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And then WebCL will become disabled by default in sane browsers. Stealth mining is akin to theft (electricity bill), I wonder how it will be classified, legall

by pygy_ 14y ago

And then WebCL will become disabled by default in sane browsers. Stealth mining is akin to theft (electricity bill), I wonder how it will be classified, legally.

belorn 14y ago
How exactly is this different from sending unwanted java-script with ads and tracking code? The CPU cycle and bandwidth is not exactly free, and both cost electricity. Not that it matter. Current legal thinking regard consensus is a very simple one. So long the user stay on the site, then an implied consent is given to what ever the EULA says (so long the EULA page is linked in tiny text in the corner somewhere). What the cookie law in EU showed, is that there aren't enough political power at the layers below elected politician level that will enforce a strict consensus requirement on the web.
- dspillett 14y ago
  > How exactly is this different from sending unwanted java-script with ads and tracking code? The CPU cycle and bandwidth is not exactly free, and both cost electricity. Scale is the difference. The bit of bandwidth required for a small image and the CPU time to render it and run any associated little bits of script, is not all that significant compared to what is going on to transfer and render the content that has actually been requested. Running someone's GPU (and/or CPU) at 100% for a time is going to be significant though, not only does it consume more noticeable amounts of electricity directly but it also generates heat which could reduce the life expectancy of the user's device and will certainly reduce the battery-life-until-next-charge of a laptop or other portable device which could be quite an inconvenience. Of course that sort of thing already happens with flash, which is one of the reasons I have it disabled be default (or simply not installed) on all my devices, with badly written animations consuming as much CPU time as is available - though that is at least just ineptitude rather than someone deliberately abusing my kit for their own gain. Having said all that: if sites were honest about using processing power for things like that and I could choose between ad-free but power consuming and normal sites, I'd probably pick the former on desktop and the less *PU intensive option on mobile devices. Perhaps it is something places like Reddit could consider in their continuing effort to keep the site relatively un-ad-encumbered.
  - kolinko 14y ago
    Heat and sound. The difference is between me working on my laptop on a lecture, and me having to shut down my laptop because the fan is going crazy...
  - belorn 14y ago
    > The bit of bandwidth required for a small image and the CPU time to render it and run any associated little bits of script, is not all that significant compared to what is going on to transfer and render the content that has actually been requested. I strongly remember people doing tests on news sites. What they find was several MB of bandwidth, for each few lines of sent content. Ads was around 2500 times bigger in bandwidth, and I would not even try to imaging how much javascript run-time is spent on ads/tracking vs the graphical interface. Sure, some sites are better and less intrusive, but is that the norm?

by pygy_ 14y ago

And then WebCL will become disabled by default in sane browsers. Stealth mining is akin to theft (electricity bill), I wonder how it will be classified, legally.

belorn 14y ago

How exactly is this different from sending unwanted java-script with ads and tracking code? The CPU cycle and bandwidth is not exactly free, and both cost electricity. Not that it matter. Current legal thinking regard consensus is a very simple one. So long the user stay on the site, then an implied consent is given to what ever the EULA says (so long the EULA page is linked in tiny text in the corner somewhere). What the cookie law in EU showed, is that there aren't enough political power at the layers below elected politician level that will enforce a strict consensus requirement on the web.

dspillett 14y ago
> How exactly is this different from sending unwanted java-script with ads and tracking code? The CPU cycle and bandwidth is not exactly free, and both cost electricity. Scale is the difference. The bit of bandwidth required for a small image and the CPU time to render it and run any associated little bits of script, is not all that significant compared to what is going on to transfer and render the content that has actually been requested. Running someone's GPU (and/or CPU) at 100% for a time is going to be significant though, not only does it consume more noticeable amounts of electricity directly but it also generates heat which could reduce the life expectancy of the user's device and will certainly reduce the battery-life-until-next-charge of a laptop or other portable device which could be quite an inconvenience. Of course that sort of thing already happens with flash, which is one of the reasons I have it disabled be default (or simply not installed) on all my devices, with badly written animations consuming as much CPU time as is available - though that is at least just ineptitude rather than someone deliberately abusing my kit for their own gain. Having said all that: if sites were honest about using processing power for things like that and I could choose between ad-free but power consuming and normal sites, I'd probably pick the former on desktop and the less *PU intensive option on mobile devices. Perhaps it is something places like Reddit could consider in their continuing effort to keep the site relatively un-ad-encumbered.
- kolinko 14y ago
  Heat and sound. The difference is between me working on my laptop on a lecture, and me having to shut down my laptop because the fan is going crazy...
- belorn 14y ago
  > The bit of bandwidth required for a small image and the CPU time to render it and run any associated little bits of script, is not all that significant compared to what is going on to transfer and render the content that has actually been requested. I strongly remember people doing tests on news sites. What they find was several MB of bandwidth, for each few lines of sent content. Ads was around 2500 times bigger in bandwidth, and I would not even try to imaging how much javascript run-time is spent on ads/tracking vs the graphical interface. Sure, some sites are better and less intrusive, but is that the norm?