[HN Gopher] SEC charges Nvidia with inadequate disclosures about... ___________________________________________________________________ SEC charges Nvidia with inadequate disclosures about impact of cryptomining Author : taubek Score : 386 points Date : 2022-05-17 08:12 UTC (14 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.sec.gov) (TXT) w3m dump (www.sec.gov) | Havoc wrote: | This is a non story. They missed something in the laundry list of | legal disclosures that goes in the financials. Nobody ever looks | at those since they're a useless shotgun approach covering | everything short of zombie apocalypse. | freemint wrote: | This is very much not just missing a laundry list of legal | disclosures. They actively lied to investors said increased | sales of consumer graphic cards was due to a "Fortnite Boom" | when it obvious to industry observers that is was a mining | boom. Miners and Fortnite players have very different life-time | revenue expectation, miners tend flood the used market with | used cards dropping the prices that can be asked for future | products, gamers tend to keep their cards and buy new cards | when they want to play more demanding games. This leads to less | of oversupply on the used market. The last mining bust had a | huge negative influence on Nvidia. | senko wrote: | duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31284952 | twirlock wrote: | Traster wrote: | This is kind of funny because the SEC is basically saying Nvidia | held their share price artificially high by doing this, but | Nvidia also bought back billions of their own shares, by this | logic they were overpaying. | Slartie wrote: | The most successful fraudsters eventually start to fully | believe their own fraudulent story. This of course entails to | do things that make sense in the fraudulent narrative, but are | actually disadvantageous when judging them from a viewpoint | outside of the fraud. | projektfu wrote: | That is a separate issue. Stock buybacks can be done to reward | insiders. A dividend would be distributed equally and has the | effect of directly cutting the share price. A buyback | distributes cash unequally and puts upward pressure on share | prices. Only insiders know for sure if the action is being done | to buy back shares on sale or to distribute profits. | 99_00 wrote: | Stock buy backs and dividends benefit or harm all | shareholders in proportion to how much stock they own | regardless of being an insider or not. | | Unless the insiders act illegally. If an insider wants to act | illegally they can do so in any number of ways other than | knowing that a buy back is coming. | rileymat2 wrote: | > and puts upward pressure on share prices | | I am curious if there is evidence for this. I don't see how | distributing capital that could be used for growth pressures | share prices up. | | People not selling back the shares are trading the current | profits for a bigger share of future profits, which may never | exist. So I am not sure on a risk adjusted discounted cash | flow model there is any justification for increased price | pressure. | | I always presumed that the main benefit of buybacks v | dividends was being able to time capital gains for tax | purposes. | | But this is all speculation too, no evidence behind my post. | JamesBarney wrote: | > I am curious if there is evidence for this. I don't see | how distributing capital that could be used for growth | pressures share prices up. | | Say I have a company worth a $1,000,000 dollars that has a | 1,000 shares each worth $1,000. Company comes into a giant | one off windfall. They use that windfall to buyback half | the shares. There are now there are only 500 shares that | own a $1,000,000 dollar company so each share is worth | $2,000. Or put another way .2% of future profits is worth | more than .1% of future profits. | | > I always presumed that the main benefit of buybacks v | dividends was being able to time capital gains for tax | purposes. | | It's not about timing, it's simpler. Buybacks are taxed as | capital gains, and dividends as income. | projektfu wrote: | There are two reasons in my mind why buybacks are | different. The first is that buybacks are reported after | the fact and do not directly alter the share price, rather | they increase competition for the available shares and | reduce dilution. Dividends immediately reduce the share | price by the dividend although the price often moves up a | little before the ex-dividend rate. | | The other reason is that there are very few stocks that are | being valued by the market on any sort of model. That goes | for cash flow models as well as other things like PE | ratios, etc. We are in the tinkerbell regime, prices went | up over the last 10 years because people are clapping | louder. Obviously that is a controversial take but I am not | predicting a reversal, just saying that the market overall | is in a weird place. | kgwgk wrote: | > buybacks are reported after the fact and do not | directly alter the share price | | But the fact itself adds demand for the shares on the | market, affecting the share price. | cormacrelf wrote: | There's also an open market buyback. And multiple ways of | doing it off the open market, often known as a tender | offer for a popular method where you get shareholders to | bid on the lowest price they would accept within a range | of premium buyback prices. | | Off the market, an offer does become public immediately, | that is a necessary component of doing it at all. The | sales do not. Directly is the wrong word, there's no more | direct way to affect price than a bid/ask/sale of a | share. The key is that the information about how much of | the stock will actually get bought at what price is | delayed on its way to becoming a price signal in the | market. | | Here's an old-ish but good paper about it, showing how | this delay can be exploited by those with inside | information. Not a loophole but rather another thing to | watch out for. