A Sign of the Times: Hong Kong Authorities Dismantle Smuggling Operation... Which Included 300 NVIDIA CMP Cards

[R0H1T]

I will have to repeat myself one more time I guess :

Gold or other precious materials have been used for longer, which takes me to one of my favorite quotes ever on TV ~

“Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”

If you think money is power ~ then it's more powerful for you than say someone who doesn't believe money (or influence) is power for them.

 

[neatfeatguy]

Holy crap....that's what the Matrix movie was all about. Plugged in humans were actually just GPUs....

Microsoft will be the reason why AI will take over because of their work on making human bodies to mine crypto.... https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-patent-describes-tracking-brain-activity-to-mine-cryptocurrency

Spoiler

The machines took over because they wanted human bodies to be used to mine cryptocurrency. That's why people were grown in fields...the whole idea that the machines needed humans to power them was all a lie! They needed humans to mine cryptocurrencies!

Once humans got "unplugged" from the system the machines were scared they would find a way to mine cryptocurrency as they hacked into the Matrix. The machines were only defending their cryptofarms, keeping the unplugged humans from taking more of their "GPUs".

Agent Smith was simply a hijacking piece of code that got into the mining system and was systematically disrupting crypto hash rate (think Nvidia's drivers that halves the hash rate).

Pretty soon the machines realized they were on a losing battle, their crypto farms have been hijacked and having to fight the unplugged humans while trying to regain control of their farms, they were on a losing battle. They begrudgingly came to a truce at the end with the unplugged humans to save themselves from their own destruction and loss of all their cryptocurrency.

 

[R0H1T]

Are we real or is this part of a Matrix? Well, we'll eventually get there when tech advances enough to make "human labor" almost worthless!

 

[Vayra86]

Haha, sorry. World ain't black and white like that buddy.

No but it damn well should be.

This is where humans fail at large. Principles matter... but not for ourselves. I think the recent US administration spelled that out quite handily, and they reap what they sow. Its a race to the bottom like that and we're running it, or perhaps ran it, who knows.

Holy crap....that's what the Matrix movie was all about. Plugged in humans were actually just GPUs....

Microsoft will be the reason why AI will take over because of their work on making human bodies to mine crypto.... https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-patent-describes-tracking-brain-activity-to-mine-cryptocurrency

Spoiler

The machines took over because they wanted human bodies to be used to mine cryptocurrency. That's why people were grown in fields...the whole idea that the machines needed humans to power them was all a lie! They needed humans to mine cryptocurrencies!

Once humans got "unplugged" from the system the machines were scared they would find a way to mine cryptocurrency as they hacked into the Matrix. The machines were only defending their cryptofarms, keeping the unplugged humans from taking more of their "GPUs".

Agent Smith was simply a hijacking piece of code that got into the mining system and was systematically disrupting crypto hash rate (think Nvidia's drivers that halves the hash rate).

Pretty soon the machines realized they were on a losing battle, their crypto farms have been hijacked and having to fight the unplugged humans while trying to regain control of their farms, they were on a losing battle. They begrudgingly came to a truce at the end with the unplugged humans to save themselves from their own destruction and loss of all their cryptocurrency.

Plugged in humans you say?

Last I checked, Facebook started mining medical data through VR headsets.
Crypto is just a distraction to keep us attached. Bread and games - its all there.

 

[LemmingOverlord]

Our story-focused brains want a bad guy; something/someone to blame. So the culprit keeps shifting based on whatever hypothesis managed to get traction this week. Like basically anything else, it's a confluence of factors. In this case, we have: production issues, supply chain disruptions, historically high consumer demand, a crypto boom, and probably more I'm forgetting.

In a way, it's kind of like the TP/bogroll shortage in the US at the beginning of the pandemic. Nobody was pooping more, but a few (relatively speaking) people panicked and bought way more than they needed. This helped spur a LOT of people to buy a little more than they needed. Since supply chains are so heavily optimized, stock got wiped out pretty quickly, so suddenly almost everyone's grabbing some as soon as it came on the shelf, so said shelves were always empty. Eventually enough folks got their supply to what they considered a comfortable level, so supply leveled out and it's been perfectly easy for awhile now to get as much TP as you like, whenever you like. Lather, rinse, repeat with hand sanitizer, liquid soap, flour, yeast, paper towels and now canning supplies.

