Day: October 14, 2017

Over 500 Million PCs Are Secretly Mining Cryptocurrency, Researchers Reveal

Ad blocking firm AdGuard has found that over 500 million people are inadvertently mining cryptocurrencies through their computers after visiting websites that are running background mining software. The company found 220 popular websites with an aggregated audience of half a billion people use so-called crypto-mining scripts when a user opens their main page. Newsweek reports: The mining tool works by hijacking a computer’s central processing unit (CPU), commonly referred to as “the brains” of a computer. Using part of a computer’s CPU to mine bitcoin effects the machine’s overall performance and will slow it down by using up processing power. The researchers found that bitcoin browser mining is mostly found on websites “with a shady reputation” due to the trouble such sites have with earning revenue through advertising. However, in the future it could become a legitimate and ethical way of making money if the website requests the permission of the visitor first. “220 sites may not seem like a lot, ” the researchers wrote in a blogpost detailing their discovery. “But CoinHive was launched less than one month ago on September 14. The growth has been extremely rapid: from nearly zero to 2.2 percent of Alexa’s top 100, 000 websites. “This analysis well illustrates the whole web, so it’s safe to say that one of every forty websites currently mines cryptocurrency (namely Monero) in the browsers their users employ.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Over 500 Million PCs Are Secretly Mining Cryptocurrency, Researchers Reveal

IGN acquires pay-what-you-want game and book retailer Humble Bundle

Media conglomerate IGN has acquired Humble Bundle, the pay-what-you-want gaming, book and software collection retailer that raises money for charitable causes. In a blog post , Humble Bundle cofounder and CEO Jeffrey Rosen noted that his company will “keep our own office, culture, and amazing team with IGN helping us further our plans.” Aside from noting that the retailer will get additional resources and help out of the deal, no details were disclosed. Welcome to the family, @humble ! We can’t wait to help others with you ✌️ https://t.co/MlxUoFi2nk — IGN (@IGN) October 13, 2017 In the post, Humble Bundle noted that the platform has raised $106 million for various charities in the seven years since it launched its first bundle. While the platform could do a lot with funding from a media titan like IGN (owned by J2 Media), there’s obvious concern over potential conflicts of interest between a game-reviewing publication owning a game-selling retailer. (We’ve reached out to both IGN and Humble Bundle for comment and will include their responses when we hear back.) From Humble Bundle’s blog post, it seems IGN will leave it to operate more or less independently. “The idea is just to feed them with the resources they need to keep doing what they’re doing … We want to stick to the fundamentals in the short term. We don’t want to disrupt anything we’re doing right already, ” IGN executive VP Mitch Galbraith told Gamasutra . “Because of the shared vision and overlap of our customer bases, there’s going to be a lot of opportunities.” Via: Gamasutra Source: Humble Bundle (blog)

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IGN acquires pay-what-you-want game and book retailer Humble Bundle