Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half • Hacker News Board

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#491

Post by convery » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 2:01 AM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #465

ILikeBikes wrote: post #432

I do hate miners But I'm concerned that a company can tell you what you can or can't do with your hardware. Where is the spirit behind the hacker community, Jailbreaking iPhones, the right to repair, the ban of tattoos that prevented the use of Linux on PCs,... That's a very concerning move from me. Also, for a company that does morale : (1) Nvidia's marketing is one of the best for making old products look obsolete…

I agree, but it should be noted that this isn't unusual for Nvidia: See Quadro Vs. Geforce. If you trick a system into thinking the Geforce GPU is a Quadro suddenly additional functionality/performance improvements unlock in the software/driver layer.

Yep, I have a old Geforce GPU with only VGA/DVI output just to use nView (although I had to modify it slightly). Such a weird thing, having a nice window manger for Windows but requiring non-technical people to buy an overpriced GPU to use it.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#492

Post by wruza » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 2:03 AM UTC

boring_twenties wrote: post #445

wruza wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you stay in crypto (e.g. usdt). Buying in is easy. Cashing it out in viable amounts is very problematic even for individuals, at least where I live. Transferring a usd-crypto-usd million would take a couple of weeks and unclear risks. In US, can you accept usdt from an exchange and grab the cash right away?

Kraken tells me my account with them allows up to $10mm per day in fiat withdrawals. (I'm in the US)

Does it give you paper cash? Because I can receive money back from Kraken to my bank account too, but that means 100% local perverted KYC AML trouble even if it’s clear that I sent the exact amount to Kraken from the same account recently.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#493

Post by PragmaticPulp » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

Krasnol wrote: post #353

ljm wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The environmental issues are concerning to me. The amount of electricity being burned through for what is essentially a skeuomorphism of gold mining, pretty much primarily for speculation now, is beyond belief. It's a completely artificial, and artificially scarce, product. Whatever original hopeful goals the creator(s) of Bitcoin had with this idea, and decentralised currency...if there was any victory at all it is…

Is there any reliable data on the actual environmental harm? I've heard so many times that it's renewable energy being used because it's so cheap. There was something about mining near dams.

> I've heard so many times that it's renewable energy being used because it's so cheap.

It's a myth from the pro-cryptocurrency crowd.

With recent price spikes, mining is profitable even if you have to pay relative high prices for electricity. You don't need to have cheap energy.

Also, it's another myth that we have an abundance of hydroelectric power that would otherwise go to waste if not for Bitcoin. With modern power transmission it's trivial to send power through the grid to other locations, and nobody is building power plants in the middle of nowhere without a way to send that electricity somewhere else.

Finally, Bitcoin's power consumption is additive. Energy that goes into Bitcoin mining is energy that isn't being used to power cities and other infrastructure, which must still get its power from somewhere.

Don't believe the whitewashing campaigns to downplay Bitcoin's energy usage. It's very bad.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#494

Post by PragmaticPulp » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 2:07 AM UTC

Medicineguy wrote: post #325

bob1029 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practical utility of crypto is such a joke when compared to the intended use cases that all of the speculators fawn over. The idea that crypto is a "store of value" seems like meager coping with the fact that transaction rates in a distributed system necessarily must suck compared to what Visa, et. al. are doing with IBM mainframes and racks of x86 hardware contained in the same datacenter (i.e. 1~2ms latency dom…

For completeness sake: The BTC network is, by design, setting the difficulty of mining a new block so that its 10 min on avg. Currently there fitting ~2200 transactions in one block [0]. That makes 3.6667 transactions per second. BTC needs a hard fork in order to increase this dramatically. So you were actually quite generous with 10 transactions per second... [0] "Blockchain Charts" https://www.blockchain.com/charts…

> BTC needs a hard fork in order to increase this dramatically

Which was proposed, and shot down by core Bitcoiners.

They aggressively do not want to increase the transaction limit.

Miners want transactions to be expensive, because that's where they'll get their money when the mining reward falls again.

