Salon Magazine Mines Monero On Your Computer If You Use an Ad Blocker (bbc.com)

dryriver shares a report from BBC: News organizations have tried many novel ways to make readers pay -- but this idea is possibly the most audacious yet. If a reader chooses to block its advertising, U.S. publication Salon will use that person's computer to mine for Monero, a cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin. Creating new tokens of a cryptocurrency typically requires complex calculations that use up a lot of computing power. Salon told readers: "We intend to use a small percentage of your spare processing power to contribute to the advancement of technological discovery, evolution and innovation." The site is making use of CoinHive, a controversial mining tool that was recently used in an attack involving government websites in the UK, U.S. and elsewhere. However, unlike that incident, where hackers took control of visitors' computers to mine cryptocurrency, Salon notifies users and requires them to agree before the tool begins mining.

Comments

And they prove it

[Calydor]

People use adblockers because they have no trust in websites to not abuse their computers, eg. by installation of malware through the served ads. Websites so far have refused any kind of responsibility for what happens to your computer as a direct result if visiting them without an adblocker installed.

So now Salon goes out of their way to use malware if you DO have an adblocker installed. You have to ask yourself what kind of shit is in their ads if that's their mentality. If they can get away with making a bit of money off a portion of their visitors, why not make it off ALL their visitors, adblocker or no?

Re:And they prove it

[hazardPPP]

People use adblockers because they have no trust in websites to not abuse their computers, eg. by installation of malware through the served ads.

That's part of it for sure. However, it's not just that.

People (myself included) also use adblockers because they don't want a page they are reading plastered with annoying ads that jump at you every second. It's annoying. You know what I do when a website (usually some online publication, e.g. newspaper or magazine) tells me "you've got an ad blocker installed, please whitelist us to continue reading"? In 99% of the cases, I just leave that website. Most of the stuff I click just isn't THAT interesting to be worth being blasted by ads.

Which brings us to another point. These sites want to "make readers pay". The things is - readers don't want to pay for most of this content. They're happy to read it if it's free, but if it's not - they can live without it. Not wanting to pay includes not just not wanting to pay with their money - but also with their attention (ads blasting) and computing power (cryptocurrency mining). There's very little content out there that any particular reader is actually willing to pay for.

How will the poor websites fund themselves you ask? Well, it's their effin' problem that the advertising became way too aggressive and that the web became dominated at one point with websites which are 90% ads and 10% content. Not to mention all the malware and tracking and all of the other crap being "served" via the ads. Had the ads been less aggressive, ad blockers would not have proliferated. Even offline we are inundated with advertising, it goes way beyond just the businesses which fund themselves primarily via ads (e.g. free to air TV and in general media outlets), it looks like everyone is trying to make an extra buck by selling some space for an ad. Is it a wonder that people then massively say well screw you, I'm blocking this?

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

A big part of the mistake was that while all the standards for HTML/CSS/etc were being developed, they should have included a standard for advertising, something that would have been reasonably presented.

Re:And they prove it

[Kokuyo]

News outlets have just no grasp of the reality of internet existing.

Seriously, I wanted to have some better news sources than the free papers they keep on train stations. So I paid over 200 bucks for a subscription, digital mind you, to Neue Zuercher Zeitung.

They still showed me ads and paid content even when logged in. My subscription has now run out. I see no difference in the content.

I mean what the hell?

Re:And they prove it

[Z00L00K]

I haven't even heard about Salon until this came up.

I can't help to wonder though - waste of CPU cycles through ads or through a mining operation. At least they are honest about it.

Re:And they prove it

[bazorg]

I haven't even heard about Salon until this came up.

I can't help to wonder though - waste of CPU cycles through ads or through a mining operation. At least they are honest about it.

They are a well established player.
If you want a good article from Salon that hasn't been quoted here on /. lately, do a search for "Courtney Love does the math". If memory serves, it was written in the year 2000. After reading that, you can refer to Courtney Love as the voice of reason and moderation :)

Re:And they prove it

[JaredOfEuropa]

I love how advertising agencies talk about "improving the reader experience" and "serve ads that are relevant to you", yet the result inavriably seems to be ads that are harder to ignore and annoy the reader to the point where they will leave the site.

Dear advertisers: if you are serious about improving the reader experience, think about how your ad impresses on a reader who is not interested in whatever it is you're selling. Good ads provide info to people who are interested in your products, entice people who might be interested, and are easily ignored by people who have no interest. Of course many advertisers seem to think that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and believe that the population of people who are not and will never be interested in the product is zero. The result of that thinking is the immense popularity of ad blockers, and declining readership of sites who successfully lock out people using such blockers. If people go out of their way to avoid looking at your ad, that should be telling you something...

Re:And they prove it

[Applehu Akbar]

I don't mind seeing advertising that pays for the content I browse, so long as it can be filtered to present ads that meet a standard for non-obtrusiveness: no popups, malware, or slow loads that restrict access to the site. This is especially a problem when I'm browsing mobile.

I installed an adblocker because to much of the above "bad" ads were interrupting browse, and now I've uninstalled it because every site I encounter requires me to 'disable adblock before proceeding'. Now I just avoid the sites with intrusive advertising. This defeats the whole purpose of your advertising.

Re:And they prove it

[Applehu Akbar]

I can't help to wonder though - waste of CPU cycles through ads or through a mining operation. At least they are honest about it.

But are we sure that the mining takes place only while Salon pages are being viewed?

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep.

One or two static and unobtrusive ads at any given time that are guaranteed clean and the adblockers go away.

Re:And they prove it

[ruir]

Nowadays, if a site demands ad-blocking working in 99% of the cases I leave them too.
In the past I (ad)blocked the shit out of their HTML box and screen filter blocking scrolling, nowadays as a defense, they just load a bit of the news. They do not want us visiting.

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

My biggest issue with this position isn't that it's false it's that the consequences aren't necessarily better. You say it's websites problem how they fund themselves but if how they fund themselves is by getting funded for their content, which often is a long way from transparent, then visitors are now getting advertised to but don't even realise it. There was a great article looking at how this had happened with online mattress sales online (if you are interested enough you'll have to look it up). It went through how the dozens of sites giving reviews and information used to very highly and often top rate one brand, then that brand drop most affiliation and almost all those sites then moved to recommending other brands that did affiliate. One site that had previously recommended that brand went as far as to put a warning on the reviews for that brand saying users should consider an alternative brand (who just so happened to pay affiliates).

It's also becoming more common for video content to include information on advertising partners either by creating videos about their products or by including the advertising in the video itself.

If that's what we end up with instead of adverts then how is that just the websites problem?

Re:And they prove it

[mjwx]

People use adblockers because they have no trust in websites to not abuse their computers, eg. by installation of malware through the served ads. Websites so far have refused any kind of responsibility for what happens to your computer as a direct result if visiting them without an adblocker installed.

This.

Its gotten so bad that a script blocker like Ghostery is now also a requirement.

Re:And they prove it

[Megol]

No they give you the chance to read their content either by showing ads or by allowing them to use some processing resources. A choice in other words, a choice many sites wouldn't give in the first place.

But you don't need to go to their website and read content that _they_ pay money to produce and serve. You can choose not to.

So make your choice and stop whining.

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

The no trust is earned. Next to phishing, malvertising is a primary infection vector these days. Sites like Salon demanding one mine coins just shows what contempt that the website makers have for the users. If they foist a level of malware with no ads, what level of shit do they do when there is no adblocker, and they can run Javsscript code (perhaps trying to get past Meltdown/Spectre) as they feel like. It wasn't that long ago when Flash based keyloggers that would be "contained" in a window were commonplace and were a way to steal MMO accounts.

Fuck Salon. I would expect this stuff from a warez torrent site, but not a top tier publication.

Re:And they prove it

[AmiMoJo]

I'd pay if there was a reasonable way to pay.

If say I could put â10 into a pot and have it paid out to sites I visit somehow I'd be happy to do that. Obviously I'd expect not to be bombarded with ads in return.

This sounds like a good application for a blockchain.

Re:And they prove it

[postbigbang]

Agreed. The easiest way to stanch this problem is to never surf to Salon.com. Problem solved.

When wired.com did their adblocker wall, I kissed them goodbye, and found out how my day improved.

I'll subscribe to content that I really need. But the madness and security danger poised by ads, not to mention their often dubious origin motivates me to use Privacy Badger and that plus no-script in another browser.

Publishers can tell me I suck. Fine. I'll go elsewhere. Publishing on the web has a lot of flawed models, and Salon.com just found another one.

Re:And they prove it

[AmiMoJo]

Advertising is about selling you shit you don't need. Selling you shit you do need is easy, invasive advertising is only required to make you buy stuff you could live happily without.

The primary mechanism for making you buy shit you don't need is psychological abuse. Adverts make you feel inadequate because you don't own that thing. They try to make you measure your worth by the amount of worthless shit you own.

Re:And they prove it

[pjt33]

The standard for HTML was developed as a way for scientists to communicate with each other, and against a background of Usenet norms which were hostile to advertising. I don't think it's really fair to blame Berners Lee for failing to foresee what the WWW would become.

Re:And they prove it

[turp182]

I'm really tired of the "I just bought that" ads. And then, since we share an Amazon account, my wife sees the surprise I purchased for her advertised to her...

Re:And they prove it

[ckatko]

The Joe Rogan Experience has completely replaced Talk Shows for me. He actually lets people speak, isn't condescending, and has actual experts on his show.

TV and traditional media killed itself. And it's nobody's fault but their own.

Re:And they prove it

[Oswald McWeany]

I'm really tired of the "I just bought that" ads. And then, since we share an Amazon account, my wife sees the surprise I purchased for her advertised to her...

Incentive not to buy your mistress anything without an adblocker installed.

Re:And they prove it

[Oswald McWeany]

Yep.

One or two static and unobtrusive ads at any given time that are guaranteed clean and the adblockers go away.

Indeed. I'm fine with a few ads. I'm not fine with modal ads, or interstitial ads, ads that dance around the page, ads that play videos or make sound.

Simple text ads that are tastefully done is fine. Salon's technique is going to make me blacklist Salon.

Re:And they prove it

[Oswald McWeany]

I haven't even heard about Salon until this came up.

I can't help to wonder though - waste of CPU cycles through ads or through a mining operation. At least they are honest about it.

It's a shame. Salon sometimes has some really interesting articles. They are pretty much a left wing propaganda mouthpiece, but they sometimes have some interesting content nonetheless. I'd read something on their site occasionally. Never again now.

Re:And they prove it

[H3lldr0p]

I mean what the hell?

Because the newspaper model was predicated on a race to the bottom. At the turn of the 20th century, those in charge of newspapers just wanted the public to want them, much like how websites just want an audience now. They priced accordingly. A nickel, a dime, a quarter. That's what they thought people would pay for a paper at the time. But that was never enough to actually pay for the paper, let alone make a profit.

That model never changed.

That's the hell the newspapers find themselves in. Those in charge don't want to have to put the true cost of a subscription out there out of fear that no one will buy it. At the same time advertising pricing has fallen to nearly nothing, thanks to online ads being monopolized by Google. No one wants to change because of fear of being the first, fear of failure, fear of losing their job, fear of retaliation from everyone else who didn't follow. Fear, fear, fear.

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

So now Salon goes out of their way to use malware if you DO have an adblocker installed. You have to ask yourself what kind of shit is in their ads if that's their mentality. If they can get away with making a bit of money off a portion of their visitors, why not make it off ALL their visitors, adblocker or no?

I know it's not the done thing on this site, but at least try to read and comprehend the fucking summary Mr. Self-Entitled-Freetard.

I'll give you a helpling hand by repeating the last sentence.
"Salon notifies users and requires them to agree before the tool begins mining."

So how is that "going out of their way" ?
You don't agree to run the miner, it doesn't run and you don't get their content, simples.

Re:And they prove it

[dwillden]

This!

I have no problem with text or even static image adds to the side of the content. But so many pages insist on autoplay video ads, interstitial ads, that's that appear while you are trying to read shifting the text up or down until you find the ad and close it.

The Internet industry caused the creation of ad-blockers because of these and more ways they abuse those who visit their sites. They think we own them something, but we don't. If their content is interesting we will read it. If interested I may whitelist a site, but the first add that disrupts my reading of their article results in their being blocked again and my being less willing to unblock them in the future.

Re:And they prove it

[aaarrrgggh]

Newspapers are in the advertising business, not the content business. I kind of want to support my local newspaper with a subscription... but I don't want dead trees, ads, or annoying "teaser" rates. Give me a lifetime subscription to the website, ad-free... and I would be happy to pay a few hundred dollars as a *customer* and not as a pair of eyeballs with an income of $X, living in _, and interested in ___...

I used to subscribe to Salon way back when (2003 or so?) for ideological reasons. They changed something, and it simply wasn't worth it anymore.

Re:And they prove it

[ArchieBunker]

If that bullshit adblocker pop up happens I click a button that disables javascript and then the site is free of annoyances. Funny thing is without the javascript the internet looks like it did in the 1990s. No animated bullshit menus and pages that move and scroll. Images that don't load until you get to them are annoying as fuck. Stop changing the layout as I'm reading as its very distracting.

