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Topic: Embedable Javascript Bitcoin miner for your website - page 4. (Read 149663 times)

Nythain

newbie

Activity: 56

Merit: 0

Quote from: tonne on June 01, 2011, 08:38:15 PM

For ads there's adblock. No problems with contributing to a collective mining effort, I just want to be asked.

For FireFox there's NoScript
For Chrome, there's built in script blocking functionality, and NotScripts for further protection.

While I don't think the cumulative world wide web browsing populace should have to resort to things things, they are effective. They will also help stopping other scripts. With today's internet, they are almost a must have really.
The great solution would be if webmasters would make it known what is going on so users can choose to frequent the site or not. A step even further would be an opt-in or opt-out option.

From reading through this thread, and the couple others that have popped up, I gather *almost* all of us agree that the initial development of this miner is awesome. It's potential is amazing in numerous applications of it. For the most part, we start to disagree on ethical application of this miner by webmasters. Most of us against it really only request at least being informed its being used, so we can choose whether or not to continue visiting the site. In the comparison of ads, they are visible and I know they are there. If I find the amount of ads on the site to be annoying or too resource intensive, I can leave. So far, I have only come across 1 site other than the main project site, that informed users on the home/front page that they were currently generating bitcoins using a web miner.

1bitc0inplz

member

Activity: 112

Merit: 10

Quote from: Nythain on June 01, 2011, 07:29:51 PM

So comparing it to ads is probably not the best analogy... comparing it to analytics would probably be better.

You know, one of our original ideas (not that it got far) was to somehow bundle this into an analytics package...

1bitc0inplz

member

Activity: 112

Merit: 10

Quote from: manifold on June 01, 2011, 03:13:00 PM

First Points:

Your idea isn't good, it is brilliant.
If bitcoins will ever get a major payment, your way WILL replace ads
Your idea, may very well get some sites to use it instead of ads, and therfore will make the bitcoin market bigger

Seconds Points:

All code has to be open source, if it really want to spread it as wide as possible
An optional visible hashing rate would be nice
A choice (I want to use 10, 20,.... 90%) of the end users cpu.

Thanks for your idea and implementation!

Thank you for your kind words. Your input is worth more than you think. You gave me an idea... some of the things you were saying got me thinking...

I don't want to spill the beans just yet Cheesy

1bitc0inplz

member

Activity: 112

Merit: 10

Quote from: cablepair on June 01, 2011, 12:07:06 PM

is there a way I can show the users mining speed on my site like you do at bitp.it ?

Firstly, thank you for your previous post. It was your site (in addition to a couple others) that I pictured when I was thinking about sites that are very open to the user about what is going on. I applaude your use of this script, and I think it is a great example of what we originally had in mind.

As for the hash rate... that is a feature that has been asked for a couple of times. I see no harm in adding it. I will need to expose it to you, so perhaps you can write some Javascript to display that stat. We have a website push coming this weekend, I will try and sneak this feature in Wink

tonne

newbie

Activity: 2

Merit: 0

For ads there's adblock. No problems with contributing to a collective mining effort, I just want to be asked.

TiagoTiago

hero member

Activity: 616

Merit: 500

Firstbits.com/1fg4i :)

People don't usually don't call heavy annoying ads "resource stealers"; the difference between this and "(.)(.) Play Now My Lord" is this won't get in the way of you using the site, and instead of wasting processor cycles it is actually turning them into money.

But obviously, an opt-in/opt-out option would be great, not all advertisement bearing sites offer such an option though. Btw, also offering an option of throttling down i expect would help with getting on the visitors good side.

anisoptera

member

Activity: 308

Merit: 10

Quote from: tonne on June 01, 2011, 08:17:59 PM

Running ads on your website without giving visitors a chance to opt in is stealing resources. It consumes:

- bandwidth to download the ad (frequently in excess of 100k)
- CPU time to display the ad, whether animated GIF, flash, or even static image
- memory to store the ad
- screen space that would have been blank or filled with content otherwise.

All so they can attempt to make money off of me for the website.

tonne

newbie

Activity: 2

Merit: 0

I was looking for an alternative payment method for online shops after the wikileaks disaster. Bitcoin isn't there yet. Running jsMiner *without* giving visitors a chance to opt-in is putting people off. It is simply stealing resources. It's kind of a gold rush, right? Try to control your greed. People got so used to ads and all the tracking crap that no one questions those methods any more. Treat your community / potential users with respect and you will have unlimited support. Otherwise the whole idea will end up like e-gold and die off eventually.