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/vi | ewcontent.cgi?arti... | Msw242 wrote: | A buyback increases EPS and makes the shares worth more. Same | pie, fewer slices. | | It is just a more tax efficient way to distribute earnings. | disgruntledphd2 wrote: | Buybacks should be banned. | | It's bad for society to have companies spend money on their | own shares, and dividends have the appealing property that | they allow a holder to both continue to hold, and bank some | gains for further investments. | JamesBarney wrote: | Most holders own enough stock that if they wanted to both | bank some gain and hold they could sell some stock and | hold on to some other stock. | | I think we should get rid of the tax advantage for | capital gains though, the mechanism through which a | company distributes capital shouldn't determine tax rate. | Also I think dividends make it psychologically easier for | people to live off the interest. | Shadonototra wrote: | You think wrong, if they commit, it's to push their agenda even | further, they knew what they were doing, maybe they did in | preparation for such charges | indemnity wrote: | Buybacks increase prices, a large part of compensation is | linked to share price, executives don't care if the company is | overpaying, they see more in their pocket. | spupe wrote: | Stock buybacks also increase stock prices, and a lot of | companies are doing it lately. | kgwgk wrote: | Securities fraud squared! | YedrickTheYeti wrote: | Wouldn't this have been obvious to anyone trading in nvidia | shares though? | [deleted] | bufferoverflow wrote: | I don't see how it's Nvidia's job to track how their products are | used exactly. | JamesBarney wrote: | It is their job not to mislead investors about how their | products are used. | | This is not a fine for "You didn't know how your product was | being used" but "you knew it was being used for crypto but | reported to investors that it being was gaming" | colonelxc wrote: | They don't have to. The problem is that they said to investors | repeatedly, "Sales are up due to increase in gaming demand", | when they actually knew that a signficant portion of the | increase was due to cryptomining. | | So what the SEC is fining them for is lying to investors. If | nvidia didn't know how much of their sales were to | cryptomining, then there would be no fine. If they did know, | and did share that in their reports, there would be no fine. | _jab wrote: | I'm confused about why this matters. From anecdotal experience, | Nvidia seems to be struggling to meet demand for its products | right now anyways. It's hard to tell, but I assume that even if | crypto took a major hit, Nvidia could still sell a good chunk of | its newfound supply to genuine gamers instead. Alternatively, | they could invest more into their ML-focused chips instead, which | are also supply constrained. | | Granted, this might not have been true in 2018, which appears to | be what the SEC's charge is focused on. Nonetheless, I don't | think the huge amount of demand from crypto for Nvidia's products | should be construed as a bad thing; there's plenty of other | demand. | Tuna-Fish wrote: | Companies are not allowed to lie to their investors. Part of | the deal of being a public company is that all communication is | communication with their investors. If they told their | investors that they were selling GPUs to gamers, while in fact | selling most of them to miners, they violated the law. The | principle of it being that said investors might have had a | different outlook on the company depending on who they were | selling to. | | Besides, there is a difference. Because whenever crypto | collapses (and it has twice already in the past), a lot of the | existing mining GPUs end up on the secondary market. If this | happens now, it will have a material impact on the prices of | GPUs going forwards. | mschuster91 wrote: | On the other hand, NVIDIA does not have legal authority to | control where its GPUs actually end up being used (nasty | things like drivers shutting down when detecting | virtualizations aside). How can _anyone_ prove or disprove | that a specific percentage of GPUs end up in a specific | market, as long as NVIDIA can prove they have kept their | usual delivery targets towards wholesale distributors? | dematz wrote: | This is a good question. I remember having to give my | identity before walking out of a store with a computer with | a GPU in it, and if someone really wanted to buy multiple | GPUs for mining that wouldn't stop them. | | The SEC lists some facts suggesting nvidia thought they | were ending up mining | (https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2022/33-11060.pdf): | | "NVIDIA launched a product line of cryptomining processors, | known as "CMP," which the company marketed to large | cryptomining operations ... Based on known CMP sales, the | company identified cryptomining as a significant element of | the OEM GPU sales" | | "NVIDIA also received information indicating that | cryptomining was a significant factor in year-over-year | growth in NVIDIA's Gaming GPUs revenue. Some of the | company's sales personnel, in particular in China, reported | what they believed to be significant increases in demand | for Gaming GPUs as a result of cryptomining" | | These were the 2 most concrete points to me - management | was aware miners drove up GPU prices for gamers and saw it | as another big market to capture, and sales attributed | increased demand to miners. The rest of it basically says | crypto grew, nvidia sales grew, and nvidia thought sales | grwe because of crypto. | | Honestly, I'm not sure it's possible even knowing these | factors to know who really bought the GPUs or where they | really ended up, but idk all the SEC probably cares about | is nvidia not disclosing material seeming information. | simiones wrote: | That is irrelevant. The SEC also didn't go and check what | people were using their NVIDIA GPUs for. | | The problem is that NVIDIA leadership knew/believed that a | proportion X of their GPUs were being bought for crypto | mining (thus tying demand with crypto prices), while they | reported to investors a different number, Y, with Y < X. | This is material information that they simply lied about, | which is illegal for a publicly traded company. In fact, | the lawsuit could have happened even if Y > X. | | If NVIDIA had reported the same numbers they did, and | people had been in fact using them at the same rate that | they did, but NVIDIA hadn't known about it, then nothing | illegal would have happened. If NVIDIA had later found out | and disclosed this to investors, again no lawsuit (though | perhaps share prices would have changed, one way or | another). | dangerface wrote: | > they told their investors that they were selling GPUs to | gamers, while in fact selling most of them to miners | | I don't think nvidia even did this, they marketed to gamers | and reported the correct number of sales. What people do with | the card once its sold is not up to nvidia its not | information that an investor can reasonable assume nvidia | will report on. | | If I invest in a steel mine they market their steel to car | manufactures and report the correct number of sales. If they | also happen to sell to gun manufactures I can't then sue said | company for not reporting that. | runeks wrote: | > I don't think nvidia even did this, they marketed to | gamers and reported the correct number of sales. | | It's not about that. It's about: | | " _NVIDIA had information, however, that this increase in | gaming sales was driven in significant part by | cryptomining._ " | | Which they did not disclose. | davedx wrote: | > "NVIDIA had information, however, that this increase in | gaming sales was driven in significant part by | cryptomining." | | > Which they did not disclose. | | What's annoying to me as an NVDA investor is that I | _still don 't have that information_. Or maybe it can be | found somewhere else? | ajdegol wrote: | I certainly wouldn't want a second hand GPU that'd been used | for mining; it'd be ragged. | latchkey wrote: | Totally untrue. I've run many many tens of thousands of | GPUs for years, in the worst of conditions (directly | exposed to seasonal temperatures and environment)... they | keep on ticking. | | Power supplies on the other hand... those don't seem to | last as long, but we open those up and they are hand | soldered by someone in China. | w1nk wrote: | It's boggling to me that everyone is so entirely | convinced of this fact. Check out this paper from google | where they observe this exact process occurring in their | CPUs at scale: https://sigops.org/s/conferences/hotos/202 | 1/papers/hotos21-s... | | Given their conclusion that this is the result of | manufacturing tiny process transistors, it follows that | this can occur in GPUs as well. | viraptor wrote: | Often repeated, but wherever you actually see someone | testing that theory, they can't spot any issues. | deadbunny wrote: | Is there any evidence that running a GPU/CPU at 100% for X | years degrades the product vs average use over the same | period? | colejohnson66 wrote: | No; there's been many tests. The mistake seems to come | from thinking GPUs "wear out" like cars. The cooler | might, but the silicon is fine. | | Some even suspect that crypto mining is _better_ for the | card than gaming as it avoids the constant ramp-up /ramp- | down of the clock/activity by keeping it pegged at 100%. | In turn, that would lower thermal stress. | remram wrote: | > GPUs aren't cars | | I think another comparison is with hard drives, which are | also used by some cryptocurrency schemes, and do degrade | faster with intensive use. | colejohnson66 wrote: | Yes, because hard drives, like cars, have moving parts | that can wear out.[a] The silicon of a GPU doesn't have | moving parts and is therefore more resilient. | | [a]: It's (hopefully) common knowledge in the tech | community that purchasing used hard drives is a Bad | Idea(TM) | the_gastropod wrote: | SSD's have no moving parts, and wear out too, right? | w1nk wrote: | Yes, but for different reasons. The grandparent is | probably incorrect though, there is emerging evidence | that silicon is actually changing/failing over time. See | this paper from google on their CPU cores where they have | practical evidence of this occuring: https://sigops.org/s | /conferences/hotos/2021/papers/hotos21-s... | | If their data is correct, it should follow that these | exact issues will happen on the small transistor process | GPUs as well. | w1nk wrote: | Actually there's reasonable evidence to believe this | isn't true. This paper from google: https://sigops.org/s/ | conferences/hotos/2021/papers/hotos21-s... outlines | specific scenarios where CPUs fail over time. Given the | evidence that these are silicon defects that are actually | worsening over time, there's no reason to imagine these | failures don't extend to GPUs as well. | | The difference in data here is obviously scale, google | has -way- more CPUs than GPUs so the absolute counts of | failures will be different. | colejohnson66 wrote: | I'll concede that silicon can wear out over time; it's | impossible for it to be immune from happening, and I | wasn't speaking in absolutes. But as you mention, it's | one of scale. I'm curious how likely a second hand GPU | from a cryptominer is affected. | w1nk wrote: | So that's actually one of the awful implications of this | paper. It's probably actually happening at a rate higher | than would be noticed by humans. | | If a given piece of silicon is hosing up a GEMM (matrix | multiply), in graphics scenarios this may be invisible to | the human eye as it could potentially just introduce | artifacts in a scene rendering that could be entirely | ephemeral to the frame. | | In the case of crypto mining though, it's completely | possible (probable?) that there are GPUs that can't | possibly ever calculate a proper SHA3 hash (see the paper | on AES instructions that fail in symmetric ways). | Melatonic wrote: | Actually it can be the opposite - if the miner is using it | properly and not overheating them regularly they can be in | good shape. If they run at a high percentage but the | temperature stays constant then theres not a lot of wear | going on vs suddenly heating and cooling all the time. | | I imagine the bearings in the fan might have more wear, | however, but that might be more easily fixed. | babypuncher wrote: | A better question to ask is "why did Nvidia feel it was | necessary to lie to their investors?". Lying to your investors | is illegal, regardless of whether or not you profited from it. | paxys wrote: | What about a year or so later when supply chains are back to | normal and crypto demand dries up? Suddenly investors are | wondering why their revenues are falling 50% instead of 5% that | they predicted. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | GPU mining was consuming much more of the supply than you | suggest (that's literally the basis of this lawsuit) | | When the GPU mining bubble pops, there's a secondary effect as | miners unload their used GPUs at fire sale prices on the | secondary market. This means that the demand reduction is even | worse than it might seem. | TheBigSalad wrote: | It matters because people asked the question about how much of | the business was crypto based and they lied. | aj7 wrote: | Now I know how gun manufacturers feel, although I'm not on their | side. | t_mann wrote: | It's kind of strange/funny how much trouble _too much_ demand can | cause for a company. | mcv wrote: | I don't quite get this. Was it not blatantly obvious to everybody | that Nvidia's sales were largely driven by cryptominers? Did they | specifically market to cryptominers and lie about that or | something? I don't quite get what they did wrong. | | What's also baffling to me is how their share price is taking a | nosedive because of this news. Any investor should know about | this. And $5 million fine doesn't sound like enough to hurt the | company that much. | | But if it's true that they misled investors, does that mean that | investors can get their money back or something? It seems like | any investor who wasn't aware of this is now screwed twice. | bionsystem wrote: | If you have a publicly-listed company you have to disclose all | macro, market, and sector/industry risks (as well as company- | specific risk) that might impact investors. The mere fact that | they didn't disclose it (in 2018) is blamable. | | Their stock price doesn't tank on this news, it's trending down | along with BTC and other crypto assets. The market isn't | stupid, it's pricing into NVDA price the risk of cryptos going | into a prolonged bear market. | | Investors will probably never get their money back. First of | all, NVDA stock is up a ton since 2018, and second of all, | shareholders are considered full risk-on and should diversify. | Class actions are possible but highly improbable to work. The | company has been buying their stock back too which show their | commitment to reward shareholders as well. | Slartie wrote: | It was obvious to the gamers who tried to buy a GPU for a | reasonable price. If you put some time into this endeavor, you | were bound to see all those cards coming in to retailers | immediately being bought, with a few appearing on secondary | markets at higher price tags but being bought away very quickly | there as well. This occurring in parallel with a huge bunch of | "looking for GPUs A, B, C, D, offering $ridiculous_price in | cash, will take any number of cards" offerings on Craigslist | and similar platforms speaks a clear language: nobody is trying | to secure various different GPUs despite high prices in | basically unlimited numbers for GAMING! Nor do gamers buy up | all those overpriced secondary market offerings within minutes | of them being posted. | | But: the stock market investors that are moving the really big | bags of cash rarely have hours and days to spend trying to hunt | down GPUs for their gaming rigs. So they wouldn't see these | obvious hints. | BlueTemplar wrote: | And it's _still_ not over - early 2022 prices for RX 580 (and | the like) were still 4 (FOUR !) times higher than in 2020 ! | | https://web.archive.org/web/20220126135425if_/https://cdna.p. | .. | | EDIT : Never mind, still 2x prices, but seems to start coming | down ? | | https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Asus- | RX-... | latchkey wrote: | This is because RX480/580 are the most ROI efficient. ETH | mining doesn't require latest fastest hardware because it | is memory bound [1]. | | [1] https://www.vijaypradeep.com/blog/2017-04-28-ethereums- | memor... | MrFoof wrote: | I managed to get some GPUs at MSRP over that period and as I | got something a bit faster over that period, I would sell to | defray my upgrade cost. | | I tried to restrict to US buyers to try to get it in the | hands of someone who just wanted to play games. | | They went to US addresses as my shipping restrictions and | other exclusions required, but I unexpectedly got dinged for | "International Fees" by eBay. | | So I dug in as to why. When I checked the shipping address in | Google Maps, they were warehouses. Googling again, known | freight forwarders. | | From what I can ascertain, one likely went to Qatar, and the | other ended up in Uzbekistan. The accounts that bought them | were quite old, not new, and had extremely high quantities of | feedback. Based on the absolutely extreme auction end prices | ($1540 for a 3070!), I wasn't surprised in the end. The | buyers were clearly extremely well organized and had | exceptionally professional communication. | cormacrelf wrote: | Not putting "blatantly obvious" things in the disclosure | documents is WORSE than omitting obscure things. The market for | Nvidia stock is not made up of the same people who buy their | graphics cards. Maybe even almost no crossover. The prospectus | regime for public companies is there to protect ordinary | investors who do not know this stuff. The overall effect is to | increase the "smartness of money" by avoiding people investing | who do not know this basic stuff. And yes there is a robust | regime for investors to sue for defrauding them in this | fashion. | Jon_Lowtek wrote: | People suing nvidia about their 2018 quarterly reports is | actually what happened, the SEC fining them years later is | just the cherry on top. | | See for example case 18-cv-7669 by the "Ironworkers Local 580 | Joint Fund" from late 2018, which was later merged with a | class action lawsuit. | | Nvidia talked about crypto in their 2018 quarterly filings | but they allegedly downplayed the effect on the company. | | Analysts upgraded their rating, growth prediction of 17%, | shares trading at record