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What happens when I choose to “Suppress Ads” on Salon?

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Re: What happens when I choose to “Suppress Ads” on Salon?

#51

Post by jnordwick »

seanwilson wrote: post #24
jnordwick wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather pay 10 cents than waste 20 cents in electricity. There just isn't good way to really do that easily and transparently.

Half-baked thoughts here, but the way I thought of it is you'd "top-up" your browser with say $10 a month and it would be distributed to sites you've viewed or chosen to donate to. There's obvious questions with privacy though and sites trying to game the system if it's view count based. I think most people wouldn't be against a small monthly payment to avoid seeing ads but you'd need to do it in a way that was simpl…

Nobody wants to have am account you have to top up. You need to plan ahead, there would be multiple systems not completely overlapping (or some sites being cheaper with a specific billing company), and a myriad of other reasons. You would need to sequester multiple monies, and some you might ever use like having $3.12 left on a gift card, but multiple cards.

Re: What happens when I choose to “Suppress Ads” on Salon?

#52

Post by lrns_ »

rspeer wrote: post #45
ves wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just proof that you didn’t forge a scarce commodity. The value isn’t related to the wasted electricity, but the hard problem the electricity was used to solve. Love it or hate it, it makes sense.

It doesn't make sense because it's a negative-sum game. The only thing people are actually using Bitcoin for right now is to sell to other people for more than they bought it (or maybe to sell for less than they bought it to launder money). The total amount made by the buyers and sellers is zero (because every buyer is buying from a seller), and there has to be a constant inflow of new buyers just to cover the cost o…

Tell that to a Venezuelan, who can provide a family with a single antminer.

It will make sense to you in 5 years.

Re: What happens when I choose to “Suppress Ads” on Salon?

#54

Post by AstralStorm »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #36
perl4ever wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really everything you want? Because one thing that I can imagine wanting with micropayments is transparency about how much you are paying...

You can control how much is "spent" with with a cap on CPU utilization.

Browsers do not provide such caps for JS CPU usage. Maybe they should.

This is extra bad when you're viewing on a phone, tablet or battery powered laptop.

Re: What happens when I choose to “Suppress Ads” on Salon?

#55

Post by Arn_Thor »

The last two paragraphs is where it gets sleazy. They're saying you'll "help support the evolution and growth of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies" (a.k.a. paying Salon from your electricity bill), but then allude to the fact that this technology COULD, theoretically, maybe, be used for all sorts of good stuff. Never mind that what it's actually going to be used for is, again, paying Salon.

I approve of their transparency, and I don't have a rational complaint against the method of revenue generation at the moment, but the last part there is an attempt to put lipstick on the pig

Re: What happens when I choose to “Suppress Ads” on Salon?

#56

Post by AstralStorm »

Nursie wrote: post #39

Great, more sites that will make my laptop sound like an aircraft taking off. Just nope. If you want to block me from accessing your content with an adblocker active, go for it. But you aren't using my machine like this. Without explicit agreement I wonder if it's even legal.

It is as legal as any silly website eating all your CPU. Time to fix JS engines to prevent such abuse. Make them a real virtual machines while at it not sombre half baked efforts - that would also help with security holes.

Re: What happens when I choose to “Suppress Ads” on Salon?

#57

Post by pdkl95 »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #50
pdkl95 wrote: post #22

The increased use of browser mining has made it a lot easier to convince people to globally disable Javascript (or install noscript/etc). Security concerns are rarely convincing, and tracking can be hard to explain, but paying for more electricity and worse UI response time are things people actually care about.

> The increased use of browser mining has made it a lot easier to convince people to globally disable Javascript (or install noscript/etc). Has it though? Do you have any data to back up this assumption? I can't find ANYONE who is tech illiterate who understands any of this stuff and those that I know are tech literate either don't notice or don't care about JavaScript. I've only ever met very, very few people who di…

> Has it though?

I have personally succeeded in convincing more people to disable javascript in the last few months than I have since Javascript was introduced in Netscape Navigator 2.0.

> this assumption?

I'm offering personal experience, not an assumption.

Re: What happens when I choose to “Suppress Ads” on Salon?

#58

Post by staunch »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #40
staunch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Too bad it has to waste electricity... It doesn't waste electricity. It uses a lot of electricity to create a secure global payment network that can solve the micropayments problem. Sacrificing efficiency for decentralization was a key design decision in Bitcoin. YouTube cat videos and daytime television are genuine wastes of power. Humanity has to solve the power generation problem and processors are already far m…

You're technically correct in that it does provide some value, but it is a waste in the sense that it is CPU mining which is far less efficient than mining with GPUS or ASICS.

There are proof of work algorithms that try to be ASIC-proof. And most visitors already have a CPU and GPU sitting idle. Something that used an extra 25% of your processors may not even be noticeable, and yet it could solve the fake news and clickbait problems.

Re: What happens when I choose to “Suppress Ads” on Salon?

#59

Post by pls2halp »

staunch wrote: post #32
dkarl wrote: post #5

This is everything I wanted from micropayments. Please, take my money rather than forcibly taking my attention and shoving garbage through my brain. Too bad it has to waste electricity, but at least it's not abusing my poor, finite, distractible, distortable brain. It's not precious to anyone else, but it's precious to me.

> Too bad it has to waste electricity... It doesn't waste electricity. It uses a lot of electricity to create a secure global payment network that can solve the micropayments problem. Sacrificing efficiency for decentralization was a key design decision in Bitcoin. YouTube cat videos and daytime television are genuine wastes of power. Humanity has to solve the power generation problem and processors are already far m…

But the way crypto has ended up, big pools are sacrificing efficiency for (some) centralisation.

Re: What happens when I choose to “Suppress Ads” on Salon?

#60

Post by apatters »

pdkl95 wrote: post #22

The increased use of browser mining has made it a lot easier to convince people to globally disable Javascript (or install noscript/etc). Security concerns are rarely convincing, and tracking can be hard to explain, but paying for more electricity and worse UI response time are things people actually care about.

I have no problem at all with websites using browser mining as an alternate monetization strategy to ads, as long as:

1) Permission is requested first

2) The UX is good (it stays out of my way and doesn't slow down my device)

3) The mining finishes when I leave the site

Most of the problems with the modern web stem from the failure of browser vendors to implement a good user-centric permissions model. They all hold an unquestioned belief that more power in the platform is always better, and they've all spent the past 15 years kowtowing to developers, advertisers, and profit-motivated corporations instead of protecting their users from the above.

I want a simple, limited, fast, secure, document-centric platform which allows the site to request the execution of additional functions. Publishers unsurprisingly abuse the freedom they currently enjoy to throw up popovers on every page, secretly steal CPU cycles, load-on-demand videos that follow me as I scroll, and track every move I make online. I don't want any of that to work by default.

A common, well-intentioned argument against my point of view in the last few years has been that the web platform needs to compete with native mobile apps. That argument carried a lot more weight when everyone was installing tons of native apps. But increasingly we're at the point where we're sick of native apps for all the same reasons we're sick of the web -- they too are bloated attention + data thieves.

We need a true user-first platform. I'll pay for sites or apps on that platform, or I'll let them use my CPU to mine crypto. I just want them to not suck.

Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple could all lead the way in shipping browsers that are pro-user. Mozilla's got the heart for it, Microsoft and Apple have little to lose. Leaders at all these companies have failed to lead and demonstrate vision, relegating themselves to playing second fiddle to Google on the web because they think shitty popup ads will be the final word in web history.

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