Bail Bloc
November 15, 2017 11:22 AM Subscribe
Volunteer your computer's spare power to get people out of jail - When you download the app, a small part of your computer's unused processing power is redirected toward mining a popular cryptocurrency called Monero, which is secure, private, and untraceable. At the end of every month, we exchange the Monero for US dollars and donate the earnings to the Bronx Freedom Fund and through them, a new nation-wide initiative, The Bail Project.
FYI - Chicago also has The Chicago Community Bond fund.
This is really good, important work that's being done, here. Thanks for the post.
posted by bibliogrrl at 11:44 AM on November 15, 2017
This is really good, important work that's being done, here. Thanks for the post.
posted by bibliogrrl at 11:44 AM on November 15, 2017
appolition.us is a thing now too, looks like it has just launched this week and is connected to the Bronx and Brooklyn bail funds.
posted by clavicle at 11:50 AM on November 15, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by clavicle at 11:50 AM on November 15, 2017 [4 favorites]
Very cool & great cause. I'm on board. But before I download and run a software 24/7... can anyone confirm that the code is harmless?
posted by Emily's Fist at 1:40 PM on November 15, 2017
posted by Emily's Fist at 1:40 PM on November 15, 2017
Yeah...after the all skeeviness with cryptocurrency I'm pretty reluctant to trust this. A scam with a well-meaning cover is still a scam. Is this latest magic Internet money legit? Or are we going to learn next week that it's all been "hacked" and mysteriously disappeared?
posted by Sangermaine at 2:34 PM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Sangermaine at 2:34 PM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]
... can anyone confirm that the code is harmless?
I have no idea about it, specifically, but the first search engine link under 'mining cryptocurrency' (I had no idea what that meant) software in general (from two years ago) says "You Really Don't Want This Junk On Your PC."
The writer suggests you just give money to any charity directly, instead of 'mining' for it.
posted by LeLiLo at 2:35 PM on November 15, 2017 [7 favorites]
I have no idea about it, specifically, but the first search engine link under 'mining cryptocurrency' (I had no idea what that meant) software in general (from two years ago) says "You Really Don't Want This Junk On Your PC."
The writer suggests you just give money to any charity directly, instead of 'mining' for it.
posted by LeLiLo at 2:35 PM on November 15, 2017 [7 favorites]
It’s a nice idea, but even leaving aside the scam concerns (and the fact that they just picked some random-ass crypto currency is the biggest, reddest of flags), running on commodity hardware odds are you’ll spend more on electricity mining this stuff than you’ll ever generate. Everyone involved would be better off by you just donating that money directly.
posted by Itaxpica at 4:04 PM on November 15, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by Itaxpica at 4:04 PM on November 15, 2017 [8 favorites]
Everyone involved would be better off by you just donating that money directly.
Yeah. "Your computer's unused processing power" takes extra electricity when it is used. That electricity costs you money. So instead of giving your money to the power company in exchange for them using likely-non-renewable resources to generate power and transmit it to you so you can use that power to solve arbitrary, pointless math problems in order to obtain tokens of cryptocurrency that can then be exchanged for money (and probably less money than you gave the power company in the first place) that you can then give to the cause... just give your money to the cause.
posted by whatnotever at 4:20 PM on November 15, 2017 [14 favorites]
Yeah. "Your computer's unused processing power" takes extra electricity when it is used. That electricity costs you money. So instead of giving your money to the power company in exchange for them using likely-non-renewable resources to generate power and transmit it to you so you can use that power to solve arbitrary, pointless math problems in order to obtain tokens of cryptocurrency that can then be exchanged for money (and probably less money than you gave the power company in the first place) that you can then give to the cause... just give your money to the cause.
posted by whatnotever at 4:20 PM on November 15, 2017 [14 favorites]
I'm familiar enough with crypto and mining, and Monero is one of the more solid coins in the ecosystem as far as these things go. It's generally regarded to be in the top ten for stability, value and community, but there are now hundreds and thousands of these coin systems now and the bar wildly varies.
That being said at this point you're better off donating directly unless you really want to run up your electric bill and overheat your computer.
I'm not super familiar with Monero's mining stats, but a quick search and basic hashrate calculation looks like about 500 h/s might (might) net you 15-ish USD a month, and this looks like a fairly advanced dual GPU mining computer running 24/7, or maybe one single newer GPU.
And these hashrate calculators are usually, uh, overly generous, and they tend to not account for things like intentional difficulty increases where mining/processing rewards dwindle per kilowatt-hashrate-hour as time goes on. Much less price fluctuations.
Soooo, yeah. Unless you happen to have a lot of spare computing power available to you that you don't particularly care about the security of AND free electricity to back it up AND you really like this idea for novelty or whatever AND you're simply too cash poor to simply donate 20 bucks, then, yeah, sure. Mine some Monero for justice, I guess.
And, sure, if a million people wanted to run this on their laptops or whatever it would start to add up, but that's just not likely to happen. The people who care about mining crypto are generally going to want to remain in control of their rewards, even if they're interested in donating to this project.