price. _(for the time, not | comparable to today)_ | | In the last quarter of 2018 crypto crashed, nvidia revenue | dropped by 7%, and the share price by 29% | dangerface wrote: | > The market for Nvidia stock is not made up of the same | people who buy their graphics cards. Maybe even almost no | crossover. | | I think this is the problem you have investors buying stock | in a company they have no concept what that company does they | just know its a hot stock because the price is currently | pumping. They go all in with no due diligence assuming the | price will continue to pump for no reason and when it doesn't | and the supply demand level out they act like they where | scammed like the company should have told them when to buy | and sell. | dhzhzjsbevs wrote: | The more I learn about finance the more I'm confused how 2008 | actually happened. We actually have some pretty good | regulations in place. | einpoklum wrote: | > We actually have some pretty good regulations in place. | | That's only if your basic view of the financial markets is | of something legitimate and socially beneficial. I would | say that is mostly not the case; and in the past, the US | government at times needed to recognize this at least | partly, on pain of mass upheaval and system collapse, | putting stronger regulation in place, e.g.: | | https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/glass- | steagall-... | | (which isn't that strong either) | | This is all before the complex derivative markets formed | which gave rise to the 2008 crash. The housing situation in | the US even now seems rather tenuous and volatile, whether | through some financial crash or a different form of crisis: | | https://slate.com/business/2021/06/blackrock-invitation- | hous... | cormacrelf wrote: | A lot of it is designed really well but squashing human | stupidity on the scale of trillion dollar economies is a | perpetual game of whack-a-mole. The message a lot of people | got from 2008 that it was the bankers and the system that | hurt the little guy and therefore we should no longer trust | any of it. And create a new financial parallel universe in | which to rediscover why regulation is needed in the first | place. Vitalik Buterin today literally suggested an | analogue of FDIC insurance for cryptocurrency banks. | | My view is that the banks did hugely mess up and did not | face enough consequences -- and the correct approach is to | massively enhance enforcement. (In many ways that actually | has happened.) But moreover they preyed on stupidity, just | massive massive stupidity that will always be there to | contend with. Fraud always looks better than real | investments to the marks. People have to overlook the shady | parts, and to make them do that a product must offer | unrealistic returns. Millions and millions of people are | not smart enough to tell when that's happening to them. As | long as the SEC and its ilk let these run, people get hurt | and everyone suffers, either personally, or from the | inefficiency of fraud generally or the collapse of | interlinked financial systems when the fraud gets big | enough. Dealing with this is a huge task and often | unpopular. If you tell millions of Americans they can't | invest in crypto scams, many of them will be royally pissed | off, because they were promised riches! That's even worse | than whack-a-mole -- letting frauds off the leash for one | minute leaves your hands tied unless you are top of your | game and have a lot of built up trust. | | That's why people keep pointing to the lack of arrests as a | huge failure of 2008. As mistakes by government go it was | much worse than the bailout, which was rather necessary to | limit the damage. It meant people thought the government | was in on it, or that they didn't care. Frankly I think | Bitcoin would never have taken off if there were a slew of | high profile arrests. It would not have seemed necessary. | rfw300 wrote: | It's worth noting many of these regulations came into | existence (or became stringently enforced) _because_ of | 2008. | dangerface wrote: | The regulations in this case are both very old, I don't | think the regulators care about 2008. | | Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Securities Act of 1933 | zmmmmm wrote: | While this seems like something the SEC should indeed be paying | attention to, it pales into comparison with Elon Musk openly | breaking every rule in the book on Twitter while they do | absolutely nothing (up to and including directly pumping and | dumping stock ...) | elevenoh wrote: | What actual rules did elon break? | lvl102 wrote: | I remember I was short the stock via puts quite a bit and they | kept saying crypto was 5% of the business which I knew was a lie. | It turned out great for me. Fast forward to 2022, you see how | much of the GPU "shortage" was due to crypto mining especially in | Russia (there are enough anecdotes of people in Siberia heating | their kitchens with GPUs). | paganel wrote: | > due to crypto mining especially in Russia | | When the war started in neighbouring Ukraine (I live in | Romania) the local market started seeing graphics cards again | which, previously, had been marked by local official resellers | as "not in stock for the near future". This is for business | procurement, so not even retail. | vkou wrote: | Card supply/demand delta has already been slowly easing up | over the months leading up to the war. | thesausageking wrote: | If, at the time, you had bought the stock instead of shorting | and held onto it, you'd be up 64% today. | lvl102 wrote: | I made something like 100x on that trade so I think I did OK. | daniel-cussen wrote: | Right so using waste heat that way is more ecological. | xxs wrote: | Except using heat pumps is a lot more efficient than | resistive heating... and/or adding a proper insulation. | lkbm wrote: | Sure, but what % of heating is just natural gas furnaces? | | We should evaluate things against what the actual, real | world alternative would be, not just against the best | possible world. | | (That said, I should acknowledge that a large part of that | electricity comes from burning natural gas at an efficiency | loss, so resistive