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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?

#111

Post by fauigerzigerk »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #100
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that crypto currencies are not productive assets and as such they are a negative-sum game. But they have utility. At this point I think mostly for gamblers and criminals as you said yourself. But they also have utility for all sorts of tinkerers, and via that route they may eventually become more useful to the rest of us.

Yeah, it's wrong to deny cryptocurrencies have utility. They do. The real problem is the associated upkeep. If it were to get comparable in use with fiat, I believe Bitcoin would quite literally cook us all on this planet. The energy characteristics of crypto are unbounded from top, and this is seen as a feature - unlike normal financial systems, which try to minimize it.

I agree that it does look disproportionate. But my understanding (I'm by no means an expert) is that it could theoretically become less disproportionate as more transactions are being processed.

Proof of work is not a per transaction cost. It's a per block cost that doesn't depend on the number of transactions per block or the size of the block.

But still, the way the incentives are structured in this whole game seems somewhat perverse. Otherwise we would never have gotten to a point where bitcoin mining has a country sized energy profile.

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

#112

Post by pdkl95 »

Chris2048 wrote: post #88
pdkl95 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

Aka declarative configuration, which we have already: HTML.

Define new tags for if necessary.

> Anything custom requires permission.

You generate that server side.

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

#113

Post by stordoff »

staunch wrote: post #58
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there a way to be ASIC-proof without being less efficient? I'm not 100% familiar with it, but my base level understanding was that you are adding more work (e.g. memory access) to nullify the raw compute advantage of ASICs.

Further, I'm not sure how it would solve clickbait. Surely clickbait => more clicks => more people running your miner (just as it currently leads to more ad. views)?

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

#114

Post by Chris2048 »

pdkl95 wrote: post #112
Chris2048 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> So have predefined, approved functions that achieve 90% of required functionality, who's composition may not be TC. Aka declarative configuration, which we have already: HTML. Define new tags for if necessary. > Anything custom requires permission. You generate that server side .

> which we have already: HTML

HTML cannot perform 90% of what JS is used for, otherwise the js wouldn't be needed. "Define new tags" might be one way, ala Angular directives, but it would still require notions of safety attached to those directives/functions.

> You generate that server side.

A server-side crypto miner? Websites/apps are increasingly client-side intensive/heavy. Perhaps there is no need for non-generic/safe client side code, but I'm not so sure. In any case, requiring permission to run anything custom would be a reasonable restriction I think.

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

#115

Post by stordoff »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #111
TeMPOraL wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's wrong to deny cryptocurrencies have utility. They do. The real problem is the associated upkeep. If it were to get comparable in use with fiat, I believe Bitcoin would quite literally cook us all on this planet. The energy characteristics of crypto are unbounded from top, and this is seen as a feature - unlike normal financial systems, which try to minimize it.

I agree that it does look disproportionate. But my understanding (I'm by no means an expert) is that it could theoretically become less disproportionate as more transactions are being processed. Proof of work is not a per transaction cost. It's a per block cost that doesn't depend on the number of transactions per block or the size of the block. But still, the way the incentives are structured in this whole game seem…

It's not a per transaction cost, but as I understand it they are closely related and there is no upper bound on it. As the number of transactions per block and the value of the currency increases, it becomes more profitable to mine, thus it makes more economic sense to invent more power into it.

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

#116

Post by pdkl95 »

Kiro wrote: post #104
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.

> worse UI response time The miner is run in a WebWorker so shouldn't affect the UI response time.

I never said it was the browser's UI.

Regardless of which UI, you do not know people are using their computer for, or how much free CPU they have available.

My friend's 1.2Ghz Core 2 Solo[1] laptop takes many seconds to reload locally hosted static HTML. Loading a youtube page takes >30s, sometimes far more. Anytime a webpage has CPU-bound Javascript - intentionally or not - the mouse becomes a lot harder to use. No, they are not buying a new laptop anytime soon; they live below the poverty line with student loans and medical expenses.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_2_microproc...

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

#117

Post by whywhywhywhy »

Think it's interesting how angry website miners make people vs just a banner ad also consuming your entire CPU.

Definitely feel it has an element of Bitcoin FOMO to it. The idea someone used their CPU could get rich off it angers people more than just a badly coded ad using the same amount of CPU.

