| ▲ | dmurray 12 hours ago |
| It 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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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > 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. |
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| ▲ | slopinthebag 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They didn't disclose it though. It's no different from sticking a bitcoin miner in a video game and telling the user "WARNING DANGER CAUTION ;)" | | | |
| ▲ | LoganDark 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If someone disagrees, it takes about 15 minutes to ask an LLM to edit the offending behavior out of the free and open-source software. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sure. Though I’d consider that a dick move if the social contract is to contribute back. | | |
| ▲ | ohyoutravel 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That’s not the social contract. Otherwise more than 0.05% of people would give back to OSS. | |
| ▲ | LoganDark 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Like for like. You can always contribute back with a fork. |
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| ▲ | monooso 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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... |
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| ▲ | KingMob 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I was trying to use Gas Town heavily only 3 weeks ago, and while it's fascinating, it's also very much still the bleeding edge. The neat part though, is agents are so interwoven through its operations, it can kind of power through almost any error. It's a strange-but-real form of resilience. | |
| ▲ | potsandpans 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > That was some time ago. Actual laugh out loud. 3 months[1]. Imagine picking up software that 3 months ago came along with the disclaimer, "YOU WILL DIE" and complaining about responsible disclosure. 1 https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d... |
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| ▲ | _verandaguy 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| For context for those of us who don't follow these things very closely: where exactly did this "WARNING DANGER CAUTION" stuff show up? |
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| ▲ | alwa 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | In its wave-making announcement post: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d... ”But first, before we get into Gas Town’s operation, I need to get rid of you real quick. WARNING DANGER CAUTION GET THE F** OUT YOU WILL DIE Let’s talk about some of the reasons you shouldn’t use Gas Town. I could think of more, but these should do.” | | |
| ▲ | _verandaguy 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thanks for the link; this seems like an insane way to warn potential users of the risks associated with this thing. | | |
| ▲ | speedster217 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah it doesn't even remotely qualify as a warning about it using your tokens to improve itself. |
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| ▲ | slopinthebag 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | SR2Z 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Bitcoin mining is useless work that only benefits the thief. Presumably these improvements are useful for the user as well. | | |
| ▲ | slopinthebag 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Bitcoin is a technology that will benefit mankind if it reaches global adoption. So presumably bitcoin mining is useful for the user as well. Doesn't matter who you think benefits because it's still theft and it's still illegal. | | |
| ▲ | tjpnz 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Won't reach global adoption if I can't settle a restaurant bill with it and not have the restaurant have to stay open all night. | |
| ▲ | fcarraldo 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Bitcoin is a technology that will benefit mankind if it reaches global adoption Citation needed. | | |
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| ▲ | dheera 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | drakythe 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's not coming soon, that is a thing that was happening on compromised servers years ago (and probably still, but to a lesser extent given the decline in popularity of meme coin launches) | |
| ▲ | fg137 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A few years ago, if you visit a site, your laptop grinds to a halt and the fan starts spinning like crazy, you know there is crypto mining happening on the site. (btw that was a really good showcase for WebAssembly. Too bad it's used for illegitimate purposes) | | |
| ▲ | dheera 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Pretty much all sites do that to my laptop these days if I don't enable uBlock Origin. Google Meet consumes 25% of each of 16 hypercores, ffs. On a 7840u. Laptop becomes a toaster. |
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| ▲ | RobotToaster 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Already been done, albeit without the webgpu part. I think some browsers already block crypto miners It's a shame in a way, it also blocked the pseudo-captchas that used mining to limit spam. |
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