heating is still worse than the natural | gas furnace.) | freemint wrote: | Heat pump based heating from burned natural gas is better | than burning natural gas for heating though. | lkbm wrote: | Yes, and that's very nice if you have a heat pump. I | suspect people with heat pumps use them for heat. It'd be | weird if they didn't. | | But, to restate my previous comment: if you have a | natural gas furnace and a GPU, but no heat pump, and are | deciding which to use for heat, it doesn't matter how | efficient the heat pump you don't have is. | | If you own your own home and have the capital to get a | heat pump, great, do it. But a lot of people rent. They | can't just swap out their furnace for a heat pump. | nkurz wrote: | Here in the US, I don't think these are in common use. At | least, I've never seen one in person. Are they used much | wherever you are? They do seem like an interesting idea. | Here's a US Dept of Energy page about them: | https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/absorption-heat-pumps | freemint wrote: | From what i have heard it varies a lot on a state by | state basis. I suppressed my urge to look up heat pump | statistics because frankly i should work on more | important things. Just uhhmmm please don't act like i am | supposed to research for you unpaid. I might fall for it | and hate myself for it later. | Loughla wrote: | Depends on where you live. The rural area where I am have | a nearly 100% install of heat pump or geothermal units on | any and all new builds. | kimburgess wrote: | See: https://blog.qarnot.com/introducing-the-qc-1-crypto- | heater/ (2018) | | Such a beautiful idea, if only the computation was actually | useful. | px43 wrote: | It's useful for the millions of people who participate | every day in the trillion+ dollar cryptocurrency economy, | but sure, continue to claim that anything that doesn't | directly benefit you personally must be "useless". | | Literally hundreds of alternatives to Proof of Work, | especially PoW with some enhanced utility (calculating | large twin primes, folding proteins, file storage, GIS, | etc) have been tested in the real world, but it turns out | that a straight up "find the nonce" PoW is the best form of | democracy we can build that doesn't require some global | registry of every human on earth. Anyone with access to | electricity can participate in ensuring the global security | of the network, and be fairly compensated for it. | | Proof of Stake can work alright in certain market | conditions, but those didn't exist on any blockchain until | relatively recently. Look at the utter chaos going on with | Terra validators. The validating token goes to | approximately zero, so bad actors can cheaply buy up the | staking asset and hijack validation, further destabilizing | the network, allowing the next attackers to buy in even | cheaper. | | It's a hard problem, and Satoshi's solution is an | incredibly elegant one. If you've got a better idea than | PoW, then do share. Whoever figures it out stands to make | billions of dollars. You should know that it's mostly | considered to be a solved problem at this point, and nearly | everyone has moved on to other hard problems in the space. | kimburgess wrote: | PoW is not useless. Hashcash in its original form is a | prime example. It's good design/engineering that solves a | problem. | | Blockchains are not useless. Append only, verifiable data | structures have countless applications that again, can be | used to solve actual problems. | | Systems which combine these to create a "trillion+ | economy" that's sole external affect appears to be | inducing an obsessive overuse of the word "fiat" while | consuming incomprehensible amounts of the worlds | resources--not just power, but hardware, and importantly, | the focus of many intelligent people--that is a venture | of questionable use. | Kbelicius wrote: | > It's useful for the millions of people who participate | every day in the trillion+ dollar cryptocurrency economy, | but sure, continue to claim that anything that doesn't | directly benefit you personally must be "useless". | | The calculation itself, once removed from bitcoin | ecosystem, is quite useless. | | > Literally hundreds of alternatives to Proof of Work, | especially PoW with some enhanced utility (calculating | large twin primes, folding proteins, file storage, GIS, | etc) have been tested in the real world, but it turns out | that a straight up "find the nonce" PoW is the best form | of democracy we can build that doesn't require some | global registry of every human on earth. | | How is "find the nonce" PoW better for democracy than | "fold proteins" or "find a chain of primes" PoW? In what | way does calculating primes or folding proteins require | global registry of every human on earth? | | > Anyone with access to electricity can participate in | ensuring the global security of the network, and be | fairly compensated for it. | | What about internet and expensive hardware, don't you | need those also? What would you need besides those to do | "fold protein" or "find chain of primes" PoW. | beardog wrote: | See gridcoin, it is a proof of stake currency where you | can additionally earn coins via mostly useful scientific | computing. It's a neat project, but it gives effective | control to the boinc server managers. The users have to | sign up to earn that way | Jon_Lowtek wrote: | my understanding is that gridcoin "rewards" people | participating in boinc by incrementing numbers on a | blockchain that uses proof of stake. It doesn't use | scientific computing, like protein folding, as a proof of | work for the chain itself, which is what the parent | comment was all about. | | I would love to be proven wrong, to see any reference | that grc provides algorithmic benefit to boinc, as in | "getting rewarded with grc is proof the provided solution | for the requested scientific computation is correct", or | even a little thing like storing the boinc participation | statistics, but those are features of the boinc network | independently from grc. | | What grc provides to the scientific community is a weird | incentive for monkey-brains: monkey brain sees grc number | go