They say they want to help miners, but... Congratulations: They just gave lawmakers another arguments to move against crypto currencies, especially PoS based ones.
You mean PoW right?
Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever
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Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no better metric of human progress than energy usage. True, but when energy is used to manufacture products or services. When you turn energy into money there's no progress involved and no new jobs are created. The only linked activities which would benefit would be energy creation and the manufacture of mining hardware. Everything else will suffer when more and more money will be diverted to buy more ener…
Countries are get kicked out of the global banking system, and WESTERN countries start confiscating bank accounts. Inflation at levels not seen in 30 years. And that’s just last month. Bitcoin is a product. It autonomously provides a Service. Sound money. Hard money. Censorship resistance and decentralized peer to peer money. It’s ok if you still are skeptical, but don’t wait too long!
Are you suggesting that it would be a good thing if Russia used cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions?
Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever
#63> So, NVIDIA, the choice is yours! Either: Officially make current and all future drivers for all cards open source, while keeping the Verilog and chipset trade secrets... well, secret OR Not make the drivers open source, making us release the entire silicon chip files so that everyone not only knows your driver's secrets, but also your most closely-guarded trade secrets for graphics and computer chipsets too! Intere…
No single piece of software has wasted more of my time than Nvidia's drivers, mostly (though not exclusively) on Linux. They've rendered my OS unbootable so many times over the years. So many times I've spent whole days of my life troubleshooting, upgrading, downgrading, configuring, rebooting. Then often reinstalling the OS after their installers mess stuff up in ways that are impossible to even know until they pop…
A better solution would be for AMD to invest in bringing their ML stacks up to date to work with PyTorch and such.
Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever
#64>"We decided to help mining and gaming community," I don't understand how this demand helps the gaming community. Wouldn't this drive up the crypto-motivated demand for GPUs even more and hurt the gaming community?
> I don't understand how this demand helps the gaming community.
It doesn't. This is just miners co-opting an old argument to gain sympathy.
Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever
#65So when do we ban cryptocurrencies already? The only use of this crap is crime.
Never, actually. Also you are wrong that the only use is crime. There are literally millions of stories in the last 13 years of cryptocurrency that demonstrate this. But of course keep screaming at the sun if you wish.
Well, many of the especially relevant stories where still illegal.
Sure ethically they where "right" and not illegal from a EU POV, but still illegal in the country they happened.
Besides that most other stories are people getting rich by high-risk speculative investments. But the problem with mass investments into high-risk speculative investments is that they tend to create bubbles which can destabilize the economy, so not really that grate either.
There are a lot of good use-cases for the technology behind crypto currencies.
But much of the current crypto currency landscape is not grate a lot bubbles, a lot pyramid schemes and scams, a lot of things which conflict with money laundering regulations. And many other problems.
I'm fully sure that the related technology (blockchain etc.) will have a future, I'm not sure about crypto currencies like we have them now.
Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever
#66> So, NVIDIA, the choice is yours! Either: Officially make current and all future drivers for all cards open source, while keeping the Verilog and chipset trade secrets... well, secret OR Not make the drivers open source, making us release the entire silicon chip files so that everyone not only knows your driver's secrets, but also your most closely-guarded trade secrets for graphics and computer chipsets too! Intere…
I definitely support making GPUs less attractive to miners. I'd buy a card that could be remotely disabled when usage patterns matched crypto mining if it meant I could spend MSRP on a modern card.
Is there some practical way to delineate the two product usages that isn't arbitrary I wonder?
Maybe make mining only cards more performant and affordable than consumer graphics cards, so that consumer cards will drop in price from less demand?
I find it hard to believe that a use case specific device wouldn't be able to dethrone graphics cards as the better choice for miners at the right price, and it should be cheaper right? No need for all that extra graphics related componentry like visual ports etc.
I know stuff like that is already on the market, but it's usually more expensive as they are from more niche manufacturing. NVidia has the scale to make a similar device more affordable I imagine.
Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever
#67I'm not a big fan of limiting hardware to run only approved software. One day it's for limiting crypto mining, the next day it will be for limiting our ability to use strong encryption. It's a slippery slope.
It would be much easier if crypto could just die out.
Why? I saw a good use for this week when journalists used it to purchase a car in war torn Ukraine.
Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever
#68I would rather outlaw cryptocurrencies for being a harm for the planet with their crazy energy demands, besides also fueling criminals.
I'd like to engage with this opinion because I genuinely have no idea how this is the conclusion people reach (that crypto is bad for the environment).
The configuration of transistors through which electrons are punched is obviously not the problem (at least I hope it's obvious).
So it must be about proof of work chains, right? That they create high demand? That's about the only point I do understand, but I think you'd be hard pressed to meaningfully translate a bitcoin transaction to a carbon cost. There are some mining farms powered by green energy (less altruistic and more about being off grid).
But if we're talking about energy usage and environmental damage, we have to talk mining.
There is just no debate that mining is THE singular (keyword) greatest threat to the environment. Fracking, acid mine drainage, offshore drilling, sonic bombardments of coastlines, the ridonculous requirements of smelting. The list goes on and on.
We are stuck with that industry for a long time though. I'd argue the minerals that constitute the technology you're using to view this comment may have done more damage than bitcoin and co have.
In a nutshell, here's my problem with this argument: To suggest that demand is responsible for the damage caused by supply is just a crazy warping of reality. That absolutely does not make sense.
There are other, more pressing issues with crypto (like the lack of regulation around fiat exchanges and how they constantly get rugged) and those criticisms are valid, but they get lost in the noise of "how we generate energy is not as bad as how we use it". I just can't get on board with that point of view.
Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever
#69I would rather outlaw cryptocurrencies for being a harm for the planet with their crazy energy demands, besides also fueling criminals.
No post body was provided.
Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Positive PR from "helping gamers" 2. Product segmentation (nvidia also make mining cards)
3. To actually help gamers and other legitimate users of GPUs
Yeah I think that was point 1. If they succeed in getting reasonably priced GPUs into gamers hands (While AMD can't) they get a lot of good PR!