[IamCarbonMan]

None of that comment even close to makes sense.

1. My operating costs are more than $9/month. I don't know where you got that presumed feature but it's wrong.

2. There's nothing to implement. You include a library and a few lines of code to start it and you're done.

3. How would not doing something that could potentially make me money, even if only a little bit, save me money? That makes zero sense.

[tokenizerrr]

You are talking about server costs. Get a server at for example online.net (not affiliated) for $9/month or cheaper. That server is going to be able to run your card game easily.

You don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on AWS.

[IamCarbonMan]

You don't know what my site requires, so you're assuming that whatever hosting you just randomly want to assume is sufficient is enough and so you can discredit my legitimate idea for a possible way to get the required cost to run my site, and possibly also make a little profit. Would you rather have me borrow user's time and attention with ads, or bottom a few of their precious millions of CPU cycles per second? And in case you didn't read what I wrote, I'm not "stealing" anything. The site will be hosted either way, if I have to pay for it out of pocket at a loss then fine. But if people would like to donate CPU time to support the project, there is an off-by-default option to do so, just like there's an off-by-default option to donate money. I fail to see how this is evil.

[tokenizerrr]

Ads obviously, as long as you're not using them to spread different kind of malware. It doesn't matter that much to me personally, I'll be blocking whatever garbage you put out anyway, but ads are objectively the better choice as they dont needlessly wreck the environment any further, nor cause unnecessary wear and tear on the hardware of your users.

Anyway, I'd be very interested in hearing how a card game simulator requires more than 8gb of memory and a decent cpu.

[IamCarbonMan]

God, would you shut up? Jesus, sorry to burst your bubble but people are running their damn CPUs no matter what I do. I heard that some people would prefer client-side mining to ads and I thought I might give that option for those that want it. But I guess that'll cause the Apocalypse next Friday so I'll just go host my application at online.com™ for the low low price of $9 a month, since it's just a card game and can't possibly require anything more than that! Any idiot could see that I don't need to pollute the air and melt the ice caps by trying to give my users options and help support the development of fun internet sites! Could you be any more condescending?

[tokenizerrr]

Nope. If you post your idea on a public forum I will be responding with my opinion. Feel free to stop posting if you don't want my replies.

I'm also genuinely curious what kind of card game has such intensive server requirements because I just don't see it. Maybe you have a legitimate need to contribute to global warming, it just seems unlikely to me.

[IamCarbonMan]

I'm sure it's entirely possible that I can run my application within the arbitrary limitations that you have set for me. I have a MongoDB and Express stack primarily. Sorry that I didn't know that online.com™ can host my application with 8 gigs of RAM for just $9 a month. I came into this damn thread wondering if maybe someone thought this was a good idea from the point of view of user experience. I don't care whatsoever about the planet. Not a bit. If my computer brings about the next Ice Age, fine. I'm a webdev, I saw an idea I liked, you ruthlessly shot me down because apparently it's going to harm you in some way. Honestly, I'd like to make a little money to pay my student loans off with, but that's not about to happen. So maybe, just maybe, I don't care how wonderfully cheap and capable the server you just randomly decided I should use is. I saw a cool idea, I wanted to implement it in an open and honest way for those users that wanted it. Sorry for destroying the planet with curiosity.

[guscost]

> Ads obviously

You'd have a better argument if the TechCrunch homepage didn't use 50% of my CPU just to render all the ads.

[tokenizerrr]

I mean isn't 50% better than the 100% that these crypto miners do? And those miners keep going for as long as you have the page open, not just while scrolling.

Of course inefficient ads are also horrible.

[guscost]

What if you could choose a "support level" or unlock features by donating more resources? I'm thinking out loud here, but I've never heard of customer-donated CPU as a business model and there might be something here. For an author trying to monetize content online all of the "normal" options are pretty bad right now. I think most digital entertainment just isn't very valuable these days, but I'll bet the mining thing has some characteristics that compare favorably to both ads and (micro)payments.

Of course, if it was a viable strategy, wouldn't some malware authors write the malware to do this instead of ransoming files? Has that been tried? Is it a thing?