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from the all-your-browsers-are-belong-to-us dept.
There has been a trend to burden visitors of javascript-infested web sites further by mining cryptocurrencies on the visiting machines. Sometimes it is the site hosting the web pages being visited doing the mining. Sometimes it is third parties. A recent report from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, looks at the ethics behind browser-based cryptocurrency mining, focusing on the case of Coinhive.
According to the report, ethical problems remain even when a user voluntarily consents to their CPU being used for mining, as the user might not fully understand that to which they are signing. While they might benefit from a lack of ads or higher quality video streaming on the site, they could also be stuck with "higher energy bills, along with accelerated device degradation, slower system performance, and a poor web experience."
Also, economics are addressed to a more limited extent. From the actual report:
While visits to parked domains are considerably shorter than an average website, the data spans a period of three months and gives some insight into the profitability of cryptojacking. During the experimental period of about 3 months, they accumulated 105 580 user sessions for an average of 24 seconds per session. For the period examined, the revenue was 0.02417 XMR (Monero's currency) which at the time of writing is valued at $7.69 USD.
In other words, cryptojacking burns a lot of electricity, slows down the CPU, degrades the web experience, and in return pays the malfeasants a pittance.
From Arxiv.org : A First Look at Browser-based Cryptojacking (warning for PDF).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday March 12 2018, @09:16PM (4 children)
I can assure you if my CPU/video card fans go berserk, I'm not gonna spend hours every day on S/N in a very short time.
Popularity can go down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Monday March 12 2018, @09:32PM (2 children)
What about if it was reasonably throttled? Say, 10% of your available resources?
Personally, I'd much rather mine CC for a site than I would look at the excrement that passes for advertising these days.
But yes, if it floored the machine, that'd be an unacceptable level of consumption. I don't just surf the web; I do it during compiler builds, etc., and my machine is just about always running my SDR software, which requires about 10% of the system all by itself.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 12 2018, @10:55PM
Pre-announced and reasonable may be Ok.
Mind you, it may or may not be, depending on the circumstances. Examples when it may not: reading S/N from my mobile (while using public transport), or reading S/N from the office's workstation while the monster C++ part of the project compiles for the next half-an-hour.
(substitute S/N with 'your favourite site using cryptomining to cover the costs')
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday March 12 2018, @11:00PM
Even then I'd prefer a dedicated client than running in browser.
Any S/N coders raising to the challenge of implementing a native distributed cryptomining client to trickle in the S/N coffers?
No other dependencies please (a la Perla or Python)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Tuesday March 13 2018, @03:45AM
Finally a way to end the Colo menice! But in all seriousness we can't let soylent get the cryptocodes.
I think most of the editors, at least from what I have seen on the IRC are such ludites and respectors of your computer soverignty that they wouldn"t even consider it.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam