19 ms·

I would normally be appalled by such an action, but the supply issues for RTX 30x0 cards are beyond ridiculous. Mining trashes the environment and, for the majo

I would normally be appalled by such an action, but the supply issues for RTX 30x0 cards are beyond ridiculous. Mining trashes the environment and, for the majority of crypto assets/volumes, does not provide genuinely valuable economic activity besides speculation (I say that as someone who has put thousands of dollars into crypto in the past). Why should people who want to try some ML/DL at home (maybe they even need it for a class they're taking), and might also want to play the occasional game, have to pay an arm and a leg to get their (remaining) hands on a modern, efficient card? I really wish Nvidia would do this across the RTX product line. Edit: the "Syrian refugee crossing into Europe" trope might pop up as a counter-argument for crypto. I am Syrian and still have relatives there. Refugees' assets are a drop in the ocean of speculators' mining and HODLing.

Tenoke 6y ago
> I really wish Nvidia would do this across the RTX product line. I'd rather they have scaled up the demand. They've had years of this to take the higher profits and invest them. Even if people don't use them for mining, the demand for Machine Learning is there - instead GeForce cards have been banned for use in data centers for years. Not to mention that the crippling of 3060 would be trivial for mining operations to get around.
- ralmidani 6y ago
  I understand Nvidia is no angel. And I'm totally OK with them doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Also, my concern is not for data centers running creepy ML models that invade users' privacy, but for the average home user who wants to get started with ML and at the same time get decent frame rates when they play a game.
  - Tenoke 6y ago
    >I understand Nvidia is no angel. And I'm totally OK with them doing the right thing for the wrong reason. My argument is they should and could have scaled up the production rather than just shuffling around which group they hurt or help at the expense of which other (be it miners, ML folks or gamers). This isn't the 'right thing', it just helps the group you prefer on this round.
    - tomatotomato37 6y ago
      You do understand Nvidia is a fabless company, correct? Scaling up demand isn't just calling up some factory manager and telling them to work harder, it's getting into a massive cagefight with AMD, Apple, and every other company out there that needs silicon all for the amusement of Samsung/TSMC
    - belltaco 6y ago
      https://www.networkworld.com/article/3602456/youre-not-imagining-things-there-is-a-serious-chip-shortage.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/3602456/youre-not-imagi...
    - PixelOfDeath 6y ago
      Ask AMD why scaling up to mining demand is a bad idea. A sudden implosion of demand combined with a flooding of the used GPU marked. Better not plan on bringing out any new GPU architectures when your warehouses are still full of the previous generation.
      - Tenoke 6y ago
        Except with NVIDIA there's already extra demand if they need it - they can allow GeForce into data centers which are currently artificially disallowed.
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    > but for the average home user who wants to get started with ML and at the same time get decent frame rates when they play a game. Getting started with ML doesn't require a GPU at all. Realistically, any video card or even a modern CPU is more than sufficient to get started with ML learning. It's a myth that $1000 gaming video cards are necessary or even helpful for learning basic ML.
- throwaway1777 6y ago
  You do realize there is a global chip shortage right now? It’s not as easy as clicking a button in ec2 to suddenly make more gpus.
  - Tenoke 6y ago
    This has been going on for half a decade. Yes, it's not as easy as ec2 but it's not a problem that money can't help with solving faster.
    - reducesuffering 6y ago
      TSM is slammed with chip demand from Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, and others. Like, 100% booked for the next year or two. They have been heavily investing in state of the art manufacturing facilities for decades and it's still not enough.
      - reader_mode 6y ago
        Nvidia is using Samsung for 3xxx series cards
  - Der_Einzige 6y ago
    Sounds like a good opportunity for the US to significantly expand its domestic chap manufacturing industry. I don't care if the lag time is 5 years or more before the first chip rolls off the production lines - because I don't anticipate demand for chips will significantly reduce in the future.
    - anonisko 6y ago
      Related, https://www.epsilontheory.com/taiwan-is-now-arrakis/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/taiwan-is-now-arrakis/ Development of domestic chip manufacturing might even start to become a national security concern, leading to even more money flowing in on top of the money coming from crypto miners.
bob1029 6y ago
