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People got angry when a popular site recently decided to test a JavaScript coin miner. Or perhaps more accurately, news websites sponsored by ads reported people as being angry. The actual online discussions seemed more split than purely angry, leaning more towards to side of "the only really bad thing was that the mining was hidden". Naturally the ad-supported news cannot bite the hand that feeds them, so this mismatch between reality and the way it is portrayed in the news is expected. Thus they report coin mining as "pirating your PC" (ok I get it, it's funny in context), "hijacking your browser" (it's just JavaScript being executed by the page, your browser is affected no more than usual), "roping visitors into mining", and so on, worst of all "stealing electricity". To be fair some were neutral and just called it "use your CPU". Openly coming out in (tentative) favour of this new technique was quite rare.
Anyway, coin mining isn't some miraculous saviour of the free (both as in free beer and as in liberty) web. Mining-supported sites would still not directly serve the users' interests (though nothing ever does anyway), they'll just want to user to be on their site as much as possible regardless of how happy the user is to be there. But at least it offers a chance to do better in some regards.
Imagine websites that, visually, just have the actual content on them, with no pollution (on some sites the smog is so thick the content is hard to find). Imagine YouTube without adpocalypse, and without video ads (which suck major elephant droppings so are blocked by anyone who knows how). Imagine freeware download sites without a dozen fake download buttons that each lead to different strains of malware or hostile sites that generate dozens of pop-ups and are hard to leave. Imagine making money from your content, without having to bowdlerize it first to make it "advertiser friendly".
Also imagine, unfortunately, websites that make you sit in a dumb artificial "queue", just to make you spend more time on the site and mine coins for them (or similar tricks) - even the free web has no free lunch, they'd just have to battle that out with competition, until a balance between users valuing their time and websites profiting of making them wait is reached.
Increased CPU usage isn't much to pay in return, at least on the desktop. The biggest problem I see is that it may simply not be economically viable. It's not (as a lot of the news would have you believe) inherently evil - as with ads, the deal is that you get the content or service in return for something, "stealing electricity" and "hijacking" are just way off. But who knows, maybe I missed some critical flaw.
Also, mining (or some other alternative) may eventually, in the near-enough future, be forced by the massive rise of ad-blocking. Naturally miner-blocking would also be a thing, in fact it already is, despite the narrow applicability.
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harold aptroot wrote: Imagine YouTube without adpocalypse, and without video ads (which suck major elephant droppings so are blocked by anyone who knows how).
I spend the first few seconds watching "You can skip to the video in 5...4...3...2...1...Skip" Is there something else going on during that time? 
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That sucks. I bought land dirt cheap in Iowa and have been waiting for it to become beach-front property. I guess I'll go plant some corn now instead. 
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Despite what the article claims the following from the abstract of the very article cited doesn't suggest that the authors expect a rosy outcome.
"Hence, limiting warming to 1.5 °C is not yet a geophysical impossibility, but is likely to require delivery on strengthened pledges for 2030 followed by challengingly deep and rapid mitigation."
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You can argue about the interpretation, but not about the facts the paper presents. GCMs run way too hot. CO2 is not causing any where near as much warming. Period.
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Nazis? What makes you relate climate alarmists to nazis. Please explain.
I never saw climate scientists kill 6 million jews or ram a car into a climate change deniers crowd.
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Le centriste wrote: Nazis? What makes you relate climate alarmists to nazis. Please explain.
I never saw climate scientists kill 6 million jews or ram a car into a climate change deniers crowd.
How is John's use of Nazi any different from say Grammar Nazi's and Seinfeld's Soup Nazi?
Totally acceptable.
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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Has Anyone Seen Mike Hunt wrote: How is John's use of Nazi any different from say Grammar Nazi's and Seinfeld's Soup Nazi
Seinfeld's Soup Nazi was a joke. Grammar nazi, I don't know.
The obvious reason he (and others) use the term "nazi" to designate people they don't like to discredit them.
It does not make any sense, since climate alarmists are mostly leftists while nazis where right-wing extremists.
Calling them stalinists or marxists would make more sense.
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Le centriste wrote: Seinfeld's Soup Nazi was a joke. Grammar nazi, I don't know.
The obvious reason he (and others) use the term "nazi" to designate people they don't like to discredit them.
It does not make any sense, since climate alarmists are mostly leftists while nazis where right-wing extremists.
Calling them stalinists or marxists would make more sense.
The use of Nazi in all these situations is to highlight the persons extreme view on a particular issue. For Grammar Nazi it means someone who expects spelling and the construction of sentences to be correct.
It is why anyone from the English world cringes when Yanks use many sayings cause they faarrrkkkk them up. They can't use Couldn't careless, for instance.
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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Has Anyone Seen Mike Hunt wrote: Couldn't careless
That is "care less"; careless has a totally different meaning. But I will excuse you as you are from foreign.
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110 pounds a year? That does not seem extreme. And I am pretty sure there is fuel poverty without that extra fee, particularly since UK spends millions to help those people.
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Poor people find the £10 a month hard to find, so they turn the heating down, move into one room in their flats.
The incidence of respiratory diseases is increasing and is costing our NHS a lot of money.
Green policies are killing people. Right now. In europe.
All to save some other people who *might* be affected in 50 years.
Its a disgrace. A foul and nasty disgrace.
modified 9hrs 15mins ago.
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Britain aint Europe anymore 
Rules for the FOSW ![ ^]
if(this.signature != "")
{
MessageBox.Show("This is my signature: " + Environment.NewLine + signature);
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("404-Signature not found");
}
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Stop blaming a petty green fee for the death of people. Without that fee, people would be dying of respiratory diseases anyway. There is no direct cause.
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MORE people are suffering and dying because of that green tax. That is a fact.
Google[^]
Britain has some of the oldest housing in Europe. It needs a lot of heating. Without it it gets damp. Quickly. Mold grows, peoples lungs get infected. They die.
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Munchies_Matt wrote: Britain has some of the oldest housing in Europe. It needs a lot of heating. Without it it gets damp. Quickly. Mold grows, peoples lungs get infected. They die.
I don't think 10 pounds a month make a lot of difference.
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Le centriste wrote: I never saw climate scientists kill 6 million jews or ram a car into a climate change deniers crowd.
Maybe you are not looking hard enough. 
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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err... we still have to take drastic steps to save humanity. And if anyone's a Nazi, it's the right wing climate change deniers who basically want to not save humanity
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Humanity has proven time and again that they don't want to be saved.
If/when they have REAL science to support their panic, I'll listen. But the current climate fraud is being propped up by sh|t they simply made up.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: Humanity has proven time and again that they don't want to be saved.
Aha! You've finally slipped up, and revealed that you're either an alien or a robot. Probably one of those gun-slinging robots from Westworld.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: Humanity has proven time and again that they don't want to be saved.
With you on this one.. the root of all our problems is overpopulation of the planet. How anyone thought we could take our population from 1 billion to almost 8 billion in just over a century without any consequences, I have no idea..
However, it's still increasing and will continue until some kind of disaster (from our perspective) takes care of things. We're a pretty dumb species.
Now is it bad enough that you let somebody else kick your butts without you trying to do it to each other? Now if we're all talking about the same man, and I think we are... it appears he's got a rather growing collection of our bikes.
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Global birth rate is down to 2.4 kids per family. That is maintenance levels.
In 20 years the worlds population will decline.
By the way, there is 5 times the mass of termites on earth than people. People are really no more over populated than many other species.
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