Each factor is only part of the story. It's likely true that without the crypto craze, things wouldn't be as bad as they are, but I'd wager we'd still be seeing higher-than-MSRP pricing. As far as individual culpability in this whole debacle, one can look at it like this: I'm not going to vilify or scold anyone for running Nicehash to make a few $REGIONALCURRENCY. However, to claim one's participation isn't contributing at all is a bit like saying marine pollution isn't your fault because you only throw one bottle in the ocean a year. Confession time: I'm arguing with myself about whether or not to grab some BTC/ETH at the next ... crash, for lack of a better word. Pricing seems to follow a curve roughly shaped like a rising sawtooth wave, so it seems like a pretty decent bet. But then I'm also fueling the fire.

Tinfoil hat moment: A not-implausible theory is that some Russian and Chinese operations are state-sponsored as part of a strategy to get the world off of USD as a reserve currency.

I get that, but Global Semiconductor publishes a paper saying there's 14.9% more sales Feb-to-Feb (that's Revenue, not Volume), which doesn't really translate into paper launches, the way it has done for the GPU makers.

Oh well. Here's to the 2022 re-launch of the GTX 1650!

 

[80-watt Hamster]

I get that, but Global Semiconductor publishes a paper saying there's 14.9% more sales Feb-to-Feb (that's Revenue, not Volume), which doesn't really translate into paper launches, the way it has done for the GPU makers.

Oh well. Here's to the 2022 re-launch of the GTX 1650!

I'm not disagreeing with you, and should probably do a better job of presenting a thesis statement or something when making posts like those. I quoted your post more for context than anything, while trying to address the discussion as a whole.

Anyway, you very well could be right, and have clearly done some research while I'm over here speculating based on mere observation.

To heck with 1650s. Why isn't AMD flooding the market with Polaris?

 

[Franzen4Real]

Anybody that mines is contributing to the mining craze which in turn encourages more to dip their toes in.

well, technically the more people that mine, the faster coins will be mined, increasing difficulty to mine the next coin, making it less profitable and therefore less desirable... In a miners perfect world, they would be the only one doing it. So @R-T-B and @DeathtoGnomes are actually doing us all a favor to help bring the shortages to an end sooner! (glass half full? I dunno if that's how it actually works, but it sounded good )

Yeah, the authorities never consider something like what you just described can happen

reminds me of a will smith movie, Focus.

Yea I think this was also covered near the beginning of Narcos Season 1 Episode 1. Perhaps Agent Murphy is "the guy he works with".... Agent Peña, is that you??!

 

[64K]

well, technically the more people that mine, the faster coins will be mined, increasing difficulty to mine the next coin, making it less profitable and therefore less desirable... In a miners perfect world, they would be the only one doing it. So @R-T-B and @DeathtoGnomes are actually doing us all a favor to help bring the shortages to an end sooner!

I don't know much about mining but I have wondered about this from time to time. If the next coin is more difficult (costly to mine) than the previous one then wouldn't mining be destined to be a failure eventually? Why would the creators of crypto-currency do that?

 

[80-watt Hamster]

I don't know much about mining but I have wondered about this from time to time. If the next coin is more difficult (costly to mine) than the previous one then wouldn't mining be destined to be a failure eventually? Why would the creators of crypto-currency do that?

Inflation control. If coins are too easy to mine, it devalues the currency. If not enough or none are produced, DEflation becomes a problem. That's why we're off the gold standard.

 

[64K]

Inflation control. If coins are too easy to mine, it devalues the currency. If not enough or none are produced, DEflation becomes a problem. That's why we're off the gold standard.

The real reason we are off the gold standard is because the amount of currency that could be churned out by backing it with gold was too little. It's the opposite of crypto-currency in that regard.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

The real reason we are off the gold standard is because the amount of currency that could be churned out by backing it with gold was too little. It's the opposite of crypto-currency in that regard.

Right. I... think we're mostly saying the same thing? With crypto, my understanding was that the difficulty curve was supposed to be leveled out by time, adoption rate and advancing computing power. More can be produced, but hypothetically at a rate that circumvents both inflation and deflation issues. But history is littered with clever things created by smart people that went sideways when running against human and social factors that said smart person didn't anticipate or understand.