The practical utility of crypto is such a joke when compared to the intended use cases that all of the speculators fawn over. The idea that crypto is a "store of value" seems like meager coping with the fact that transaction rates in a distributed system necessarily must suck compared to what Visa, et. al. are doing with IBM mainframes and racks of x86 hardware contained in the same datacenter (i.e. 1~2ms latency domain vs seconds to minutes). For reference, Visa does thousands to tens-of-thousands of transactions per second. The cost to run one of these transactions is negligible because it can be handled so quickly. Contrast with BTC, which struggles to hit 10 transactions per second on a good day. I used to work in a facility that monitored debit transactions. Our SLAs were ridiculous. Certain customers had requirements that if a single transaction took more than 100 ms, we were to open a ticket and contact their help desk immediately. This is the type of rigor it takes to maintain a financial payment network that consumers will have confidence in using. This is not something that can be solved with current crypto approaches. There are information theory constraints regarding how long it would take to reach consensus across a distributed system and in such a way that transactions are serializable.
- deweller 6y ago
  The long term road map for Ethereum 2 is 100k transactions per second. This is a theoretical maximum and it will likely take years to get there. This defies your assertion that scaling cannot ever be achieved with current crypto approaches.
  - blitz_skull 6y ago
    Okay, so for the foreseeable future: "The practical utility of crypto is such a joke when compared to the intended use cases that all of the speculators fawn over" Not really a change in semantics here. It's still the point that crypto promised a LOT of really cool things for fintech that realistically won't materialize for a long time.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - 6y ago
option 6y ago
how Syrian refugees (or any other people from war torn place) convert their assets to crypto before leaving?
- ralmidani 6y ago
  Good question. I don't know the details, but early on in Assad's war against Syrians, the situation was easier than it is now. In 2012/2013, a lot of cash was taken to neighboring countries.
- selfhoster11 6y ago
  They don't need to mine for that, merely buy existing Bitcoins.
  - Leherenn 6y ago
    Is that easy? I assume they are going to have Syrian pounds as cash. Then I guess you need to put them in a local bank account and use that account to buy BTC. Can you buy BTC with Syrian pounds? If yes, wouldn't the exchange rate be dreadful? I'm not sure exactly who would want SYP.
    - throwaway1777 6y ago
      You need someone to accept Syrian pounds for the nvidia gpu too, and you need to buy electricity and have functional internet service... there’s really no reason to mine instead of buy in this case.
- mactrey 6y ago
  There are no two ways about it: the Syrian refugees who were planning to buy RTX 3060s for mining are going to be hurt by this announcement.
- jonhohle 6y ago
  Hypothetically, if you are seeking fleeing hardship would you want to convert your assets to a public ledger?
baybal2 6y ago
Even $2000 video cards are sold out I'm speechless
- kyriakos 6y ago
  It doesn't surprise me. My 2yo GPU is selling in EU for double the price I originally bought it from the same retailer. Its the first time computer hardware is actually not depreciating but gaining value as it ages.
  - pyr0hu 6y ago
    Same, bought a GTX1660 Super, and the price doubled since. It's madness what's happening on the GPU market.
  - gabereiser 6y ago
    A year ago I bought a RTX 3070 when I rebuilt my entertainment rig. I replaced a GTX1080 and got rid of it. I should have kept it and resold it. It's crazy and I wish there were two categories of cards. Mining cards and Gaming cards. Looks like NVidia feels the same and is making dedicated cards for the basement farmers.
    - felipelemos 6y ago
      Maybe you are confusing with the series 20XX? The RTX 3070 were only released a bit more than 4 months ago.
      - gabereiser 6y ago
        You’re right, it’s a 2070
  - paulmd 6y ago
    When I upgraded to a 3070 I sold my 1080 Ti for 50% more than I paid for it and at this point I think I could have gotten more (it was a blower so not exactly a desirable card though). Cost me 100 bucks after tax to do the upgrade. Then I scored a 3080 and sold the 3070 for $700 plus shipping. It's to the point where I'm thinking about selling my "backup" 1060 3GB card, but if my GPU died then I would be in real trouble because lol at getting ahold of GPUs right now.
dumbfounder 6y ago
I think it absolutely makes sense for them to customize their products for the market they want to serve, even if it is artificial, that is their prerogative. But the product is just for gamers that want better games. I think it's funny that is the moral high road here.
- qqii 6y ago
  By the same logic those interested in ML shouldn't be buying up Geforce cards and should buy their Tesla line.
  - spiznnx 6y ago
    Yes, Nvidia would like that as well. I expect them to further cripple more non-gaming applications on the Geforce line going forward.
  - dumbfounder 6y ago
    They should be free to create products that foster the community they believe will give them the best returns in the long run. Clearly they don't think that is crypto, they probably think it is either a fad, or that it will move to proof of stake, and that the demand will subside. So if they leave their core community high and dry during that time they could lose favor. I don't know if that's right or wrong, they clearly have way more insight than I, but either way I support their right to make the decision. They aren't the only company in the world, others should step up if they see a frothy market. ML is a bit different in that the applications are probably here to stay, and the applications are "legit". But, the ML market will not have the same brand loyalty that the consumer gaming market will. Consumers like brands and they stick with them. Companies spending money on ML are going to flock to the cheapest TCO, and a lot of this will also be abstracted through cloud offerings. In short, they don't want to piss off what they believe to be their cash cow for years to come.
