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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

#311

Post by greggsy »

7steps2much wrote: post #275
ggreg84 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'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. I'd assume that developing extra features costs money. If a buyer doesn't need a feature, why should they have to pay for it? For example, if a gamer does not need drivers for a CAD program, or crypto features…

There is a difference between hardware that simply doesn't support a use case and hardware that technically supports stuff but was artificially locked to no longer do so. If the hardware was actually different then of course your argument would make sense, you could build cards that can only be used for a certain use case and sell those, but in that case you wouldn't have to lock down the card anyways

Intel have been selling cpus with binned cores for ages for performance reasons, and some IBM mainframes require you to license some features in hardware which you’ve purchases.

I know it’s counter to human nature to be denied use of the physical object that you bought, but it’s not new territory.

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

#312

Post by NavinF »

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #264
pjerem wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I’ve not used Linux as my mainly driver for years. I miss it and I want to come back but I basically don’t have any decent PC anymore so I have the freedom to get/build one. When I used it, ironically, NVidia was the way to go on Linux and ATI/AMD was a shit show. Is AMD ok nowadays ? My needs are mostly confortable casual gaming where I don’t care having more than 60fps and I don’t play online (so this…

I have built my desktop with top end components: ASRock X570M Pro4, ASUS ROG Radeon RX 6800, AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, WDBlack Nvme, and I have no issue at all with drivers or anything (I also use gentoo with a self-configured kernel, no genkernel). It's my daily driver for working and gaming 4k (with 3 4k monitors) Linux has no issue with drivers and/or video cards in particular, people just need to pay some attention when…

That works if you don’t care about deep learning or use any apps that need CUDA

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

#313

Post by [deleted] »

schappim wrote: post #301
fnomnom wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no cash. ATMs we’re dry. paypal, venmo, cashapp etc would have worked the same. for all of them and for crypto you need to be in the ecosystem (need wallets, accounts, apps etc) and internet access.

All very US centric apps (with the exception of Paypal), but PayPal would gouge them on fees. I guess what I want to get across is I’m not evangelising crypto, I just don’t necessarily want the space to die. I want them to keep iterating on the concept and see what other benefits can be generated.

[deleted]

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

#314

Post by ckastner »

jimmydorry wrote: post #241
ckastner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand how this demand helps the gaming community. Agreed. But I don't understand how this helps the mining community, either. Removing the LHR restriction would lead to a vast increase of the network hash rate, and consequently the difficulty would also increase, leading to lower rewards. The result would be that (1) non-LHR card owner's rewards go down significantly, and (2) LHR card owner's rewards p…

At an individual level though, increasing the hash rate of your setup without impacting energy usage means more efficient mining (cheaper to run and faster to recoup investment). Long-term, the least efficienct miners get forced out until there is no profit to be had for the effort involved.

> increasing the hash rate of your setup without impacting energy usage means more efficient mining

No, it just means you get more MH/s. It's also (probably) not cheaper to run, unless the cards actually draw less power as well.

Whether that's cost-efficient or not depends on the reward. And with hundreds of TH/s suddenly being freed from LHR, your individual reward will all but certainly go down.

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

#315

Post by ckastner »

jart wrote: post #310
ckastner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand how this demand helps the gaming community. Agreed. But I don't understand how this helps the mining community, either. Removing the LHR restriction would lead to a vast increase of the network hash rate, and consequently the difficulty would also increase, leading to lower rewards. The result would be that (1) non-LHR card owner's rewards go down significantly, and (2) LHR card owner's rewards p…

Yes, but no. The ransomers probably invested a considerable sum buying up every last used LHR card beforehand, so they'd stand to gain if Nvidia changed their policy. That's likely how they'll get caught.

If they had tons of LHR cards and the code to unlock them, the last thing they would do is share the unlock code with others (= the competition).

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

#316

Post by newswasboring »

gambiting wrote: post #299
newswasboring wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it being outlawed in every country that can. Being pedantic for fun. Isn't all crypto currency already outlaws? They operate outside of all the financial laws and regulations we have. In fact I think some proponents are citing this as a feature.

>>Isn't all crypto currency already outlaws No? Here in UK you can legally buy/sold/hold crypto. HMRC even tells you exactly how to pay taxes on it with official documents explaining the process.

Oh, I didn't know. I was trying to use the original definition of outlaw, where a person is excluded from protections of the law. Do crypto transactions enjoy the same level of regulatory protection (assuming UK has any) that normal cash transactions do? Like if I am defrauded in a rug pull, can I sue the rug puller?

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

#317

Post by i_have_an_idea »

Aunche wrote: post #303
bouncycastle wrote: post #30

I'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.

There are plenty of examples of hardware being artificially constrained, and low hash rate GPUs are hardly the first. Slippery slope fallacy aside, why would you need a top of the line GPU to do strong encryption? That's something you can do with a pen and paper if you're motivated enough.

and you can send messages for free by lighting a fire and creating smoke signals, so why bother having the internet? /s

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

#318

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

lmm wrote: post #216
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…

The binary driver made me a big NVidia fan FWIW. It works, consistently and easily, on both Linux and FreeBSD. The unified release makes both of those feel like a first-class citizen alongside Windows. It's always been more reliable than the ATI/AMD drivers, even when the latter are notionally open-source. (I will say that Intel video drivers have also always been good). Sure, it'd be nice for it to be open-source to…

So long as you don’t mind getting wayland 6 years late.

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

#319

Post by archi42 »

jimmydorry wrote: post #243
Godel_unicode wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I take it you haven't tried to buy a 30-series GPU for gaming, then. It's impossible*, and that's because of mining*. * Yeah, yeah, I know, supply chain this and pandemic demand that, but it's really mining that's the culprit.

I bought one the other day, no hassle from a local store. They had a pretty wide select of 30-series GPUs. The cost of electricity is high in Australia though, so it is certainly less economical to mine here.

Around here that's a rare story. Actually, I know nobody that did try this and succeeded. But then we don't have true offline retailers around here; those with offline stores sell most of their GPU stock in their online store at inflated prices. So I tend to chalk that up to survivorship bias ;-)

That's in Germany, we have some of the most expensive electricity in the world, and then the prices exploded since about 09/2021: Previously the cheapest offer was about 0.27€/kWh or maybe even 2c less if you're lucky; now we're at 0.35 to 0.45 for new contracts, depending on the region. I haven't checked the last few months (and especially not in the last week), but when I checked in early 12/2021 mining still netted some money (IIRC in the ballpark of 3 Euro/day/GPU).

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

#320

Post by ksec »

ihateolives wrote: post #269
modeless wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> No single piece of software has wasted more of my time than Nvidia's drivers I see you haven't used printers much :)

I had to install a new inkjet printer because kids now need to print out their homework during COVID.

I swear to god if I ever become wealthy the printer industry is what I intended to completely destroy. Not in it for profit. Not positive sum whatever startup thinking. It will be Zero Sum.

Edit: Lasers are fine. That will be left alone.

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