Re:And they prove it

[Cederic]

Advertising is about selling you shit you don't need. Selling you shit you do need is easy

I need toilet paper. Advertising has raised my awareness of the brands available and the attributes of their product. It does influence my purchasing decision, thus advertising is helping sell something I do need, disproving your first point.

So someone trying to sell me shit that I need without advertising is not succeeding, thus disproving your second point.

Marketing is not sales.

Re:And they prove it

[hAckz0r]

Why not let the cloud providers duke this out? And thus it begins another rat-race of technology, where the browser of the future runs itself "in the cloud", to let the likes of Google and other competing providers are left to spin the necessary cpu's to pay for the advertising that was successfully blocked by their own service.

.
In this scenario, why not let the cloud run the "malwareizements" and bit-miners, while you sit back and drink your morning coffee, malware and worry free? What's on your desktop, or mobile, could be little more than a thin client collecting clicks and keystrokes and displaying patches of tagged bitmap overlays rendered in the cloud, where the malware and miners are then someone else's problem to deal with.

The new web provider "with the right balance of service" (by *your* own definition) is the one who takes the marketplace by popularity, and thus financially. This new marketplace financial model, in fighting for readership, would now be biased towards providing what users want, and not dictated by advertisers alone. Here, you see the advertising content level you want. It's scaled to the advertisement level you personally chose, while the providers take most of the risk of malware or botnets and other infectious maladies. Your entire Internet connected PC could be a mostly-write-protected memory, to prevent any persistent malware infections, and would then fit on a RF connected credit card sized device smaller than a Raspberry Pi nano.

Perhaps the compromise is to allow the service to provide an advertisement free experience, but then provides an AI enhanced "personal adviser" when put it into a special shopping specific mode? That separation of modes would preclude all the day to day annoyances and malware but still offer a benefit for the service provider to recoup some costs while maintaining a certain level of service for the consumer. The consumer here always has the ability to select that level of service, or speak with their wallet, by walking to the next service provider.

Re: And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

Ads even try to frustrate you into buying. Infomercials are especially guilty of that. They always show people struggling to do some mundane task...and they refer to that clumsy actor as you.

Still, they do make some funny videos. Even if I'm not sure what they were selling at the end.

Re:And they prove it

[eth1]

Guess it's time for a CryptoBlockPlus plugin...

Re:And they prove it

[ArchieBunker]

I used to subscribe to the paper version of Wired and let my subscription lapse. They sent me to a collection agency for failure to renew a $12 subscription! How is not renewing a subscription the same as buying something and not paying for it?

Re:And they prove it

[houghi]

I use adblockers because I can. If it where possible I would use them elsewhere as well. The fact that that would mean many service would not be "free (as in beer)" or that the companies will not make money is not my problem. There is no reason for me to defend their business model.

Or to say it in other words:

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

â" Banksy

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a very rural area, I was still using dial-up when it had become a "huehuehue, Grandma's on the AOL again!" joke to the rest of the country. But it wasn't funny, because it was all that I had. While the rest of the world was tearing it up with their cable modems the ads became INSANE. Attempting to use the WWW was just pure pain, because of bloat and ads. I was FORCED to learn how to block ads and now I'll never stop doing so. They did this to themselves.

Re:And they prove it

[mrbester]

How much of a hit did your credit rating take by escalating this to a collection agency for not continuing to buy something you didn't want?

Re:And they prove it

[tepples]

Which other sites are included with your subscription to Neue Zuercher Zeitung? If someone shares the URL of an article with you, and the article is in a publication other than Neue Zuercher Zeitung, how do you respectfully phrase that you decline to read the article?

Re:And they prove it

[tepples]

I need toilet paper. Advertising has raised my awareness of the brands available and the attributes of their product.

So would a nonprofit product tester like Consumer Reports.

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

this is easy, stop visiting the website

Re:And they prove it

[Greyfox]

Unless you run an ad blocker AND a Javascript Blocker. Run a browser without them for about 15 minutes and you quickly realize that the experience is so shitty that you'd be better off just not browsing the internet at all.

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, advertising is about getting your message to people that need your product or service. If your product or service doesn't fill a need, solve a problem or fulfill a desire, it's not going to work well. In the short term, you might trick some people into buying, but it's difficult to build an entire company on these kinds of ads.

In most cases, we're doing the advertisers a solid by blocking the annoying ads as now they don't have one more person viewing their product as substandard and annoying.

Targeting anything other than the content of the page has never made much sense as the content on the page is literally the only thing that the advertiser knows the reader is interested in right now. So many times I see ads targeted at things I was looking at yesterday when I have my adblockers off and I never click those ads because they're simply not relevant. If they want to advertise to me, it's best to get it into my email inbox as those ads I do look at and from time to time buy from.

Re:And they prove it

[Jadecristal]

Lots of it *is* shit that's not worth paying for; I suspect that they don't want to put the real price out there because they know it.

There are still some "reputable" news sources left - the big, big papers and all - that DO provide quality content, even if you know that the publisher of the paper may have some bias/ideological bent. You usually know what that ideological bias/bent is, since it's not like they try to hide it.

*Those* entities have managed to, in some cases, demand and get a "more" reasonable subscription fee - i.e. any fee at all, in this publishing/news climate - but who knows if it really covers the actual costs or not; I suspect not based on the NYT headquarters changes and all. I'm sure there are lots of other stories like it; that's just the one that comes to mind.

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

If that bullshit adblocker pop up happens I click a button that disables javascript and then the site is free of annoyances. Funny thing is without the javascript the internet looks like it did in the 1990s. No animated bullshit menus and pages that move and scroll. Images that don't load until you get to them are annoying as fuck. Stop changing the layout as I'm reading as its very distracting.

My experience without javascript is that most sites just don't work at all.

Re:And they prove it

[Bradac_55]

That's a funny comment (true but funny) as I look up to the top right corner of my browser while reading this statement.

uBlock Origin is blocking 15
Ghostery is blocking 8
HTTPS Everywhere is blocking 12

on SLASHDOT .... I just tossed this page into Edge and good lord the ads.

Re:And they prove it

[mark-t]

Having worked at one time for a collection agency for a few months, I think it's safe say that if he did not receive magazines after his subscription lapsed, then his credit rating would probably be unaffected. As far as I know, the company to which he supposedly owed money would generally need to provide proof they had delivered the merchandise he supposedly needs to pay for in order for his credit rating to take any hit.

Re:And they prove it

[GrahamJ]

I agree entirely, but also believe that this move by Salon is a good one. At least now people will have the choice to have ads, to mine, or to leave. Choices are good. Maybe some of the people who would have just closed the page will now mine instead. Win-win.

Re:And they prove it

[GrahamJ]

I’ve never seen an online ad for toilet paper.

Re: And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

I've experienced high loads with ad blockers and sites definitely not cryptomining, so your evidence is fairly weak.

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats on being the honest guy at a collection agency.

Let me tell you how it actually works. You take the hit and notice months later when your credit is affected. You then have to complain, in writing, and wait months for someone to be bothered to follow the law. Then your credit returns to normal.

You acting like this isn't the case is more than mildly annoying.

Re:And they prove it

[joe_frisch]

I'm happy to pay for content IF there is an easy, safe, reasonably anonymous way to do it. A micro-payment system would solve all of this. The problem is that the way things are now, there is no low-risk way for me to send a few cents to the owner of a page.

I use an ad-blocker because on some pages the ads are so intrusive that I can't read the content. I fell OK about it because the ads are so badly targeted that I can't remember EVER intentionally clicking on an ad. (ads that slide under your mouse so you accidentally click on them don't count). If I were shown ads for things I'm interested in, I'd be happy to look at them.

If the system is secure, I have no problem with mining as a way to collect micro-payments (other than the overall environmental disaster that is crypto-currency)

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, I am an single, and it looks like the advertisers knows this, because every site that has ads, is offering me dating apps, and datingwebsites. All the time. Hello, I am single, I know it. I dont want to be single, but do the ads have to rub it in my face all the time?
And sometimes i search for products and sometime I buy stiff on the internett, and then there is an iflux of offers in ads, for products I JUST BOUGHT. I don need the ads and offers fora product AFTER I have bought it.

Re:And they prove it

[Solandri]

I don't know what was wrong with inline ads - print magazines and newspapers did just fine with those for centuries.

What's happened is some marketer did research comparing inline ads to some other type of (more annoying) ad, and found the more annoying type generated more click-throughs. But their research was based on assuming one person viewing each ad. It didn't account for people avoiding the site because of the annoying ads, or using an ad blocker because of the risk of malware ads. Factor those in and I'll bet that the tried-and-true simple, nonobtrusive inline ads generate the most net revenue. But marketers refuse to accept this because theirs is an industry based on one-upping each other to win advertising contracts over other advertising agencies. It's the tragedy of the commons with a population who is always trying to elevate themselves even at the expense of others.

In a way, it's the same problem as net neutrality, where the amount of bandwidth remains the same so it makes no sense to try to increase revenue by selectively allocating it. Regardless of the type of ads you use, the number of eyeballs that are viewing all articles remains the same, the amount of discretionary income they have remains the same. So you cannot increase net revenue across the entire industry by using different types of ads. All changing the ads do is shift revenue from some ads to other ads. So if all marketers would just stick to simple, non-intrusive ads they'd make just as much money as they currently do without pissing off 95% of visitors.

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

An... enthusiast... art site I go to has picture-based ads, specifically gifs. They're quite small. If not for the content, I'd recommend them as a model for the rest of the net.

The best thing about them is that they are all ads for producers in the community. Anyone can buy space there, and yes, I click them from time to time as they are relevant to what I'm looking for.

What a novel concept!

Re:And they prove it

[zieroh]

You have to ask yourself what kind of shit is in their ads if that's their mentality.

I actually turned off ad blocking on Salon recently, and the ads made the site unreadable. Constant DOM changes that jumped the text up and down every few seconds made for a very unpleasant experience, to the point of unusable. Also, just the ads caused my CPU cycles to jump and set my fans spinning, and the page eventually consumed so much memory that my browser halted it.

So if it's the choice between monero-mining-malware or ad-malware spinning wildly out of control, I guess we should be seeing Salon in a death spiral soon.

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

Never forget that once you pay your "lifetime" subscription, they can change the agreement on you even if it's not in the fine print. In other words: a lifetime agreement is a fool's agreement.

Re:And they prove it

[sheramil]

I can't help to wonder though - waste of CPU cycles through ads or through a mining operation. At least they are honest about it.

But are we sure that the mining takes place only while Salon pages are being viewed?

This. Does it end when you close the page? Does it end when you hunt down and close every one of the popups and popunders the page spawned?

Does it end when you restart your computer?

What's the experience like if you visit the site with a really slow machine, like those tiny Lenovo netbooks?

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

You could also just wander into a store and see what they have for sale. Do you really look for toilet paper brands before you go shopping for it?

Re:And they prove it

[turp182]

I'm too honest, too old, and too lazy to have a mistress.

Unless you were referring to small racing drones, then I'm busted (Banggood adverts follow the missus, but she knows about them because I send the stuff to her office...).

Re:And they prove it

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Advertising is about selling you shit you don't need. Selling you shit you do need is easy

That's an oversimplification. There are three other cases I can think of:

(a) Buy my shit you need instead of my competitors' shit you need: I'm going to buy a new car. However, I haven't decided which new car I want want to buy. Advertising may convince me to get a Honda instead of a Toyota.

(b) Learn about this shit you really need: There was a time when toothbrushes and toothpaste weren't considered needs. People just sometimes lost teeth. At some point, there had to be education that you need that shit.

(c) I got some new shit here: Look, if I invent an anti-gravity surfboard, people are going to have to find out about it before they start handing me money. I'll probably get on the news with anti-gravity tech, but not with a new windshield wiper that lasts three times longer and costs $1 more.

Re:And they prove it

[CoolCash]

Not sure if you know what Malware is. If they explicitly state what they are doing and you click ok, there is nothing malicious about it. Also its not installed, its a javascript library that runs

Re:And they prove it

[ArchieBunker]

Haven't a clue what it did to my rating back then, I was maybe 18-19 at the time. My credit is 740 now.

Re:And they prove it

[mark-t]

I'm only speaking from the experience that I've had, which admittedly isn't much, but this particular issue was actually covered in my training. for the job. We were told that we could assure anyone in that position, but only if they explicitly asked about it, that their credit rating would not be affected if the company was unable to verify that the item for which they were being billed had in fact been delivered correctly.

Re:And they prove it

[Calydor]

And we all know that every user of Salon.com has the technical know-how to understand what Monero is, what it does to the computer while mining, and why Salon wants to spend YOUR resources while you read celebrity gossip.

Full disclosure, I haven't gone to look, but I imagine the dialog window to look something like, "We can see that you're blocking our ads. That hurts our feelings a whole lot, but if you click the OK button we will run a teeny-tiny program in the background while you read our site that will make everything better."

Re:And they prove it

[RhettLivingston]

The ratio of ads to text was vastly lower in newspapers when they were king than in web viewed news today. Also, the ads were much more tasteful because the reader connected them with the newspaper's reputation. A large portion of newspaper revenue was from the subscription fee.

I understand that I am no longer paying a subscription fee and thus there needs to be an increase in advertisements. A ratio of one ad to one article would be vastly greater than what used to be in the newspapers and is acceptable. Beyond that is absolutely ridiculous.

I'd also like to get back to the sites being responsible for the ads, but don't know how that happens.

