KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
A few weeks ago, The Pirate Bay began testing out a new cryptocurrency miner as a potential way to replace flash ads. The miner appeared in the website’s code and would borrow CPU resources from visitors of the site in order to obtain a currency known as ‘Monero coins’. The miner was removed for a few weeks following the test but now, it has returned.
Back when this new system was first tested on TPB, some errors in the code caused massive CPU usage spikes for some users. This was later corrected and now, the script should only use between 20 and 30 percent of available CPU resources while a user is visiting the site.
The main point of criticism at the moment is that there is no way to opt out. The Pirate Bay’s miner is powered by Coinhive, a company that offers its tool to websites looking to replace classic advertisements. The company suggests that site owners be transparent about the usage of Coinhive and there is even a UI widget that can be implemented to websites, allowing users to directly see what the miner is doing and make adjustments or stop the miner entirely.
As Bleeding Computer notes, this UI widget is unfortunately not present on The Pirate Bay, though this may be intentional. After all, torrent sites have had Bitcoin donation buttons for years and they are rarely used. Either way though, there are extensions in Chrome that can block these scripts from running if you really don’t want to lend your CPU power to TPB while browsing the site.
KitGuru Says: This isn’t exactly an unexpected move, after all, we were warned about this a few weeks ago. How do you guys feel about TPB’s switch to Coinhive? Are you happy to lend your CPU cycles to the site, or do you think more transparency is required?
I think I’ll be actively blocking anything like this on any website I go on and it won’t be long, if not already, before a browser extension is available to block CoinHive.
My computer. My internet. My electricity bills. My choice. I’ll never support this, nor ads.
eh well and how do the people who provide you content on the internet will be able to provide you “free” content?
That’s not really any of my concern.
If we’re going to throw up ideas, I’m a fan of merchandise and Patreon. I also unblock ads on websites I like and frequent, such as this one.
I simply block all ads from the start and every time I’ve reinstalled my OS or I see a friend visit a look I’ve sent them, I’m instantly validated in my decision to blanket ban ads. They’re ugly, irrelevant and a waste of my resources. I’ll never click them.
Ads are everywhere in life and you don’t get a choice about seeing them in the street or out and about, but in the area of my life i get full control over them i get rid of them.
Sure I do the same, but I don’t mind giving 20% of my 6 core cpu on a site for ad free content. Money make the world go around, and if the editors of my favorite site are not getting paid good enough, they have worst quality of life and this reflect back in their work. So in the end their work is starting to be mediocre or plain crap work and I no longer enjoy that site.
I want to pay for something so that the guy/girl who made it, will keep up the good work. There are times that I can’t pay but I still want to reward the maker/writer/whatever, giving some CPU power for the 1-2 hours I may spent in their site doesn’t seem like a big deal. It is just a few cents per month in my bill, lost in the cost of other devices I run in the office anyway.
if it means no (Zero) nada, ads inc pop us then meh.
Well, it’s going to like my Threadripper then :/
I think that’s better than NSFW Ads…