Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by nextlevelwizard » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #342

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm just gonna artificially raise price of this limited resource even though there already exists hardware specifically made for me, but after the next generation comes out I can re-sell this one to some sucker" If you don't see anything wrong with that then that's about it. I really hope US or China or someone is going to regulate cryptocurrencies to shit so cryto-bros can stop destroying the planet and normal peop…

So basically you are surprised that people want to buy a higher value and better product instead of lower value? Also, for "normal people" there are plenty of 1 and 2Gb videocards at reasonable prices, unusable for mining.

Not surprised (why would that surprise me?) just that this throttling is justifiable and I would go even further

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

#532

Post by paulmd » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #13

httpz wrote: post #9

>"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 think the argument is that driver source being open could help the (tiny!) Linux gaming community, but I agree. This is about mining.

it absolutely cannot, because no official developer is going near this with a 10,000 foot pole.

https://nitter.eu/_Lyude/status/1498811646697000961

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

#533

Post by nextlevelwizard » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

keymon-o wrote: post #349

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm just gonna artificially raise price of this limited resource even though there already exists hardware specifically made for me, but after the next generation comes out I can re-sell this one to some sucker" If you don't see anything wrong with that then that's about it. I really hope US or China or someone is going to regulate cryptocurrencies to shit so cryto-bros can stop destroying the planet and normal peop…

I am probably not that informed on who does what artificially and intentionally, but I still don’t see a point in justifying gaming usage over crypto usage. As far as destroying the planet argument goes, gamers could equally be limited to using a specifically designed devices for optimal gaming and entertainment purposes. Apart from the ability to check the GPU health, GPU providers could easily implement some hardwa…

>gamers could equally be limited to using a specifically designed devices for optimal gaming and entertainment purposes.

We are trying, but crypto-bros are buying our cards. C'mon pay a bit more attention.

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

#534

Post by mullingitover » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #419

I doubt nvidia would have complied with their demands anyway, but the new demand "make all your code open source or else we'll release it ourselves" gives them absolutely no incentive to comply at all. If the choices are you can have your source out there but unlicensed so it's illegal for anyone else to use it, or you can choose to legally let anyone else use your source -- why would nvidia ever choose the latter? T…

> I don't think they've thought through their demands very well.

If you, as a person with technical skills, aren't making money hand over fist with a normal job in the tech sector and instead are doing illegal things like this, it's very likely that there is something wrong with your judgment in general.

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

#535

Post by nextlevelwizard » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 5:39 PM UTC

Zpalmtree wrote: post #428

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm just gonna artificially raise price of this limited resource even though there already exists hardware specifically made for me, but after the next generation comes out I can re-sell this one to some sucker" If you don't see anything wrong with that then that's about it. I really hope US or China or someone is going to regulate cryptocurrencies to shit so cryto-bros can stop destroying the planet and normal peop…

You aren't entitled to cheaper video cards just because you don't like what other people are doing with them

Seeing as Nvidia agrees with me, I think you are wrong. In any case the sales have started to drop so if Nvidia doesn't do anything after crypto fad ends they'll be out of business since people aren't buying their GPUs anymore.

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

#536

Post by danaris » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #452

danaris wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We get a financial system that's independent of banks and governments. I don't care how much energy it consumes, that's a worthy goal. I see it as exactly the opposite. We live in a society, and as a society, we have agreed upon certain rules about how money is handled. If you want to opt out of those rules, then get out of our society.

I'm not opting out of anything, nor am I leaving. Those "rules" form the backbone of the financial arm of total global surveillance. I oppose them on principle, as should everyone on this site. I want to see them either repealed or completely neutralized with subversive technology such as cryptocurrency. The only problem here is the fact that so much energy is being wasted on the failure that is bitcoin. I wouldn't m…

Only in the same sense that laws are "imposed on" criminals. You may not have personally agreed to it, but it's part of the legal framework our society rests on.

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

#537

Post by paulmd » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 5:41 PM UTC

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.

That ship has sailed. FP64 is artificially limited on AMD 290X graphics cards, as is workstation performance in enterprise software, and neither of those ideas was new at the time.

That ship sailed decades ago, in fact.

And in none of these cases, by the way, is computation prohibited. LHR cards are still capable of mining. A 290X can still run Solidworks. The choice of "prohibited" here is deliberately inflammatory - a word like "slowed" or "reduced" is more appropriate.

(But it is true there are cases like ECC on AMD APUs where it actually is fully prohibited.)

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

#538

Post by bjelkeman-again » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

kinnth wrote: post #404

dan-0 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the single biggest "driver" to me moving to Mac from Linux. I had a really nice system that I built and used for work. I was working on a project with a 24 hour requirement, it was only an hour of work. I needed to update for a particular dependency, but decided to update everything and low and behold, my video output broke after the update. I made the deadline, but spent literally all day and night trying t…

Do you now love or loathe your mac and it's cost?

I am not dan-0, I like my Macs, I used to love them, but software quality has gone down. Weird UI decisions, mostly around size, colours (all friggen grey!) and contrast were the older I get the harder it gets to use in default setup. The cost of them are really a bit of a challenge now. A Mac Mini with 16 Gb ram and 2 TB SSD for $1600 is a bit much. And the Pro is just eye watering.

Windows is out of the question in how they treat their customers. Example: Dialogue when rejecting upgrading to Win10, click the X button at the dialog upper right corner and be greeted by an immediate reboot and upgrade.

Linux, life is to short for me to handle the hassle on the desktop. Server is a no brainer.

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

#539

Post by sam0x17 » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 5:47 PM UTC

tyjen wrote: post #409

jason-phillips wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 work, it is disrupting every kind of interaction, even those that had nothing to do with money. Things that were completely econ…

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.

This was a reality a few years ago (in particular, there was a very easy to use Monero cryptominer that ran in the browser) and then every major ad blocker and many major browser distributions blocked crypto mining and it's basically become impractical for the most part. PirateBay did it for a while but I believe they have stopped, you really don't see it anymore.

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

#540

Post by paulmd » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

ciupicri wrote: post #238

modeless wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia as a hardware manufacturer has long lead times and low flexibility. As a result they prefer predictable and dependable sales, not random boom and bust cycles. The gaming market is dependable, mining isn't. They don't mind selling some GPUs to miners, of course. But mining is disrupting the supply of GPUs to the gaming market which could hurt future growth of the gaming market in general as well as Nvidia's sha…

Why is the mining market not dependable?

huge variations in the price of crypto lead to enormous mining boom/bust cycles that are impossible to plan for.

Semiconductor fab planning operates at least a year in advance, and even then there are limits, TSMC has other customers and NVIDIA can't order 100% of TSMC's supply even if they wanted to.

But in a day, crypto prices can 10x, or 0.1x, and this occurs relatively frequently (potentially tied to large capital injections from a questionable "stablecoin" called Tether). When that happens, mining suddenly becomes 10x as profitable, and miners hoover up every card on the market for the next 6 months, so the market goes through a prolonged shortage and periods of very high prices (as market economics dictate). Then when it crashes, miners dump all the cards back on to the market, and then NVIDIA has to drop prices to compete with a flood of used cards. It's all basically impossible to plan around given the realities of silicon production.