Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

I'm going off Salon's notification above, which implies they're just using Coinhive -- which runs js client-side to mine Monero. There's still a sketch factor, since Coinhive doesn't prohibit partners from running the miner w/o informed consent (they "strongly advise against it")

Salon is obviously informing their users, but the platform providing the code is a little more ethically dubious and that should probably be of some concern to everyone quietly running their js in-browser

I mean, ads aren't safe and we hate them anyway, and nobody wants to pay for a subscription... they have to make money somehow...

I worry about how they vet the mining code though. Wait until one of these companies starts slipping in Meltdown/Spectre attacks. Nope, my JS will stay off for a while, especially on any sites that start hammering my machine like this.

You know, if someone does this and puts some reasonable caps on how much CPU it chews, it would be FAR less intrusive and probably take off.

Browser extension that convinces crypto miner js that it's running on a Pentium 2?

Remember SETI@Home? Good times.