- Aug 25, 2001
- 56,348
- 10,048
- 126
Honestly, I think that the rush to block SURREPTITIOUS mining in web browsers, is throwing the baby out with the bath-water.
Internet "ads" have been a mainstay of the "free" internet, ever since it went commercial. Users have long complained about them.
What if, there was a way to "pay" sites that you visit, a small fee, via mining, that was OPT-IN, and CONTROLLABLE by the USER?
No need for a transaction account, micro-payment system, or anything of that nature. Just use a little extra CPU / GPU time and electricity on a modern low-power / high-end PC.
What we need for this, are APIs, built into web browsers and then web pages/sites, that enable this browser-controlled mining activity to happen in the background, and not interrupt every time you change pages on a site, only run in the background while you are on that site.
This would be more preferable to me (use a little extra CPU time), rather than either: 1) have to put up with ads, or 2) have to put up with a paywall after X articles on that site were read.
As a side note, this would greatly help legitimize CC rather than stigmatize it, as might happen should Firefox go ahead with blocking CC mining automatically, as if it were some sort of evil technology. (It's not, it's a tool, like ads, that can help pay for a site's existence. Some of us would prefer donating a little extra CPU time, rather than watch ads. As a bonus, the money would be going directly, more-or-less, to the site, in the form of that CC, rather than funneled downstream through a flurry of shady ad networks.)
I even suggest, having support for "mining plug-ins", like a version of NiceHash on Windows, that would integrate into the web browser, and when surfing a "mining supported site", the site would present a URL (CC address), for mining to, and the user could allow/deny it, and if allowed, it would be passed on to the mining plug-in, and mining would commence in the background. The plug-in mechanism would allow for it to be native or near-native code for performance reasons (rather than the horribly inefficient (?) JavaScript-based mining scripts), AND allow usage of GPU mining, for much better performance and profits.
There are some small things to work out, like, what if you have two "mining supported sites" open in your web browser, should they split the profits of mining (should the mining plug-in be instanced, with both mining URLs running at the same time, each sucking down half the available CPU time allocated for mining in the browser config (like BOINC does)), or should it be like web pages with audio, and have it pause the mining, if that page isn't currently in the foreground (probably the best/easiest implementation).
Edit: There could be other usages as well. People could open a "mining supported site", for a charity, perhaps, and just leave it running in the background, donating CPU time and power towards that cause. Another, could be, allow user-specified URLs for mining, for the end-user to use the browser to mine their own CC to their own wallet address(es), basically, as a more-or-less portable/multi-platform mining software app.
There are a lot of possibilities here. (Along with some distributed-computing hooks possible too, like a F@H URL or something of that nature. But that might get more complex.)
Edit: This would also go a long way towards paying internet radio stations, considering their fairly-high regulated internet broadcasting fees for playing music, much higher than traditional radio broadcast fees. Likewise, for internet "streamers". Imagine, having 1000 people watching your stream, most/all of them, mining away on ETH or BTC or whatever is mineable on a CPU or GPU these days that's worth anything (XMR? Monero?). That could be HUGE!
Edit: There would need to be browser configuration for the mining plug-in(s), to limit CPU/GPU usage, as to not take necessary performance away from content viewing. (I have to stop NH when viewing a 4K60P video on YouTube, but I can keep mining if the video is 1080P.)
Edit: The more that I think about this, this could be done with existing infrastructure in browsers! Just add URL schema handlers in the plug-in, for BTC, ETH, etc., all the different CC types that the plug-in would handle, and then the web site would open a pop-up or additional tab, containing the mining URL, and then the plug-in would automatically be called to handle that. I think that this is totally feaseable right now, without any special browser modifications. Someone just needs to write some plug-in code, possibly the NiceHash guys, to integrate things. That would be really sweet!
Internet "ads" have been a mainstay of the "free" internet, ever since it went commercial. Users have long complained about them.
What if, there was a way to "pay" sites that you visit, a small fee, via mining, that was OPT-IN, and CONTROLLABLE by the USER?
No need for a transaction account, micro-payment system, or anything of that nature. Just use a little extra CPU / GPU time and electricity on a modern low-power / high-end PC.
What we need for this, are APIs, built into web browsers and then web pages/sites, that enable this browser-controlled mining activity to happen in the background, and not interrupt every time you change pages on a site, only run in the background while you are on that site.
This would be more preferable to me (use a little extra CPU time), rather than either: 1) have to put up with ads, or 2) have to put up with a paywall after X articles on that site were read.
As a side note, this would greatly help legitimize CC rather than stigmatize it, as might happen should Firefox go ahead with blocking CC mining automatically, as if it were some sort of evil technology. (It's not, it's a tool, like ads, that can help pay for a site's existence. Some of us would prefer donating a little extra CPU time, rather than watch ads. As a bonus, the money would be going directly, more-or-less, to the site, in the form of that CC, rather than funneled downstream through a flurry of shady ad networks.)
I even suggest, having support for "mining plug-ins", like a version of NiceHash on Windows, that would integrate into the web browser, and when surfing a "mining supported site", the site would present a URL (CC address), for mining to, and the user could allow/deny it, and if allowed, it would be passed on to the mining plug-in, and mining would commence in the background. The plug-in mechanism would allow for it to be native or near-native code for performance reasons (rather than the horribly inefficient (?) JavaScript-based mining scripts), AND allow usage of GPU mining, for much better performance and profits.
There are some small things to work out, like, what if you have two "mining supported sites" open in your web browser, should they split the profits of mining (should the mining plug-in be instanced, with both mining URLs running at the same time, each sucking down half the available CPU time allocated for mining in the browser config (like BOINC does)), or should it be like web pages with audio, and have it pause the mining, if that page isn't currently in the foreground (probably the best/easiest implementation).
Edit: There could be other usages as well. People could open a "mining supported site", for a charity, perhaps, and just leave it running in the background, donating CPU time and power towards that cause. Another, could be, allow user-specified URLs for mining, for the end-user to use the browser to mine their own CC to their own wallet address(es), basically, as a more-or-less portable/multi-platform mining software app.
There are a lot of possibilities here. (Along with some distributed-computing hooks possible too, like a F@H URL or something of that nature. But that might get more complex.)
Edit: This would also go a long way towards paying internet radio stations, considering their fairly-high regulated internet broadcasting fees for playing music, much higher than traditional radio broadcast fees. Likewise, for internet "streamers". Imagine, having 1000 people watching your stream, most/all of them, mining away on ETH or BTC or whatever is mineable on a CPU or GPU these days that's worth anything (XMR? Monero?). That could be HUGE!
Edit: There would need to be browser configuration for the mining plug-in(s), to limit CPU/GPU usage, as to not take necessary performance away from content viewing. (I have to stop NH when viewing a 4K60P video on YouTube, but I can keep mining if the video is 1080P.)
Edit: The more that I think about this, this could be done with existing infrastructure in browsers! Just add URL schema handlers in the plug-in, for BTC, ETH, etc., all the different CC types that the plug-in would handle, and then the web site would open a pop-up or additional tab, containing the mining URL, and then the plug-in would automatically be called to handle that. I think that this is totally feaseable right now, without any special browser modifications. Someone just needs to write some plug-in code, possibly the NiceHash guys, to integrate things. That would be really sweet!
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