    - Shorel 6y ago
      I see it the other way around. Some gamers are switching to AMD now that Nvidia cards are sold everywhere. Meanwhile, companies are tied to CUDA, and AMD still doesn't have a similar API offering. There's some progress, but they're not there yet.
glsdfgkjsklfj 6y ago
This comment is peak Liberal hacker news.
ljm 6y ago
The environmental issues are concerning to me. The amount of electricity being burned through for what is essentially a skeuomorphism of gold mining, pretty much primarily for speculation now, is beyond belief. It's a completely artificial, and artificially scarce, product. Whatever original hopeful goals the creator(s) of Bitcoin had with this idea, and decentralised currency...if there was any victory at all it is a pyrrhic one when you look at the externalities. If you can call a digital gold rush a victory, anyway. The physical one in the US was pretty bad for a lot of people.
- infogulch 6y ago
  > skeuomorphism of gold mining I'm gonna steal that one, thanks. :D
  - emteycz 6y ago
    Don't, it's not accurate at all. "Mining" in the context of Ethereum is what powers it, not some abstract useless calculations.
    - ljm 6y ago
      Someone's out there digging ethereum out of the wall of a cave? Panning for it in a river delta? No? Then it's a calculation. Or an abstract and useless one in your terms.
      - emteycz 6y ago
        It's a calculation, but not a useless one done just to simulate gold mining, unlike Bitcoin. Look deeper into what Ethereum actually is, it's not just a cryptocoin, it's also a computing platform.
        HDMI_Cable 6y ago
        > Look deeper into what Ethereum actually is, I don’t have an opinion on this but if you’re making a point, you should be the one providing evidence, not telling others to look it up.
vbezhenar 6y ago
Just wait until they'll limit ML/DL using those heuristics because you're supposed to buy specialized hardware and let gamers play their games. First they came for the miners, and I did not speak out.
- liuliu 6y ago
  Yes, that is worrying. But, they already have license in place to ensure no one uses their gaming GPUs in the cloud, where the big money is already. (And it worked, I cannot find any low-cost cloud providers with gaming GPUs for GPGPU computing). I hope they don't, given that there is limited upside and a lot of push back from dev community.
- buildbot 6y ago
  If I recall correctly; they already do this by really limiting mixed precision performance on the GeForce line. I believe Titans typically where excluded, but otherwise for full FP16 support you needed a Quadro or Tesla card.
  - zaptrem 6y ago
    Is that limitation in hardware or software? I always thought it was a physical difference in chip design.
- wruza 6y ago
  So let’s wait until BTC hits $100k and a generic videocard for any purpose costs $5000. That would be much better than paying extra $200 over MSRP for ML. /s
  - xur17 6y ago
    People are not mining Bitcoin on videocards.
    - wruza 6y ago
      But BTC price influences all crypto. Read it as “ETH hits $5k” if that matters.
ajnin 6y ago
I see that as just another hardware manufacturer limiting what people can do with their hardware. And "creating tailored products for customers with specific needs" ? Just regular old market segmentation as they've always done, to extract more profit. Don't be mistaken, thus is about money, Nvidia does not act in the interests of the end user but their own. "think of the gamers" is just a way to put their foot in the door.
- wruza 6y ago
  It would be very suspicious of nvidia if it acted in others interests. What bugs me most is that in many win-win situations (specifically, nvidia takes more markets, I get a videocard for much less than $2500) there is a guy who proclaims freedom über alles, stretching good intentions ad absurdum.
andrepd 6y ago
As opposed to...? What valuable asset is impervious to speculation?
127 6y ago
I'm sure a person whose life is saved by being able to transfer his or her wealth across the border doesn't feel like a drop in the ocean.
chaosharmonic 6y ago
> Mining trashes the environment and, for the majority of crypto assets/volumes, does not provide genuinely valuable economic activity besides speculation I've actually been wondering about this -- are there any major ones that meaningfully provide other kinds of value for all of the computational resources they're using? My understanding of blockchain as a concept is pretty surface-level, so maybe I'm just missing something obvious here. But at least at first glance, it kind of baffles me that so many of them are using seemingly arbitrary hash algorithms to calculate proof of work, when they could instead be tied to distributed projects -- folding@home, for instance -- and measuring actual work.
- Qworg 6y ago
  Actual work can be monetized. The waste demonstrates commitment to the truth. Any non-waste reduces the security of the commitment, as you're getting paid no matter what.
- qqii 6y ago
  GPU mining is mostly ethereum. Ethereum mining isn't just arbitrary hash functions, its network settled $1T last year[0]. [0]: https://www.newsbtc.com/news/ethereum/ethereum-on-pace-to-settle-over-1-trillion-in-transactions-in-2020-analyst/ https://www.newsbtc.com/news/ethereum/ethereum-on-pace-to-se...
- Forbo 6y ago
  It exists, it's called GridCoin. It's a proof of stake chain that disburses coins based on work units completed on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). There's a few others that take different approaches like Golem Network Token, Nym, Oxen, etc.