(And many would be. People have been throwing large amounts of cryptocurrency at projects pretty much since the birth of the technology. Wikipedia is one example. And for better or worse, Wikileaks. So, yeah, not all of the cryptocoin space is a bunch of neo-libertarian hellscape trying to smash the banks or whatever. Most of it is, but there's some people trying to do interesting things with blockchain tech like create self-funding and cryptographically secure art/media/music publishing that offer both micro and macro payments in the same low friction ecology.)
But, yeah, this project also not quite as directly computationally related as something like SETI@home or Folding@Home or other distributed volunteer computing systems - all of the work that your computer is doing is going to be towards supporting the Monero network and blockchain. You're just donating the block rewards to someone else by joining a mining pool that tries to expand the chances of finding block rewards by optimizing multiple mining node structures, not unlike an insurance pool or betting pool.
And all that being said, browser hijack background mining is already a thing. Watch out for dodgy or even mainstream sites that peg your CPU and slow down your machine, or really heavy bursts of network traffic that don't make sense.
These are unfortunately going to become more and more common. Why use a virus to steal credit card numbers, DDoS sites or send spam to make money when you can just turn a huge botnet into a mining pool that directly creates difficult or impossible to trace magic internet money out of clock cycles and other people's electricity? You could probably mine tens of thousands of dollars worth of cryptocoins a week or even day with a big, well-sorted botnet functioning as a distributed computer.
I'm not sure if you could even realistically prosecute that in many jurisdictions beyond general computing intrusion and security laws. It's not like there's going to be credit card companies or banks leaning on DAs to prosecute because Grandpa's computer mined 5 dollars worth of bitcoin burning 40 dollars in electricity over three months after he went to the wrong porn site or infected PHP forum.
Side note: I used to want to live in an exciting cyberpunk future. Used to!
posted by loquacious at 4:27 PM on November 15, 2017 [8 favorites]
That being said at this point you're better off donating directly unless you really want to run up your electric bill and overheat your computer.
I'm not super familiar with Monero's mining stats, but a quick search and basic hashrate calculation looks like about 500 h/s might (might) net you 15-ish USD a month, and this looks like a fairly advanced dual GPU mining computer running 24/7, or maybe one single newer GPU.
And these hashrate calculators are usually, uh, overly generous, and they tend to not account for things like intentional difficulty increases where mining/processing rewards dwindle per kilowatt-hashrate-hour as time goes on. Much less price fluctuations.
Soooo, yeah. Unless you happen to have a lot of spare computing power available to you that you don't particularly care about the security of AND free electricity to back it up AND you really like this idea for novelty or whatever AND you're simply too cash poor to simply donate 20 bucks, then, yeah, sure. Mine some Monero for justice, I guess.
And, sure, if a million people wanted to run this on their laptops or whatever it would start to add up, but that's just not likely to happen. The people who care about mining crypto are generally going to want to remain in control of their rewards, even if they're interested in donating to this project.
(And many would be. People have been throwing large amounts of cryptocurrency at projects pretty much since the birth of the technology. Wikipedia is one example. And for better or worse, Wikileaks. So, yeah, not all of the cryptocoin space is a bunch of neo-libertarian hellscape trying to smash the banks or whatever. Most of it is, but there's some people trying to do interesting things with blockchain tech like create self-funding and cryptographically secure art/media/music publishing that offer both micro and macro payments in the same low friction ecology.)
But, yeah, this project also not quite as directly computationally related as something like SETI@home or Folding@Home or other distributed volunteer computing systems - all of the work that your computer is doing is going to be towards supporting the Monero network and blockchain. You're just donating the block rewards to someone else by joining a mining pool that tries to expand the chances of finding block rewards by optimizing multiple mining node structures, not unlike an insurance pool or betting pool.
And all that being said, browser hijack background mining is already a thing. Watch out for dodgy or even mainstream sites that peg your CPU and slow down your machine, or really heavy bursts of network traffic that don't make sense.
These are unfortunately going to become more and more common. Why use a virus to steal credit card numbers, DDoS sites or send spam to make money when you can just turn a huge botnet into a mining pool that directly creates difficult or impossible to trace magic internet money out of clock cycles and other people's electricity? You could probably mine tens of thousands of dollars worth of cryptocoins a week or even day with a big, well-sorted botnet functioning as a distributed computer.
I'm not sure if you could even realistically prosecute that in many jurisdictions beyond general computing intrusion and security laws. It's not like there's going to be credit card companies or banks leaning on DAs to prosecute because Grandpa's computer mined 5 dollars worth of bitcoin burning 40 dollars in electricity over three months after he went to the wrong porn site or infected PHP forum.
Side note: I used to want to live in an exciting cyberpunk future. Used to!
posted by loquacious at 4:27 PM on November 15, 2017 [8 favorites]
That being said at this point you're better off donating directly unless you really want to run up your electric bill and overheat your computer.