Re:And they prove it

[Falconnan]

Also, if you let your subscription lapse, and they sent it via mail, this would be postal fraud. You cannot be billed for an item you receive via the mail if you did not order it. It might not immediately help your credit score, but openly criminal behavior is not shielded so easily behind the corporate logo for the employee(s) responsible for the false report. This information is available on the FTC website.

Re:And they prove it

[rtb61]

ADblockers do not block ads per se. They block scipts and elements of web pages. So Salon wants to be a dick, the adblockers will find the script and block it, good luck the morons at Salon. Can't run shit on a browser that is properly configured for example by https://noscript.net/ runs fine on https://www.waterfoxproject.or... (if you hate quantum and preferred the previous layouts easiest way to go.), excluding of course any browser out of M$, they control it and make no mistake and it will serve compulsory M$ ads, I waiting for the boot up ad, you now ad kicks in at boot and you have to interact with the add at the appropriate points for the next 10 minutes else the computer will complete the boot.

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

In point of fact, you don't need toilet paper. The majority of the world today still does not use it. There are alternatives - some even being used in countries leading the US in most metrics because they are considered better both in comfort and economy.

Also, if the claims in advertising are influencing your purchase decision, you're being conned. You can never trust what the seller is telling you.

Re:And they prove it

[Rakarra]

Which brings us to another point. These sites want to "make readers pay". The things is - readers don't want to pay for most of this content. They're happy to read it if it's free, but if it's not - they can live without it. Not wanting to pay includes not just not wanting to pay with their money - but also with their attention (ads blasting) and computing power (cryptocurrency mining).

The ad-infested website has led to some horrible assumptions on the part of the Internet audience -- we now expect that everything should be free. It doesn't matter if it cost money for people to write the stories and for companies to host the content, some folks put up stuff for free, so 'free' is the default assumption for something that costs money. The old saying "there's no such thing as a free lunch" is true. You WILL pay for something that you use one way or another, whether it happens with your attention (side ads/paid stories/crypto mining) or not.

The freeloaders, the people who WANT to use all the websites and want to assume absolutely no cost, well, I don't have a lot of regard for their arguments. But you're doing the right thing by going elsewhere if you don't want to put up with the mining or ads of a website.

Re:And they prove it

[Bing Tsher E]

"Don't squeeze the Charmin."

(you know, that brand where they spool it looser on the roll so you get less per roll but it's 'softer.')

Re:And they prove it

[Rakarra]

The ratio of ads to text was vastly lower in newspapers when they were king than in web viewed news today.

Partly because they were funded by whole sections of ads (like the car section, the movie section, etc) as well as classified sections that charged by the entry. Once the classifieds died out, the newspaper industry was in trouble.

Re:And they prove it

[mark-t]

I never encountered that particular issue while I was working there. It only happened a few times in my personal experience, and it seemed that each time it was with products that were ordered by mail, and they had simply not received the item, but still received a bill for it. A couple of times I got yelled at quite harshly for calling to collect payment for something that they had not received, so I needed to learn to have a thick skin (which I never really developed, and a major reason why things didn't work out there for me). None ever actually asked me if their credit was being affected, so my responsibility ended there. Each time it happened, I forwarded the account to my supervisor who handled the intricacies of such situations.

Re:And they prove it

[jafac]

"psychological abuse" being, somewhat a hyperbolic term, let's say I agree with you, in principle.

Because, looking at it this way: an advertisement for sweat socks is not the same as an advertisement for mortgage services. Think about the relative value of the sales commission. For sake of argument, say that the socks ad is $.05, and the mortgage ad is $1000. As a reader of a Salon article, you could see either of these ads: and you're contributing either of these amounts to the revenue of Salon. It's a transaction. And from the standpoint of the consumer, it's completely non-deterministic. And it's complete bullshit. This entire sector of our economy, for: going on centuries, actually, but ramped up to fever-pitch over the last 2-3 decades, is complete bullshit. And we FINALLY have the technical means to eliminate it. We do. That's what the Internet is for. Kill Advertising Dead. It is unneeded. Consumers can find what they need using search. Marketers are still necessary: just not lying marketers. Just not 'pushy' marketers. Marketers only need be honest suppliers of information to those who need it and are looking.

But this is not what we have. Why?

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point is you don't see anything anymore. You're opting in to Monero mining by bypassing features of the site.

I think if I was making the decision conciously and the mining only happened while I read their page... I'm kinda ok with that. But if it happens if the tab remains open, in the background (it does) that's just theft.

Re:And they prove it

[vlueboy]

The standard for HTML was developed as a way for scientists to communicate with each other, and against a background of Usenet norms which were hostile to advertising. I don't think it's really fair to blame Berners Lee for failing to foresee what the WWW would become.

Berners is not to blame --agreed! However, there is no real power to prevent the current WWW committees and browser implementors from doing stupid things (feels like the sinking ship that was the adoption of KDE 4.0, Gnome Shell, Windows 10). Power Users Who Care are facing a losing fight. Most can't just fork Firefox every time it drops a feature nor expect Palemoon and Waterfox to support it forever, or at all. At some point an annoying standard is introduced that will not be reflected by these forks I do follow, or the browser just makes one up despite the obvious ill-will.*

We the users should be making the W3C and browser implementors responsible for crap standards and policy decisions. "Just switch!" isn't working when the 4 major browsers are an illusion of choice. It's almost like 2-party political voting, or broadband's "vote-with your wallet", or using iOS to run Safari skins that are marketed as non-Safari browsers.

* W3C was OK with a standard "Battery Status API" that eventually got canned for allowing mobile device fingerprinting - https://blog.lukaszolejnik.com...
There has been some stuff that seems to favor advertisers rather than regular folks (tracking beacons, localstorage tracking) are more often than not used by the enemy than corner cases of the likes of Flash games.

Re:And they prove it

[hazardPPP]

The ad-infested website has led to some horrible assumptions on the part of the Internet audience -- we now expect that everything should be free. It doesn't matter if it cost money for people to write the stories and for companies to host the content, some folks put up stuff for free, so 'free' is the default assumption for something that costs money.

It's not just that. Yes, the internet has increased the overall expectations for "free" content, that is true. However, the truth is that most of that content would never be read if it weren't offered for "free". Say I go to salon.com and the first thing I see is "if you want to read our articles, please subscribe for $X a month". Would I subscribe? Probably not. How many people hitting that page would subscribe? 1%? 0.5%? 0.01%? So yes, the content costs money to make. However, most people don't care enough for the content to pay for it.

It's like when RIAA and MPAA make those inflated claims about lost revenue due to piracy: a lot of the music/video that people download they only listen to/watch because they can download it freely. If they had to pay, they would be a lot more selective of what they buy.

It's the choice of most websites to offer content for "free", and then to try and support themselves via ads or whatever. It's their choice to try and have millions of readers, and make a fraction of a cent on each via advertising, rather than have tens of thousands of readers who pay double or triple-digit dollar figures for a subscription. They figured it's easier to do the former than trying to convince people to take up a subscription in the latter model. If they screw up by offering too many ads for too little content, it's their problem. Not the readers'.

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't "let [the] subscription lapse", you failed to cancel it. Not the same thing at all, though it doesn't mean Wired arent assholes. Nor you, come to that.

Re:And they prove it

[david_thornley]

I installed an adblocker on my phone because I couldn't use sites. Anywhere I put my finger, I had a large chance of hitting an ad rather than, say, being able to scroll.

Re:And they prove it

[dacaldar]

Very well put

Side note - I remember when Google (Search) first came out. Sure, the results tended to be better, but most noticeably, compared to Yahoo which had started to use high-contrast-blinking banner ads, all you had was some mild, related text ads which you sometimes noticed and were definitely not in any way annoying. Once in awhile, I even clicked them because they were relevant and just to say thanks for not doing <blink> blinky </blink> ads like everyone else.

And you wonder why there was mass migration to Google as the de-facto standard.

Re:And they prove it

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is... WE (readers of ./ and other tech minded) know what's up. We know to block ads. We know to use a JS blocker. We notice when a website is mining crypto coins.

But... we are NOT the majority... not by a long shot. The vast majority are technologically illiterate. Not just a little unaware... totally unaware at a level you and I have trouble comprehending. These people have zero understanding of what the internet is or how they actually access the web. They just know that when they tap/click some icon on their phone/tablet/laptop they get Instagram, WhatsApp, cat videos, porn, and celebrity news. They don't know how it gets there, and they have no interest in finding out how either

Crypto mining WILL work as a business model because enough people will have no clue what is happening that the website owner will see a significant return. The risk is a few... a very few people will be outraged, but it will be so statistically insignificant that we can easily be ignored and written off. There will be no death spiral for Salon - at least not because of Crypto mining. Just like there has been no death spiral for clickbait ads in Facebook ("You won't believe these 10 shocking things about your Cornflakes" followed by 27 densely packed pages of ads and popups interspersed with one liner "facts" like "Cornflakes are made from corn!!!!")

Meanwhile the technologically literate is the group in a death spiral. The numbers of people who know how a computer works, as in really understand it, is rapidly shrinking.

Re:And they prove it

[Cederic]

if the claims in advertising are influencing your purchase decision, you're being conned. You can never trust what the seller is telling you

If only I could fight tens of millenia of evolution and the marketing industry's viciously clever exploitation of it. I try, but the odds are on their side.

Re:And they prove it

[Cederic]

No. The advertising has taken its toll on me over the course of many decades.

I don't need to search out something to see an advert for it, and I don't need to be shopping for something advertised for that advert to have an impact.

Re:And they prove it

[hazardPPP]

What's happened is some marketer did research comparing inline ads to some other type of (more annoying) ad, and found the more annoying type generated more click-throughs.

The whole "click-through" fixation is part of the problem. In the past, companies really had no direct and effective way to measure the effect of an ad. They could only do it indirectly - e.g. ad goes out, sales go up (but was it really due to the ad? no one can tell for sure).

When click-throughs arrived, the ad people came to *think* that they got an effective measure of ad effectiveness. So hence the fixation on click-throughs. They are easily measurable and objective (just a number), so they make a great metric to strive towards. Except that click-throughs don't really tell you the whole story, nor are click-through oriented ads the only way to do effective advertising. Companies take out non-online ads just to "create presence", to have them stuck in your mind. Maybe you're not shopping for a new car right now, but that doesn't mean that all those BMWs ads are pointless. When you DO get around to shopping for a new car, an effective BMW advertising campaign will have ingrained in your brain the idea that BMWs are great cars, and that you should consider buying one. Bonus points for the ad if that's the first car that comes to your mind.

Online ads should be treated the same way, I feel. An unobtrusive inline ad in an article will subconsciously ingrain some idea in your head - "Colgate = toothpaste" or "super laptop = Dell". It doesn't have to make you instantly buy (or think of buying) something, but it has to pop the brand up in your head the moment you want/need to buy something. That's maybe months or years down the road.

Re:And they prove it

[Amanitin]

I need toilet paper. Advertising has raised my awareness of the brands available and the attributes of their product

when you take information in advertising into account for a purchasing decision, that's a clear sign there are no real stakes involved.

So the GPs point is actually too specific. Advertising is for shit you don't need AND/OR don't give a fuck about.

Virtue signalling stops where money begins

[Anonymous Coward]

Suddenly far-left Salon isn't so concerned about climate change, the environment or that currencies like Bitcoin "enable alt-right extremists".

Re:Virtue signalling stops where money begins

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Suddenly far-left Salon isn't so concerned about climate change, the environment or that currencies like Bitcoin "enable alt-right extremists".

Greed is endemic across all political spectra.

Re:Virtue signalling stops where money begins

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this tripe insightful? The people who run a newspaper is rarely the same people who own it. I bet the people writing for the Salon had absolutely nada to do with this.

Far right asshole newspaper owners, on the other hand... far more probable.

Re:Virtue signalling stops where money begins

[argStyopa]

But let's be honest here - only one side rides a moral high-horse denying that greed is a motivation.

Re:Virtue signalling stops where money begins

[Anonymous Coward]

I immediately ignore any post that uses 4chan buzzwords.

Virtue signalling? Oh please.

Re:Virtue signalling stops where money begins

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly have no idea which side you're referring to. Both sides constantly ride a moral high-horse on just about every issue. One side's moral justification is "God." The other side's moral justification is, "cuz i'm a progressive." Personally both excuses annoy me immensely.

What does it do

[Anonymous Coward]

if you use a script blocker?

Re: What does it do

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering most websites these days rely on JS and AJAX for loading content, the site is probably unusable.

Re: What does it do

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be surprised.
Unless they are hosting the monero scripts locally (which I doubt) you can block that and allow the scripts you need for the site to work.

Re: What does it do

[ruir]

I am using whitelisting with a surprising degree of success with some sites using more aggressive tactics of adverting couple with domain rotation of secondary addresses to avoid blacklisting tactics...

Re: What does it do

[Anonymous Coward]

Try salon.com - turns out it works perfectly without scripts.

Re: What does it do

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be surprised.
Unless they aresting the monero scripts locally (which I doubt)

I gather that they are hosting it locally... on MY machine. I tested it minutes ago and the CPU usage skyrockets without something blocking their scripts. All the RAM is used up in my live distro.

There's no warning, no modal window, no opt-in, unlike some posters have said.

