Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

bleepingcomputer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 818 posts

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#231

Post by ALittleLight »

emsy wrote: post #76
capableweb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If we didn’t have such a dire X I would be upset on principle, but I see this as a move that’s supposed to help ..." What worth is a principle if you don't still have it when it get challenged? Then it's just a opinion, which is fine by itself and it's ok to change opinion, smart people do it all the time. But don't call it a principle. Unlikely that mining will disappear because NVIDIA limits a specific algoritm/cl…

I think your criticism is valid, but I don’t think it’s sensible to adhere to principles in a black and white way. For me, the minor restriction put in place by Nvidia is the lesser evil when you consider that they could just as well sell out to the miners and drastically increase their margins. In fact, I think it’s a very sympathetic move. I don’t think “it will be broken” is a good argument, because the intent dis…

Their intent is to limit what people can do with their hardware. That strikes me as almost morally wrong. I tell the computer what to do. It doesn't tell me what to do.

I think cryptocurrency is a scam and I'll be glad if/when it goes away and graphics cards become cheap again. However, I will never support hardware manufacturers infringing on the idea of general purpose computing for the sake of their business model.

If they want gamers to get more graphics cards then make so many graphics cards that everyone will be able to afford them. Don't try to artificially limit what the hardware can do.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#232

Post by lukifer »

fay59 wrote: post #167
nyjah wrote: post #125

I have a dumb theoretical question, but I genuinely don't understand the answer. Why wouldn't nvidia and amd or any other card maker just keep the cards and mine all the cryptocurrency for themselves?

I absolutely despise cryptocurrency, so this may not be accurate, but my understanding is that they’re only reliable if many independent people mine. If NVIDIA kept all its GPUs and mined Bitcoin instead of selling them, it could control more than 50% of the hashing capacity. This could allow NVIDIA to double-spend bitcoins, the possibility of which would probably crash confidence in the asset.

> they’re only reliable if many independent people mine

Sort of. It's a matter of establishing trust with buyers, holders, and the ecosystem. If a hypothetical 51% owner behaved as a good citizen (which is to say, their incentives were publicly aligned towards preserving value rather than exploiting double-spends), the confidence wouldn't necessarily erode. (Contrast with a nation-state or other hostile actor who performs a 51% attack with the express intent of theft or undermining trust, which has happened with smaller cryptos.)

The three largest BTC miners combined have been well over 51% of the hashpower for years now, and they could collude to crash or exploit BTC if they wanted; it's simply not currently in their interest. Yet more evidence that while Proof of Work was a clever hack in the original BTC whitepaper, it doesn't inherently lead to decentralization, and is functionally indistinguishable from Proof of Stake with extra steps.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#233

Post by imbnwa »

behringer wrote: post #122
cma wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe Nvidia is being an enforcer here to "take action against harmful behavior"? It's just price discrimination. They saw they were leaving money on the table. Unless they thought it a huge PR win to do it, it's probably not much different in motivation than the previous thing with them segmenting out datacenter use.

As a gamer, I'd much rather they take miner's money for miner's uses and leave me able to play games in my spare time.

I can't believe this is so downvoted. So I, a gaming consumer, have to compete with bots every release because there's so much money in accommodating miner demand for the same cards? That's ridiculous

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#234

Post by IncRnd »

fay59 wrote: post #167
nyjah wrote: post #125

I have a dumb theoretical question, but I genuinely don't understand the answer. Why wouldn't nvidia and amd or any other card maker just keep the cards and mine all the cryptocurrency for themselves?

I absolutely despise cryptocurrency, so this may not be accurate, but my understanding is that they’re only reliable if many independent people mine. If NVIDIA kept all its GPUs and mined Bitcoin instead of selling them, it could control more than 50% of the hashing capacity. This could allow NVIDIA to double-spend bitcoins, the possibility of which would probably crash confidence in the asset.

Are you saying that GPUs are now competitive with ASICs when mining bitcoin?

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#235

Post by lstamour »

akersten wrote: post #147
luma wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are clearly marking the new models with a new suffix on the model number. As someone who has been trying for months to buy a 3080 and has zero interest in crypto, this is fantastic news... IFF it means I can actually purchase a card. This doesn't make me angry, and I don't think it should make you angry either.

The e-Waste part is what should collectively anger us, but I'm glad you're able to buy your card.

What about the electricity cost for powering the card. Doesn’t that outweigh the e-waste part by a significant margin?

