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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?

#81

Post by fauigerzigerk »

pdkl95 wrote: post #62
apatters wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> Most of the problems with the modern web stem from the failure of browser vendors to implement a good user-centric permissions model. I suggest that such creating a proper permission model isn't possible , because it isn't possible to determine the behavior of Turing complete programs without running them[1]. Browsers are currently chasing the impossible[2] goal of trying to enumerate badness - often only the known…

There are things that could be done in spite of Turing. For instance, web pages could be granted CPU and memory quotas.

If they want to run JavaScript that uses more than say 5% CPU or more than 300 MB of memory (both on average over 30 seconds) they must ask for permission.

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

#82

Post by bencollier49 »

rspeer wrote: post #70
bencollier49 wrote: post #61

This again falls under the heading of "environmental disaster".

It blows my mind that the first site to openly make their users participate in this disaster is the supposedly "progressive" Salon. Is it clear what they're trying to mine? They have these silly feel-good examples like folding@home but it sounds more like they're going to be moving drug money for anarcho-capitalists like everyone else in this space. Probably Monero, right?

That one makes the most sense, given that it'll be CPU mining.

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

#83

Post by majewsky »

AstralStorm wrote: post #54
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If this problem persists, we will see tools popping up that use the OS APIs for restricting resource usage (e.g. cgroups on Linux) when starting the browser.

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

#84

Post by zapt02 »

ShirsenduK wrote: post #19

I wrote about this model few days back. https://medium.com/@troysk/saving-journalism-with-cryptocurr...

It's clear you've never worked at a newspaper. If one of the major publications tried this sort of hijinx the other papers would latch on and give them badwill to no end. This is not the way to "save journalism", and it's a truly terrible idea that will kill whatever serious publication dares try it. The CBS Showtime site you refer to as "HBO Showtime" in your article was likely hacked, so doesn't back up your point at all.

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

#85

Post by zapt02 »

jnordwick wrote: post #11

I want my cut! I've been pushing this idea for over a year now (as my HN and other social media comment histories can attest), most recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16242816 I should have patented this when I first had it. Waiting for streaming music and video to embed mining in their players... Or websites pooling together to stabilizing income streams and provide bulk access. The idea to rent computer…

Terrible idea, and hubris on your part for thinking you can patent this "idea".

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

#86

Post by nikanj »

wskinner wrote: post #46
nikanj wrote: post #28

In the crypto money flow, I get to see the page for a $0,20 payment from me to my electricity company, but I'm still struggling to see the value transfer from the electricity company to Salon.com. Someone™ is paying good greenbacks for irrefutable proof of me wasting kilowatts. The more I try to understand that part of the crypto value chain, the more bizarre it seems. "It's a store of value", i.e. Salon.com can late…

It’s called proof of work: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

The giant pile of dirt on my back yard is proof that I did hours of hard work with a tea spoon. Much less efficient than a shovel would have been, as a metaphor for hash algorithms designed to be difficult.

Why is that proof of work of any value, to anyone?

Hard work, just for the sake of hard work, is a great ideal to the the previous generations - but we traditionally have based our economy on how much your work benefits someone, not how hard you worked.

Mining bitcoin is extremely hard, with precisely zero benefit. The only thing of value is the work itself. Quite zen, even.

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

#88

Post by Chris2048 »

pdkl95 wrote: post #62
apatters wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> Most of the problems with the modern web stem from the failure of browser vendors to implement a good user-centric permissions model. I suggest that such creating a proper permission model isn't possible , because it isn't possible to determine the behavior of Turing complete programs without running them[1]. Browsers are currently chasing the impossible[2] goal of trying to enumerate badness - often only the known…

So have predefined, approved functions that achieve 90% of required functionality, who's composition may not be TC.

Anything custom requires permission.

Also, don't crypto-miners need to pass their results back? That's one point of attack - restrictions on what data can be passed back.

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

#89

Post by mrtksn »

saagarjha wrote: post #63
mrtksn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean that CPU can't mine bitcoins.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should . If you're not going to make money mining Bitcoin, then why do it?

Are we mining Bitcoins here?

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

#90

Post by VonGallifrey »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #41
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.

But does that hard problem actually do anything? If it was something like Folding@Home, I could see the value. It seems to me, the only “value” in this hard problem is to waste electricity.

Mining in Crypto Currencies is the process to Verify, Order, and Secure the transactions in the global ledger. Without mining no one could send transactions, without transactions the currency does not function.

The hard problem that the mining algorithm computes is a Hash of a batch of transactions together with some meta data. This meta data also includes the Hash of the previous batch. This is creating a cryptographic chain of transaction batches (blocks). A Blockchain.

This is securing the transactions in the following way:

- You can not change a transaction without changing the hash of the batch the transaction was included in.

- This would also change the hash of all transaction batches that follow.

- The crypto currency miners and users follow the longest chain with the most work put into.

- To fake or alter a Transaction you would need to recalculate the hashes of the blocks that follow faster then the honest miners so that your new chain is the longest chain.

- More honest miners means it is harder to manipulate the blockchain since to do that you would need to control more then 51% of the global hash power of this currency.

Securing a Blockchain is not as noble of an effort then curing cancer with Folding@Home, but it is also not just wasting electricity.

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