gchamonlive 6y ago
That is why there is the need to at the very least discuss government taxation over the mining and transaction of cryptocurrency without evoquing heated but unfruitful debate
- lozaning 6y ago
  Im curious to know how much more in taxes you think I should have to pay on my mining profits above and beyond the capital gains taxes I already have to pay. I'd understand if you wanted all economic activity to have to figure in the negative externalities before a profit could be realized by stake/shareholders, but your comment implies to me that crypto should have some kind of special tax because you're upset you cant buy a gpu.
  - gchamonlive 6y ago
    > because you're upset you cant buy a gpu. This is exactly the kind of antagonism that is detrimental to everybody. Read op comment again: > Mining trashes the environment and, for the majority of crypto assets/volumes, does not provide genuinely valuable economic activity besides speculation I am not "upset I can't buy a GPU", mining uses a lot of power[1] and its environmental impact is not being taken into consideration. So yeah, if mining is damaging the planet and if we can assess the damage quantitatively and link it to mining without a doubt, it should have to be taxed accordingly. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952
    - lozaning 6y ago
      > So yeah, if mining is damaging the planet and if we can assess the damage quantitatively and link it to mining without a doubt, it should have to be taxed accordingly. Replace 'mining' with 'anything' and I fully understand as I'd said. If I'm running 3,000 watts worth of GPUs at home to heat my house, and you're running 3,000 watts worth of space heaters at your house, I'm certainly not damaging the environment anymore than you are. We should both pay the FULL cost of the toll the generation of the required electricity cost to run our equipment. Why I should pay taxes above and beyond what I already do because my heater makes money is where you totally loose me.
gopty 6y ago
Please tell your relatives to stay at home. In Europe we don't need more immigrants from tribal societies. Thank you.
- dang 6y ago
  We've banned this account. You can't take HN threads into hell like this, and you've done it before. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
epa 6y ago
Isn't there an incentive for the world if NVDA continue s innovating in their GPUs such that they use less energy to achieve the same result as years prior?
DavidSJ 6y ago
The environmental impact of mining is quite substantial and I agree that this calls into question whether cryptocurrencies are of overall benefit to society. However, it is important to note that mining does do something useful: it secures the network from attack. To my knowledge, there is no known alternative solution to the distributed trust-free consensus problem.
qqii 6y ago
Fundimental supply issues aren't going to be solved by releasing a mining variant and artificially limiting a gaming variant. At the end of the day this is still a supply and demand problem. I bet that we'll still see 3060s being scalped and brought at ridiculous markup. Just becuase your use case is more noble doesn't change the fundimental issue of supply and demand. Nividia also already has artificial restrictions on their GTX and RTX lines to produce a product for your use case: the Tesla series.
ineedasername 6y ago
Besides, a Syrian refugees who can manage to get their liquid assets into a digital store like bitcoin could probably alsoamage to get them into a commodities account and buy gold. Bitcoin isn't the only way, or even most convenient way, of moving assets across borders.
- mannerheim 6y ago
  Cryptocurrencies are supposedly popular among Venezuelans, although I wonder what the advantage is of using them versus any fiat that isn't the bolivar. Anyway, seems easier for them to obtain crypto than getting a commodities account and buying gold, since presumably one would have to deal with KYC/AML in that case, and one can continue to use crypto as a currency within the country (though I doubt Bitcoin, since the transaction fees probably amount to more than a typical Venezuelan earns in a month).
- HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
  Paper gold maybe. Buying actual gold tends to be harder than one might expect and it's almost always monitored and kept track of.
Der_Einzige 6y ago
Yeah the shortages of RTX 3000 series cards are likely actively reducing AI/ML innovations in the short term. I have no idea what to do about these shortages - but it seems to be something that needs more regulation so that crypto miners don't continue to hoard the cards.
TechnoTimeStop 6y ago
Someone clearly hasn't figured out what Ethereum is, or Ethereum 2.0 in how proof of stake actually makes most of your weak premise completely evaporate.
soheil 6y ago
> does not provide genuinely valuable economic activity Not yet, but don't presume current economical status quo is working flawlessly. The current monetary system is kind of a joke, it no longer is backed by gold, in fact it's not backed by anything. So if you think about it for more than a minute why should it be that currency in the US should have any value? Creating an alternate store of value that is not just printed or made up and can be proven to exist at the very least provides something not too dissimilar to a database backup in case of a complete meltdown of fiat currency. It, however, does need to be allowed to get sufficiently big for a future restore to work. That is worth a bit of electricity. Yes, a bit, as a percentage of the GDP.

