I actually don't think this is particularly heinous as long as they are completely transparent and open about it. Hell, if they wanted to be even more above board, they should provide a slider that allows you to allocate a percentage of CPU usage you are dedicating at a given time.
Now, whether it'll be worth it is the real question. But I'm hopeful. If we can find an alternative to obtrusive, obnoxious ads I'm all for it.
A comment on /. stated that they use Monero, optimized for customer grade CPUs. Personally I do not see a problem in computing third party code: at the end of the day it's how HTML/JS was designed. If such code is harmful then it's malware and it has to be blocked and the organization spreading it bashed. Otherwise we should ask compensation for all the SELECT * ever written :)
[+] [-] classybull|8 years ago|reply
Now, whether it'll be worth it is the real question. But I'm hopeful. If we can find an alternative to obtrusive, obnoxious ads I'm all for it.
[+] [-] carroccio|8 years ago|reply