up, monkey brain releases happy hormones. It is a | mirror of the participation statistic on the blockchain, | not because that makes sense, but because blockchain. | Sure there is some theory that some monkey may give a | monkey a banana for making their number go down and its | number go up, but that transaction involves no scientific | computation and is purely speculative. | Feritiuuu wrote: | For most people the affects of climate change costs more | and have higher impact than what crypto provides. | | Better solution: PoS. | | Do you know who is using already a highly tuned modern | fast currency system based on PoS? | | You do. I do. Everyone else does. | | It's called us dollar, euro and other stable fiats. | | And yes inflation problem doesn't go away just because | you use Bitcoin. | shkkmo wrote: | > PoW is the best form of democracy we can build that | doesn't require some global registry of every human on | earth. Anyone with access to electricity can participate | in ensuring the global security of the network, and be | fairly compensated for it. | | This is a complete, steaming, and self-serving pile of | bullshit. It isn't at all democratic and you need far | more than just "electricity" to participate. | wffurr wrote: | If only the computing hardware generating that waste heat was | doing something _useful_ like serving funny cat pictures. | IAmEveryone wrote: | I have some doubts that any significant amount of | cryptomining is actually done in Siberia. Part of that would | include a few questions of the definition of "Siberia", a | deep examination (i. e. a suggestion to google) people's | ideas of the weather condition at that hypothetical place, | and maybe a comparison of efficiency of heating a typical | rural Russian home with coal vs. burning coal to generate | electricity to run GPUs, after transmission over sowjet-era | grids. | | Considering how cryptocurrencies seem to attract the get- | rich-quick crowd, it's impressive to see the levels of | motivated reasoning they are capable of, since neither | motivation nor reasoning alone seem to be among their usual | strengths. | varenc wrote: | _If and only if_ you would have used electrical heating | anyway, then using a GPU 's waste heat for heating your home | is one of the best things you can do with it and it's "100% | efficient". That is, 100% of all the energy your GPU consumes | also ends up as heat in your house and it's thermodynamically | equivalent to any other type of resistive electric heater. | | Of course, the energy consumed by any even semi-serious | mining operation far exceeds a home's heating needs. | the8472 wrote: | Not necessarily, a FIR heater (which is also resistive) | deposits a larger fraction of its input energy in humans | than a GPU cooler which heats the air which then indirectly | warms the human and also everything else. | adhesive_wombat wrote: | However, resistive heating is 3-4 times less efficient then | ground/air source heating, so if your actual aim is to heat | the house, you can do a lot better[1]. It's just better, if | you're generating heat anyway, to _also_ use the waste heat | than to dump it outside. | | [1] YMMV in permafrost regions, and the hardware is too | expensive for many people. | vehementi wrote: | Not really a "however", that was the origin of the "If | and only if" | daniel-cussen wrote: | They do use little electric heaters some of the time. | | And there's smaller mining operations, the economies of | scale aren't that great, more the difficulty of finding | GPUs. You can lend it to neighbors and give them a cut of | the proceeds, you could do the whole town. So in fact | ordinary mining operations waste the heat, this would not. | | Plus power there is cheap, I would guess nuclear. | daniel-cussen wrote: | I want to answer the other poster who shows up dead: how | can you lend a miner? Like lending a little heater. Like | lending a cow, one guy needs milk the other wants the | meat and hide. So if you already have all the electrical | heat you really need for your house but want to mine | more, you won't benefit from more heat for your own | house. Whereas maybe across the street a neighbor is | still using little electrical heaters a lot, doesn't | understand crypto very well. So they work something out, | the neighbor gets heat, pays the electric bill, and gets | a cut of the mining, and the original miner provides the | GPU through his contacts and gets a share too. So that | way the heat doesn't go to waste, and the miner can | scale. | daniel-cussen wrote: | Clarifying for alisonkisk, lend means 20 cards instead of | 10 you need for heating, lending the other 10 out to a | neighbor for his heating. Economies of scale, for | instance by buying more cards at a time at a better unit | price. | alisonkisk wrote: | How can you lend your miner to a neighbor for heat? You | all need heat at exactly the same time. Are you going to | move the rig to a different home every hour? | px43 wrote: | Do you think it's more than 5%? Maybe it is, but it seems like | every place that offers GPU rental services (Amazon, Vast, etc) | they are being used almost exclusively for machine learning | applications. The rate they can be rented out is 3-4 times | higher than would be profitable for any cryptocurrency mining, | which should be a pretty solid indicator of where the demand is | actually coming from. | | I know I'm in the minority, but my GPUs are used almost | exclusively for password cracking. I've got ASICs for the | crypto mining. | muttled wrote: | I had a rig on Vast. It wasn't 100% utilized. It mined crypto | when it wasn't rented for ML applications. | rytill wrote: | What software do you use for GPU password cracking? Custom? | And for what purpose? | gaspard234 wrote: | I worked at a security consulting firm that had an 8 GPU | password cracking rig. Teams would be able to send it | hashes obtained during assessments/red teams and try to | discover passwords. | | I was not doing that type of work so I'm not sure what type | of software was used but I think it had multiple open | source programs available. | h4waii wrote: | hashcat. | lvl102 wrote: | I think the overall impact of crypto