Jokes on them

[Anonymous Coward]

Jokes on them, I ain't reading their shit.

Yet another terrible financial model

[shanen]

Crypto-currency is just a gambling scam. I certainly regard it as a good reason to avoid any website, and they didn't need the bad press.

So let me focus on the solution I keep advocating: SELL ME THE SOLUTIONS. I'm sick and tired of all the problems. I want to do something to help SOLVE the problems.

The articles or videos about various problems should be followed by links to projects related to solutions for those problems. The journalism part could be supported directly with internal projects, or via tithes on the external projects.

AtAJG, DAUPR.

Re:Yet another terrible financial model

[Anonymous Coward]

SELL ME THE SOLUTIONS.

Firstly, people don't want to pay, that's why advertising is the breadwinner for most media. Secondly, information wants to be free and it can be distributed for almost nothing: That's not a product earning revenue. Thirdly, mostly, they're solving the problem of how to keep your mind busy while not doing real work: As popular as it is, it's not worth paying money for.

... projects related to solutions ...

Americans at least, are so divided, that they can't agree on a bearable solution.

An America that consumes negativity because negativity asks nothing of its audience; an America that has broken itself down into groups of powerless, self-defined victims; and an America that has drifted dangerously from its can-do moorings and is currently sailing away into aesthetic and intellectual irrelevance.

-- James Abbot

Re:Yet another terrible financial model

[shanen]

Gee, I wonder if any of those AC comments raised any questions worth considering? Guess we'll never know, will we?

I guess I have a question for the ACs. Why? Your identity could scarcely be weaker than having an account on Slashdot, but why the whipped cream anonymity sauce on top?

As usual, I think about problems in terms of solutions these days. ACs should get a preface on their comments that will never be seen. First a warning, and then if they insist in commenting when they'll never be seen, the Slashdot server would preface their comment with something along the lines of "The AC was informed that the OP would not see this comment, so the following comment is not part of any sincere attempt at dialog."

Salon is blocked now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Salon.

Re:Salon is blocked now.

[ruir]

I left them long, long ago. Cannot anymore remember why....

Re:Salon is blocked now.

[Deadstick]

You could have just said no to the mining option, y'know.

I use a privacy plugin, not an ad-blocker

[Misagon]

I don't mind ads but I mind my privacy.

I use EFF's Privacy Badger plugin, which automatically blocks web sites that it has detected to track me.
Ads on web sites that respect users' privacy are still visible.
If their web site uses ad-networks that tracks visitors and those ads are blocked as a result then that is the site owner's fault -- and the site deserves to get those ads blocked!

Re:I use a privacy plugin, not an ad-blocker

[Anonymous Coward]

For those that use a browser like palemoon (firefox fork) privacy badger won't be compatible but, uMatrix is a very good alternative but a bit more complex and flexible for the basic user.

Re:I use a privacy plugin, not an ad-blocker

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mind ads but I mind my privacy.

I use EFF's Privacy Badger plugin, which automatically blocks web sites that it has detected to track me.
Ads on web sites that respect users' privacy are still visible.
If their web site uses ad-networks that tracks visitors and those ads are blocked as a result then that is the site owner's fault -- and the site deserves to get those ads blocked!

This. I have no problem with any amount of ads as long they do not track me.

Re:I use a privacy plugin, not an ad-blocker

[mentil]

Also if you use Firefox, turn first-party cookie isolation on (about:config->privacy.firstparty.isolate)
I've noticed no problems on any of the sites I use.

Re: I use a privacy plugin, not an ad-blocker

[c6gunner]

This. I have no problem with any amount of ads as long they do not track me.

I have a problem with ads which use 5 times as much of my mobile data as the rest of the page put together. Especially when I'm reading a text based article which would be 1/10,000th of the size on it's own.

TextOnly browser is a great solution, when it works.

Re:I use a privacy plugin, not an ad-blocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine is a computer security tool. If ads weren't vectors for attacks they wouldn't get swept up by it.

uBlock Origin

[Hal_Porter]

If you go to Salon with uBlock Origin in Medium Mode - third party scripts and frames are blocked - it turns out it loads fine.

And then you see articles like this on the front page and remember why you deleted your bookmark to Salon about ten years ago

https://www.salon.com/2018/02/18/john-oliver-gives-us-six-lessons-on-how-to-report-on-trump/

A listicle based on failed Brit comedian and CURRENT YEAR man, now a wholly owned subsidiary of the DNC saying things like 'late-night comedians have become the nation's front-running truth tellers'. Yeah, I think I'll pass. If he's not going to cry like Jimmy Kimmel, how do I know he's sincere?

Re:uBlock Origin

[AmiMoJo]

You know that when you make an ad-hominem attack on a comedian who says unkind things about Mr. Trump you are basically signalling to the world that you've lost the argument and this is all you have left.

Oliver's new season started last night. Haven't seen it yet but I'm guessing you don't have any specific criticisms of its content.

Re:uBlock Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

What is "Medium Mode" I can't find any setting in uBlock Origin to set the "mode". I run it with its default settings and the site loads fine.

Beside that, uBlock itself will attempt to block crypto miners wherever they come from.

Re:uBlock Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a fucking comedian.
This is like writing an article about how insightful Dave Chapelle is on transgenderism.
I love his comedy, and I even agree with his stance on the issue, but he's still just a fucking comedian.
This is especially true for people like Oliver, because he makes all his political points interspersed with jokes, and gets all riled up.
Then when you call him out on some bullshit it's all "I'm just a fucking comedian why are you acting like I have to live up to the same standard as the news".
Yeah, no. Fuck that.

Re: uBlock Origin

[Zero__Kelvin]

I suppose he is a failed Brit comedian, what with him being a highly successful comedian in the US. It's actually pretty hilarious to watch you admit that if you encounter any factual information about the Dontard you will immediately close your browser and run away like an errant schoolgirl and never look back.

Re: uBlock Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

factual information about the Dontard

I hope you aren't talking about Oliver with that statement. He entirely relies on appeal to emotion. Facts are very rarely presented in his show. One of the most famous was a piece he did on unjust bail in the US and failed to make mention of the 8th amendment of the US. If you believe he presents facts, I pity you.

Re:uBlock Origin

[ArchieBunker]

This place used to post Salon stories all day long. I never liked their agenda.

Re:uBlock Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

What has he been called out for, or are you just anticipating thats what the response would be.

Either way he tends to be more accurate and on point then many major news sources.

Re:uBlock Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

A listicle based on failed Brit comedian

Donald? Is that you?

Re:uBlock Origin

[Hal_Porter]

What is "Medium Mode" I can't find any setting in uBlock Origin to set the "mode". I run it with its default settings and the site loads fine.

It just means "Block third party scripts and frames by default". You need to check "I am an advanced user" and then enable the two global blocks as explained here

https://github.com/gorhill/uBl...

And then you need to work out what exceptions you need to make to get a site to work.

E.g. for slashdot I had to add a local whitelist entry for fsdn.com

https://i.imgur.com/0MVTaqq.pn...

Re:uBlock Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

Then when you call him out on some bullshit it's all "I'm just a fucking comedian why are you acting like I have to live up to the same standard as the news".

What "bullshit" have you called John Oliver out on?

Re:uBlock Origin

[SvnLyrBrto]

"Failed?" John Oliver has a hit TV show that's renewed at least through 2020, a multimillion dollar salary, multiple Emmys and WGA awards, and at least one Peabody to his name. If that's your "failure" in your mind then, as Fezzik, would say, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Also, your assertion that HBO is a subsidiary of DNC is demonstrably untrue. They are, in (a quite easily-verifiable) fact, a subsidiary of Time Warner which is, in turn, a publicly traded corporation and now a subsidiary of anything (Though that would change if the AT&T acquisition goes through.). But hey, don't let little things like facts get in the way of whatever your rant is about.

Re:uBlock Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

Then when you call him out on some bullshit it's all "I'm just a fucking comedian why are you acting like I have to live up to the same standard as the news".

Yeah, no. Fuck that.

This. If you engage in journalism, that doesn't necessarily make you a journalist, but you sure as fuck should be called out on your mistakes. Jon Stewart pulled the same bullshit. And I even like Jon Stewart, generally. You can't hold other people to some standard and then refuse to hold yourself to the same standard when doing the same activity.

So, yea, Jon Oliver engages in real journalism some time interspersed with dick jokes. People can generally spot the hyperbole, so that's not it. So long as it's clear enough, it's a good enough approach to making news entertaining. Of course, it's not necessary to make news entertaining with jokes.

It would help, though if journalists wouldn't, as pointed out by Oliver, regurgitate whatever bullshit a politician says. To me, that's the real issue. Most people in the news are reporters. We need more journalists. The next time you watch anyone talking about anything, look for it. Good Youtube content is journalism. Most is shit because it's just regurgitation*. Hell, even good regurgitation would be good enough. That's what Wikipedia does, and except for its obvious problem with edit wars and wiki page turf, it still manages to be more accurate than most news outlets because it doesn't just regurgitate: it regurgitates within a framework of consideration of the accepted facts, effectively calling out bullshit.

* It should be clear, I'm excluding fiction, Walkthroughs, cat videos, RHNB, etc.

Re: uBlock Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the most famous was a piece he did on unjust bail in the US and failed to make mention of the 8th amendment of the US.

You're right, he should have mentioned it. Just like he mentions the 4th amendment every time the US government ignores it.

Re:uBlock Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the commenter who has no problem at all leveling ad-hominems.

Re:uBlock Origin

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been increasingly startled at the amount of people that seem to take what comedians say to heart.

A comedian often builds a narrative like a straw man, highlighting details from a particular perspective with the purpose of illustrating a topic in a different light so they can tear it down. It isn't truth, its propaganda. Its sophism.

But oh my god at the amount of people that only appear to get their opinions on current issue from the monologues of Colbert, Kimmel, Conan, Myers, Oliver et al. I hear people regurgitate what they say all the time and it really bothers me a great deal more than it should. What is the future going to hold for all of us when the majority are so (un? mis? dis?)informed?

Re:uBlock Origin

[zieroh]

but he's still just a fucking comedian.

You seem fixated on this point. Yes, we all agree he's a comedian. A "fucking comedian", even. So what? Comedians have always traded on the currency of social and political commentary. At this point, comedians (or possibly just fucking comedians are the only ones left seriously discussing those topics.

Legal?

[butzwonker]

First, an ad blocker can and will block such scripts, too. Second, they are using someone else's resources without their consent. Is this legal? Or wire fraud?

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the part where they actually ask for consent.

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, an ad blocker can and will block such scripts, too. Second, they are using someone else's resources without their consent. Is this legal? Or wire fraud?

You accessing a website uses your resources, unless you've discovered a magical way to perform this action using exactly zero CPU and memory.

And besides, if you have to "I Agree" let them use resources to run Java, scripts, plugins, or anything else a browser may need to initiate when accessing a website, you're going to be clicking and accepting on that annoying shit (likely more than once) before you finally access the damn content you wanted to see. I really don't think we want to go down that road.

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you normally give consent to websites you visit to run javascript and send you images, video, and text? Maybe, maybe it's implied consent when you click on a hyperlink or type the URL of a website in your web browser. What else do you want to happen? Get a popup from Chrome that prompts, "Are you sure you want to allow https://example.com to use your computer's resources by running scripts and sending you data?" before it begins loading?

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, pretty much that. An explicit dialogue asking for permission. But to be fair,to me it's not going to be important. My adblocker will block this mining script. I was just wondering generally about the legal situation.

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think this would fall under the CFAA

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) was enacted by Congress in 1986 as an amendment to existing computer fraud law (18 U.S.C. 1030), which had been included in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. The law prohibits accessing a computer without authorization, or in excess of authorization.

I'd think the excess of authorization would apply here.

Fortunately I don't read Salon garbage anyway.

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, pretty much that. An explicit dialogue asking for permission...

Imagine if this was the default behavior across every website on the internet. And then spread to other devices.

Every time you want to start your car, you have to click "I Agree" first.

Every time you want to open your iFridge, you have to click "I Agree" first.

Every time you want to watch your smart TV, you have to click "I Agree" first.

Every channel change on your cable box. Every app on your smartphone. Every interactive social media event.

In short, fuck that, and fuck your shitty suggestion. Lawsuits and litigation have ruined enough of the universe.

Oh, and adblockers are becoming worthless, as more and more websites detect adblockers and want to block their content until you whitelist them, which is also becoming infectious. Don't worry though, I'm sure we'll be paying micropayments for every fucking click soon. Pay-per-use IS the 21st century mantra of capitalistic greed.

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, like the EU requires that websites only set cookies if you actively click "I agree".

That pretty quickly became a warning box saying "you agree".

Re:Legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time you want to start your car, you have to click "I Agree" first.

No, it would be like the first time you use a new car (visit a new website), you would click on 'I agree (for this specific car, now and until further notice)'.

So your post is a pile of crap.

And as for

Oh, and adblockers are becoming worthless, as more and more websites detect adblockers and want to block their content until you whitelist them, which is also becoming infectious.

Every single website I've ever visited which comes up with 'adblocker detected' works fine after one click on the 'yescript2' button.

Unable teo recreate...

[angsthaas anonymous]

When visiting the salon.com site; no anti-adblock warning appears, no cpu crypto-mining starts on my machine, no articles are inaccessible. Ublock Orgin in Hard mode with no site exceptions enabled. Nothing to see here

Re:Unable teo recreate...

