5 ms·

If 20 years ago a cyberpunk author pitched a story to me about thieves that steal a truckload full of AI-grade processors in order to profit off a digital gold

If 20 years ago a cyberpunk author pitched a story to me about thieves that steal a truckload full of AI-grade processors in order to profit off a digital gold rush I'd say "cool story bro but it doesn't make sense technically"

paxys 5y ago
I would have said "cool, I just saw Fast & Furious as well" (which released exactly 20 years ago funny enough)
- slg 5y ago
  Yeah, maybe I am missing something, but what is new or interesting about this story? In the first Fast and Furious movie they were hijacking trucks to steal DVD players and TV/VCR combinations to sell on the black/grey market. Isn't this the exact same thing except with newer tech?
  - parsimo2010 5y ago
    Well, the real life GPU thieves probably didn’t do a high speed heist by driving cars in formation with the truck. They say the cards were stolen en route, but it’s probably just that they took the truck at a truck stop.
    - attythrowaway 5y ago
      In these cases the driver is generally paid to walk away, play dumb, or some combination of the two. Escalating to violence taking a truck undermines long-term success doing the same, just like modern piracy somewhat forced shipping lines to enhance security, thereby making piracy harder. Organized crime in the US figured out a long time ago that hurting a driver generally leads to the collapse of the whole operation and indictments. Ask any trucker how often they’re approached.
      - MisterTea 5y ago
        The whole romantic scene of a hijacking or theft is plausable. But I also have my money on inside jobs. I knew a truck driver who was a thief. One story: PS2 is released. He goes to the Bestbuy warehouse to pickup a skid of 20 PS2's to deliver to a Bestbuy. They seal the trailer BUT the supervisor at the warehouse was busy so he hands the seal to my friend to put on the trailer. My friend slips it on and makes it look like he snapped it together but didn't. Warehouse guy sees the "sealed" trailer and signs the paperwork. 8 of those 20 PS2's didn't make it to Bestbuy. He unloaded them with the help of his wife and then simply snapped the seal on. The store manager accused him of the theft since it was a local point to point delivery and inspected the trailer for holes or signs of theft but found nothing. He shrugged and said well your guy signed for this count and sealed the trailer so not my problem. He also told me the owner of the trucking company used the warehouse as his own personal shopping mall. Turns out the whole trucking company, drivers, warehouse workers, management, owner, all of em, were stealing. And yes, they eventually got caught. But it happens all the time.
  - mmaunder 5y ago
    What has changed is they don’t need to sell the cards to monetize them. No fence needed and those serial numbers will never be seen again.
    - attythrowaway 5y ago
      This. The boost is undoubtedly tied to organized crime, and organized crime is very aware of mining operations (particularly in Asia). These won’t be showing up on eBay. Spot on observation. Organized entities don’t take a truck unless they have a guaranteed outcome in mind.
    - rkangel 5y ago
      That's actually a really interesting point about the changed dynamics of theft.
    - salawat 5y ago
      This just gives Nvidia an excuse to ship cryptographically signed firmware that checks serial numbers burnt into the card and disables the card remotely. Make no mistake; they have the capability to ensure that those cards are paperweights. Just look at the nouveau project and how post-Maxwell cards are effectively locked into proprietary drivers via cryptograpgic signature verification of the firmware blob gating access to the power management and reclocking API's.
- Talanes 5y ago
  > Fast & Furious Was the Fourth movie, in 2009. First one was The Fast and The Furious. Definite articles and no ampersand.
ljm 5y ago
If Plan9 worked out then the thieves would only need to steal consumer grade processors
- andrepd 5y ago
  How so?
b0bd0bbsb0b 5y ago
About 23(?) years ago, just after the 2(3?) chip factories in Taiwan burned down, there were Vietnamese and Chinese gangs in San Jose / Milpitas robbing stores/warehouses of ram and pentium chips, which were in very high demand.
- deep-root 5y ago
  25 years ago one of the groups was caught, from NYT article: https://archive.md/5Qv1e https://archive.md/5Qv1e "More than 400 Silicon Valley businesses had been robbed by chip thieves in the last 18 months. The businesses range from giants like Sun Microsystems to small companies of 100 employees. The apparent record for a heist was $9.9 million worth of computer parts stolen from Centon Electronics in Irvine, Calif., in May."
- baybal2 5y ago
  CPUs, and unsoldered GPUs are the most smuggled item into China, bigger than gold, cash, booze, and other valuables. I think deficit MCUs are now joining this list. China similarly sees mass break-ins into warehouses of component distributor companies now. Some MCUs fetched up to $100 bucks from their original <$1 price at the peak of the shortage.
- rodgerd 5y ago
  I worked with a Brit whose company had taken an outage when theives back a truck up do a datacentre and made off with several fully-loaded E10ks.
  - b0bd0bbsb0b 5y ago
    I remember something similar happening at "AboveSecure", Abovenet's silly "super secure" vaulted datacenter in that downtown San Jose building that used to be the massive sports bar. The thing there was storage though, like 2 or 3 racks of EMC jbods. A datacenter tech thought they were legit and helped them get the kit on the truck.
  - neilv 5y ago
    Any idea what the plan for the E10ks was? Data center where techs don't ask questions? Fraud by someone who did the TCO math on a Linux PC farm? Does an E10k have unusually high gold content, by pound of gear? (Scott McNealy thinking outside the box to boost sales numbers?)
varispeed 5y ago
> truckload Yeah exactly, I would expect like spaceship load or sth...