(Not saying the anger isn't justified, purely an observation when really the power wastage is the same)

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

#118

Post by stordoff »

seveibar wrote: post #44
PatchMonkey wrote: post #30

Adblock Plus has a cryptominer list. Yes, it does work in ublock origin. Problem solved? I think so.

It's pretty easy to proxy the request to a cryptocurrency miner pool through the web server of the main site. e.g. https://github.com/cazala/coin-hive-proxy Site owners have incentive to run this proxy so they're not marked as a mining site OR to circumvent the X% fee that coinhive/other cryptocurrency pools collect. So the adblock/ublock origin fixes will only work until site owners decide to start proxying. IMO sea…

Is that not currently the case with ads, and addressed by blocking certain scripts/elements even if they originate from the same site?

I'd also suspect that it'll just lead to different ways of detecting miners (e.g. fingerprinting the behaviour of mining algorithms, or just blocking scripts that use more than a set CPU budget by default).

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

#119

Post by pdkl95 »

Chris2048 wrote: post #114
pdkl95 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So have predefined, approved functions that achieve 90% of required functionality, who's composition may not be TC. Aka declarative configuration, which we have already: HTML. Define new tags for if necessary. > Anything custom requires permission. You generate that server side .

> which we have already: HTML HTML cannot perform 90% of what JS is used for, otherwise the js wouldn't be needed. "Define new tags" might be one way, ala Angular directives, but it would still require notions of safety attached to those directives/functions. > You generate that server side. A server-side crypto miner? Websites/apps are increasingly client-side intensive/heavy. Perhaps there is no need for non-generi…

> HTML cannot perform 90% of what JS is used for

Yes, that's the goal.

> Angular ... directives/functions

HTML is a document format, not an application framework. My entire point is that complexity cannot be made safe. Repackaging the Turing completeness into different forms only moves the problem around. The only way to reduce the attack surface back to something that is decidable is to remove complexity (aka features).

> A server-side crypto miner?

You can do whatever you want on the server. However, I was replying to the desire for "anything custom".

> Websites/apps are increasingly client-side intensive/heavy.

Yes, that's the problem.

> but I'm not so sure

Server-side apps worked fine before Javascript existed, just like they did on the IBM 3270 which was the model for HTML+forms.

> requiring permission to run anything custom would be a reasonable restriction I think.

That only re-creates the current situation on phones where apps ask for everything and refuse to run if you don't grant them permission. That hasn't worked in practice, because it's easy to social engineer people that do not have the necessary engineering background to understand what that permission really means.

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

#120

Post by Chris2048 »

pdkl95 wrote: post #119
Chris2048 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which we have already: HTML HTML cannot perform 90% of what JS is used for, otherwise the js wouldn't be needed. "Define new tags" might be one way, ala Angular directives, but it would still require notions of safety attached to those directives/functions. > You generate that server side. A server-side crypto miner? Websites/apps are increasingly client-side intensive/heavy. Perhaps there is no need for non-generi…

> HTML cannot perform 90% of what JS is used for Yes, that's the goal. > Angular ... directives/functions HTML is a document format, not an application framework. My entire point is that complexity cannot be made safe . Repackaging the Turing completeness into different forms only moves the problem around. The only way to reduce the attack surface back to something that is decidable is to remove complexity (aka featu…

> packaging the Turing completeness into different forms only moves the problem around

The solution I proposed doesn't require TC, except in code that needs explicit permission to run.

> reduce the attack surface back to something that is decidable

You don't need decidability, just trust. A function checked manually and signed by a reputable source is enough. Are internet browsers formally checked? The only aspect that needs to be decidable is composition of signed functions, not the functions themselves, as safety is represented by the signature.

building functionality into HTML might be similar, except I'd assume would be more bogged down by consortia. Add the ability to sign JS functions and verify their composition, and you can decide who's signatures to trust.

> Server-side apps worked fine before Javascript existed

Sure, but did they scale as well?

> That only re-creates the current situation on phones where apps ask for everything and refuse to run if you don't grant them permission

Maybe, it depends how you design it. I think that should change too. But those environments are currently restricted in ways the internet is not.

I'm also far happier for a website to indicate to me that they aren't worth my time by this kind of access refusal. Same thing happening with pay-walled news sites - I'll happily blacklist them.

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