Reg now behind invisible HTML5 Bitcoin paywall Readers will be aware that these are tough times for the media. And The Register is no exception: like many other publishers we need to diversify our revenue base. So we set a team of developers to find disruptive ways of funding our journalists, pun-generation labs and to ensure our founders' long labours are properly …
this could descend into a meta-physical, economic debate as to whether any money is truly real.
I guess "commodity" money had a "real" representation when the gold standard existed.
Lots of (name your fiat currency here) "money" just exists as some number in a database on some computer somewhere, and that's not even thinking about bitcoin.
(the short version) Seems to me "money" is a virtual numbers game that the ruling elite continually tweak to their advantage ( no surprise there ). The ruling elite don't like bitcoin because they don't control it .
A few points:
I used Bitcoin last week to buy all the parts I needed for a dual xeon PC upgrade, all off Amazon
How is it that people arent using Bitcoin ?
Very quick, very convenient and no CC companies ripping me off
I purchased a bunch of x11 miners last year using bitcoin.
Some of my customers are using Bitcoin to buy engineering supplies off me in NZ as I added it as a purchase method with 25% discount.
As I was reading this I actually thought this to be a good idea; I'd gladly give you some of my processor time in exchange for your hard work. And after you mother******* successfully rickrolled me (yes I clicked the 'source code here' link) I still think it's a good idea.
I've never been rickrolled before and years since I was last succesfully april fooled. And now laughing my ass off, thanks el reg. Maybe because of this kind of stuff I keep coming back here, after some 15 years now.
Hmmm, we can see the truly moderately paranoid amongst us.
Knowing that it was a rickroll, I clicked on the link.
Nothing. Just some random YouTube archival page that wasn't loading. Had to tell NoScript to let it pass for now.
Still nothing. Turns out it also needed Flash and I haven't had that in years.
Have a beer on me for your bravery ;-)
I clicked the link too, but have java script disabled so ... irony or something.
Thing is it's not a bad idea, if someone lingers on page (possibly even reads it) for 20-30s ... I imagine bit coin mining has got to the point where it probably isn't worth the effort, but there are new 'bit coins' all the time, mine, cash in, move on .. it could work. couldn't it?
Javascript you say?
I heard from a friend (of a friend...) that one of the Shadow Equation Broker Group's leaked attack tools was a dynamic reverse redirect rewrite router written entirely in Javascript and embedded in the new SHA-256 certificates. Supposedly it silently redirects your browser to a harmless looking "Rickroll" video prank page. The music video has a special carrier signal embedded in ultrasonic and infrasonic frequencies that hack any IoT devices within speaker range to mine (?i:bit|scrip|doge|\w+)coins to crowd fund the Patreon of the NWO's Lizard chemist research to develop a a fair-trade, carbon neutral chemtrail chemical
Just had brekkie, though I daresay I hadn't when you posted. My favourite from the Reg time machine.
"Just had brekkie, though I daresay I hadn't when you posted. My favourite from the Reg time machine."
Which particular post?
You can get the direct link to a commentard post by clicking on its date field.
"And do you know what it costs to file a patent?"
It's under $1000 last I priced it, if you can manage your own paperwork and patent search and are filing as an individual, not a corporation. Yeah 'paper bag' needs to be re-invented, especially in Cali-fornicate-you. Nice Job!
/me needs to re-invent "wheel" next
My PC CPU temperature suddenly jumped from 36 to 93C and fans are running at 100%
Wonder if we can blame Windows 10 this time?
In other news, I debugged the problem with my BIOS, seems that there is indeed a problem with corruption over time related to power usage/standby but the fix is just replacing the chip.
Despite putting it in a socket a swap with nearly identical machine it did not work, any ideas?
This is on a very old HP netbook but I bought a new battery for it not 3 months ago so would rather like to get it going again if possible.
(yes, see the joke, ha ha hardy ha ha ha)
Sorry, I have to report a vulnerability in your script. Purely as proof-of-concept, I hacked it and took delivery of my first physical bitcoin.
"took delivery of my first physical bitcoin."
Haven't you heard that some of these asteroids out there consist of such rich yields of bitcoin that it will soon be economic to mine them? Particularly if they strike Earth
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/apophis/
Some reports have suggested even without an asic!
I think the 2038 flyby may offer rich pickings:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/apophis/://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
See for example: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=9042.0
However apparently around 2011 people gave up on the idea since it just cannot compete with dedicated hardware.
There are still lots of proof-of-concept Javascript bitcoin miners on Github, so it would be technically very simple to set this up. It just wouldn't make any money...
