Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2018 February 26

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February 26

A website wants to user my unused computing power

This doesn't sound good. How does it do this? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:19, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Apparently, it's a plugin, which should draw increased scrutiny because of the implicit permissions. But that wouldn't be necessary: JavaScript could compute whatever (though perhaps less efficiently) and then make a "request" back to the server that is actually just uploading the result. I suspect it's a bit silly, since it's surely worth less than the electricity used to compute it: I'd guess a handful of cents per user-day, and people aren't going to be leaving those tabs open longer than necessary. I have a hard time seeing more than a few thousand dollars per year even with a good uptake rate. But maybe as a social statement it makes more sense. --Tardis (talk) 05:19, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Many websites mining (whether notifying users, secretly, or hijacked sites) use Coinhive which mines Monero (cryptocurrency)#Implementations of Monero. This very roughly estimates [1] $12000/month for PirateBay. This estimates Coinhive themselves make "$3.7 million and $5 million per year" from their 30% cut for all websites. This person with a very minor website which people don't visit for long [2] made $0.36 a day, which was significant less than they made with ads.Nil Einne (talk) 07:30, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

• See BrowseAloud too. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:17, 27 February 2018 (UTC)