[SpankiMonki]

Me too. Not sure why all the nerd rage...

Re:Unable teo recreate...

[XxtraLarGe]

Me too. Not sure why all the nerd rage...

Maybe they're not checking for uBlock, or they are only doing it with random readers.

Re: Wannabet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen, I am actually cool with this practice. I have always been in favour of some kind of micropayment for enjoying commercially produced content. I am just offended by advertising.
I always wanted to pay something like $0.02 per page. Paying about 1X10E-4 or E-5 Watt-hour instead sounds like a great compromise.

This is sort of fair actually.

[Qbertino]

Go ahead, mine something on my box. If the code is sandboxed - as should be the case with JS - and it doesn't slow to a grinding halt, I'm actually ok with that. But don't show me you annoying ads!

In fact, make it the default! And give me the option to choose ads over mining. That would actually be a huge improvement IMHO. No joke.

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[Anonymous Coward]

And your opinion makes me believe that the sooner cryptocurrencies are banned outright, the better. We're already wasting 29TWh of electricity to do no useful work whatsoever, just to mint imaginary money.

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your user id says you're on old fart, but your comment says your a naive youngling. All you'll get with that permissive attitude is sites with cryptominers and ads. Most newspapers exist because someone wants to influence the public. The fact that the public used to pay for that too is testament to the influencers' power of persuasion. Sites like Salon don't provide a product. They spread opinions. There are a few people whom I would pay to hear their opinion, but Salon isn't among them. They ought to pay me to read what they want me to read. They, just like most other "news" organizations, must at some point realize that they are just one more voice who wants to be heard, not a voice that people want to hear.

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[ruir]

And you could not publish this with an actual user *because*???

Re: This is sort of fair actually.

[Zero__Kelvin]

Oh .... I see how your cluelessness manifests itself now. All money is "imaginary money" dipshit.

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[tommeke100]

except my laptop suddenly goes all sandstorm like Darude and then shuts down because the processor reached critical temperature...because I'm reading a website !!!

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[Freischutz]

Go ahead, mine something on my box. If the code is sandboxed - as should be the case with JS - and it doesn't slow to a grinding halt, I'm actually ok with that. But don't show me you annoying ads!

In fact, make it the default! And give me the option to choose ads over mining. That would actually be a huge improvement IMHO. No joke.

I’d have to agree with that and if people don’t want ads and they won’t pay for a subscription I’m OK with mining as long as they don’t use too many resources and don’t do anything malicious. It costs money to run a paper and no amount of hysterical shrieking from people who feel entitled to get everything for free is going to change that.

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[Anonymous Coward]

And your opinion makes me believe that the sooner cryptocurrencies are banned outright, the better. We're already wasting 29TWh of electricity to do no useful work whatsoever, just to mint imaginary money.

Whatever. I'll club baby seals to get rid of annoying ads.

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't need to log in to post, so I don't. (Note that requiring a login for posting would not make me log in, but make me stop posting.)

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[GrahamJ]

I agree, except that I think an obvious switch is necessary for those running on batteries.

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[Solandri]

You're actually paying for it via a slightly elevated electric bill, making it an extremely inefficient way to transfer money.

You -> electric company -> heat generated on your computer -> bitcoin -> website -> bitcoin exchange -> cash to website

If you're ok with paying for the website you're visiting, just cut out everything in the middle, save your computer some wear and tear, and prevent a little bit of global warming by simply transferring money:

You -> website

Re: This is sort of fair actually.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try telling the tax office that and see how you get on.

Re: This is sort of fair actually.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah Zero__, you poor literal idiot, never to know love, as it does not exist in your world.

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[Strudelkugel]

It's an interesting idea.

Let's say the background process was processing data to sort clinical compounds for a life saving new drug. I would certainly prefer that over useless flashing ads. What if a network of sites set up an arrangement where you could build credits for ad-free browsing by allowing them to use your CPU when the machine is not in use? IOW, your machine is "the cloud" and you get paid for CPU time. Clearly security would be an extremely important issue, and it may not work well for mobile devices, but I wouldn't write off the concept.

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[Pfhorrest]

The primary reason I want to block ads is that they (and other useless Javascript bullshit) makes the web unbearably slow in this day and age, so replacing that with an invisible drain on my system resources isn't going to enhance my user experience much.

I would rather read a narrow column of text surrounded by static locally-hosted and fast-loading image ads that I can easily ignore than read an ad-free page that makes my computer unable to even accept text input at the speed I'm capable of typing.

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what they do. There is a popup, and you can chose to continue by turning off your ad blocker, or by mining cryptocurrency.

Re:This is sort of fair actually.

[lerxstz]

I agree as well. I don't mind paying for quality content (not saying salon.com is or is not, I don't use it actually). This sounds like a reasonable compromise. If they don't show ads and don't abuse it--we'll see--I'd be fine with it. I've paid for Medium subscriptions because I don't like ads and will continue IF Medium is fairly compensating the writers in the long run (we'll see). I won't pay for digital newspaper subscriptions because they continue to show me ads even if I've paid. Actually, now that I think of it, I should click on a slashvertisement or two I suppose...I still get some amount of value/entertainment from this site, even though it's not as tech-y as it used to be.

How long for Ad Blockers to block the miners?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing days or weeks. Salon can't win this arms race with Ad Blockers, and they will mightily piss off their readers in the process.

Re:How long for Ad Blockers to block the miners?

[Anonymous Coward]

Already happens if your blocker also blocks scripts and/or cross-site cookies and/or iframes apparently.

Re: Wannabet!

[fyngyrz]

Ditto

Well, bye...

[Anonymous Coward]

Salon just got added to my blocked sites list. Ii expect my employer will do the same once I point this article out to our network administrator.

Re:Well, bye...

[Deadstick]

Your admin might be clever enough to notice that it's a by-consent option.

Re:Well, bye...

[budgenator]

Your admin might be clever enough to notice that it's a by-consent option.

He/She might also be clever enough to notice her/his average user is a dipshit that doesn't think twice about clicking Okay and running unauthorised software on a system with access to sensitive data and regulatory restrictions.

Re:Well, bye...

[reboot246]

"By consent" for now. Who knows about tomorrow? Once Salon goes down this dark road, they may be tempted to do other nefarious shit.

And they may not even tell you about it.

Re:Well, bye...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, well, they do tell you about it.

THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT.

Re: Wannabet!

[fisted]

WHAT? I COULDN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE NOISE OF MY CPU, CASE AND PSU FANS!

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

BUT I MEAN TO BE YELLING

Sounds legal to me

[fyngyrz]

You missed the part where mindless outrage was the only signal the GP was on about. :)

I don't mind paying for content this way. It's a form of micropayment that does not involve ads. Yeah, it actually hits the wallet - at least if you're paying for your own electricity it does. But if the site has decent content (Salon... dubious, but perhaps I'd read there sometimes) and if the mining only occurs when I'm actually on the site, I'd be okay with it. It sure as heck beats being pummeled by ads. I have plenty of CPU power available. Especially if it's not being consumed animating some bullshit ad.

Re:Sounds legal to me

[butzwonker]

It's not hard to block scripts and nobody forces me to visit their website. I was merely interested in the legal situation in the case when the mining is done without explicit consent, since using someone else's resources for profit without consent seems legally problematic. With explicit consent there shouldn't be much of a problem.

Re: Wannabet!

[Anonymous Coward]

At least it should only have a marginal impact on bat--carrier lost--

This leads me to the conclusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

we as a society should ban both crypto currencies and advertising.

fuck these cunts

[Anonymous Coward]

Salon told readers: "We intend to use a small percentage of your spare processing power to contribute to the advancement of technological discovery, evolution and innovation." is as bullshit as it gets. just say we are gonna make some fucking money out of you anyway... that said the only people who read that garbage are left winger cucks... so i have no problem with em being fucked

disable javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

90 percent of javascript is a waste. The same real utility could be achieved with html, links images and a little serverside tech like cgi bin or .jsp.

OTOH, the overwhelming majority of security and privacy nightmare rely on javascript in one way or another.

Surfing with javascript disanled is a good idea. Some sites will hand you a blank page without javascript. They're not for me and I'm not for them, with a few exceptions.

Executable content

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever thought it was a good idea to "enrich" a net-facing application (aka browser) with functionality that will execute anything coming its way is... well. I've no words to describe that.

And taking away (or making less obvious) the user controls to disable that (no, I'm not talking about half-assed "plugins" Ã la NoScript) on the grounds that "users are too stupid to understand that" will get us... more stupid users.

Yes, Mozilla. I'm looking at you! (no the other browser vendors are too disgusting to even look at).

Re:Executable content

[Anonymous Coward]

yep

/etc/hosts

[FudRucker]

0.0.0.0 salon.com
there, that should fix it

Bad business models are not my problem

[sjbe]

Amen, I am actually cool with this practice. I have always been in favour of some kind of micropayment for enjoying commercially produced content

I'm not and I think you are out of your mind if you are cool with this. They are the ones who have a shitty business model dependent on me subsidizing them with my computer resources and attention. I block ads mostly because I don't like being tracked and I don't trust them with the data. I will block anyone trying to do that and if that costs them money that is no my problem. They certainly don't get to use my computer to mine money without contracting with me to do it first. They can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned if they try to do that behind my back.

Also bear in mind that I might be using my company's computer to read that website. Lots of people including me do not have the authority to allow a third party to use company computers for such a purpose without the express permission of the company even if the company is cool with the reading a Salon article.

The arrogance of Salon is kind of breathtaking here.

I always wanted to pay something like $0.02 per page.

That's fine but I don't think you've done the math on the cost per page if you think $0.02/page is reasonable. For me that could easily top $50/day at that sort of price point. You're mileage may vary but I think it will be more expensive than you realize. I don't have a principled objection to pay-as-you-go (sans ads of course) but I'm not about to pay that sort of ridiculous rate. I do subscribe to websites I find valuable (several of them) but most of them don't offer me enough value to bother. Salon certainly does not. And if I'm not willing to subscribe it seems unlikely I'm going to be ok with giving them a free pass to run up my power bill and slow down my computer.

Paying about 1X10E-4 or E-5 Watt-hour instead sounds like a great compromise.

Not to me it doesn't. If they want to approach me directly and offer such a deal then fine but they do not get to just go ahead and do it because I happened to load one of their articles with an ad blocker active. If they want to put up an offer when the web page loads that's fine. I can take the offer or leave it. (and I assure you I will leave it) But if they simply go ahead and start trying to mine bitcoin on my computer without asking me first, now we have a fight.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[Time_Ngler]

> If they want to put up an offer when the web page loads that's fine. I can take the offer or leave it. (and I assure you I will leave it) But if they simply go ahead and start trying to mine bitcoin on my computer without asking me first, now we have a fight.

From the Fucking Summary:

> However, unlike that incident, where hackers took control of visitors' computers to mine cryptocurrency, Salon notifies users and requires them to agree before the tool begins mining.

Re: Bad business models are not my problem

[c6gunner]

From the length of his comment it's pretty coast that he's a busy man who doesn't have time to read more than the headline. Clearly this whole "summary" thing is a failed business model.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of moronic lemmings out there that don't even care if someone dumps their personal information online. They will just pay a service to "guard" their identity and move on about their lives without any notion of responsibility because they lack responsibility themselves.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[tsqr]

That's fine but I don't think you've done the math on the cost per page if you think $0.02/page is reasonable. For me that could easily top $50/day at that sort of price point.

OK, let's do some math. $50 at $0.02/page is 2500 pages. That's about 2 minutes/page if you browse for 20 hours/day with no breaks. Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[mellon]

But you pay to see it, not to read it. So if it's $0.02/page times the number of pages you visit in a day, are you still okay with it?

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess, "requires them to agree" in the same way as those cookie warnings that claim that the user agrees when he/she clearly does not.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[wed128]

They certainly don't get to use my computer to mine money without contracting with me to do it first. They can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned if they try to do that behind my back.

They're not doing it behind your back. They post a notice that you have to agree to before the page loads. Just don't agree and you can go back to slashdot. Calm down.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[Thumper_SVX]

Well (a) from the article it says that Salon is asking permission before it starts doing this... so right there the entire first part of your argument goes out the window. I don't mind being asked for permission to mine for cryptocurrency to pay for a resource I like (reading material).

That's fine but I don't think you've done the math on the cost per page if you think $0.02/page is reasonable. For me that could easily top $50/day at that sort of price point.

Well, quite frankly I think that OP was using that number as an example and is probably the wrong number. And how much time do you spend reading articles on a magazine website in order to rack up $50 a day in 2 cent a page expenses? Can I have your job? The reality of this is that yeah... Salon started it and others may well follow suit. I get it; monetizing content is important in order to provide decent content. Just look around the USA today to see the results of a population with unfunded or underfunded independent information sources. We are a country surrounded by propaganda and a good part of that is because independent outlets for information can't survive unless they kowtow to advertisers and/or sponsors... then they become propaganda by default.

The reality of Salon's proposal here is pretty good. You start mining currency when you arrive on the page and agree. If you find the article boring or it doesn't grab your attention then you navigate away and the mining stops. That might cost you a tiny fraction of a penny in electricity, particularly since they do say they're going to use a percentage of your CPU power, not all of it.

