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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

#461

Post by z3c0 »

lukeschlather wrote: post #395
z3c0 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, then I stand corrected, but it does not change my point that a single company being able to bottleneck a resource is problematic.

The resources are bottlenecked due to the chip shortage, which happened because the entire automotive industry mis-forecast demand for the pandemic. All the GPU manufacturers have the same problem: they don't want to build GPU production lines for a market that is going away. The problem isn't Nvidia, it's proof of work, which will bottleneck as many resources as it can by design. This is what happens when you try an…

You're likely not going to like this, but you agreeing with their reasoning for bottle-necking a resource does not make it any less problematic that they have the power to do so.

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

#462

Post by veganhouseDJ »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #344
SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #335

A bit off-topic, but the fact that criminals asked for help mining, instead of money or crypto-money, just gave me an epiphany: The whole internet is showing the first signs of a digital Resource Curse [1] brought by crypto mining. Crypto mining changed the economics of the digital world in such a drastic way that it is poisoning all kinds of internet interactions. It is not just about disrupting how money used to wo…

I'm sure many people would agree with your diagnosis. What's the treatment, though?

Time.

Crypto is a speculative digital commodity bubble. We haven't seen a real bear market yet. Gold took 7 years from 1973 when you could own gold again to the 1980 peak. All the increase in gold mining lead to a 20 year bear market.

The crypto narrative is fundamentally unsustainable. It doesn't just have to beat the S&P 500 returns, people need to believe they are going to get rich. That November 2021 peak is going to be tough to take out. That is looking like the peak of the everything bubble from COVID. The get rich narrative can only hold for so long until the reality that crypto is a set of volatile currency no one really uses and has been massively over mined for years now sets in.

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

#463

Post by veganhouseDJ »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #344
SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #335

A bit off-topic, but the fact that criminals asked for help mining, instead of money or crypto-money, just gave me an epiphany: The whole internet is showing the first signs of a digital Resource Curse [1] brought by crypto mining. Crypto mining changed the economics of the digital world in such a drastic way that it is poisoning all kinds of internet interactions. It is not just about disrupting how money used to wo…

I'm sure many people would agree with your diagnosis. What's the treatment, though?

Time.

Crypto is a speculative digital commodity bubble. We haven't seen a real bear market yet. Gold took 7 years from 1973 when you could own gold again to the 1980 peak. All the increase in gold mining lead to a 20 year bear market.

The crypto narrative is fundamentally unsustainable. It doesn't just have to beat the S&P 500 returns, people need to believe they are going to get rich. That November 2021 peak is going to be tough to take out. That is looking like the peak of the everything bubble from COVID. The get rich narrative can only hold for so long until the reality that crypto is a set of volatile currency no one really uses and has been massively over mined for years now sets in.

Time will make crypto boring like every other currency/commodity. No one gets all excited about corn futures.

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

#464

Post by jmholla »

Qub3d wrote: post #425
franga2000 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, a cleanroom procedure is a given in this case. History has shown that it is entirely possible though - see ReactOS for one very public example. But also, not everyone cares. See game modders who routinely use source code leaks to make game patches. I'm not talking about big companies that want nvidia would want to sue, but individuals and small groups, who are not a big enough target and would likely remai…

ReactOS isn't necessarily the best example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341933

That thread goes on to describe several very plausible reasons that a clean room implementation could have resulted in all of the coincidences the commenter pointed out.

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

#465

Post by napolux »

leodriesch wrote: post #375
napolux wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Tried to get back to PC gaming for a while. I play on PS5 and XSX but damn, with the price of a performant GPU I can buy 3/4 PS5s or 1 PS5 and a lot of games for it.

You’re definitely right about the price, but I bought a PC anyways for the freedom it gives. You can emulate older games, get games for 1/4th of the price on second hand market and choose your store. Paying 60$ for 5 year old games on my switch changed my view on console gaming. Even if there’s a lot of room for games in the price difference between console and PC, I’d rather pay the higher fixed cost up front and th…

> Paying 60$ for 5 year old games on my switch changed my view on console gaming.

LOL. That's my very same reason. Got a Switch in 2021 and I was surprised Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (a game originally for Wii U) was still full price.

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

#466

Post by napolux »

leodriesch wrote: post #375
napolux wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Tried to get back to PC gaming for a while. I play on PS5 and XSX but damn, with the price of a performant GPU I can buy 3/4 PS5s or 1 PS5 and a lot of games for it.

You’re definitely right about the price, but I bought a PC anyways for the freedom it gives. You can emulate older games, get games for 1/4th of the price on second hand market and choose your store. Paying 60$ for 5 year old games on my switch changed my view on console gaming. Even if there’s a lot of room for games in the price difference between console and PC, I’d rather pay the higher fixed cost up front and th…

Plus I don't usually buy games on consoles for full price... I wait or just buy used

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

#467

Post by Leherenn »

uncomputation wrote: post #127
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…

Yep, it’s the red queen’s race problem. If LHR is lifted, your hash rate will rise, but so will everyone else’s, so you are either (1) no better off or (2) worse off because other people may use this increased efficiency per chip to buy more chips, thus increasing their hash power proportionally. No one will ever decrease their hash power.

Won't your hash rate rise more than the average hash rate since not all cards are LHR cards?

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

#468

Post by aasasd »

VPenkov wrote: post #457
aasasd wrote: post #427

By the way, ‘lapsus’ as a slang-ish Russian word was around perhaps until 1970s or 1980s. Quite rare today. Means ‘a dumb mistake’. It comes from Latin, and Wiktionary says that it's used in English and Romance-family languages, but I've never seen it outside of Russian. It might be used in other Slavic languages, though. If the word is not around in Western languages, then presumably it would point to Russian origin…

"Lapse of judgement" is a fairly common expression for a mistake

‘Lapse’ yes, ‘lapsus’ no.

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

#469

Post by wyager »

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.

> why would you need a top of the line GPU to do strong encryption

He's referring to the fact that this is an assault on general purpose computing, not that he specifically needs a GPU to do encryption.

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

#470

Post by vmception »

korse wrote: post #436
tyjen wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment chain made me envision a potentially terrible future direction. Imagine a future where websites force people to consent to allowing them use your device to mine cryptocurrency while you use its services or browse its content instead of ads.

Isn't that the Brave browser?

No Brave doesn't do that, its default behavior doesnt use crypto, its optional behavior theoretically lets you earn bat but not by processing cycles
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