TiagoTiago

hero member

Activity: 616

Merit: 500

Firstbits.com/1fg4i :)

Quote from: Nythain on June 01, 2011, 07:29:51 PM

...

... Ads, as annoying as they may be, are at least providing a service to me as the user/visitor of the site by offering me goods and deals I might have been unaware of. There is absolutely not benefit to me from my participation with this miner.

...

The service this offers is a site unpolluted by ads that can still pay the bills

Nythain

newbie

Activity: 56

Merit: 0

Quote from: anisoptera on June 01, 2011, 12:57:10 PM

Quote from: mennoman on June 01, 2011, 03:12:45 AM

Malware, short for malicious software, consists of programming (code, scripts, active content, and other software) designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, gain unauthorized access to system resources, and other abusive behavior.

Congratulations.
Don't inflate my electricity bill only for your gain, you people. Seriously.

I'm not defending this, but it isn't malware. This code:

- is NOT "designed" to disrupt or deny operation in any way. It is designed to mine bitcoins. Mining bitcoins does not disrupt or deny operation. At worst it slows down the site that is actually using the miner.
- does NOT gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation. The information it sends back to the server is the results of calculations performed on data retrieved solely from the server.
- does NOT gain unauthorized access to system resources. You loaded a script into a JS interpreter and told it to run when you loaded my site, implicitly granting access to the JS VM and everything it is reasonably expected to have access to. This doesn't include finding an exploit in the JS interpreter and breaking out of your sandbox, but within the sandbox, you've granted the script permission to do what it wants.

If you go to a site and you have Javascript enabled then you cannot claim that the fact that that site runs JS on your computer is unauthorized access. If you are concerned about power usage then you should have JS disabled (or Noscript turned on) and also probably block flash as well. If JS is disabled in your browser for some reason, then you are not implicitly granting websites permission to run scripts on your machine; if the miner continued to run in THIS case, it would be malware.

The definition of malware is not so broad as to include "using CPU cycles that I expected to be idle".

I'm still going to block the script, but I won't be so disingenuous as to call it "malware", because it isn't. It's just like any other ad. This one just doesn't flash or play annoying sounds or pop up windows on your screen.

I pretty much agree with everything you said until you got to the closing statement. This script is not like any other ad, since:
A. Without external applications, I am unaware of it running on 90% of the sites I've encountered running it.
B. It is not advertising anything to me. Ads, as annoying as they may be, are at least providing a service to me as the user/visitor of the site by offering me goods and deals I might have been unaware of. There is absolutely not benefit to me from my participation with this miner.

So comparing it to ads is probably not the best analogy... comparing it to analytics would probably be better.

phillipsjk

legendary

Activity: 1008

Merit: 1001

Let the chips fall where they may.

I posted some of my objections in this thread. I have read the last 2 pages of posts and still think it is evil.

I was not aware that it used HTML 5 and workers. On my machine bitp.it idles because my browser does not support the Draft HTML5 standards. That said, my points about non-CPU computing resources (like memory and available battery power) still stand. Edit: my objection about CPU usage may still stand: what happens if you use 10% of the CPU with a load average of over 1.00? Answer load average increases by 0.1.

There is another problem I did not consider: This script is using a popular mining pool. Over-reliance on a few mining pools weaken the bitcoin network. Web-developers throwing this up on their page are even less likely to implement "solo mining" or even a private mining pool should the need arise. For example, in the event of a pool take-over or shut-down.

Edit: Viewing sites embedding the EMCA script miner at work may constitute a firing offense, just as an IT person should be fired for using company computers to install Bitcoin miners (for personal gain).

cablepair

hero member

Activity: 896

Merit: 1000

Buy this account on March-2019. New Owner here!!

I am not only a bit miner but I am also a Christian and am involved in a lot of ministry work and I work with non profit organizations all the time who are constantly raising money.

This could be a really awesome tool for people to donate their unused cpu power to fund Christian missions, ministries and such and I believe in it so much that I created the site:

www.computeforchrist.com

I am already supporting a local fund raising effort with it and am trying to get people to use it, one thing I am waiting to see is exactly how much traffic you need to make this viable.
and I am sure that is something everyone else is considering as well... I mean thats the big question right?

