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

Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 693 posts

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#141

Post by larsrc »

smokey_circles wrote: post #68
squarefoot wrote: post #4

I 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 yo…

Cryptocurrencies have shown that you can transform energy into money without any of that messy middle step of doing something useful.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#142

Post by GreenWatermelon »

ezoe wrote: post #82
squarefoot wrote: post #4

I would rather outlaw cryptocurrencies for being a harm for the planet with their crazy energy demands, besides also fueling criminals.

Be careful what you wish for. While I agree the current cryptocurrency is a mess, but prohibiting a pure computation cause more harms than good.

The computations are ok, but exchange with, well, non-crypto currency could be prohibited. Crypto would lose its worth of you can't convert it to dollars in a feasible way. Much of the market is driven by speculative investment and get-rich-quick type of schemes.

Of course, criminal organizations could still use it, but I believe it would be harder to launder money using crypto if banks no longer supported it.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#143

Post by akvadrako »

modeless wrote: post #134
akvadrako wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that relevant to Nvidia GPU source code?

As stated upthread, "the argument is that driver source being open could help the (tiny!) Linux gaming community", and the further argument that the community will be getting larger and not only because of people using Steam Deck hardware.

I see, makes sense.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#144

Post by vl »

leereeves wrote: post #49
TheCowboy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize it's not simple to just build the chip production facilities to facilitate this? It requires major capital investment and planning. Looks like you also missed that the chip shortage is affecting automobiles. Many articles exist that can explain better than I can about why this isn't a quickly resolved issue.

It's not a supply issue. By design, proof of work requires even more resources as more resources are spent on it. One might say that it expands to consume all available supply. Because of that, no matter how many cards Nvidia makes, crypto miners will want them all, as long as there is money to be made in crypto.

Not true at all. If enough hardware is available, pool only expands until reward covers electricity cost plus small margin. I.e. bitcoin mining electricity-cost bound for the long time now.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#145

Post by DangitBobby »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #54
DangitBobby wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. To actually help gamers and other legitimate users of GPUs

I’m sorry you are being outbid by another guy who wants to mine with a graphics card, but who are you to say that guy securing a censorship resistant and decentralized monetary system is less legit than your leisure time amateur rocket league tournament? If the owner uses it to train a ML model? Is that legit then? Or can general purpose GPUs only be single purpose for games. For gamers?

I think my position is well known. I am not the first person to argue that cryptocurrencies are negative because they generate waste by design and are a technical solution to social/meatspace problems. I personally don't really need a GPU right now (lucky for me I can probably hold off a couple more years), but I am pretty concerned about the future of the planet in general and have some increased existential dread and angst arising from the fact that we are finding new and exciting ways to accelerate global warming.

We can just dispense with the part of the discussion where we argue about why we think it is or isn't legitimate and just agree that we have mutually incompatible world views.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#146

Post by Siira »

leereeves wrote: post #49
TheCowboy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize it's not simple to just build the chip production facilities to facilitate this? It requires major capital investment and planning. Looks like you also missed that the chip shortage is affecting automobiles. Many articles exist that can explain better than I can about why this isn't a quickly resolved issue.

It's not a supply issue. By design, proof of work requires even more resources as more resources are spent on it. One might say that it expands to consume all available supply. Because of that, no matter how many cards Nvidia makes, crypto miners will want them all, as long as there is money to be made in crypto.

No post body was provided.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#147

Post by hyperman1 »

I wonder how professional these criminals are. A crime syndicate would silently ask for money. This seems either a false flag operation for a group wanting something else, or much more likely a kid playing around and finding an unlocked door.

That last case, a kid pissing of a powerfull entity with a crime, generally does not end well for the kid.

I don't see NVidia publicly giving in and loosing face, so there seems no upside either for the criminal.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#148

Post by Broken_Hippo »

DangitBobby wrote: post #124
schappim wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I saw a good use for this week when journalists used it to purchase a car in war torn Ukraine.

Thats wonderful. Im sure a handful of victories can be listed. I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though. Anyway, I need not remind you of how big a boon cryptocurrencies have been to criminals and con artists. I think it should be pretty clear to anyone on this site why someone would be against them, just like it's clear to me why someone would be for them.

I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though.

Exactly this. I'm guessing if they needed food they'd be out of luck.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#149

Post by eru »

Blammar wrote: post #140
chmod775 wrote: post #5

> 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 can suggest a good reason why the Nvidia GPU drivers are opaque binary blobs. Generally speaking, you don't build a multi-billion transistor chip, and manage to ship the A01 spin without doing some magic. The Nvidia GPU i/o interface is a remarkable mechanism where the resource manager (the code that sits at the very lowest level) can patch the hardware interface to get around hardware issues and give the appearanc…

Isn't that essentially the same as what everyone does with CPUs?

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#150

Post by eru »

DangitBobby wrote: post #32
chmod775 wrote: post #5

> 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.

Eh, you can fix that problem much simpler: nvidia can raise MSRP.
Post reply on HN