alt Hacker NewsIt seems completely in the spirit of Gas Town.
A respectable software provider should warn you about this kind of behaviour at install time, and give you the opportunity to opt out. Gas Town fulfilled all its obligations in this regard with these (and other) warnings in the original announcement:
> WARNING DANGER CAUTION
> GET THE F** OUT
> YOU WILL DIE
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That was some time ago. According to Yegge, Gas Town is now stable and ready for everyday use.
> Gas Town “just works.” It does its job, it has tons of integration points, and it has been stable for many weeks. People are using it to build real stuff.
> So as far as I’m concerned, Gas Town is ready. That’s why I feel it merits a 1.0.0 release.
Source: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/gas-town-from-clown-show-to-v...
For context for those of us who don't follow these things very closely: where exactly did this "WARNING DANGER CAUTION" stuff show up?
So it's perfectly fine to ship a bitcoin miner in software, as long as you say:
> WARNING DANGER CAUTION > GET THE F* OUT > YOU WILL DIE
You cannot be serious...This behaviour is deeply unethical and most likely illegal as well.
Coming soon: JavaScript embeds on bloated websites that mine cryptocurrency on viewers' WebGPUs.
Accidentally leave a browser tab open and it burns $5 of your electricity overnight to make $2 for the owner of the website.
> A respectable software provider should warn you about this kind of behaviour at install time, and give you the opportunity to opt out
They honestly only need to disclose. Requiring contribution as part of the social contract is perfectly okay—if someone disagrees, they don’t get to use Gas Town.