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

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611–620 of 693 posts

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

#611

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…

That's a good point, although they are threatening to release slightly more than just the drivers ("the complete silicon, graphics, and computer chipset files"). But the legal vs. illegal access is definitely interesting and probably not something they took into account. I don't see, say, AMD stealing from "publicly stolen" technology, I can't imagine the insane lawsuit that would ensue. Maybe some Chinese company mi…

I don't think this group is thinking within the constraints of the law. There can be no trust in this, the data is out there and no longer in Nvidia's control. Even if they fully accept the terms, the group can still do what they want.

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

#612
post #8

> Nvidia introduced LHR in February 2021 with the launch of its GeForce RTX 3060 models. Three months later, the company brought LHR to its GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti graphics cards. The reason: to make the cards less desirable to people mining Ethereum and possibly other types of cryptocurrencies. What a bizarre move. Why would they do this?

Gamers were skipping new cards in favor of cheap used mining cards. This move ensures that those mining cards (which conversely cannot be used for gaming) go to landfill, and don't eat into NVIDIA profits.

There's also their claim that it's good for gamers. It's certainly not.

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

#613
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…

I definitely support making GPUs less attractive to miners. I'd buy a card that could be remotely disabled when usage patterns matched crypto mining if it meant I could spend MSRP on a modern card.

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

#614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would allow hardware DRM in your box just to allow Nvidia to "revoke" ownership of your card when you use it "incorrectly". Yeah I'll pass.

The parent comment makes no mention of giving Nvidia control over the GPU. You know you can have remote access features that are solely under your control, right? That's how SSH works. You should read comments before you reply to them.

> I'd buy a card that could be remotely disabled when usage patterns matched crypto mining...

What does LHR and SSH have in common? How does 3rd party LHR make any sense.

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

#615
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I use FreeBSD now so it was however many years late for me already. And even when I was using Linux, the benefits seemed extremely marginal - like, sure, in theory I can see some situations where using two screens with different DPI settings would be useful, but it's rarely something I've wanted or needed in practice - when I got a laptop with a 4k screen I did try using it with an old 1080p monitor for a little whil…

BSD makes you a minority of a minority, so that’s probably to be expected. Afaik it offers sandboxing and a better security model, reduced screen tearing, etc. Nvidia dragging their feet has surely impacted on the early adoption of the project.

It’s also created painpoonts. I’d be using fedora, but there’s no assurance on the content within the fedora community repos. I don’t really want to apply trust there, so I stick with Ubuntu for better or worse, all because of nvidia.

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

#616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ban crypto mining. Outlaw exchanging cryptocurrencies (directly) to USD (and other fiat currencies, but USD is the big one for now).

It seems like it’s happening indirectly. I keep hearing stories about places like Coinbase not converting dirty Bitcoin that’s been associated with illegal activity. Eventually, it seems like this will apply to all of it.

How much would it cost to purposefully contaminate a significant portion of Bitcoin? Just, you know, for reasons.

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

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Valid point. Nintendo Games are still particularly expensive, even used.

Zelda Breath of the Wild still costs 40$ or more where I am.

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

#618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Video game skins become NFTs that you now "own" instead of just being in-game. This use case actually doesn't make sense if you think about it. Items only make sense in the context of a game, and you trust the game makers to honor it. At that point, there's no incentive for them to actually allow you to port in/port out items. Think about it this way: what good is the BFG from Unreal Tournament in Cooking Mama? Eve…

if the game itself runs via a decentralized computational model then there’s no need to appeal to authority to honor the ownership. The game itself, just like the skin, would exist on the p2p network. We are of course very far from that happening, or knowing if it can happen, but it’s still a possibility to consider

The fact that people keep trotting out this idea about the future potential of NFT gaming is evidence that people know basically nothing about making video games or the assets that go into them. And neither do the founders of any NFT projects with the rate at which they crash and burn if they aren't outright scams.

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

#619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But again, not only is that trustful (after all, the "moonlight sword" name, image, etc, are subject to copyright and trademark) if From decides to allow that they can just open an API.

“Is thing in wallet” strikes me as much easier to implement then n^2 api integrations across companies. It’d be easier to do the api method via drm platforms like steam at the cost of lock-in to those platforms; cross pc/console access to any item would be far from guaranteed. Outsourcing all of that logic to a centralized (ex google blockchain) or decentralized blockchain and wallet just seems like a more scalable (…

> Outsourcing all of that logic to a centralized (ex google blockchain) or decentralized blockchain and wallet just seems like a more scalable (num of actors not tps) approach with a low barrier for entry for each individual actor.

I do think for this to make sense you'd have to have, you know, one blockchain everyone used otherwise you still have the "10 app stores" problem, no?

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

#620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would allow hardware DRM in your box just to allow Nvidia to "revoke" ownership of your card when you use it "incorrectly". Yeah I'll pass.

The parent comment makes no mention of giving Nvidia control over the GPU. You know you can have remote access features that are solely under your control, right? That's how SSH works. You should read comments before you reply to them.

This is so painfully pedantic and obviously not what the original commenter meant. What point would a remote killswitch have to deter crypto miners if the owner of the card (the crypto miner) fully controlled it as you imply. Use your head.
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