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Opera 50 Web Browser Will Offer Anti-Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Mining Feature (betanews.com)
BrianFagioli writes: The upcoming version 50 of the Opera web browser will offer an integrated anti-Bitcoin mining feature. Besides Bitcoin, it will also block the mining of other cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin and Ethereum. If you aren't aware, some websites are hijacking user computers to mine for cryptocurrencies. This is not only a potential violation of trust, but it can negatively impact the computer's performance too. Mining is also a huge waste of electricity. Opera 50 will offer an optional setting that, when enabled, blocks this nonsense.
But it still has to be able to detect that the code is even there. It's going to be a cat and mouse game similar to anti-virus and anti-malware. It will need definition updates in order to detect and block the code. The authors of this bitcoin mining software will just alter and tweak it a little bit. It's a moving target.
I'll take a JS miner over shady ad networks every day of the week.
I'd prefer they'd mine bitcoin in the background any day over any ads or a gazillion trackers that follow me around.
Hmm, can a turing-complete language calculate SHA1 hashes? Inquiring minds want to know.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Nothing about this is hijacking. Hijacking implies it's an unauthorized takeover when the fact is that it's simply Javascript is doing exactly what it was created to do: execute arbitrary instructions from a remote source. The only thing different is that this is annoying people enough that it threatens all the jerks that demand to execute Javascript.
Here's an idea: add basic animation and ad hoc relative source loading for CSS then completely do away with Javascript. Oh but the money people don't give a shit about what users want, it's all about what they want.
Be real, this is just the logical conclusion of Javascript.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
What are Anti-Bitcoins and why would I want to mine them in my browser?
Ezekiel 23:20
That's only because you are paying for the time nd the energy
if the energy is paid for by others and the time is parallel over a large enough group of systems, then the efficiency doesn't matter for the person doing the mining.
Why would the miner care whether your computer burns 1000x the energy required to mine his coins as long as you pay for the electricity?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It needn't be practical. It's the spam problem: If the cost is zero, a nonzero profit, no matter how small, is reason enough to do it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I prefer ads. Mostly 'cause I got the blocker for them already in place.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What a convoluted method of paying for content. The 'free' website makes your computer mine cryptocurrency, for which you require electricity, which you are billed for by the electric company and pay. You are just the middleman here. How can that be efficient.
Even if it could perhaps be disabled, it will likely be impossible to remove all traces of its code from one's system.
WebAssembly runs on the JavaScript VM in your browser just like JavaScript does now. You don't need to "remove all traces of its code" from your system, just clear your browse cache and any cached copies are gone. If you don't want to run WebAssembly (or JavaScript) then just use an extension like NoScript or uMatrix to block it.
not all currencies use ASIC machines
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Brainfuck should become the standard web-scripting language enforced by W3C all browser devs. We'd have the old good HTML web back, and web-developers pursuing careers in selling snake oil.
Would you rather have ads in your content or cryptocoin miners running in the background?
Assuming content costs money, both seem ways of making money on pages with content.
That said, it might make sense to limit the amount of the CPU that the browser can use; if we're designing webpages that need >1ghz octo-core processors, we're already doing something probably pretty wrong.
Of emscripten/asm.js
Anyone who thought it was a smart idea and convenient to use didn't understand the full perils of it, perils that those of us from the 90s remembered all too well from the plugins of that era (some of which remained until very recently, or even today, but haven't been actively used by anyone with an inkling of sense in going on 20 years.)
By making the scripting engine of a web browser provide features equivalent to a computer or operating system you are essentially allowing the exact same level of malware capability as an actual operating system allows. Combined with a cross-compiler that can convert any normal program into javascript, you have just eased the ability to port said malware from an architecture specific system to a platform agnostic browser engine. For the lazy malware writers, they can make fully network accessable malware inside the browser, to use your system for whatever purpose they need. For the dedicated ones, they now have an injection platform that should work similiarly on all architectures, with only architecture specific exploits tailed to gain application, user, or system level access to perform their more comprehensive infection.
Javascript itself was always a bad idea, but they have taken it to the next level with asm.js and emscripten.
NoScript blocks all cryptocurrency miners, as well as a bunch of other stuff. There's also uBlock if you want a little easier time of it, and don't mind trusting the block list maintainers.
How difficult would it be to limit how much CPU the browser has access to ?
Restricted to minimal CPU by default, allows you to whitelist sites that you trust.
Plausible ? Better way ?
Only 19? Someone doesn't know how to leverage a real motherboard. I can pop 36 in a triple-crossfire mobo using a 16x breakout down to individual 1x slots, then get the riser adapters. 1200W PSUs are the run of the mill cheap server PSUs, you want 2400W PSUs for any real power draw.
Sounds like you and your affiliate asshole friend need to go back to school and learn how to do real hardware builds.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Well, with ads you instantly notice when your blocker is shit. With miners ... not so much.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The money people want you to run and download only their certified (and rented) stuff. Running shared code is nothing new.
CSS has very basic animation... but you might mean more than that.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
What's the current value of anti-bitcoin anyway? I can't seem to find it anywhere. I've been looking into investing in cryptocurrency other than bitcoin and, with Opera practically endorsing this one, I'm even more interested. It must be really easy to mine right now though if Opera is making a feature for users to mine from the browser.