4 ms·

An aside to this story which I find interesting: I definitely think that mining cryptocurrency on other people's machines without their consent is malicious, a

An aside to this story which I find interesting: I definitely think that mining cryptocurrency on other people's machines without their consent is malicious, and I am glad that the security industry is treating this as an exploit. This shares similarities with ads in webpages, which run without my consent. However, unlike ads, mining scripts don't grab my attention without my consent, they only use my processing power, which is something I would be willing to negotiate for the right website. I'd be happy to click a button which says "Allow nytimes.com to mine cryptocurrency on your browser while you browse their website", for example. There would need to be secure systems in place around this sort of mechanism--I'd rather have this implemented by the browser than as a JS script--but this might provide an alternative to pay models which sites seem unwilling to try, and ad models which I am unwilling to agree to.

pessimizer 9y ago
As long as it's implemented in an open-source browser and I get some fine grained control over my processor time dedicated to each site, I'd consider it a pretty killer feature.
SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
>I'd be happy to click a button which says "Allow nytimes.com to mine cryptocurrency on your browser while you browse their website", Ya know, I wonder if poeple hat agree to this have made comments online about global warming and how serious a threat it is, and how dirty deniers are stupidbadpeople? Because being proCrypto in my mind, is just like that same type of hippy type being anti-nuclear, just with more irony and ignorance. And I’m not someone that believes 1/2 the gloom and doom, just that I like the hypocrisy of “climate informed” types being pro-crypto which is the biggest waste of power we’ve ever made.
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  That only makes sense if you ignore the fact that most "climate informed" people think renewable energy is the solution to climate change rather than luddism.
- sli 9y ago
  You're judging all cryptocurrencies against Bitcoin, which is already inaccurate. They don't all work the same way or consume mass amounts of power like Bitcoin does.
lweber 9y ago
This is exactly what happened on Pr0gramm. The users of the platform are not the people who include Coinhive on hacked websites. Pr0gramm simply allowed its users to voluntarily mine in their browsers and be rewarded with a premium account. The main benefit of a premium account is, that no ads are shown on the site.
- narcisius 9y ago
  yup, at least pr0 gives you something back and you do NOT do it without consent... unlike some websides where I wonder why the hell does this site need 50% of my 4GHz processing power....
- Fnoord 9y ago
  > The users of the platform are not the people who include Coinhive on hacked websites. They're apparently basement dwellers. Hint: basement dwellers don't pay their own electricity bill.

pessimizer 9y ago

As long as it's implemented in an open-source browser and I get some fine grained control over my processor time dedicated to each site, I'd consider it a pretty killer feature.

SlowRobotAhead 9y ago

>I'd be happy to click a button which says "Allow nytimes.com to mine cryptocurrency on your browser while you browse their website", Ya know, I wonder if poeple hat agree to this have made comments online about global warming and how serious a threat it is, and how dirty deniers are stupidbadpeople? Because being proCrypto in my mind, is just like that same type of hippy type being anti-nuclear, just with more irony and ignorance. And I’m not someone that believes 1/2 the gloom and doom, just that I like the hypocrisy of “climate informed” types being pro-crypto which is the biggest waste of power we’ve ever made.

kerkeslager 9y ago
That only makes sense if you ignore the fact that most "climate informed" people think renewable energy is the solution to climate change rather than luddism.
sli 9y ago
You're judging all cryptocurrencies against Bitcoin, which is already inaccurate. They don't all work the same way or consume mass amounts of power like Bitcoin does.

lweber 9y ago

This is exactly what happened on Pr0gramm. The users of the platform are not the people who include Coinhive on hacked websites. Pr0gramm simply allowed its users to voluntarily mine in their browsers and be rewarded with a premium account. The main benefit of a premium account is, that no ads are shown on the site.

narcisius 9y ago
yup, at least pr0 gives you something back and you do NOT do it without consent... unlike some websides where I wonder why the hell does this site need 50% of my 4GHz processing power....
Fnoord 9y ago
> The users of the platform are not the people who include Coinhive on hacked websites. They're apparently basement dwellers. Hint: basement dwellers don't pay their own electricity bill.