Tenoke 6y ago

> I really wish Nvidia would do this across the RTX product line. I'd rather they have scaled up the demand. They've had years of this to take the higher profits and invest them. Even if people don't use them for mining, the demand for Machine Learning is there - instead GeForce cards have been banned for use in data centers for years. Not to mention that the crippling of 3060 would be trivial for mining operations to get around.

ralmidani 6y ago
I understand Nvidia is no angel. And I'm totally OK with them doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Also, my concern is not for data centers running creepy ML models that invade users' privacy, but for the average home user who wants to get started with ML and at the same time get decent frame rates when they play a game.
- Tenoke 6y ago
  >I understand Nvidia is no angel. And I'm totally OK with them doing the right thing for the wrong reason. My argument is they should and could have scaled up the production rather than just shuffling around which group they hurt or help at the expense of which other (be it miners, ML folks or gamers). This isn't the 'right thing', it just helps the group you prefer on this round.
  - tomatotomato37 6y ago
    You do understand Nvidia is a fabless company, correct? Scaling up demand isn't just calling up some factory manager and telling them to work harder, it's getting into a massive cagefight with AMD, Apple, and every other company out there that needs silicon all for the amusement of Samsung/TSMC
  - belltaco 6y ago
    https://www.networkworld.com/article/3602456/youre-not-imagining-things-there-is-a-serious-chip-shortage.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/3602456/youre-not-imagi...
  - PixelOfDeath 6y ago
    Ask AMD why scaling up to mining demand is a bad idea. A sudden implosion of demand combined with a flooding of the used GPU marked. Better not plan on bringing out any new GPU architectures when your warehouses are still full of the previous generation.
    - Tenoke 6y ago
      Except with NVIDIA there's already extra demand if they need it - they can allow GeForce into data centers which are currently artificially disallowed.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > but for the average home user who wants to get started with ML and at the same time get decent frame rates when they play a game. Getting started with ML doesn't require a GPU at all. Realistically, any video card or even a modern CPU is more than sufficient to get started with ML learning. It's a myth that $1000 gaming video cards are necessary or even helpful for learning basic ML.
throwaway1777 6y ago
You do realize there is a global chip shortage right now? It’s not as easy as clicking a button in ec2 to suddenly make more gpus.
- Tenoke 6y ago
  This has been going on for half a decade. Yes, it's not as easy as ec2 but it's not a problem that money can't help with solving faster.
  - reducesuffering 6y ago
    TSM is slammed with chip demand from Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, and others. Like, 100% booked for the next year or two. They have been heavily investing in state of the art manufacturing facilities for decades and it's still not enough.
    - reader_mode 6y ago
      Nvidia is using Samsung for 3xxx series cards
- Der_Einzige 6y ago
  Sounds like a good opportunity for the US to significantly expand its domestic chap manufacturing industry. I don't care if the lag time is 5 years or more before the first chip rolls off the production lines - because I don't anticipate demand for chips will significantly reduce in the future.
  - anonisko 6y ago
    Related, https://www.epsilontheory.com/taiwan-is-now-arrakis/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/taiwan-is-now-arrakis/ Development of domestic chip manufacturing might even start to become a national security concern, leading to even more money flowing in on top of the money coming from crypto miners.

bob1029 6y ago

The practical utility of crypto is such a joke when compared to the intended use cases that all of the speculators fawn over. The idea that crypto is a "store of value" seems like meager coping with the fact that transaction rates in a distributed system necessarily must suck compared to what Visa, et. al. are doing with IBM mainframes and racks of x86 hardware contained in the same datacenter (i.e. 1~2ms latency domain vs seconds to minutes). For reference, Visa does thousands to tens-of-thousands of transactions per second. The cost to run one of these transactions is negligible because it can be handled so quickly. Contrast with BTC, which struggles to hit 10 transactions per second on a good day. I used to work in a facility that monitored debit transactions. Our SLAs were ridiculous. Certain customers had requirements that if a single transaction took more than 100 ms, we were to open a ticket and contact their help desk immediately. This is the type of rigor it takes to maintain a financial payment network that consumers will have confidence in using. This is not something that can be solved with current crypto approaches. There are information theory constraints regarding how long it would take to reach consensus across a distributed system and in such a way that transactions are serializable.