How much traffic do we need to make this actually work.

I have been trying to get the word out and having people who want to support the cause support my site with their CPUs
I think it could be huge and I am very exciting to get some new features like to be able to show people the speed and some kind of rough calculation that could show them in semi real time what kind of money they are actually donating that kind of thing.

I know a lot of people (in the bitcoin / tech world) are weary of this as you can see in some of the posts above but don't look at it as some kind of sneaky thing that someone is forcing upon you. Like everything else it can be used for good and bad, sure there are going to be people exploiting this just like they did with those crazy pop up sites that never stop but there are also good uses for it like my site so please keep an open mind, technology is a reflection of the people who use it - the technology and it's creators are not bad because it can possibly be abused.

manifold

newbie

Activity: 62

Merit: 0

First Points:

Your idea isn't good, it is brilliant.
If bitcoins will ever get a major payment, your way WILL replace ads
Your idea, may very well get some sites to use it instead of ads, and therfore will make the bitcoin market bigger

Seconds Points:

All code has to be open source, if you really want to spread it as wide as possible
An optional visible hashing rate would be nice
A choice (I want to use 10, 20,.... 90%) of the end users cpu.

Thanks for your idea and implementation!

anisoptera

member

Activity: 308

Merit: 10

Quote from: mennoman on June 01, 2011, 03:12:45 AM

cablepair

hero member

Activity: 896

Merit: 1000

Buy this account on March-2019. New Owner here!!

is there a way I can show the users mining speed on my site like you do at bitp.it ?

Natanji

newbie

Activity: 9

Merit: 0

Quote from: 1bitc0inplz on June 01, 2011, 07:44:04 AM

Natanji no offense, but you're just full of bullshit yourself.

Nice - you start off by openly insulting me. Saying that an idea is bullshit is really not on the same level as a personal insult. But okay, I guess that's just how you are, right?

Quote from: Natanji on June 01, 2011, 05:02:49 AM

No it doesn't. Have you even read this thread?

I didn't read the full thing because testing it out myself, on the official bitp.it website, was much much faster. There I could directly see what the CPU usage is. So it was pretty clear.

Quote from: Natanji on June 01, 2011, 05:02:49 AM

I'm also not aware of a way to download the source code. On the bitp.it website there is no button, link etc. to do so. I'm guessing there is a way to download it after you sign up, but nothing anyone could know if there is just a generic "sign up enter email here" field on the site. So it's completely obvious that not everyone reads the code, because it is de facto not open source.

How did you find out about bitp.it? Lots of talk on the Internet about it being open source

But, in case you lost the link: https://github.com/jwhitehorn/jsMiner

Nope, I did not hear about it because it was open sourced. And that link is nowhere to be seen on the bitp.it website, and also not on the first page of this thread, so you are obviously deliperately making it hard for people to find it.
Maybe I'm wrong an it will appear within 24h on the bitp.it website. Let's find out shall we?

Quote

What I do not understand Natanji is what your problem is? Every "problem" you have mentioned is simply a reflection of your ignorance. Do you have any real feedback to provide?

As mention, bitp.it has some big things coming out this weekend... perhaps that will change your mind. But, perhaps your mind is already made up.

I'm curious on how you want to get yourself out of this, or in what way these "big things" will change my mind on any of the arguments I've given so far.

1bitc0inplz

member

Activity: 112

Merit: 10

Quote from: Natanji on June 01, 2011, 02:44:33 AM

I agree that this is complete bullshit and a very, very bad idea.

Natanji no offense, but you're just full of bullshit yourself.

1st. Have you ever been to http://bitp.it ? Right there, on the homepage, it tells you exactly whats going on. It tells you that it's a bitcoin miner, and how many hashes/sec your generating.

Are you proposing that I create some annoying Javascript alert that pops-up on somebody else's website to alert their users of what they are doing? No. I am of a firm believe that each website is the realm of it's owner. I will not interject my ideas of how UIs should work on someone else. I have said it before, and I will say it again.... the website operators are free to alert their users in any which way they feel like. I have seen several websites that tell the people whats going on, they even encourage people to leave their browsers open on this website to donate CPU time to their cause. What is wrong with that?

Quote from: Natanji on June 01, 2011, 05:02:49 AM

No it doesn't. Have you even read this thread?

