Live data from Hacker News

Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

whyalex.com

51–60 of 62 posts

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#51
post #41
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not nearly as efficiently as your regular heater does though. What do you mean? It's basically 100% efficient. Where else would the energy go? Through the ethernet port?

Presumably he means efficiency in terms on monetary cost. Producing 1 BTU via electricity is about twice as expensive as producing 1 BTU via natural gas. In places like Norway, they're almost certainly using natural gas, so this is a real cost.

Actually gas is a bit uncommon here. We get cheap electricity from water running down the mountains.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#52
Using university resources for personal gains doesn't border on stealing. It is stealing. All the universities I had attended made me sign agreements which said so.

I am really curious to know how Bitcoin mining may work in India where you can simply throw a cable on the pole and steal electricity.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that heating-by-CPU is less cost effective than baseboard electrical heating which is already one of the least cost effective heating methods: http://www.efficiencymaine.com/at-home/home-energy-savings-p... Also, depending on the setup of your HVAC system, it may be possible to cause a lab to overheat and trigger the cooling system in the middle of winter. Many datacenters vent excess heat year-round. The…

Baseboard electrical heating is low on cost effectiveness, but it is very efficient :)

Fixed my wording.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#54
post #39
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. My computer pulls ~250 watts idling. It can easily go into 750 watts mining with a video card. I would imagine it can pull 320-375 watts at max cpu load.

250W seems like really high idle consumption.

GFX cards don't idle nearly as well as CPU's; I would guess that is the reason. A 350W GFX card may idle around 150-200W.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#56
post #34

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.

Ah yes, bitcoin, the currency of the future that gives one big fat middle finger to the environment!

Except that the decentralized bookkeeping that Bitcoin does is a lot more efficient than the bookkeeping done by financial institutions, and it is more difficult to falsify on top of that. So you could say that Bitcoin is more efficient in terms of energy cost vs bookkeeping accuracy.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#57

"I still have a few tricks up my sleeve that CU doesn’t want to deal with any time soon!" Probably want to be careful about that. No matter how smart/clever you are, you'll probably get caught doing whatever it is you're talking about. The school has already caught you doing something they didn't want you doing, so if it happens again, they might have a place to start looking...

I caught that comment as well... pretty fucking stupid. But hey, obviously they won't see it, since you posted it on the private internet, so carry on.

Re: Mining Bitcoins on a college campus

#60
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, OP gave the middle finger to the environment, bitcoin is ambiguous. Nobody really mines using CPUs anymore, they use ASICs which are multiple levels of magnitude more efficient.

I disagree. ASICs is far more efficient, for sure, but at best, it's slightly more profitable than the used electricity, because with every new mining technology introduction the difficulty is readjusted to compensate. So, even with current ASICs you might spend $8 worth of electricity and bandwidth to make $10 worth of virtual goods, goods which by them selves have no real world value outside their ability to facili…

Your values are dramatically off. I myself mine $0.50/day spending $0.04 in electricity, and I live in an extremely costly area for electric. I do not come anywhere near my bandwidth cap so thats a non discussion point.
Post reply on HN