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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?

#31

Post by egypturnash »

itronitron wrote: post #3

Anyone know the cost of the mining rig in comparison to the cost of power for running the mining rig? Seems like it would be easier for Salon to just buy their own mining rig but if the energy demands are extreme I can see why they would want to offload this to their readers. Seems convoluted but hey this is the internet.

This is not a way for Salon to mine crypto. This is a way for Salon to get a small amount of money from each of their readers, replacing the small amount of money they used to be able to get by serving some ads along with their articles.

The equivalent action is not “Salon buys their own mining rig”. The equivalent action is “you and a bunch of other readers kick in a buck, and then Salon buys a mining rig”.

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

#32

Post by staunch »

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 more power efficient than they were.

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

#33

Post by dkarl »

perl4ever wrote: post #16
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.

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

Not everything. But having this appear out of nowhere after years of waiting for micropayments for journalism is enough to make me gush like that.

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

#34

Post by Torn »

viraptor wrote: post #27
seanwilson wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The distribution system you're describing is: https://flattr.com/

Brave Browser & Basic Attention Token (BAT) seems to have more traction: https://brave.com/creators/

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

#35

Post by natecavanaugh »

ves wrote: post #29
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 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.

This is a really good point. And strangely, like so much wealth in our economies, this one has nothing physical backing it up, but is suited to something we crave.

And in this case, trust seems to be the underlying commodity.

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

#36

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

perl4ever wrote: post #16
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.

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.

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

#39

Post by Nursie »

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.

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

#40

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

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…

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.
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