And another thing - what's this troll malarky? Give me back my beer (icon)
You'll be pleased to know I can see your beer icon when I hit reply.
As well as the troll icon there was some other 'text scrolling' crossing the icon selector when I made a post earlier today. That seemed entirely meaningless. I guessed it related to April 1st but couldn't figure out what. Perhaps it wasn't rendering properly in my browser.
WebGL doesn't cut it anymore for bitcoin mining, but the upcoming WebASIC standard might be useful for this (currently available under an "experimental-" prefix in Firefox Nightly).
This allows web designers to embed "WebVerilog" into their HTML. WebVerilog is a hardware description language like Verilog but fully sandboxed for security using an actual physical sandbox.
Once your browser (Firefox for now, but Edge support is already announced) downloads the WebVerilog, it is then re-transmitted to the nearest chip foundry where a custom chip is fabbed. This is then delivered and installed into your computer or mobile device using a drone. (For Apple devices this may involve heating the device up to 600 degrees Celsius to dissolve the glue). At that point the Javascript "onload" handler executes and the web page is now ready to use its custom hardware.
Clearly this allows a website to use custom hardware for bitcoin mining, which is currently the only cost-effective way to mine.
Note that you may need to practice some care visiting websites using this upcoming technology, since the cost for the custom mask needed to fab the chip (typically starting from $1,000,000) will be added to your telephone bill.
Apparently Fox News cannot take the risk of publishing April Fool stories, because none of their "readers" can distinguish them from the, um, real news.
The story was headlined "China infiltrating millions of Americans' family homes with cyborg dogs", which alleged that "Chinese agents, disguised as Hispanic immigrants to avoid police attention, have been dognapping family pets and replacing them with undetectable robodogs programmed to spy on every aspect of Americans' lives". It went on to explain that "The stolen pets have been disposed of in Chinatown enclaves all over the USA, accounting for the rise, noted first by food hygiene agencies during 2015, of ultra cheap meat in oriental takeaway and delivery meals. The FBI had dismissed 142 previous reports as 'fake news' until a Republican congressman in Arkansas reportedly choked in a Chinese restaurant, regurgitating Mystery Chow Mein and a collar marked 'Bruno'."
The story was spiked by a senior editor on the advice of Sean Spicer, who said "Trump would go nookular."
Steve Bannon was last seen scuttling away with a pad of blank Executive Orders, muttering "A wall, a wall, a yooge great wall ... we must keep the dogs outside the Beltway. Watch the kennels! ..."
Genuinely, opened the article but was also naffing around with a music player... so brain not fully engaged... looked at the article and thought my eyes were going a bit funny!
As for bit-mining... yeah, great idea, except - and I think I speak for the majority of readers here - "We're all browsing using modified commodore-64s! So, the mining operation might take... some time"!
Bloody hell ... I gave my blood yesterday and thought the fading text was a consequence of it, thought about going back to bed once I had finished reading.
As for mining, fair enough, just go for it! I guess I have not been clicking enough ads, sorry, el'Reg, I tried my best ;-).
Yes, I am a freeTard so I give my blood because of the remote chance it might save a life or two, you never know... feel knackered for two or three days, well worth it.
EDIT: Thinks about this for some more, checks date, ok, well done, got me!
I've been in a coma for the last few months, and just woke up this morning. It's been stressful, but waking up on April 1st has the advantage of only seeing lighthearted news stories. Thanks El Reg, for helping with my recovery, this was a great gag. Not quite as good as the articles that imagine if Trump won the US election. Those are a stroke of genius!
The content of theregister is good. I couldn't justify the drain on the family expenses, paying a subscription wall. When reading at lunch breaks generally, why not allow the PC to pay with power for what I'm reading. Feel's like the company pay's for me reading in terms of power, but then again they install all sorts of software that wastes many CPU cycles all day long doing irrelevant stuff in terms of monitoring.
Great idea - it makes sense - well done!
It is 5am, but I genuinely thought my eyes were going for a good few minutes there. Or I was having a stroke or something. That's a very subtle and sneaky trick. So, whilst I knew the Bitcoin paywall was a joke as soon as I read the "you'll be funding quality journalism" sentence, the other trick definitely got me.
Personal, little thought opinion:
Famous news sites like Register should delete this kind of prank on 2nd April and limit the prank just on the day. Many sites do. Continued presence of this kind of prank confuses a lot of Eastern people until it's not funny anymore. People just know what day it is, hardly any of them read the tiny date after the headline when they read a news.
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