26 ms·

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/

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?)
  - b0bd0bbsb0b 5y ago
    Huh? Why would a datacenter ask questions? I've worked in dozens of datacenter and nobody ever asked "hey! Where did you get that?" The E10k was a $1m server. Steal 3 racks of those, sell them to a var for $500k, party.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      One would think it would lead to some awkward questions down the road, when a serial number was read off to support.
    - brian_herman 5y ago
      They could of already had a buyer setup also that was looking for server equipment for doing nefarious or non nefarious things.
    - b0bd0bbsb0b 5y ago
      > They could of already had a buyer setup also that was looking for server equipment for doing nefarious or non nefarious things. Nefarious? Like running Oracle?
  - rodgerd 5y ago
    > Any idea what the plan for the E10ks was? My colleague's theory was they were likely going to the oil and gas exploration modelling or nuclear research for middle-eastern states that couldn't get state-of-the-art gear.

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?)
- b0bd0bbsb0b 5y ago
  Huh? Why would a datacenter ask questions? I've worked in dozens of datacenter and nobody ever asked "hey! Where did you get that?" The E10k was a $1m server. Steal 3 racks of those, sell them to a var for $500k, party.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    One would think it would lead to some awkward questions down the road, when a serial number was read off to support.
  - brian_herman 5y ago
    They could of already had a buyer setup also that was looking for server equipment for doing nefarious or non nefarious things.
  - b0bd0bbsb0b 5y ago
    > They could of already had a buyer setup also that was looking for server equipment for doing nefarious or non nefarious things. Nefarious? Like running Oracle?
- rodgerd 5y ago
  > Any idea what the plan for the E10ks was? My colleague's theory was they were likely going to the oil and gas exploration modelling or nuclear research for middle-eastern states that couldn't get state-of-the-art gear.