It's mind boggling that people will complain about banks conspiring to charge them hypothetical fees, then rush to use a cryptocurrency that has double-digit transaction fees when nobody is really using it for anything other than speculation. The reality is that Bitcoiners don't actually want people using Bitcoin as a currency, they just want you to buy and hold. No selling, no spending, just buying. That's the only thing that drives the price up, and that's the only thing they want you to do.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#495

Post by mlyle » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

px43 wrote: post #444

BobbyJo wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to look at the planet as a set of resources. Resources grow and shrink, but are definite and limited in any given moment all the same. Generally, spending them on less productive tasks is bad. It's cool they are using solar power vs burning gas/coal, but it doesn't change the fact that those same resources would benefit the planet much more if used in a different capacity. If a billionaire hoarded manufactur…

Each hour 430 quintillion Joules (430 exajoules) of energy from the sun hits the Earth.[1] It is almost exclusively reflected back out into space, and wasted. We have nearly no incentive to capture it, so the energy is being wasted at a mind boggling scale. I've been mining cryptocurrencies with solar power for about 6 years or so. The great thing about crypto mining is that it creates a price floor for energy usage.…

This might be a good argument if:

A) the environmental impact of manufacturing a solar panel is 0 and carbon neutral itself (it's not),

B) there's an excess of solar panels available too (not really),

C) the bitcoin miners aren't often running on coal power during the nighttime hours (they often are), and

D) there's nowhere better for mankind to deploy the capital used in deploying miners and renewable power production than for cryptocurrency mining (dubious).

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#496

Post by DavidSJ » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

ralmidani wrote: post #50

I would normally be appalled by such an action, but the supply issues for RTX 30x0 cards are beyond ridiculous. Mining trashes the environment and, for the majority of crypto assets/volumes, does not provide genuinely valuable economic activity besides speculation (I say that as someone who has put thousands of dollars into crypto in the past). Why should people who want to try some ML/DL at home (maybe they even nee…

The environmental impact of mining is quite substantial and I agree that this calls into question whether cryptocurrencies are of overall benefit to society.

However, it is important to note that mining does do something useful: it secures the network from attack. To my knowledge, there is no known alternative solution to the distributed trust-free consensus problem.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#497

Post by jawzz » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #397

emteycz wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a calculation, but not a useless one done just to simulate gold mining, unlike Bitcoin. Look deeper into what Ethereum actually is, it's not just a cryptocoin, it's also a computing platform.

> Look deeper into what Ethereum actually is, I don’t have an opinion on this but if you’re making a point, you should be the one providing evidence, not telling others to look it up.

They’re not really making a point that needs evidence. If you have no idea what Ethereum is, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that you take a quick look at their website before participating in an web forum discussion about it.

This is different than people blithely spouting “it’s not my job to educate you” when asked to give some support for their controversial, unsubstantiated claim.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#498

Post by mlyle » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

lordlimecat wrote: post #479

px43 wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't see the practical utility of cryptocurrency in 2021, you're being willfully ignorant. If you actually believe what you're saying, then short it[1]. If you really think that the practical value is non-existent, then put your money where your mouth is, and take out a short. This isn't some academic theory where the best you can do is throw tomatoes at it, and ridicule it from a distance. This is an economi…

Nothing you said addresses the core and critical issue that Bitcoin and most blockchain currencies have terrible limitations on transaction-per-second, and are wildly inefficient with power and computing resources for what they provide. And thinking that bitcoin is a terrible idea is not the same as thinking you can predict its market value. When something is as volatile as bitcoin, shorting it is almost as bad as go…

> and are wildly inefficient with power and computing resources for what they provide.

As I've said elsewhere: doing one transaction on bitcoin uses approximately the amount of electrical power that an average US household uses in 2 weeks.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#499

Post by hyperbovine » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 2:10 AM UTC

ILikeBikes wrote: post #432

I do hate miners But I'm concerned that a company can tell you what you can or can't do with your hardware. Where is the spirit behind the hacker community, Jailbreaking iPhones, the right to repair, the ban of tattoos that prevented the use of Linux on PCs,... That's a very concerning move from me. Also, for a company that does morale : (1) Nvidia's marketing is one of the best for making old products look obsolete…

Vote with your wallet then. ATI has a Radeon they’d love to sell you.

Re: Nvidia announces mining GPUs, cuts the hash rate of RTX-3060 in half

#500

Post by boring_twenties » Fri, Feb 19, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

wruza wrote: post #492

boring_twenties wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kraken tells me my account with them allows up to $10mm per day in fiat withdrawals. (I'm in the US)

Does it give you paper cash? Because I can receive money back from Kraken to my bank account too, but that means 100% local perverted KYC AML trouble even if it’s clear that I sent the exact amount to Kraken from the same account recently.

They wire the money to my bank, of course. I've done this pretty regularly with several different banks for years, and have never been asked even a single question by any of those banks, or ever had them delay the availability of my funds.

I can't tell you from personal experience if it would be the same if my amounts were a million plus, but they are not insignificant amounts either. I'm quite sure that attempting to deposit similar amounts of physical cash at a bank would be at least somewhat challenging.