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Starbucks in-store wifi provider in Buenos Aires uses CoinHive

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Re: Starbucks in-store wifi provider in Buenos Aires uses CoinHive

#61
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would coinhive work as a captcha alternative? There is no human involvement in mining, is there?

It works as a rate-limiter in a way. If you're interested look into HashCash as proposed to combat email spam: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

rate-limiting is not what captcha does, that's for DDoS protection and even in that scenario I feel HashCash and crypto mining is a very terrible idea.

Re: Starbucks in-store wifi provider in Buenos Aires uses CoinHive

#62
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works as a rate-limiter in a way. If you're interested look into HashCash as proposed to combat email spam: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

rate-limiting is not what captcha does, that's for DDoS protection and even in that scenario I feel HashCash and crypto mining is a very terrible idea.

Hence "captcha alternative" and not "alternative captcha".

Re: Starbucks in-store wifi provider in Buenos Aires uses CoinHive

#63
post #56
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is you are always outspending on energy costs because of the energy inefficiency of personal computers for mining vs. a dedicated machine. So the chance of return would be more or less 0%. More like, "If I pay $5 for a lottery ticket where the max I can win is $4, what are my chances of profiting?" But again, not an expert. Just the articles I've read and people I know who mine bitcoin say you can't…

Very false. You appear to not understand how mining works. The reason people join pools is to make money even if you never personally mine a coin. In a pool you just get paid for your effort. This is why joining a pool with consumer hardware will always lose. In this case we aren't talking about pools! There is two things that can happen when you solo mine - you either "lose it all" (all money spent on electricity do…

I think that the current reward for mining a block is 12.5 Bitcoin (+ transaction fees of course)

Re: Starbucks in-store wifi provider in Buenos Aires uses CoinHive

#64
post #43
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeez, you're completely missing the point. The GP was asking for a comparison the odds/cost of mining a coin with the odds/cost of winning the lottery. Not about "investing," and not about "making a profit." Basically, which form of gambling is better from a cost/rewards perspective.

My understanding is you are always outspending on energy costs because of the energy inefficiency of personal computers for mining vs. a dedicated machine. So the chance of return would be more or less 0%. More like, "If I pay $5 for a lottery ticket where the max I can win is $4, what are my chances of profiting?" But again, not an expert. Just the articles I've read and people I know who mine bitcoin say you can't…

>Just the articles I've read

I strongly recommend reading the Bitcoin white paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf It is not as nearly as long and complicated as you would think, if you know the basics (what's a hash, how do public keys and digital signatures work). I found it way clearer than all the explanation articles I've seen on the internet.

Re: Starbucks in-store wifi provider in Buenos Aires uses CoinHive

#65
post #64
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is you are always outspending on energy costs because of the energy inefficiency of personal computers for mining vs. a dedicated machine. So the chance of return would be more or less 0%. More like, "If I pay $5 for a lottery ticket where the max I can win is $4, what are my chances of profiting?" But again, not an expert. Just the articles I've read and people I know who mine bitcoin say you can't…

>Just the articles I've read I strongly recommend reading the Bitcoin white paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf It is not as nearly as long and complicated as you would think, if you know the basics (what's a hash, how do public keys and digital signatures work). I found it way clearer than all the explanation articles I've seen on the internet.

Thank you, that's quite useful! I was doing some light reading on it so I just started with some simple articles, but perhaps they were over simplifying.

Re: Starbucks in-store wifi provider in Buenos Aires uses CoinHive

#66
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rate-limiting is not what captcha does, that's for DDoS protection and even in that scenario I feel HashCash and crypto mining is a very terrible idea.

Hence "captcha alternative" and not "alternative captcha".

Wouldn't "captcha alternative" imply that the said alternative is a replacement for captcha and has similar functionality?

Re: Starbucks in-store wifi provider in Buenos Aires uses CoinHive

#67
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence "captcha alternative" and not "alternative captcha".

Wouldn't "captcha alternative" imply that the said alternative is a replacement for captcha and has similar functionality?

Not necessarily. If the goal is to reduce bot activity, captchas and hashcash are two ways to do that. Captchas are hard for bots to pass, whereas hashcash wastes a fixed amount of CPU time. The result is that robot operators have to invest more effort to abuse your service at scale than they're willing to (hopefully). In this sense, hashcash is a captcha alternative—it's not a captcha, but it helps with the same problem. An alternative captcha might be using something other than reCaptcha. At least, that's how I'd interpret it.
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