 

[trog100]

printing machines go brrrrr.. dollars are easy to mine.. much easier than crypto... figure that one out..

trog

 

[bobbybluz]

In manufacturing ANYTHING can disappear without a trace. All it takes is the right people involved in the scam to pull it off. I'm not going to go into details other than to say my knowledge is from personal experiences many years ago. I grew up in the world of crime and parted ways with it over 40+ years ago. Absolutely nothing surprises me when it comes to criminal ingenuity.

 

[Caring1]

In manufacturing ANYTHING can disappear without a trace. All it takes is the right people involved in the scam to pull it off. I'm not going to go into details other than to say my knowledge is from personal experiences many years ago. I grew up in the world of crime and parted ways with it over 40+ years ago. Absolutely nothing surprises me when it comes to criminal ingenuity.

Probably along the same lines as this large scale theft where goods were written off as waste.
250 metric tons of salmon, at least 800 kilograms a day.

Five charged in multimillion-dollar salmon theft scheme

Five have been charged in the alleged theft of millions of dollars’ worth of salmon from a processing plant operated by Huon Aquaculture.

www.seafoodsource.com

 

[R-T-B]

No but it damn well should be.

No, it really shouldn't. There is no substitute for understanding the issues you want to critique.

To be clear if anyone actually read my mining series to conclusion it was not designed to promote mining. It was designed to show it's low wage menial work.

I don't know who could walk away from that series thinking "f yeah man, this is for me"

Before that I mined without promoting it at all on part time cards that also gamed. I do not get how that contributes to anything. If you told me I could not mine, I would have had the same number of cards to game anyways.

Dumb concept is dumb, sorry. I get you guys are salty. I am too. It's why I do not mine period anymore. But have your logic and facts straight if you are going to hate on something. There is plenty to hate without bringing one card miners trying to save up for a scalper 3000 series price into this. Leave the bloody victims that are just trying to adapt alone.

 

[trog100]

i know one thing mr frog.. if graphics could be bought at a much lower price there would be an awful lot more gamer miners and every single one of them would be saying how wonderful it was.. the only thing thats limiting the amount of small time miners is the high cost of the hardware to mine with..

i mine but only because i am prepared to pay the high cost of the hardware.. most would be miners are not.. which suits me because the more miners there are the less the rewards for me..

some things just are..

trog

 

[Caring1]

Before that I mined without promoting it at all on part time cards that also gamed. I do not get how that contributes to anything. If you told me I could not mine, I would have had the same number of cards to game anyways.

Dumb concept is dumb, sorry. I get you guys are salty. I am too. It's why I do not mine period anymore. But have your logic and facts straight if you are going to hate on something. There is plenty to hate without bringing one card miners trying to save up for a scalper 3000 series price into this. Leave the bloody victims that are just trying to adapt alone.

Not salty, just aware that mining contributes to consumption of more power, and the why not attitude draws more people into mining, because everyone else is doing it. The impetus is greed, the thought of more money, there's nothing altruistic about it.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Guys, this is more simple that you thought.
ALL of those cards are declared faulty (even if they are not) by "key" people and then instead of being decommissioned, are put in "special" crates, and the rest is history...
So if they do a thorough investigation they can really find the responsible persons...

 

[bobbybluz]

Guys, this is more simple that you thought.
ALL of those cards are declared faulty (even if they are not) by "key" people and then instead of being decommissioned, are put in "special" crates, and the rest is history...
So if they do a thorough investigation they can really find the responsible persons...

Depending upon who's in on the scam it's even more simple than that. Faulty cards would have to be accounted for; off the books production runs when done properly leave no trails behind. The line workers would never know or suspect any wrongdoing. Also, pulling 10-20 of them at a time multiple times over an extended period and not including them in a final assembly count (and not assigning serial numbers to them) would be another foolproof method of diverting inventory.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

that mining contributes to consumption of more power,

a very minor contribution

 

[R-T-B]

the only thing thats limiting the amount of small time miners is the high

Which is due entirely to miner "whales"

My point in a nutshell.

Not salty, just aware that mining contributes to consumption of more power, and the why not attitude draws more people into mining, because everyone else is doing it. The impetus is greed, the thought of more money, there's nothing altruistic about it.

You could use this same argument against overclocking.

"Why not get more performance for free?!"

Because performance per watt suffers, etc.

You could argue minings impact is larger and you may be right, but I'm not certain you are at all when you consider only "gaming/single-gpu miners"

Also, most gaming miners don't really promote what they are doing, it's just a way to adapt to sucky times.