Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or a browser that offers a first-class mining API. Then we'll see every device come with a specialized mining chip. As long as you meet the required number of hashes you get the add-free experience.
Sounds like an abomination.
CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers
191–200 of 220 posts
Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The cost to the viewer is ultimately a few cents of electricity And the cost to the society is few cents of electricity minus fraction of a cent the site gets, paid in fuel being wasted on producing that electricity. Crypto mining is a disaster. If I were an evil mastermind who wanted to deepen the energy and climate problems of the world, cryptocurrencies is what I would push for.
Why do you think that minor cryptocurrencies mining operations are worse in regards of wasted fuel than playing computer games, watching mindless YouTube videos, scrolling Facebook, leaving devices on when not used, lighting places 24/7 where nobody goes at night anyway etc.? We, as society, waste an enormous amount of resources anyway, I don't see how mining in browser would even dent that. Sure, these mega cryptocu…
> playing computer games, watching mindless YouTube videos, scrolling Facebook, leaving devices on when not used, lighting places 24/7 where nobody goes at night anyway etc.?
We do. But all those examples are the case where energy use gives us something (fun, convenience) and where the waste is bounded (there're only so many devices I can leave powered, and also I have to pay for the power they use). Crypto mining literally pays you for wasting power, so the more electricity you can burn, the more money you get. And the more people join in, the more you have to burn to keep up. So there's almost no ceiling to how much personally you get to waste, and a strong incentive to waste as much as you can.
And what's all of that for? To replace a system that works fine and does not have a greed-powered feedback loop of waste? That's just dumb.
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[0] - Currently. Hopefully they'll always stay that way, but there's an off chance this becomes so popular that all new computers will come equipped with additional hardware and drivers to mine crypto for micropayments.
Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mining in a browser is going to consume my battery and bandwidth and you shouldn't be surprised that people aren't happy about that.
"Mining in a browser is going to consume my battery and bandwidth" You mean just like ads do? Of course, in a perfect world we wouldn't have either, but I just don't see clear distinction between mining in browser or ads or other useless/annoying things (from the user perspective).
One of those disincentivizes waste (howewer weakly). The other incentivizes it.
Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would they block miner.pr0gramm.com, which is only used in one specific place (the pr0gramm site itself) where you need to explicitly press a start button to mine?
"More than $BIGNUM entries? These guys know what they're doing!"
Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think that minor cryptocurrencies mining operations are worse in regards of wasted fuel than playing computer games, watching mindless YouTube videos, scrolling Facebook, leaving devices on when not used, lighting places 24/7 where nobody goes at night anyway etc.? We, as society, waste an enormous amount of resources anyway, I don't see how mining in browser would even dent that. Sure, these mega cryptocu…
Cryptocurrencies in the browser are[0] irrelevant. But they're a part of larger ecosystem of cryptocurrency mining, and that ecosystem is a huge problem. > playing computer games, watching mindless YouTube videos, scrolling Facebook, leaving devices on when not used, lighting places 24/7 where nobody goes at night anyway etc.? We do. But all those examples are the case where energy use gives us something (fun, conven…
Well, you (or somebody else) still has to pay for power consumption used for mining, so it just converts money you pay for energy bill to micropayments (though in very unfavorable rate as of yet). Don't get me wrong, I don't advocate such shady behavior in any way, just wanted to point out that this "wasted power" point is a bit of a stretch.
Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that mining through the browser is very inefficient. I don't have numbers but it'd probably cost an order of magnitude more, at least, to mine on the browser. And I'm talking about CPU cryptos, forget about bitcoin.
That may be true for Ethereum or Bitcoin, but not for Monero. The Coinhive Monero miner is about 65% as fast as a native miner would be, at least in Browsers that support WASM. Disclaimer: I wrote the Coinhive Monero miner.
Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that mining through the browser is very inefficient. I don't have numbers but it'd probably cost an order of magnitude more, at least, to mine on the browser. And I'm talking about CPU cryptos, forget about bitcoin.
That may be true for Ethereum or Bitcoin, but not for Monero. The Coinhive Monero miner is about 65% as fast as a native miner would be, at least in Browsers that support WASM. Disclaimer: I wrote the Coinhive Monero miner.
Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's worth it depends on the site, your target audience and the ads you'd be allowed to show based on your content. At this point, we (Coinhive) have paid out 992 XMR (about $89.000) to our users. We started this service 11 days ago.
$89.000 or $89,000?
Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers
#1993 quite big ukrainian web sites were found to use same script.
Re: CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers
#200I’ve been running a miner via coin-hive.com. The earnings are ridiculously low. With 5 ad slots, I make around $6 RPM. With coin-hive/monero, it's not even equivalent to $0.5. Unless you are a website with the page open for hours and you have millions of views, this does not even make sense. Or maybe I am not doing this right.
Yes this is what I calculated as well. Regular ads are still way more profitable - even if you somehow convince all your visitors to keep your page open 24/7. Even coinhive admit that you can't use this to make real money.