>> I don't fundamentally see the difference between a website running unsolicited mining crapware in your browser versus unsolicited adtech crapware.

Misuse of computer resources IMHO, no different to any other sort of code running on someone's machine with authorisation. We'd call this hacking in different circumstances.

I don't like the whole ad-auction-crapware thing, obviously, but it seems like it's a different thing to actually start using my hardware for your own calculations, using significant resources, without my explicit consent.

I'm sure salon aren't doing this, but I know I've stumbled across quite a few sites that do.

-- edit -- this just sparked something in my brain. Imagine Amazon Lambda but executed in the browser, by site visitors just like this...