An anti-drug campaign in the late 80s said, "This is your brain... and (cue a picture of an egg sizzling in a pan)... this is your brain on drugs."
Do you remember those ads?
Now it's 2018, and we could probably make a campaign out of the Google chart below.
On the left: "This is your CPU at rest."
On the right: "This is your CPU at rest—when it's being forced to mine for crypto!"
I came across this image on Google's Chromium blog (yes, there is one of those), where Google announced its Chrome Web Store will no longer accept extensions that mine for cryptocurrency. And in June, it will de-list current extensions known to mine crypto.
In 2018, 'it's all about the crypto'
Here's more proof that "it's all about the crypto" this year. Says Google:
"Until now, Chrome Web Store policy has permitted cryptocurrency mining in extensions as long as it is the extension’s single purpose, and the user is adequately informed about the mining behavior. Unfortunately, approximately 90% of all extensions with mining scripts that developers have attempted to upload to Chrome Web Store have failed to comply with these policies...."
In other words, you added a great new extension to do something that helped your productivity, but it may also be using your processor to mine cryptocurrency in the background.
So if you ever notice that your computer seems to be working very hard when you are not asking much of it, check your CPU usage.
If it looks like the image above, it could be your CPU is "on crypto" at your expense.