As an aside, I'm pretty sure none of my CPUs are powerful enough to mine $50 worth of Monero a day...

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to me it doesn't. If they want to approach me directly and offer such a deal then fine but they do not get to just go ahead and do it because I happened to load one of their articles with an ad blocker active. If they want to put up an offer when the web page loads that's fine. I can take the offer or leave it. (and I assure you I will leave it) But if they simply go ahead and start trying to mine bitcoin on my computer without asking me first, now we have a fight.

I've never seen a warning. When I connect I see my resource monitor go through the roof. I knew that something nasty was being done. Of course my relationship with this publication is over effective immediately.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

They certainly don't get to use my computer to mine money without contracting with me to do it first. They can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned if they try to do that behind my back.

They're not doing it behind your back. They post a notice that you have to agree to before the page loads. Just don't agree and you can go back to slashdot. Calm down.

I use hosts for blocking [technically not an ad-blocker], but still my resources monitor goes up through the roof when I surf their website. I never get a warning.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[war4peace]

Another fine example of how developers think. They take a FUCKING EXAMPLE and turn it into a single, nothing-else-possible case.
Jesus...

0.02/page could be 0.02/minute. Actually, considering you can mine Monero of about 1 dollar per day on an average quad-core CPU, the income for the website is 0.07 cents per minute. Your actual cost may vary depending on your CPU power consumption and electricity cost.

Re: Bad business models are not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

> Also bear in mind that I might be using my companys computer to read that website

Get back to work.

Sincerely, your IT department

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The arrogance of Salon is kind of breathtaking here.

If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black. Here you are thinking you're somehow entitled to their content. Their writers have to make a living too. Fuck your "screw everyone but me" attitude, its thinking like this that destroys community.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[tepples]

considering you can mine Monero of about 1 dollar per day on an average quad-core CPU

First, last I checked, JavaScript miners were slower than native miners. Second, will sites kick out users of older or mobile CPUs because they can't mine fast enough?

Re: Bad business models are not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you checked what is running and determined it is coin mining, as opposed to an ad blocker getting into a loop, or other JavaScript, as I've seen both happen?

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[pezpunk]

RTFA. they are giving you the option. your outrage is completely absurd and based on total ignorance of the actual policy and implementation.

Re: Bad business models are not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you checked what is running and determined it is cockoin mining, as opposed to an ad blocker getting into a loop, or other JavaScript, as I've seen both happen?

Same AC here. No, I use Puppy Linux Live with an app called 'Pup-advert-block', which is essentially a hosts file generator that pulls domains from three curating websites, namely mvps.org, Sysctl,org and Yoyo.org.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[Kjella]

But you pay to see it, not to read it. So if it's $0.02/page times the number of pages you visit in a day, are you still okay with it?

I would so *not* want it to be $0.02/page by default because that would be incentive to constantly spawn pages, potentially also with some kind of iframe/refresh/redirect tricks. But if I could whitelist sites and set limits I'd rather give them permission to mine than permission to show me ads. And it wouldn't necessarily have to be a fixed rate. Like say I allow /. to pre-mine up to $0.10, max $1/24 hours like a mini-balance. Every time I read a story they subtract $0.02, mining starts running again. Like a continually pre-paid mini-subscription with a hard limit on how much they could take if they're hacked or whatever. Of course if I for some reason want to read more than 50 stories a day, I could always change the limit.

The alternative would be pay as you go, either that they first show ads instead that disappear if you permit mining or that the actual content isn't loaded into the DOM before you've micro-paid up. I think I could pretty quickly say if this was a serious site and quickly put them into like a bronze/silver/gold/platinum tier (+ custom of course). Each site you've whitelisted should have some kind of easily accessible running tab. Any sites that's greedy/a scam will hit the wall quickly and be delisted again, those that provide good value for money get to mine. The overhead is probably huge but less than getting a global micro-payment solution going.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This is funny. I already pay for Internet. Not paying for more. Net neutrality.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[religionofpeas]

Salon: "We intend to use a small percentage of your spare processing power"

That's much less than a fully loaded quad-core.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[tsqr]

But you pay to see it, not to read it. So if it's $0.02/page times the number of pages you visit in a day, are you still okay with it?

I didn't say I was OK with paying $0.02/page. I was merely pointing out that one would have to devote quite a bit of effort to run up a $50/day bill at that rate. I have to admit, though, that I didn't consider the case where one just flits from page to page without reading. I'm having a bit of trouble seeing the utility of such a use case.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[ShanghaiBill]

you can mine Monero of about 1 dollar per day on an average quad-core CPU

Let's do some math!

I have a quad core i7. All four cores running flat out consume about 150W for the entire system. I pay about 12 cents per kWhr. But Coin-Hive maxes out at 40% of CPU.

So the cost in electricity per day would be (150 w / (1000 w/kw)) * 24 hr/day * $0.12/kWhr * 0.4 = $0.17 / day

Let's assume that JavaScript has 50% inefficiency factor compared to native code.

The CoinHive server (Slate in this case) would earn $1/day * 0.4 * 0.5 = $0.20 / day.

So I pay 17 cents to the electric company, and Slate gets 20 cents worth of Monero. This assumes the miner is running for 24 hours, which is unrealistic. More likely it would be for just a few minutes. If the page is open for five minutes, I would pay $0.0006 to the electric company, and Slate would get $0.0007.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[sonamchauhan]

NOTE: mining does not stop if you navigate to another tab. It continues in the background

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[Thumper_SVX]

Correct... but do you never close tabs? Sounds like a workflow problem.

Re: Bad business models are not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy figures they should just live on the street while doing deep investigative journalism. Meanwhile, he should live in a palace made of gold for posting comments on the internet.

I exaggerate but this is essentially many people's POV regarding the media these days. Then they wonder why it's falling apart.

Re:Bad business models are not my problem

[Darinbob]

Noscript will deal with it.

Re: Bad business models are not my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

So - should your isp be paying content sites for access from that money you pay?

Invalidate non consensual mining coins

[Anonymous Coward]

I said it before and say it again, crypto currencies need to only accept mining from people who use their own miners and pay for their own electricity. Stealing peoples computer power and electricity needs to be made unaceptable in the mining community. I see illictly mined coins as counterfeit.

Since salon is unwilling to use their own miners they are basicly a counterfeiting operation.

It's the tracking that is the problem

[sjbe]

I don't mind seeing advertising that pays for the content I browse

I do because I have yet to find an advertiser that can provide me adequate assurances that data about me isn't being tracked and sold. I *might* be willing to live with some non-obtrusive ads if I could be sure of and control what was done with the data gathered. But until I control that process (which I have no illusions will ever happen) the ads will remain blocked and I will fight tracking with every resource at my disposal. If that means I have access to less content then so be it. Unlike you I actually value my privacy.

I installed an adblocker because to much of the above "bad" ads were interrupting browse, and now I've uninstalled it because every site I encounter requires me to 'disable adblock before proceeding'.

Either you had the wrong ad blocker or you are browsing sites I never go to. I almost never see ad-blocker notices and sites that refuse to work with one enabled I deem to be ones I didn't need to go to anyway. Seriously it just isn't a problem. Even on my mobile devices.

Re:It's the tracking that is the problem

[Applehu Akbar]

Ah yes, the big bad tracking beast. Accumulating demographics on how many people searched for new cars on Tuesday in my town is something I consider totally normal and unobjectionable. I’m being surveyed without having to stop what I’m doing to fill out surveys.

And the personal tracking? Either I see ads for specific items I recently searched for and already bought or I see ads for specific items I searched for but did not buy. In either case, you’re welcome to waste your money.

Re:It's the tracking that is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow you really have an over-inflated sense of what your piddly-little data is worth.

No one cares what you're doing sonny, nor rather how much you masturbate in front of your monitor, with the only exception of trying to serve you relevant ads.

Today's lucky 10000

[sjbe]

I haven't even heard about Salon until this came up.

Congratulations! You are one of todays lucky 10,0000.

Re:Today's lucky 10000

[Anonymous Coward]

Salon is mostly crap articles

Re:Today's lucky 10000

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too! Never heard that website so much as mentioned my entire life until now.

Re:Today's lucky 10000

[Anonymous Coward]

And to think, you are also informing 10,000 people about being one of the 10,000 people!

Future of Website Funding

[mentil]

I predict that a few years from now, web browsers will have crytocurrency handling as a built-in feature. There will be wallets for various cryptocurrencies, and a mechanism for this to interact with websites, with a browser-controlled UI controlling this. The browser will also have a 'mining mode' that users can toggle (or set to activate automatically when idle) which slowly fills up their wallet of choice. Go to a news website or whatever, and they ask for a microtransaction in whatever denomination, it comes from your wallet (if you accept the UI prompt). You can configure in the browser that site X can deduct amounts of up to Y per page, with a notification each time this happens. This'll be HUGE for porn sites, particularly with cryptocurrencies where encrypted blockchains are used.

Wallet empty and you need some cryptocoins NOW? Handy link to a broker site with a referrer fee to the browser maker. The 'mining mode' will utilize your GPU or whatever, if available. You can configure it to only use up to X% of your CPU/GPU. Of course, the preferred cryptocoins will be those with fast transaction times and low fees, being mine-able might help, and encrypted blockchain will be preferable for some sites.

Re:Future of Website Funding

[stooo]

>> I predict that a few years from now, web browsers will have crytocurrency handling as a built-in feature
Browsers are already slow enough.
If you want to go worse, up to you, but probably most people will not go to browsers with incorporated hooks for malware.

Re:Future of Website Funding

[jafac]

Given the massive instability in value of cryptocurrency, I'm thinking not.

Salon the climate change enthusiasts

[Time_Ngler]

Salon, for god sakes, is mining cryptocurrency on its readers' machines? The same Salon which believes that climate change is going to end the world is profiting on the waste of energy used to support PoW cryptocurrency? How can they possibly justify this and their left leaning viewpoint at the same time?

Re:Salon the climate change enthusiasts

[swilver]

For the same reason as why all our climate control efforts are going to fail. Profit and short term gain.

Another Great Filter I'm sure, and I doubt we will pass it.

Re:Salon the climate change enthusiasts

[Anonymous Coward]

They are Progressives - that's why. Consequences of their own policies are not part of the feedback loop.

This surely can't cover costs

[91degrees]

The amount of CPU time you might reasonably get from a JS bot, for the minute or two that it takes to read an article, from a standard PC that's also doing other stuff at the same time is pretty small. How much money do they get per page load? Is it going to cover costs?

Re:This surely can't cover costs

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why you open a popunder window and do the mining from there. Even better if it is a hidden window so it can't be closed without manually killing the browser process, either through a task manager or the command line.

Preferable to ads

[Anonymous Coward]

:D

I do mind. I worked in the manipulation business.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had seen what I had seen, you would definitely mind ads.
People just can't believe the level on which they can be manipulated easily. (And the disbelief actually makes it even easier, as they have a false sense of security, and hence overconfidence, which makes them careless and blind.)

It is quite well-knows what memories trigger what emotions it people. Kittens, your mom, Trump, pussy, ... (see how even the vicinity of the last two words triggered a predictable association?)
That makes people very much more easy to predict that anyone of us likes to admit.
Basically one can nearly entirely steer somebody, given the right sensory input. (Smells are the most powerful, btw. Far above visual input.)
It is only a matter of intensity. Which is the only hindrance, really. (You can't always create an emotional rush situation.)
But it can mostly be mitigated with repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition.

And that is exactly what ads do.
Yes, you won't mind one ad. You won't change your views with one Coca-Cola logo.
But I literally had to remove Wikipedia edits plugging a Coca-Cola/Cargill brand yesterday, giving me a nice example of how far the total immersion strategy goes.

If you ever check the amount of socially conditioned beliefs and reactions you already have inside of you, you will be shocked.
(Checking that requires you to question precisely those things that you never questioned and never really thought about it [much]. Which is why people generally reject doing that, and get all emotional, feeling attacked. It is very hard or even downright impossible, to let go of the foundation of one's reality. As it makes decision making impossible. The brain stops being able to do its job. Which scares the living crap out of most people. ... The solution is to have a trusted anchor that can still be used to hold on to a reality, and serve as a kernel to grow the new world of self-checked assumptions around.)

That's why I block all influences by other lifeforms or media (including passive-thinkers) through which such influences could come, unless I am prepared for what might come and change me in a way that harms me.
Ads obviously are the first to go. (And going on sites like this one is a very rare occasion, that I only do on special occasions. Although I'm quite experienced with staying clear nowadays. The problem is rather, that there might always be a surprise trigger, sneaking in some unwanted imprints.)

We need a mine blocker

[Anonymous Coward]

Built into ad blockers.

Re:Not money. PROFIT.

[Anonymous Coward]

(In this case, you accuse Salon of saying "alt-right extremists"

I'm not accusing. I'm quoting: https://www.salon.com/2017/12/27/is-bitcoin-enabling-alt-right-extremists/

Not $0.02. What they actually make, is more like

[Anonymous Coward]

$0.002 per ad view. At best.

I worked in the business. $50 for a 1000 views on the most valuable page of a 16-million-users-per-day site was considered a lot, even in 2005. And it fell dramatically since then.

I figure you could probably go ad-free for a dollar, for all sites you will visit in an entire month.