Weird, I just read that as "only run this software at work."
But I might be just misinterpreting.
posted by el io at 7:03 PM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]
Weird, I just read that as "only run this software at work."
But I might be just misinterpreting.
posted by el io at 7:03 PM on November 15, 2017 [2 favorites]
and the fact that they just picked some random-ass crypto currency is the biggest, reddest of flags
Monero is a good choice. It's not dominated by ASIC miners and is big enough to have easy conversion to bitcoin or dollars. You can get $10-15/month from spare cycles on a mostly-idle quad-core intel cpu. I run xmrig on a server I have at a datacenter and it pays for half the hosting cost (my incremental cost of electricity is zero).
posted by ryanrs at 11:25 PM on November 15, 2017
Monero is a good choice. It's not dominated by ASIC miners and is big enough to have easy conversion to bitcoin or dollars. You can get $10-15/month from spare cycles on a mostly-idle quad-core intel cpu. I run xmrig on a server I have at a datacenter and it pays for half the hosting cost (my incremental cost of electricity is zero).
posted by ryanrs at 11:25 PM on November 15, 2017
(otoh if you gotta pay for your electricity, just donate dollars)
posted by ryanrs at 11:27 PM on November 15, 2017
posted by ryanrs at 11:27 PM on November 15, 2017
dude just go do appolition instead
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 1:08 PM on November 16, 2017
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 1:08 PM on November 16, 2017
I was trying to explain commercial bail bondsmen to my son (because I want him to watch Midnight Run), and discovered that only two countries in the world – American exceptionalism, yet again, and our former territory The Philippines – still put up with them. (‘Bail’ previously.)
No matter how it happens, the system needs reform. Even if you can’t contribute money to any organization at the moment, as The Whelk suggests above, you can support the people in Brooklyn and the Bronx by signing a petition currently online: “Investigate the Bail Bond Industry in New York.” (Doing so won’t use up much electricity or overheat your computer.)
posted by LeLiLo at 7:42 PM on November 16, 2017
No matter how it happens, the system needs reform. Even if you can’t contribute money to any organization at the moment, as The Whelk suggests above, you can support the people in Brooklyn and the Bronx by signing a petition currently online: “Investigate the Bail Bond Industry in New York.” (Doing so won’t use up much electricity or overheat your computer.)
posted by LeLiLo at 7:42 PM on November 16, 2017
can anyone confirm that the code is harmless?
I doubt it, but you could run a Monero miner with Bail Bloc's credentials per these instructions, which is hopefully all their desktop client is really doing via these binaries. At least the mining software recommended at that first link has probably received a fair bit of hostile scrutiny.
Is this latest magic Internet money legit? Or are we going to learn next week that it's all been "hacked" and mysteriously disappeared?
I love this project, but from that perspective Monero seems like an unfortunate choice of cryptocurrency, because it tries to obscure economic activity. E.g., if you try to check the balance and transactions for the wallet address in the first link, "Monero says 'No!'" (Not really, probably, but it's certainly designed to be hard to get that information.) In most other cryptocurrencies, all transactions are a matter of public record, so it would be relatively easy for the Bronx Freedom Fund to verify that Bail Bloc is making the monthly payments it's committing to, and that the amounts paid plausibly correspond to the amount mined times the recent USD price of the currency.
There are contexts where private balances are desirable, but I don't entirely understand why this is one of them. If they really cared about their users' privacy, they would at least be interacting with the Monero network via tor, and they don't seem to be. And as a charity they should aim to make the total amount they're receiving from mining as transparent as possible.
posted by Coventry at 7:48 AM on November 18, 2017
I doubt it, but you could run a Monero miner with Bail Bloc's credentials per these instructions, which is hopefully all their desktop client is really doing via these binaries. At least the mining software recommended at that first link has probably received a fair bit of hostile scrutiny.
Is this latest magic Internet money legit? Or are we going to learn next week that it's all been "hacked" and mysteriously disappeared?
I love this project, but from that perspective Monero seems like an unfortunate choice of cryptocurrency, because it tries to obscure economic activity. E.g., if you try to check the balance and transactions for the wallet address in the first link, "Monero says 'No!'" (Not really, probably, but it's certainly designed to be hard to get that information.) In most other cryptocurrencies, all transactions are a matter of public record, so it would be relatively easy for the Bronx Freedom Fund to verify that Bail Bloc is making the monthly payments it's committing to, and that the amounts paid plausibly correspond to the amount mined times the recent USD price of the currency.
There are contexts where private balances are desirable, but I don't entirely understand why this is one of them. If they really cared about their users' privacy, they would at least be interacting with the Monero network via tor, and they don't seem to be. And as a charity they should aim to make the total amount they're receiving from mining as transparent as possible.
posted by Coventry at 7:48 AM on November 18, 2017
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Ideally the goal is to elimate bail it until then we can do our best to reduce suffering under it.
posted by The Whelk at 11:35 AM on November 15, 2017 [7 favorites]