Just because a card can’t be used by gamers doesn’t mean the card must be tossed, there are plenty of non-gaming uses such as AI. You’ll probably see an aftermarket for both types of cards.

Also, like regular graphics cards, newer versions are highly prized so one might say that graphics cards as an industry is already all about e-waste. Unless you’d like to buy my Radeon 9800 or my GTX 1070? They’re still perfectly good for gaming… except everybody wants the new RTX ray tracing etc.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#236

Post by sokoloff »

joshuahaglund wrote: post #224
akersten wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The e-Waste part is what should collectively anger us, but I'm glad you're able to buy your card.

I'm personally angry that this whole crypto ponzi scheme has gotten so big. That miners are producing e-Waste is the least of its environmental impact.

The amount of e-waste seems like worrying about the trash created from discarded plastic bottles of windshield washer fluid as the environmental impact of cars.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#237

Post by lottin »

amelius wrote: post #180
fay59 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely despise cryptocurrency, so this may not be accurate, but my understanding is that they’re only reliable if many independent people mine. If NVIDIA kept all its GPUs and mined Bitcoin instead of selling them, it could control more than 50% of the hashing capacity. This could allow NVIDIA to double-spend bitcoins, the possibility of which would probably crash confidence in the asset.

They could start a bunch of subsidiary companies.

They would always be suspicious of collusion.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#238

Post by gruez »

Kranar wrote: post #31
jti107 wrote: post #17

interesting philosophical question that intersects with "right to repair" and "ownership of digital purchases". when you buy a product does the company get to dictate what you can do with it.

When you buy a product? No. When you purchase a license agreement for software that the product depends on? Yes.

So apple restricting iphone repairs (by breaking camera/fingerprint reader, or nagging you about the battery/display) is totally fine because it's done in software?

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#239

Post by judge2020 »

wbraun wrote: post #2

Does this behavior anger anyone else on a deep level? I get that its hard to buy GPUs right now, but this seems like such an attack on general purpose computing. Hardware manufactures already segment features between consumer and busness grade parts that the silicon itself is capable of, such as virtualization, but restricting what algorithms one can run is a whole new level. I am pretty sure my next GPU is going to…

> Hardware manufactures already segment features between consumer and busness grade parts that the silicon itself is capable of, such as virtualization, but restricting what algorithms one can run is a whole new level.

The silicon might also be capable of running the latest nvidia self driving ML models, yet you don’t get that just because it’s capable- you have to pay them $x so that they have the money to pay their engineers to develop those features (and pay the company directors, and shareholders, etc). It’s the same for things like the professional quadro view software - https://www.nvidia.com/en-in/design-visualization/software/q... - there’s only a compelling business case to make this software as a result of the higher margins they make on quadro cards.

Re: Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining on RTX 3080 and 3070 cards

#240

Post by renewiltord »

capableweb wrote: post #43
emsy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we didn’t have such a dire chip shortage I would be upset on principle, but I see this as a move that’s supposed to help long time customers get a hand at a Graphics card at a reasonable price. Once mining will ebb off, those customers are unlikely to keep buying Nvidia products so it’s entirely understandable why they would do this. Also, it’s not like on iOS where the company whitelists apps, this is a very spec…

"If we didn’t have such a dire X I would be upset on principle, but I see this as a move that’s supposed to help ..." What worth is a principle if you don't still have it when it get challenged? Then it's just a opinion, which is fine by itself and it's ok to change opinion, smart people do it all the time. But don't call it a principle. Unlikely that mining will disappear because NVIDIA limits a specific algoritm/cl…

A principle is a moral heuristic so you don't have to scan to root of your moral argument tree on every moral question. As a heuristic, it attempts to compress the moral space down and will naturally have exceptions.

As a compressed form of your moral judgment, it is also useful for you to quickly communicate your position on the moral space, and it is up to participants in social interactions to decide whether or not someone is good at this moral judgment compression.

For instance, I have a principle not to lie in general. Most social participants know that this does not constrain me from lying in specific situations. After repeated interactions they can tell whether this principle of mine is held in a manner that's useful to them.

The same principle also allows me to quickly judge situations that require me to lie. Is it okay for me to tell this person that their house is painted poorly? Well, I have this anti-lie principle so that pulls me toward "yes". I might have other principles that pull me in other directions.

Of course you can treat principles as immutable moral rods. This presumably has some value to you. In general, people do not act in this manner, however.

Post reply on HN