Mining Bitcoins on a college campus • Hacker News Board

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#11

Post by sentenza » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 9:08 PM UTC

Here in Germany, studying at most public universities is practically free and Phd students (in the natural sciences and engineering) are paid for their work, while research groups are generally underfunded.

It doesn't matter if you just add a little more to an already large electricity bill. You are stealing money from an organization that is set up to benefit the common good.

I'm so glad that I never had to "give the bitcoin talk" to somebody when I was still doing computer admin as part of my Phd contract.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#12

Post by maaaats » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 9:15 PM UTC

Crito wrote: post #3

"Although I wouldn’t go so far to say that it is “stealing” (especially if they are like CU Boulder and leave all of their computers running 24/7 anyways)" Now I am not entirely sure about this, but I am pretty certain that this is not how power usage on modern computers works.... An idling machine (what they will typically be doing) will be burning far less power than a computer pegging all of its cores running bitc…

And here in Norway, where it's cold most of the year so we have indoor heating, the power used from computers is saved from heating.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#13

Post by saalweachter » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 9:16 PM UTC

conjecTech wrote: post #9

Congrats, my rough calculations say you burned through at least $25 of energy to net $2. You are as bad as the people who shatter car windows to steal a stereo or those who rip copper wiring out of houses. It's a shame they don't withhold a degree from you. Reassess your life.

Yep.

An inefficient thief.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#14

Post by waiquoo » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 9:16 PM UTC

Interesting, I have access to a university cluster (in the top 100 of the top500) and I had played with the idea of using it in a similar way. I didn't actually implement it because I need to maintain good terms with the IT dept for my research (and everything else really). Does anyone know how this would scale or at what point (in terms of number of cores/memory) it would be a worthwhile?

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#15

Post by mcdougle » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 9:17 PM UTC

Reading articles like this makes me think of a distributed computing system we had at my college. Dunno if anyone's heard of condor, but basically, you'd submit an executable and some metadata to the central machine, and it would optimize and execute the job in parallel on all of the machines -- and every machine on the entire campus was hooked up to this system. That's a ton of computers, plus the school had its own massive data center. No need to hack anything, just log in and run a command.

It was supposed to be mostly for academic stuff, and one undergrad class where we learned about parallel programming. I wonder, though, how impressive it would be to run a bitcoin miner on something like that. Obviously unethical, and even if it wasn't, I've graduated and don't have access anymore. Still interesting to think about.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#16

Post by maaaats » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 9:18 PM UTC

> But my thought was: worst case-scenario I will have to give “back” the money made from the mining.

At my Uni there are rules for how the computers should be used. Installing this kind of software on a multitude of computers would be a breach of those rules. It would probably get you kicked out of the computer systems for some time, meaning you have no way to hand in your deliverables, use lab equipment etc. You would probably end up having to redo the semester.

Edit: I saw his edit to the post now. Looks like his Uni would treat it as a criminal offense.

> Future violations will be reported to campus police and treated as criminal trespass.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#17

Post by sliverstorm » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 9:19 PM UTC

conjecTech wrote: post #9

Congrats, my rough calculations say you burned through at least $25 of energy to net $2. You are as bad as the people who shatter car windows to steal a stereo or those who rip copper wiring out of houses. It's a shame they don't withhold a degree from you. Reassess your life.

You are as bad as the people who shatter car windows to steal a stereo

Not even that; this is breaking car windows to steal $5 in change from the ashtray.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#18

Post by Fomite » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 9:20 PM UTC

"How I misused university resources, potentially inconvenienced my fellow students, and wasted a ton of electricity"

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#19

Post by brandynwhite » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 9:20 PM UTC

I think this was a mistake. Like others have said it's a waste of their resources and you gain basically nothing in comparison. Even outside of electricity, having to bug the IT guy to look at the activity and taking up resources that other students could be using isn't worth the $2. I'd put an apology up and remove the veiled threat, it's just going to cause you problems.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#20

Post by schmichael » Wed, Jan 08, 2014, 9:22 PM UTC

waiquoo wrote: post #14

Interesting, I have access to a university cluster (in the top 100 of the top500) and I had played with the idea of using it in a similar way. I didn't actually implement it because I need to maintain good terms with the IT dept for my research (and everything else really). Does anyone know how this would scale or at what point (in terms of number of cores/memory) it would be a worthwhile?

No. Just don't. These computers are not your property. Do not use them for personal financial gain (unless it's somehow directly related to your studies).

You will cost your university far more in electricity than you'll make from Bitcoins. This is stealing.