3 ms·

It's not even using 1% of my CPU. It checks one prime every 100ms, so it doesn't really use a lot of anything.

dangrossman 13y ago
The script was just a proof of concept. A scenario where you could be paid to donate 1% of your CPU time while certain webpages were open will never occur. Here's why: Let's say there exists a problem where it's worth paying to solve it like this. The most a company could pay you is just below the spot price for buying instances on EC2 or some other cloud/cluster -- or they'd do that instead. So we're talking about nickels and dimes per hour for the equivalent of 100% CPU time on an EC2 instance. If you donate the equivalent to 1% of that computational power, the most you can earn is hundredths of a penny per hour. You could run the script for a week and make a penny, while spending more than a penny on extra electric. That's no net gain for you, and no meaningful work done for the script author -- so this script would never have been written.
- ricardobeat 13y ago
  It's not computing per se, but BrowserShots has been doing that for a couple years, paying users for their browser time.
ruswick 13y ago
That's irrelevant. It's evident that, based on the ridiculous ads that some sites employ (auto-playing videos, those absurd scroll-by ads, etc.) that a lot of companies are willing to drastically degrade their user experience to profit. Who's to say that companies won't take 10% of your CPU, or 20%? Let's universalize this practice. 1% CPU usage in each of 25 tabs begins to seriously degrade the experience and waste tremendous amounts of battery life. In fact, I'd say that it's only financially tenable to hijack larger proportions of one's CPU. In order for access to 1% CPU usage of an entire site's user base to be economical compared to cloud computing options, this form of computation would either need to be ridiculously cheap or offer a massive user base with untold devices in the computing apparatus. It just doesn't make sense in most scenarios.
fosap 13y ago
But it does, potentially, prevent my laptop CPU from sleeping and uses battery time.
medde 13y ago
try checking a 100 million digit prime number in 100ms http://www.mersenne.org/legal/#awards http://www.mersenne.org/legal/#awards

The script was just a proof of concept. A scenario where you could be paid to donate 1% of your CPU time while certain webpages were open will never occur. Here's why: Let's say there exists a problem where it's worth paying to solve it like this. The most a company could pay you is just below the spot price for buying instances on EC2 or some other cloud/cluster -- or they'd do that instead. So we're talking about nickels and dimes per hour for the equivalent of 100% CPU time on an EC2 instance. If you donate the equivalent to 1% of that computational power, the most you can earn is hundredths of a penny per hour. You could run the script for a week and make a penny, while spending more than a penny on extra electric. That's no net gain for you, and no meaningful work done for the script author -- so this script would never have been written.

ricardobeat 13y ago
It's not computing per se, but BrowserShots has been doing that for a couple years, paying users for their browser time.

ruswick 13y ago

That's irrelevant. It's evident that, based on the ridiculous ads that some sites employ (auto-playing videos, those absurd scroll-by ads, etc.) that a lot of companies are willing to drastically degrade their user experience to profit. Who's to say that companies won't take 10% of your CPU, or 20%? Let's universalize this practice. 1% CPU usage in each of 25 tabs begins to seriously degrade the experience and waste tremendous amounts of battery life. In fact, I'd say that it's only financially tenable to hijack larger proportions of one's CPU. In order for access to 1% CPU usage of an entire site's user base to be economical compared to cloud computing options, this form of computation would either need to be ridiculously cheap or offer a massive user base with untold devices in the computing apparatus. It just doesn't make sense in most scenarios.

fosap 13y ago

But it does, potentially, prevent my laptop CPU from sleeping and uses battery time.

medde 13y ago

try checking a 100 million digit prime number in 100ms http://www.mersenne.org/legal/#awards http://www.mersenne.org/legal/#awards