3 ms·

I would accept this as an alternative to ads. Ads can easily be blocked and have a high tendency to be blocked as they can be quite intrusive and a risk. So pub

I would accept this as an alternative to ads. Ads can easily be blocked and have a high tendency to be blocked as they can be quite intrusive and a risk. So publishers will get less incentive to server them if everyone is just blocking them. Cryptominer scripts can just as easily be blocked. So bad ones (long running) can easily be punished and I can have miners be blocked when running on battery power. This might nudge the market into the right direction where people allow miners and pay for content with computer power as a proxy. I might even see a framework for browsers emerging to facilitate this market and provide better more efficient API's (GPU access) and better control (no mining on battery). Since this way of paying for content does already carry a lot of overhead in terms of total cost for all parties involved :(.

Feniks 9y ago
Yep I like the idea. One of the reasons why I block ads is because I don't want to aid and abet the marketing parasite. Trouble is that capitalism and greed will take any good initiative and defile it. And then we're back to square one.
seveibar 9y ago
Cryptominer scripts can just as easily be blocked. Unfortunately this isn't true- it's pretty easy to proxy the request to coinhive through the web server of the main site. e.g. https://github.com/cazala/coin-hive-proxy 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 30% fee that coinhive collects. I don't think it will be possible to block mining in the future without blocking javascript completely.
- aequitas 9y ago
  That's true, but cryptominers will have a distinctive pattern when running. Ie: consuming a lot of cpu for a lot of time. So with some more work a blocker for this can emerge and kill obfuscated miners. Since miners really need to run to generate revenue while ads are sold on per view of click basis, incentive to play nice and be transparent with the user might be higher?
- drcharris 9y ago
  Not sure if any of the current ad blockers do this, but perhaps script-blocking by hashing the contents of the script could get around this? Another lap of the arms-race, I guess...
Fnoord 9y ago
Electricity is very expensive in my country (The Netherlands) compared to other countries around us. I don't wanna pay for inefficient mining. Blacklisting isn't the solution. A website shouldn't be allowed to continuously use 100% of all CPU/GPU resources. Of course, the reaction will be so sit right under the limit, but I suppose the limit shouldn't be static.

Feniks 9y ago

Yep I like the idea. One of the reasons why I block ads is because I don't want to aid and abet the marketing parasite. Trouble is that capitalism and greed will take any good initiative and defile it. And then we're back to square one.

seveibar 9y ago

Cryptominer scripts can just as easily be blocked. Unfortunately this isn't true- it's pretty easy to proxy the request to coinhive through the web server of the main site. e.g. https://github.com/cazala/coin-hive-proxy 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 30% fee that coinhive collects. I don't think it will be possible to block mining in the future without blocking javascript completely.

aequitas 9y ago
That's true, but cryptominers will have a distinctive pattern when running. Ie: consuming a lot of cpu for a lot of time. So with some more work a blocker for this can emerge and kill obfuscated miners. Since miners really need to run to generate revenue while ads are sold on per view of click basis, incentive to play nice and be transparent with the user might be higher?
drcharris 9y ago
Not sure if any of the current ad blockers do this, but perhaps script-blocking by hashing the contents of the script could get around this? Another lap of the arms-race, I guess...

Fnoord 9y ago

Electricity is very expensive in my country (The Netherlands) compared to other countries around us. I don't wanna pay for inefficient mining. Blacklisting isn't the solution. A website shouldn't be allowed to continuously use 100% of all CPU/GPU resources. Of course, the reaction will be so sit right under the limit, but I suppose the limit shouldn't be static.