paxys 5y ago

I would have said "cool, I just saw Fast & Furious as well" (which released exactly 20 years ago funny enough)

slg 5y ago
Yeah, maybe I am missing something, but what is new or interesting about this story? In the first Fast and Furious movie they were hijacking trucks to steal DVD players and TV/VCR combinations to sell on the black/grey market. Isn't this the exact same thing except with newer tech?
- parsimo2010 5y ago
  Well, the real life GPU thieves probably didn’t do a high speed heist by driving cars in formation with the truck. They say the cards were stolen en route, but it’s probably just that they took the truck at a truck stop.
  - attythrowaway 5y ago
    In these cases the driver is generally paid to walk away, play dumb, or some combination of the two. Escalating to violence taking a truck undermines long-term success doing the same, just like modern piracy somewhat forced shipping lines to enhance security, thereby making piracy harder. Organized crime in the US figured out a long time ago that hurting a driver generally leads to the collapse of the whole operation and indictments. Ask any trucker how often they’re approached.
    - MisterTea 5y ago
      The whole romantic scene of a hijacking or theft is plausable. But I also have my money on inside jobs. I knew a truck driver who was a thief. One story: PS2 is released. He goes to the Bestbuy warehouse to pickup a skid of 20 PS2's to deliver to a Bestbuy. They seal the trailer BUT the supervisor at the warehouse was busy so he hands the seal to my friend to put on the trailer. My friend slips it on and makes it look like he snapped it together but didn't. Warehouse guy sees the "sealed" trailer and signs the paperwork. 8 of those 20 PS2's didn't make it to Bestbuy. He unloaded them with the help of his wife and then simply snapped the seal on. The store manager accused him of the theft since it was a local point to point delivery and inspected the trailer for holes or signs of theft but found nothing. He shrugged and said well your guy signed for this count and sealed the trailer so not my problem. He also told me the owner of the trucking company used the warehouse as his own personal shopping mall. Turns out the whole trucking company, drivers, warehouse workers, management, owner, all of em, were stealing. And yes, they eventually got caught. But it happens all the time.
- mmaunder 5y ago
  What has changed is they don’t need to sell the cards to monetize them. No fence needed and those serial numbers will never be seen again.
  - attythrowaway 5y ago
    This. The boost is undoubtedly tied to organized crime, and organized crime is very aware of mining operations (particularly in Asia). These won’t be showing up on eBay. Spot on observation. Organized entities don’t take a truck unless they have a guaranteed outcome in mind.
  - rkangel 5y ago
    That's actually a really interesting point about the changed dynamics of theft.
  - salawat 5y ago
    This just gives Nvidia an excuse to ship cryptographically signed firmware that checks serial numbers burnt into the card and disables the card remotely. Make no mistake; they have the capability to ensure that those cards are paperweights. Just look at the nouveau project and how post-Maxwell cards are effectively locked into proprietary drivers via cryptograpgic signature verification of the firmware blob gating access to the power management and reclocking API's.
Talanes 5y ago
> Fast & Furious Was the Fourth movie, in 2009. First one was The Fast and The Furious. Definite articles and no ampersand.

ljm 5y ago

If Plan9 worked out then the thieves would only need to steal consumer grade processors

andrepd 5y ago
How so?

b0bd0bbsb0b 5y ago

About 23(?) years ago, just after the 2(3?) chip factories in Taiwan burned down, there were Vietnamese and Chinese gangs in San Jose / Milpitas robbing stores/warehouses of ram and pentium chips, which were in very high demand.

deep-root 5y ago
25 years ago one of the groups was caught, from NYT article: https://archive.md/5Qv1e https://archive.md/5Qv1e "More than 400 Silicon Valley businesses had been robbed by chip thieves in the last 18 months. The businesses range from giants like Sun Microsystems to small companies of 100 employees. The apparent record for a heist was $9.9 million worth of computer parts stolen from Centon Electronics in Irvine, Calif., in May."
baybal2 5y ago
CPUs, and unsoldered GPUs are the most smuggled item into China, bigger than gold, cash, booze, and other valuables. I think deficit MCUs are now joining this list. China similarly sees mass break-ins into warehouses of component distributor companies now. Some MCUs fetched up to $100 bucks from their original <$1 price at the peak of the shortage.
rodgerd 5y ago
I worked with a Brit whose company had taken an outage when theives back a truck up do a datacentre and made off with several fully-loaded E10ks.
- b0bd0bbsb0b 5y ago
  I remember something similar happening at "AboveSecure", Abovenet's silly "super secure" vaulted datacenter in that downtown San Jose building that used to be the massive sports bar. The thing there was storage though, like 2 or 3 racks of EMC jbods. A datacenter tech thought they were legit and helped them get the kit on the truck.
- neilv 5y ago
  Any idea what the plan for the E10ks was? Data center where techs don't ask questions? Fraud by someone who did the TCO math on a Linux PC farm? Does an E10k have unusually high gold content, by pound of gear? (Scott McNealy thinking outside the box to boost sales numbers?)

varispeed 5y ago

> truckload Yeah exactly, I would expect like spaceship load or sth...