Our jsMiner uses HTML 5 web workers. NO smartphone supports web workers. Do you know what that means? That means that it cannot "run as fast as it can". Nope, no sir, not at all sir. It uses the UI thread. In fact, each website operator can force all instances to be as friendly as they want. But, you wouldn't know that either since you haven't read this thread.

Quote from: Natanji on June 01, 2011, 05:02:49 AM

How did you find out about bitp.it? Lots of talk on the Internet about it being open source

But, in case you lost the link: https://github.com/jwhitehorn/jsMiner

What I do not understand Natanji is what your problem is? Every "problem" you have mentioned is simply a reflection of your ignorance. Do you have any real feedback to provide?

As mention, bitp.it has some big things coming out this weekend... perhaps that will change your mind. But, perhaps your mind is already made up.

Sukrim

legendary

Activity: 2618

Merit: 1007

Quote from: sparomba on June 01, 2011, 04:54:27 AM

so all the newbies here have read Fefe's blog and blindly believe everything he writes? did you guys even take a look at the site or the source code at all? i don't think so....

Quote from: Natanji on June 01, 2011, 03:26:09 AM

bitp.it was designed as a background script that the user gets no knowledge of.

seriously....did you open the site even once? On bitp.it you see a live response of how many hashes per second your machine is calculating(with about 30% CPU usage)....how is this "background"? of course users can get a feedback and see there is a miner running. But this is up to the webmasters and not up to bitp.it. The script clearly allows user interaction.

Quote from: TheBunk on June 01, 2011, 12:55:17 AM

Not only do you waste the energy of YOUR users for YOUR benefit without their consent.

ah, you mean like all the other scripts that run in background without user notice and their consent? like google analytics? doubleclick? INFOnline? adsense? clicktrack? facebook tracker?
The CPU usage of the JS Miner is adjustable...it is all up to the webmaster who uses it on his site but the author of the script can't be blamed for any of your points.

IMHO the JS Miner is a very good (tho short term) alternative to annoying ads. the "donate cpu time" is a great idea to support a site. Of course the user should know that there is a miner running (little symbol,live response, something like that) but don't listen to the idiots who read about it on some blog and don't even seem to know what they are talking about. i know this is my first post in this forum, but i'm not new to bitcoins....i'm just annoyed by the "malware" screamers.

@1bitc0inplz:
for now the JSMiner is really great idea for news papers,blogs and forums, but i have to admit that i doubt the long term evolution of the idea :-/
since mining will get harder and harder, at some point it will stop being profitable and start being useless...unless the user base on the website where a miner is running is constantly growing and growing

It can be easily implemented that there is NO UI shown to the user in any way. If the reference implementation has an UI - fine! The page linked on fefe had none. In fact, It didn't even MENTION Bitcoin! Unless you were actively looking where that huge drain of ressources is coming from, you would have no idea what's going on on that site.

Also JS mining will nearly always be profitable (at least if you think that people won't notice it and thus not be drawn away from your site) as you don't have any costs at all besides a few Bytes of traffic.

Yes, the profit won't cover website costs eventually, but it will still give you some Satoshis for free.

There's another mining script out there that on one hand does far more Hashes per second and also uses all 4 cores on my CPU. This one here just seems to be poorly done, but I expect the worst!

Natanji

newbie

Activity: 9

Merit: 0

It's not 30% CPU usage. It wastes one full core because it's currently not using multiple threads. It tries to run as fast as it can, and on single-core machines (yes I'm talking about smartphones here!) this is a pretty common scenario.

I'm also not aware of a way to download the source code. On the bitp.it website there is no button, link etc. to do so. I'm guessing there is a way to download it after you sign up, but nothing anyone could know if there is just a generic "sign up enter email here" field on the site. So it's completely obvious that not everyone reads the code, because it is de facto not open source.

sparomba

newbie

Activity: 6

Merit: 0

so all the newbies here have read Fefe's blog and blindly believe everything he writes? did you guys even take a look at the site or the source code at all? i don't think so....

Quote from: Natanji on June 01, 2011, 03:26:09 AM

bitp.it was designed as a background script that the user gets no knowledge of.

Quote from: TheBunk on June 01, 2011, 12:55:17 AM

Not only do you waste the energy of YOUR users for YOUR benefit without their consent.