And I too would vastly prefer that over fraudvertisement (let's call it what it is).
The only beef I have with it, is that I want to decide if I actually find it worth paying the offered amount for it.
Most sites are not worth my money. Not even $0.002. (E.g. I won't pay that money, if I get to see an ad or product placement in it anyway. Or even if that is just a possible risk.)
For others I would gladly pay 10 times that, though.

Plus, I also accept subscription models. But ONLY IF I pay for the actual work, and the result of that work (like data/information) is free for everyone.*
Patreon already offers that for YouTube videos. If the uploader puts his videos into the public domain.

By the way: Why is there no HTTP header protocol for this kind of thing?

-----
* Because asking for money multiple times, for the same work, "because" you made multiple copies of the resulting data, is just as much stealing, as is asking for work multiple times, for the same money, "because" I made multiple copies of the resulting dollar bills. My dollars are just as much not my "income property" as one's data is one's "intellectual property". It's just a crime scheme to steal money/work and not work/pay for it.

I actually like this

[MobyDisk]

Site is paid for. I don't see annoying ads. If they don't have trackers in the ads, then this sounds like a win-win to me! Can I opt-in for other sites to do this?

Another reason to block JS

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I activate JS. Most websites run without quite well...

Re:Not money. PROFIT.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am intrigued by your ideas, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Deep ignorance

[Futurepower(R)]

"I do because I have yet to find an advertiser that can provide me adequate assurances..."

Most media companies and ad agencies have no one who has technical knowledge, or is even interested in technical knowledge. "Adequate assurances" are at least a generation away.

Eventually we'll just block this too

[mario6915]

I'm sure someone will come up with a very clever way to detect and block miners reliably. So for now, enjoy it salon... 'cause it won't last long.

Re:Eventually we'll just block this too

[Anonymous Coward]

It is called NoScript and a local hosts file advocate here hates that is is more effective than anything he has ever done.

Re:Eventually we'll just block this too

[Anonymous Coward]

Move to uMatrix. It's a little more of a pain to use, but it's far more effective and doesn't keep a secret whitelist of contributors it allows through.

Salon: Crazily stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Salon's main article today: Celebrity monomania: Maybe Trump and Oprah arenâ(TM)t as different as we think"

In 298 days, President Trump has made 1,628 false and misleading claims.

Salon Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Salon's main article today: Celebrity monomania: Maybe Trump and Oprah aren't as different as we think

The reality about Trump: He is a habitual liar. One article: In 365 days, President Trump has made 2,140 false or misleading claims

What a surprise

[RogueWarrior65]

Salon discovers that it takes money to run their operations. *GASP*

Of course, it'a a liberal rag

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no need to ever visit that place.

Mineral rights

[Anonymous Coward]

If I find gold / oil n your ground, it belongs to you.
If you mine coins on my CPU, they belong to me.

just what we need more plug in's to view websites

[Joe_Dragon]

just what we need more plug in's to view websites.

Back in the days the main ones where real / QuickTime / and flash + Shockwave.

Not seeing that at all

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what you people are talking about. Ads? Third-party scripts? What are those? With Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin installed I hardly remember what those things even mean. People see ads that they did specifically solicit? How impolite! Or should I say - how violent to force that on people! Not on my computer though.

This is why we can't have nice things.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how you kill javascript, and any client side form of computation.

The web is based on a assumption of respect and good will. This is, and has always been completely insane since the client can't trust the server, and the server can't trust the client, it was just that the server was considered slightly more trustworthy because the people running it were supposed to be held somewhat accountable and responsible. Now, thanks to a bunch of greedy assholes this entire model comes crashing down. These people needs to get shut down and treated as the purveyors of malware they are, otherwise we can go back to enjoying static html, because this is only going to get worse.

Salon clearly doesnt know how ad-blockers work

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean my ad-blocker blocks coinhive and for the companies who don't use coinhive then my script blocker takes care of the rest.

Pretty much unless a site takes the script for mining and maintains it on their own servers then it will never run on my computer. Digital defense is more important today more than ever and when most major sites cross link scripts from dozen of other domains, I am just protecting my self from the multitude of potential threats.

For example, /. is pulling scripts from a half dozen domains but why would i allow for some script to run from {random string}.cloudfront.net that could be anything at all and i have no reason to trust it. Trust is earned not given so if web publishers want to be trusted, start by listing where you pull your scripts from and what they do!

Re: Wannabet!

[Anonymous Coward]

i agree, i'm sort of fine with this. nobody bothered to create a micropayment option that works anyway. honestly i read most of my news in SmartNews on android -- i'd pay 5-10 a month to read a plenty and skip the BS ads, but that's not an option with them.

PSHAW! PISH POSH!

[Thud457]

John Oliver is a subject of the British Crown, why would he concern himself with the US Constitution aside from trying to subvert it in order to bring about the collapse of our grand experiment?

Re:PSHAW! PISH POSH!

[Hal_Porter]

As a fellow Brit I demand that you don't send him back to us. He's smarmy cunt.

You could however prosecute him for undermining the US constitution.

OK...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would bother to read Salon?

Buffalo Bill's defunct

[Thud457]

Ted Nelson asks how you like your half-baked "World Wide Web" now, suckers.

Finally, web would die ...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is smart step to fight ad blocking. It will finally eliminate HTML and JavaScript as a technology off software engineering landscape and we will embrace new ways to interact with end users. Bitcoin, thank you for this generous contribution to technology.

CPU mining

[jma05]

It isn't using my GPU, just the CPU.
That should be an awfully inefficient way to mine Bitcoin.
I block ads because they insult my intelligence, often are outright fraudulent, if not just manipulative and track me across domains. I don't mind web sites monetizing some other way with informed consent, but really, other than as an experiment, I don't see this working out since people browse on underpowered ARM devices these days. Still, I would like to see the numbers on the economics if anyone has them.

Re:CPU mining

[GrahamJ]

Both CPU and GPU are inefficient for Bitcoin. That’s why they’re not mining Bitcoin.

Re: Wannabet!

[iamhassi]

Amen, I am actually cool with this practice.

But if this idea was as prevalent as ads our computers would be very slow while trying to mine for a few open websites. I've already come across some sites mining through the browser because I noticed CPU usage jump from 3% to 50% only when this pages were open

Exploring the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Several websites are experimenting with coin mining. PirateBay, LinuxTracker, Salon.... Apparently some YouTube advertisers tried to get in on it too. DistroWatch ran a poll last week [1] asking their readers how they felt about mining verses advertisements. The reaction was a strong "no" to mining. Seems people would rather see ads that are taking up too much CPU and running JavaScript code than just have JavaScript code run quietly in the background.

1. https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20180212#poll

Re: Wannabet!

[iamhassi]

Amen, I am actually cool with this practice.

And those of us on mobile devices should just accept half the battery life? It's already bad enough without trying to mine.

"failed"?

[DogDude]

"failed"? You sound like the Shithole in Chief. Calling a popular comedian with a their own HBO show as a "failure" really just tells me that you, in fact, are an actual failure, just like the Orange Asshole.

Ad Hider anyone?

[NorthWay]

My internet connection has now crept up into the 250MBit/s range and I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't be willing to spend some of it on downloading ads: Mind you, I didn't say watching them.

So is there any way for a web server to know if I'm looking at an ad or if the space it is supposed to occupy is empty?
I'm looking for a variation of an ad blocker that will tell the browser whether it should show a frame/image/whatnot after it has been downloaded or just leave the space for it as empty. Anyone?

Re:Ad Hider anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try pi-hole. https://pi-hole.net/
Works for me!

Why would anyone read Salon to begin with ?

[RedK]

Literal pedophilia apologists. Trash site is made even trashier.

Re:Why would anyone read Salon to begin with ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I must've missed the Salon article where they apologized for Trump's well-documented and well-known pedophilia.

I wouldn't mind so much...

[Wolfrider]

...if they were willing to split HALF of the bitcoin mining with ME. Otherwise you're wanting to use MY resources for YOUR GAIN!

Re:I wouldn't mind so much...

[GrahamJ]

By reading the site you’re using their resources for their gain. Sounds fair?

No they don't

[briancox2]

I use ScriptSafe on Chrome and NoScript on Firefox.

They are just ramping up the war against consumers. So consumers now need more armor.

Hal_Porter is a Russian spy

[Anonymous Coward]

and works for the Internet Research Agency.

This is (another) confirmation of that.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is (another) confirmation of that.

I'm Not Opposed To This Model

[NicknameUnavailable]

Beats the Hell out of paid advertising, intrusive marketing/data-capture, paid-for-articles, etc. There is some value in journalism, and I'd rank that value about equal to whatever they can manage to mine in cryptocoins in the span it takes me to read and close the page - if they make really long enthralling articles they get more - if they make shitty little summaries or 20-page breakdowns showing a paragraph of text each which annoy the fuck out of me their miner has to start reprocessing and gets nothing done. This is arguably the best possible revenue model for the internet as a whole to move toward.

Re:I'm Not Opposed To This Model

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way I am allowing random JS to run in my browser on my computer. I'm happy to pay for the services in which I find value. I have happily paid for Fastmail for many years as I consider them to be the pinnacle of email. I happily pay for Digitalblasphemy for my wallpapers, but I will not pay for random news or the random forum.

Paying indicates you are a customer, not a product. I don't have any Google, Facebook, or other social media because they don't value their products. If one had to pay to play, the web would be a better place. Internet ads and mining are full of tracking software, beacons, etc. I don't want people selling my data. Sure, the argument can be made that the end user benefits from Gmail and others, but the truth has shown otherwise. Fastmail (no affiliation other than long-time happy customer) happily charges for their services and they treat their customers with the highest respect. No ads, no tracking, it's open source, and best of all, their customer service is second to none.

As a result of the web now largely being a tracking minefield, I employ a Pi-hole as well as machine-specific software to see no ads, no tracking, no beacons, no rogue JS. As a 20-year veteran systems administrator, I also run a Pi-hole at work on a virtualised server protecting the entire network from this dreck. Our bandwidth use has decreased, our security is up, and I get a very good view of DNS that even server tools struggle to provide. All of this for an hour's worth of work. I also pay for the software I find valuable, even open source stuff.

Re:I'm Not Opposed To This Model

[NicknameUnavailable]

There's literally zero reason for mining software to track you aside from ensuring you aren't feeding it fake results, the ads are the ones with reason to collect data.

Re: Wannabet!

[thegarbz]

Paying about 1X10E-4 or E-5 Watt-hour

Is a great way to prevent your CPU from entering sleep state. I'm sure you'll be the first to complain about the battery life on your tablet.

Re: Wannabet!

[pezpunk]

CoinHive defaults to using 40% or less of your CPU. If your computer freaks out at 40% load you have problems.

MY information vs their profit

[sjbe]

Ah yes, the big bad tracking beast. Accumulating demographics on how many people searched for new cars on Tuesday in my town is something I consider totally normal and unobjectionable.

That would be fine if that was all they do. But it isn't. They track what YOU do and the information is traceable to you specifically. Maybe you are fine with that but I am not. Certainly not without them paying me in cash money for that information.

I’m being surveyed without having to stop what I’m doing to fill out surveys.

Do you normally stop to fill out surveys? I don't and I'm not about to automate the process for someone else's convenience and profit. If anyone is going to profit from information about me I insist that I be the first one to profit. After I get paid then we can have a discussion about other people profiting from information about me.

And the personal tracking? Either I see ads for specific items I recently searched for and already bought or I see ads for specific items I searched for but did not buy.

And with an ad blocker I see none of that and they have no opportunity to track where I am across websites (or at least find it harder to do).

Adapt

[Anonymous Coward]

https://github.com/ZeroDot1/Co...

good luck

[Anonymous Coward]

as I surf your site with a Raspberry Pi 1....

Provide real value first

[sjbe]

No they give you the chance to read their content either by showing ads or by allowing them to use some processing resources.

I vote none of the above. I'll block their ads and shut down any scripted attempt to hijack my processors. Their shitty business model is no my problem. Offer me content I find valuable enough to consider as subscription and then we can talk. I already subscribe to other sites. But they don't get to profit just because I visit their site. I have no way to know if the article is worth my time in advance so I'm not about to agree to give away data about me in exchange for worthless information. Their offer is a bad deal.

But you don't need to go to their website and read content that _they_ pay money to produce and serve.

Spare me. They want to have their cake and eat it too. I'm not going to let advertisers track me and try to sell me shit just to read an article. I'm not going to run up my power bill and peg my processor just because they feel entitled to profit whether or not they actually provide real value to me.

Re: Wannabet!

[ShanghaiBill]

For those that don't like this policy, there are Coin-Hive blockers.

Soon, instead of complaining about your ad-blocker, media sites will complain about your mining-blocker.

We shouldn't be worried...

[MMC Monster]

It's the Ad agencies who should be worried.

I wouldn't mind Salon and some other news agencies using my computers to mine for e-coins. Essentially it's a micropayment system in lieu of seeing ads.

If this catches on, Salon may just rid of ads completely and use crypto-mining to generate money.

The plus side of this is that the more you read the site, the more you pay. If you just go to them because of click-bait, you won't stay on their pages long and end up not generating a lot of money for them.

