Live data from Hacker News

Cryptocurrency miners are renting Boeing 747s to ship graphics cards

pcgamer.com

121–130 of 162 posts

Re: Cryptocurrency miners are renting Boeing 747s to ship graphics cards

#121
post #92
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we're still waiting for tulip bulbs to return to their peak value. Just because it continued up before doesn't mean it will continue up in the future.

closest thing to Bitcoin was gold certificates not the tulip bubble that lasted 2 years. Gold certificates stopped circulating when the US government said so with Executive Order 6102. Bitcoin is not gold to me, gold is a shiny rock, periodic element, and bitcoin is alternative to PayPal with less transaction fees and a better api. That's where I see the value. Programmable money without going through a too-big-to-fa…

Do people really use bitcoin like they use PayPal though? It seems to me that the vast majority of people own bitcoin because they speculate that its value will go up and not to make actual transactions.

Re: Cryptocurrency miners are renting Boeing 747s to ship graphics cards

#122
post #106
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A side business I run supplied them with components in 2016. Based on what I shipped them I'd say they deployed some where in the neighborhood of 18,000 graphics cards in 2016 and they were supposedly ramping up to go even bigger in 2017. I don't have any insight into what they are currently up to because that scaling apparently involved hiring a eastern European engineer on the cheap to masquerade as a customer to t…

> confidential hardware design details It used to be called 'documentation"...

No, we have really good documentation including pin-outs for the headers on all our products right on our site. They were asking for things like the thickness and number of copper layers and other things related to the routing that never would have been revealed even back in the day.

Re: Cryptocurrency miners are renting Boeing 747s to ship graphics cards

#123
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't have any insight into what they are currently up to because that scaling apparently involved hiring a eastern European engineer on the cheap to masquerade as a customer to try and obtain confidential hardware design details from me so he could rip off my product for them. Sounds like an interesting story here. How did you out him/her?

i seriously can't wait for Bitcoin the movie i imagine it to be somewhere between Hackers and Departed PS: given we currently have an emoji movie, had an facebook movie. A bitcoin movie is only a question of time - too many good stories here.

I would rather have a Netflix series... even up to now there just has been too much to fit into one movie.

If there are elements of Hackers in it, tensorflow and kubernetes is killed off by Apache's many offerings. The Gibson will be moved to the SMACK stack. Google is killed off because of a lack of any real customer service. Apache controls the ledger and the hero hackers will convince China, Russia and the USA to take all of their super computers to win back the ledger.

Re: Cryptocurrency miners are renting Boeing 747s to ship graphics cards

#124
post #56

Imagine all these people wasting time, energy and power, the last of which is a crime against the environment and an affront to good sense at a time of global concern. But when it comes to money, greed and self interest always triumph and there will be dozens stretching logic and apologism as far as it can go. 'Proof of work' has to the most hare-brained, wasteful, anti-environment scheme ever thought of. Responsible…

Yet, here we are - wasting resources to post trivialities online. Their consumption is generating value, yet our comments are just yelling into the wind.

I can cut down trees and exchange it with my friends as a medium of exchange and call it value.

It has no value to the wider economy or world but to us, and even though it has value to my friends it's a terrible, wasteful and unethical way to generate value. I am not generating value, just wasting trees.

You just can't create money or value out of nothing. Its linked to utility, markets, labour and the wider economy and belies the fundamental confusion in the crypto world about money. But intoxicated by the prospect, like alchemists and other charlatans before them the crypto community continue to fantasize about gaining something from nothing.

Re: Cryptocurrency miners are renting Boeing 747s to ship graphics cards

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "no real purpose" but what you mean is "a purpose I don't value". That's fine, don't do it. The problem comes when you think that people doing things you don't like is somehow wrong. People have attempted to make scientific computing good for proof of work-- GRIDCoin is an example. But it doesn't work for actually securing the network, due to the nature of how blockchains work. You're free to work or mine or…

> The problem comes when you think that people doing things you don't like is somehow wrong. I should have clarified that more: As I said before I have no issue with the basic concept behind cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is a great thing and will hopefully do even greater things in the future. And of course, everybody is to free to do with their time and resources as they please, never suggested otherwise. What I have an…

isnt that just competition? Whats wrong with that?

Re: Cryptocurrency miners are renting Boeing 747s to ship graphics cards

#126

Imagine all these people wasting time, energy and power, the last of which is a crime against the environment and an affront to good sense at a time of global concern. But when it comes to money, greed and self interest always triumph and there will be dozens stretching logic and apologism as far as it can go. 'Proof of work' has to the most hare-brained, wasteful, anti-environment scheme ever thought of. Responsible…

This is one of those positions I'm always baffled by. It's like complaining about Bell wasting copper wire or encryption wasting space and computation power. If this crowd still don't get it I guess we're further from mainstream than I imagined. Also by Q1 2018 this will be a non-issue for Ethereum.

Re: Cryptocurrency miners are renting Boeing 747s to ship graphics cards

#127
post #19

This just sounds grandiose but really, renting a 747-400F is not such a big deal. This http://www.opshots.net/2015/04/aircraft-operating-series-air... article gives a figure of 24-27000 USD an hour. You need it how long? Ten hours? Twelve? Using a random card Amazon gives us a box size of 13.4 x 9.5 x 3.1 about 400 cubic inches. Say http://www.cargolux.com/our-expertise/cargo-equipment/aircra... we have 21 347 ft^3 t…

I highly doubt they're actually chartering a 747 anyway. They're probably just sending them as air freight.

Re: Cryptocurrency miners are renting Boeing 747s to ship graphics cards

#128
post #113
post #19

This just sounds grandiose but really, renting a 747-400F is not such a big deal. This http://www.opshots.net/2015/04/aircraft-operating-series-air... article gives a figure of 24-27000 USD an hour. You need it how long? Ten hours? Twelve? Using a random card Amazon gives us a box size of 13.4 x 9.5 x 3.1 about 400 cubic inches. Say http://www.cargolux.com/our-expertise/cargo-equipment/aircra... we have 21 347 ft^3 t…

Don't they get some kind of bulk discount on those cards? A deal to pack them in bulk and ship them straight from the factory seems kind of obvious.

I'm certain they get a large discount, but that's not going to be related to the shipping cost. The best deal for them is likely to be to negotiate the price "Ex Works", which means the customer handles transportation and clearance from the factory gate. That way they can negotiate their own prices for the shipping, and handle the customs clearance in the way that works best for them. I doubt they're literally chartering a 747. I can't see how that would be better than just shipping them as normal air freight.

Re: Cryptocurrency miners are renting Boeing 747s to ship graphics cards

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its useful for conducting unregulated securities offerings and launching dapps. i just haven't found any useful dapps yet. dapps are mostly used when you need censorship resistant functionality.

Most dapps I've seen are literally pyramid schemes or gambling.

https://prism.exchange

Re: Cryptocurrency miners are renting Boeing 747s to ship graphics cards

#130
post #33

must be nice having the resources to buy that many gpus. do they make money mining these days? seems like the average person barely breaks even after paying the home electric bill.

In general the profits are wafer thin, but Ethereum price skyrocketed a few months ago. Far quicker than people could build mining machines. Back in mid-June a single GTX1070 was on target for $150/month profit (even with expensive electricity). Now profits dropped to only $30/month https://whattomine.com/merged_coins/2-eth-sc?utf8=%E2%9C%93&...
Post reply on HN