deweller 6y ago
The long term road map for Ethereum 2 is 100k transactions per second. This is a theoretical maximum and it will likely take years to get there. This defies your assertion that scaling cannot ever be achieved with current crypto approaches.
- blitz_skull 6y ago
  Okay, so for the foreseeable future: "The practical utility of crypto is such a joke when compared to the intended use cases that all of the speculators fawn over" Not really a change in semantics here. It's still the point that crypto promised a LOT of really cool things for fintech that realistically won't materialize for a long time.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 6y ago

option 6y ago

how Syrian refugees (or any other people from war torn place) convert their assets to crypto before leaving?

ralmidani 6y ago
Good question. I don't know the details, but early on in Assad's war against Syrians, the situation was easier than it is now. In 2012/2013, a lot of cash was taken to neighboring countries.
selfhoster11 6y ago
They don't need to mine for that, merely buy existing Bitcoins.
- Leherenn 6y ago
  Is that easy? I assume they are going to have Syrian pounds as cash. Then I guess you need to put them in a local bank account and use that account to buy BTC. Can you buy BTC with Syrian pounds? If yes, wouldn't the exchange rate be dreadful? I'm not sure exactly who would want SYP.
  - throwaway1777 6y ago
    You need someone to accept Syrian pounds for the nvidia gpu too, and you need to buy electricity and have functional internet service... there’s really no reason to mine instead of buy in this case.
mactrey 6y ago
There are no two ways about it: the Syrian refugees who were planning to buy RTX 3060s for mining are going to be hurt by this announcement.
jonhohle 6y ago
Hypothetically, if you are seeking fleeing hardship would you want to convert your assets to a public ledger?

baybal2 6y ago

Even $2000 video cards are sold out I'm speechless

kyriakos 6y ago
It doesn't surprise me. My 2yo GPU is selling in EU for double the price I originally bought it from the same retailer. Its the first time computer hardware is actually not depreciating but gaining value as it ages.
- pyr0hu 6y ago
  Same, bought a GTX1660 Super, and the price doubled since. It's madness what's happening on the GPU market.
- gabereiser 6y ago
  A year ago I bought a RTX 3070 when I rebuilt my entertainment rig. I replaced a GTX1080 and got rid of it. I should have kept it and resold it. It's crazy and I wish there were two categories of cards. Mining cards and Gaming cards. Looks like NVidia feels the same and is making dedicated cards for the basement farmers.
  - felipelemos 6y ago
    Maybe you are confusing with the series 20XX? The RTX 3070 were only released a bit more than 4 months ago.
    - gabereiser 6y ago
      You’re right, it’s a 2070
- paulmd 6y ago
  When I upgraded to a 3070 I sold my 1080 Ti for 50% more than I paid for it and at this point I think I could have gotten more (it was a blower so not exactly a desirable card though). Cost me 100 bucks after tax to do the upgrade. Then I scored a 3080 and sold the 3070 for $700 plus shipping. It's to the point where I'm thinking about selling my "backup" 1060 3GB card, but if my GPU died then I would be in real trouble because lol at getting ahold of GPUs right now.

dumbfounder 6y ago

I think it absolutely makes sense for them to customize their products for the market they want to serve, even if it is artificial, that is their prerogative. But the product is just for gamers that want better games. I think it's funny that is the moral high road here.

qqii 6y ago
By the same logic those interested in ML shouldn't be buying up Geforce cards and should buy their Tesla line.
- spiznnx 6y ago
  Yes, Nvidia would like that as well. I expect them to further cripple more non-gaming applications on the Geforce line going forward.
- dumbfounder 6y ago
  They should be free to create products that foster the community they believe will give them the best returns in the long run. Clearly they don't think that is crypto, they probably think it is either a fad, or that it will move to proof of stake, and that the demand will subside. So if they leave their core community high and dry during that time they could lose favor. I don't know if that's right or wrong, they clearly have way more insight than I, but either way I support their right to make the decision. They aren't the only company in the world, others should step up if they see a frothy market. ML is a bit different in that the applications are probably here to stay, and the applications are "legit". But, the ML market will not have the same brand loyalty that the consumer gaming market will. Consumers like brands and they stick with them. Companies spending money on ML are going to flock to the cheapest TCO, and a lot of this will also be abstracted through cloud offerings. In short, they don't want to piss off what they believe to be their cash cow for years to come.
  - Shorel 6y ago
    I see it the other way around. Some gamers are switching to AMD now that Nvidia cards are sold everywhere. Meanwhile, companies are tied to CUDA, and AMD still doesn't have a similar API offering. There's some progress, but they're not there yet.