Sounds like a win situation for the newspaper (they make money) and the reader (no ads). The Ad agencies lose out. But who cares about them?

salon mobile site has cleaned up

[Anonymous Coward]

I no longer get floating warnings about my use of an ad blocker on mobile and the site is much better for it. I doubt my HTC M9 can mine anything anyway and the phone didnt turn into a hand warmer, so i doubt its applied to mobile.

Re: Wannabet!

[ShanghaiBill]

CoinHive defaults to using 40% or less of your CPU.

How is that possible? CoinHive is JavaScript. JavaScript runs in a sandbox, and does not have access to CPU usage info.

you mean far-right Salon

[Uberbah]

The rag was in the tank for Hillary Clinton, and for Obama before that. Both are right-wingers, which makes Salon right-wing as well. As is their race baiting, which seeks to divide people on race so they don't pay attention to class.

Re: Wannabet!

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wanted to pay something like $0.02 per page

Oh, really? You don't

next page ->

think that would

next page ->

lead to some really terrible

next page ->

practices for showing content?

And also, who gets to define "page" here? Of course, you're probably thinking $0.02 per article. But oh, no no no sir, this would turn into $0.02 per connection really quickly. (Source: Everything that's ever happened on the Internet.)

Take a look for the profiling on a Slashdot page WITH ad-blocking and WITH noscript enabled. THIRTEEN CONNECTIONS for a typical page -- and that's for Slashdot, with minimal images and Web 2.0 hipster crap. On a shit content site, even while blocking known trackers and ad servers, you're going to have connections in the hundreds to load a single article.

So, no, this idea of $0.02 per page won't fly. MBA greed would quickly pervert that and they'll find a way to make it $5.00 "per visit".

(and lastly, $0.02 per page wtf, you have no idea how much it costs to run a business that produces content, even shitty content. $0.02 wouldn't even be enough to support an alt-right conspiracy rag. you want worthwhile content, you honestly better be ready to pony up $20 a month flat.)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Too late

[sremick]

Too bad for Salon I already subscribed to a new blocklist on my hardware firewall and now block all cryptocurrency mining JS. Although I feel bad for the general public... not everyone is an IT admin.

Considering blocking salon.com at the firewall, though, because fuck you.

Google Contributor has three weaknesses

[tepples]

If say I could put 10 [currency units] into a pot and have it paid out to sites I visit somehow I'd be happy to do that. Obviously I'd expect not to be bombarded with ads in return.

This is what Google Contributor is supposed to do. However it has three flaws:

1. Reloading a page you've already seen this month costs as much as viewing it for the first time this month. This behavior differs from many newspapers' metered paywalls, which count views of unique articles.
2. It's operated by the same company that also operates the AdSense and DoubleClick services. This means Google probably shares subscribers' click-stream with those services' interest-based advertising engines.
3. It's unavailable outside the United States, Britain, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.

Legal question

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you say theft of services?

Re:Legal question

[viperidaenz]

Legal question
Can you say

Salon notifies users and requires them to agree before the tool begins mining

Ads without cross-site tracking

[tepples]

they give you the chance to read their content either by showing ads or by allowing them to use some processing resources. A choice in other words, a choice many sites wouldn't give in the first place.

I choose ads, but I don't choose cross-site tracking. Daring Fireball respects this choice. Why don't other sites?

But you don't need to go to their website and read content that _they_ pay money to produce and serve. You can choose not to.

I thought commenting on a Slashdot story after having chosen not to read the featured article had negative consequences.

Simple Fix!

[Anonymous Coward]

Install No Coin for individual browsers. For an entire network, I highly recommend buying a Raspberry Pi and installing Pi-hole. the Pi-hole works by blocking all of this dreck from the DNS level, so no calls whatsoever to these websites from which the 3rd-party JS is running. Works very well. You can whitelist/blacklist as you see fit. Works for mobile devices on your wi-fi as well. A free VPN setup will let you call back through your own network whilst you're away from home, keeping the protection in place.

Re: Wannabet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out Brave browser and $BAT as an alternative to averts.

https://youtu.be/eUy9ake9q8w

NoScript = inferior/inefficient vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

NoScript doesn't do a FRACTION of what hosts do for you!

Can NoScript block & stall botnet client C&Cs? No.
Can NoScript protect vs. DNS down/poisoned? No.
Can NoScript protect vs. dns request log tracking? No.
Can NoScript protect vs. Dns blocklists? No.
Can NoScript protect vs. spam/phish malicious payloads? No.
Does NoScript speed you up 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes? No.

NoScript operates slower parsing script src tags in usermode.

Hosts block before ad & 3rd party scripts in kernelmode (not slower usermode compounded in added messagepassing inside a browser & addons slow a browser which shows when stacked w/ other addons more)!

APK

P.S.=> ... & hosts work vs. this threat that shares C&C w/ other botnets links in the submission point to https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11731129&cid=56108241/ per my p.s. there ... apk

Re:Not money. PROFIT.

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how you have conflated these two completely unrelated issues.

A) The Salon article is about Alt-Right sites utilizing bitcoin to get around not being able to use traditional banking services, and being booted of of web hosts.

B) Salon are ASKING people using ad blockers if they would mind letting them mine a form of bitcoin in lieu of watching ads / paying a subscription, as Salon have to make money to operate.

These situations are completely the same. /s

Of course I love all the people on here screaming about how they are going to black list the site - as if you were going to read it anyway. Unless it was to bitch about SJW's or liberals.

Seems more like they can't read for free and resent "dem filty libturds" making money off them leeching.

If many are so outraged, I'm sure you'll all subscribe and support Salon. RIGHT?

CNN

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Is there a way to check this? I'm pretty sure CNN, or one of their advertisers, is up to some funny business as the site is slow and eventually crashes its tab of Chrome when just left open.

Browser feature request:

[viperidaenz]

Pause all Javascript execution after 5 seconds of CPU time has been consumed per page.

There's a 3rd(4th) option

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the site (Salon), you can:
1. Whitelist the site / disable ad-blocking, or
2. Try their "beta" software ("Block ads by allowing Salon to use your unused computing power")
(other /.ers have pointed out you can also leave)
There is another option though, remove the overlay and continue to read without ads.

Salon is a rag, soon to be bankrupt

[Anonymous Coward]

Salon is one of the trashiest rags in the mainstream press. This terrible policy will undoubtedly accelerate their decline into bankruptcy.

Re:Salon is a rag, soon to be bankrupt

[ShanghaiBill]

This terrible policy will undoubtedly accelerate their decline into bankruptcy.

How will the loss of non-subscribing ad-blocking readers, who otherwise generate no revenue, accelerate their bankruptcy?

Re: Salon is a rag, soon to be bankrupt

[Anonymous Coward]

This presupposes that ad-blocking readers have not ALREADY hurt revenue (they have). Combined with more aggressive measures by Salon (eg, crypto mining), more users will be turned off and simply not visit at all, harming Salon's reputation as a source.

Re: Wannabet!

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet would be much smaller without ads. There would be ZERO search engines. Or will you pay 19.99$ to AOL to search the web?

You are the stupidest person here today. And thatâ(TM)s saying something because slashdot is full of retards. But you are the most regarded. Get an extension cord, put on a Bay man costume- we know you have one, and go out David caradine style with auto erotic affixation.

Re: Wannabet!

[Anonymous Coward]

THIRTEEN CONNECTIONS for a typical page -- and that's for Slashdot

And all they know from me is that I come from 127.0.0.1 and go to the same address.

Re: Wannabet!

[cyn1c77]

Amen, I am actually cool with this practice. I have always been in favour of some kind of micropayment for enjoying commercially produced content. I am just offended by advertising.
I always wanted to pay something like $0.02 per page. Paying about 1X10E-4 or E-5 Watt-hour instead sounds like a great compromise.

Yes, but Salon will want you to pay $1 per page. Or to let them mine on your CPU for an hour after each page view.

Remember that most of us are blocking ads, not because we oppose ads, but because we oppose ads that are animated, noisy, computationally/bandwith intensive and hosted by a different (unsafe) server than the webhost we are visiting. What Salon is doing here is simply equivalent by utilizing your computer's "free" CPU power.

They could just stop hosting annoying ads and then 90% of people would probably allow their ads to show.

I have a solution!

[Anonymous Coward]

127.0.0.1 salon.com

problem solved forever.

Re: Wannabet!

[AvitarX]

The math doesn't work out at all though.

You'll never be able to pay what a page view is worth to advertisers with mining via browser.

Maybe Vet Your Ads Better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use an ad blocker when McAfee warns me that some of the ads on a page exhibit risky behaviour, or if the ads on a page lock my browser down so hard I can't even read the site's content.

I'm fine with having ads show up if I can read the content without worrying about malware.

Re: Wannabet!

[sonamchauhan]

I second that. I tried this with a 6 core Xeon. Windows Task Manager shows 12 hyperthreaded cores. Normally, 6 of these are between 5% and 20% and 6 are idle. With Salon's coin mining, all 12 jump to 80%. The fans on my normally quiet desktop roar into life.

Interesting idea, but there's no effective party protecting your safety or cost here. The OS or browser should step in and offer CPU throttling.

Re: Wannabet!

[sonamchauhan]

Also note: mining does not stop if you navigate to another tab, and leave the current tab open. It continues in the background

When this "free" content dies no one will miss it

[Anonymous Coward]

> There's very little content out there that any particular reader is actually willing to pay for.

THAT IS A VERY GOOD SUMMARY OF THE PROBLEM! Most content on the web is shit. Slashdot included which has fewer readers every day. No way I would pay for this. No way! https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org

I wouldn't pay by "accepting" ads either and for certain not watch my PC's fan spin up and run hot while someone tries to mine bitcoin either. Just not worth it.

Ads? Pffft. Once Forbes gave me a nice message asking me to suspend Adblocker and I thought okay I like Forbes so I'll do it, but the ads were so intrusive and obnoxious they really distracted me from what I was trying to read. So I gave up and re-enabled Adblocker.

When this "free" content dies no of us will miss it

Re: Wannabet!

[FormOfActionBanana]

I wrote the above on my phone this morning, and then browsed to salon.com to try it out. And you know what? There wasn't a single article I was interested in reading. Too bad...

Re: Wannabet!

[rickb928]

You think there is any good reason for them to do this without disclosure?

Re: Wannabet!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not how it's supposed to work. The idea that many people have is that it's supposed to only mine for the current tab. Not all ten million tabs you have open somewhere. And if your computer sleeps, the mining stops.

In short, the idea many people have is to make it more legit than what the ad industry currently is. And it will be easier to make it that way because there should be only a couple of parties in the whole transaction. The publication/website, the Miner provider, and you. There shouldn't be additional parties flying in from God knows where complicating things.

Payback

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never been cool with advertising because my browser is my browser and it should be me and only me that decides what gets loaded, and that will never ever includes ads. I've been ad-blocking for decades (early adopter of the legendary Proxomitron!) and I'll never stop as long as webpages are polluted with ads. Find another business model, period.

But mining for crypto currency is not the answer. Again they steal something from me (not browser real estate, now computing cycles) and I'm not cool with that.

I feel it would be pefectly okay to DDoS them in return. They abuse and steal my resources so I find it perfectly reasonable to pay back in kind. If they don't want to share their stuff for free, put up a paywall so nobody will read it. Offering something for free and then steal resources in return... That's just as criminal as a straight up DDoS attack which is why I see no problem in doing just that.

Re: Wannabet!

[pezpunk]

Salon DOES give an express opt-in, jackass.

I would embrace it IF

[aussersterne]

sites that use this show a dialog that uses local store and enables you to opt in.

"Once you've read, say, your first five articles, fade in a modal that says "You seem to like what we're providing here. We need funds to operate—journalism isn't cheap, traditional subscription models are dying, and we need funds to operate. To continue to read, you need to select one of these options:

[ ] Mine Monero for us as you read (preferred)
[ ] See ads as you read (more obtrusive)

Save Preference and Read On >"

Then, after that, if you don't opt in to either one and you visit, you just see this modal each time you visit instead of articles. No opt-in, no articles.

That way, consumption of the work is funded, but consumers are given an opt-in choice that is unobtrusive and saved once, then remembered so that they don't have to bother with it, and you get your choice between ads and mining.

But it should be opt-in, not silent default. The silent default of ads that don't pay the bills (so that you need to click fifty times to read the equivalent of ten paragraphs) is the problem with the entire web right now, and it's killing the web.

Re:I would embrace it IF

[NicknameUnavailable]

I wouldn't even require opt-in or a 5-free-add delay. If someone is legitimately reading an article they aren't using their computer to do anything particularly intensive anyway so there's no reason not just start mining to the single-thread limit of the browser window. It's just JavaScript, it's not going to kill your GPU.

I am ....HESITANTLY... OK With this

[Crypto Gnome]

On the condition that they ALWAYS ONLY initiate mining *AFTER* notifying users AND the user clicks "yes, I'm cool with that".

Furthermore , I would encourage them to tune their mining such that it does not greedily suck up every last clock cycle on a machine (make sure it's extremely background, etc)

Killing your favorite sites

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all fun and well to block ads and block mining scripts until your favorite website dies. You don't pay to visit it, they need to pay for hosting somehow. Also far, far, far from all sites can use Google's ads and have no choice but rely on crappy ads such as popups. Cry all you want about it but just don't cry when your favorite non-mainstream website goes away due to lack of funds.