glsdfgkjsklfj 6y ago

This comment is peak Liberal hacker news.

ljm 6y ago

The environmental issues are concerning to me. The amount of electricity being burned through for what is essentially a skeuomorphism of gold mining, pretty much primarily for speculation now, is beyond belief. It's a completely artificial, and artificially scarce, product. Whatever original hopeful goals the creator(s) of Bitcoin had with this idea, and decentralised currency...if there was any victory at all it is a pyrrhic one when you look at the externalities. If you can call a digital gold rush a victory, anyway. The physical one in the US was pretty bad for a lot of people.

infogulch 6y ago
> skeuomorphism of gold mining I'm gonna steal that one, thanks. :D
- emteycz 6y ago
  Don't, it's not accurate at all. "Mining" in the context of Ethereum is what powers it, not some abstract useless calculations.
  - ljm 6y ago
    Someone's out there digging ethereum out of the wall of a cave? Panning for it in a river delta? No? Then it's a calculation. Or an abstract and useless one in your terms.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      It's a calculation, but not a useless one done just to simulate gold mining, unlike Bitcoin. Look deeper into what Ethereum actually is, it's not just a cryptocoin, it's also a computing platform.
      - HDMI_Cable 6y ago
        > Look deeper into what Ethereum actually is, I don’t have an opinion on this but if you’re making a point, you should be the one providing evidence, not telling others to look it up.

vbezhenar 6y ago

Just wait until they'll limit ML/DL using those heuristics because you're supposed to buy specialized hardware and let gamers play their games. First they came for the miners, and I did not speak out.

liuliu 6y ago
Yes, that is worrying. But, they already have license in place to ensure no one uses their gaming GPUs in the cloud, where the big money is already. (And it worked, I cannot find any low-cost cloud providers with gaming GPUs for GPGPU computing). I hope they don't, given that there is limited upside and a lot of push back from dev community.
buildbot 6y ago
If I recall correctly; they already do this by really limiting mixed precision performance on the GeForce line. I believe Titans typically where excluded, but otherwise for full FP16 support you needed a Quadro or Tesla card.
- zaptrem 6y ago
  Is that limitation in hardware or software? I always thought it was a physical difference in chip design.
wruza 6y ago
So let’s wait until BTC hits $100k and a generic videocard for any purpose costs $5000. That would be much better than paying extra $200 over MSRP for ML. /s
- xur17 6y ago
  People are not mining Bitcoin on videocards.
  - wruza 6y ago
    But BTC price influences all crypto. Read it as “ETH hits $5k” if that matters.

ajnin 6y ago

I see that as just another hardware manufacturer limiting what people can do with their hardware. And "creating tailored products for customers with specific needs" ? Just regular old market segmentation as they've always done, to extract more profit. Don't be mistaken, thus is about money, Nvidia does not act in the interests of the end user but their own. "think of the gamers" is just a way to put their foot in the door.

wruza 6y ago
It would be very suspicious of nvidia if it acted in others interests. What bugs me most is that in many win-win situations (specifically, nvidia takes more markets, I get a videocard for much less than $2500) there is a guy who proclaims freedom über alles, stretching good intentions ad absurdum.

andrepd 6y ago

As opposed to...? What valuable asset is impervious to speculation?

127 6y ago

I'm sure a person whose life is saved by being able to transfer his or her wealth across the border doesn't feel like a drop in the ocean.

chaosharmonic 6y ago

> Mining trashes the environment and, for the majority of crypto assets/volumes, does not provide genuinely valuable economic activity besides speculation I've actually been wondering about this -- are there any major ones that meaningfully provide other kinds of value for all of the computational resources they're using? My understanding of blockchain as a concept is pretty surface-level, so maybe I'm just missing something obvious here. But at least at first glance, it kind of baffles me that so many of them are using seemingly arbitrary hash algorithms to calculate proof of work, when they could instead be tied to distributed projects -- folding@home, for instance -- and measuring actual work.

Qworg 6y ago
Actual work can be monetized. The waste demonstrates commitment to the truth. Any non-waste reduces the security of the commitment, as you're getting paid no matter what.
qqii 6y ago
GPU mining is mostly ethereum. Ethereum mining isn't just arbitrary hash functions, its network settled $1T last year[0]. [0]: https://www.newsbtc.com/news/ethereum/ethereum-on-pace-to-settle-over-1-trillion-in-transactions-in-2020-analyst/ https://www.newsbtc.com/news/ethereum/ethereum-on-pace-to-se...
Forbo 6y ago
It exists, it's called GridCoin. It's a proof of stake chain that disburses coins based on work units completed on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). There's a few others that take different approaches like Golem Network Token, Nym, Oxen, etc.

gchamonlive 6y ago

That is why there is the need to at the very least discuss government taxation over the mining and transaction of cryptocurrency without evoquing heated but unfruitful debate

lozaning 6y ago
Im curious to know how much more in taxes you think I should have to pay on my mining profits above and beyond the capital gains taxes I already have to pay. I'd understand if you wanted all economic activity to have to figure in the negative externalities before a profit could be realized by stake/shareholders, but your comment implies to me that crypto should have some kind of special tax because you're upset you cant buy a gpu.
- gchamonlive 6y ago
  > because you're upset you cant buy a gpu. This is exactly the kind of antagonism that is detrimental to everybody. Read op comment again: > Mining trashes the environment and, for the majority of crypto assets/volumes, does not provide genuinely valuable economic activity besides speculation I am not "upset I can't buy a GPU", mining uses a lot of power[1] and its environmental impact is not being taken into consideration. So yeah, if mining is damaging the planet and if we can assess the damage quantitatively and link it to mining without a doubt, it should have to be taxed accordingly. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952
  - lozaning 6y ago
    > So yeah, if mining is damaging the planet and if we can assess the damage quantitatively and link it to mining without a doubt, it should have to be taxed accordingly. Replace 'mining' with 'anything' and I fully understand as I'd said. If I'm running 3,000 watts worth of GPUs at home to heat my house, and you're running 3,000 watts worth of space heaters at your house, I'm certainly not damaging the environment anymore than you are. We should both pay the FULL cost of the toll the generation of the required electricity cost to run our equipment. Why I should pay taxes above and beyond what I already do because my heater makes money is where you totally loose me.

gopty 6y ago

Please tell your relatives to stay at home. In Europe we don't need more immigrants from tribal societies. Thank you.

dang 6y ago
We've banned this account. You can't take HN threads into hell like this, and you've done it before. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

epa 6y ago

Isn't there an incentive for the world if NVDA continue s innovating in their GPUs such that they use less energy to achieve the same result as years prior?

DavidSJ 6y ago

The environmental impact of mining is quite substantial and I agree that this calls into question whether cryptocurrencies are of overall benefit to society. However, it is important to note that mining does do something useful: it secures the network from attack. To my knowledge, there is no known alternative solution to the distributed trust-free consensus problem.

qqii 6y ago

Fundimental supply issues aren't going to be solved by releasing a mining variant and artificially limiting a gaming variant. At the end of the day this is still a supply and demand problem. I bet that we'll still see 3060s being scalped and brought at ridiculous markup. Just becuase your use case is more noble doesn't change the fundimental issue of supply and demand. Nividia also already has artificial restrictions on their GTX and RTX lines to produce a product for your use case: the Tesla series.

ineedasername 6y ago

Besides, a Syrian refugees who can manage to get their liquid assets into a digital store like bitcoin could probably alsoamage to get them into a commodities account and buy gold. Bitcoin isn't the only way, or even most convenient way, of moving assets across borders.

mannerheim 6y ago
Cryptocurrencies are supposedly popular among Venezuelans, although I wonder what the advantage is of using them versus any fiat that isn't the bolivar. Anyway, seems easier for them to obtain crypto than getting a commodities account and buying gold, since presumably one would have to deal with KYC/AML in that case, and one can continue to use crypto as a currency within the country (though I doubt Bitcoin, since the transaction fees probably amount to more than a typical Venezuelan earns in a month).
HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
Paper gold maybe. Buying actual gold tends to be harder than one might expect and it's almost always monitored and kept track of.

Der_Einzige 6y ago

Yeah the shortages of RTX 3000 series cards are likely actively reducing AI/ML innovations in the short term. I have no idea what to do about these shortages - but it seems to be something that needs more regulation so that crypto miners don't continue to hoard the cards.

TechnoTimeStop 6y ago

Someone clearly hasn't figured out what Ethereum is, or Ethereum 2.0 in how proof of stake actually makes most of your weak premise completely evaporate.

soheil 6y ago

> does not provide genuinely valuable economic activity Not yet, but don't presume current economical status quo is working flawlessly. The current monetary system is kind of a joke, it no longer is backed by gold, in fact it's not backed by anything. So if you think about it for more than a minute why should it be that currency in the US should have any value? Creating an alternate store of value that is not just printed or made up and can be proven to exist at the very least provides something not too dissimilar to a database backup in case of a complete meltdown of fiat currency. It, however, does need to be allowed to get sufficiently big for a future restore to work. That is worth a bit of electricity. Yes, a bit, as a percentage of the GDP.