is 30-35% of their | business. | legutierr wrote: | > there are enough anecdotes of people in Siberia heating their | kitchens with GPUs | | Hey, all you blockchain skeptics, here's what you are always | asking about: a practical use for blockchain tech. | co_dh wrote: | Is this the reason of global warming? | H8crilA wrote: | As much as you living in a steel reinforced concrete house. | matheusmoreira wrote: | Cryptocurrency is not even 1% of global energy consumption. | The environment is being destroyed by China, western | nations, fossil fuels. If anything cryptocurrency is just a | very small drop in their bucket. | InCityDreams wrote: | There are those that day global warming is caused by | politicians talking crap about global warming. My theory is | global warming is caused by the people that vote for the | politicians that talk crap about global warming. | Y-bar wrote: | The Russian energy grid doesn't really have a reputation | for being carbon neutral... | peterpost2 wrote: | Don't they have more nuclear poweplants than most places | in the west? | lkbm wrote: | Might be more, but it's still a minority of their grid. | Wikipedia has a graph for 2016: 18.1% nuclear, 47.9% | natural gas, and 15.7% coal.[0] | | "Energy Matters" says that EU energy production was 26% | nuclear in 2015, but only 12% for consumption[1], so I'm | not sure how to look at that comparison. Either way, | that's probably mostly France (~80%[2]). US around | 8-9%[1]. | | TL;DR: Yes, most western countries probably have less | nuclear, but it's a low bar. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_R | ussia#M... | | [1] http://euanmearns.com/primary-energy-in-the-european- | union-a... | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_F | rance#M... | hwillis wrote: | Russian nuclear is ~17% (compare US at 19%). Overall it | is slightly less CO2-intensive than the US, as it uses | less coal. They have almost as much hydroelectric power | as the entire US renewable sector. | Y-bar wrote: | They have a sizeable nuclear electricity production, and | in energy use overall they are behind USA, but still | worse than many other places: | | https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?end=2 | 018... | driverdan wrote: | This is pretty common. I've been using my gaming rig for | cryptomining in cold weather for years. I make money and keep | my office warm, win win. | robin_reala wrote: | Resistive heating will generally be less efficient than heat | pumps, although potentially Siberia is cold enough to | mitigate that? | orangepurple wrote: | The Mitsubishi Mr Slim heat pumps that we install are able | to warm your home in temperatures as low as -15degC and | -25degC | | When temperatures drop below zero degrees, ice will build | up on the outdoor unit of any heat pump. How the heat pump | reacts to this determines how effective it will be in | providing heat to your home. To remove the ice build-up the | heat pump will need to go into Defrost Mode. During this | time the heat pump will not be delivering heat into your | home. HyperCore's Defrost Logic has been fine-tuned to | extend the period in-between defrost periods and optimise | its heating performance. | | Mitsubishi Electric offers heat pump systems with Hyper- | Heating INVERTER(r) (H2i(r)) technology which can provide | up to 100 percent of heating capacity at 5deg F and | continue operation down to -13deg F even wiThe Mitsubishi | Mr Slim heat pumps that we install are able to warm your | home in temperatures as low as -15degC and -25degC thout | auxiliary heat. | | https://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/articles/what-is-a-heat- | pu... | | https://www.mitsubishi- | electric.co.nz/materials/aircon/broch... | wccrawford wrote: | I couldn't actually find anything about this in a search, | but I think the point is that they're already using the | GPUs for something else, and heating their kitchen with the | excess heat just makes sense at that point. | | The only thing I did find was that apparently Russians are | taking the components from kitchen appliances to use for | other things, which seems entirely unrelated. | InitialBP wrote: | This isn't really a "practical use for blockchain tech". | Rather it's just a positive way to use the side-effect | that blockchain tech requires computing components that | generate a lot of heat. | | Ultimately the heat output has nothing to do with how the | tech is used (like bitcoin). If Bitcoin (or other | cryptocurrencies) stopped holding value people wouldn't | heat their homes like this because it would cost more | than traditional heating methods (as someone pointed out | above about heat pumps.) | Aunche wrote: | Until 100% of our electricity is provided by renewables or | nuclear, resistive heating is just turning converting | fossil fuels into heat, which we convert into electricity, | which we convert back into heat. It would be more efficient | to just burn the fossil fuels on site. | klodolph wrote: | Burning fossil fuels on-site means transporting fossil | fuels to people's houses. Natural gas has a GWP which is | 21 times that of CO2, and residential natural gas | distribution systems are responsible for massive | emissions just due to the leaks. | sandworm101 wrote: | >> more efficient to just burn the fossil fuels on site. | | You forget exactly how efficient a coal-fired powerplant | actually is. Love or hate them, they have 100+ years of | technological innovation to squeeze every watt out of | coal. Your fireplace at home is not nearly as efficient. | So an electric heater powered by the grid is almost | certainly more efficient than burning your own coal at | home in an inefficient stove. | [deleted] | fpoling wrote: | A good oil-burning heater has over 90% efficiency. Even | no so good and cheap one can get over 70%. The best | industrial electricity-generating plants that runs on oil | has efficiency bellow 60%. | sandworm101 wrote: | Does that oil-burning heater need oxygen? If it does then | it needs ventilation, air movement in/out of the house, | pushing that 90% efficiency number way down. | 8note wrote: | Tech connections has what you're looking for: | https://youtu.be/lBVvnDfW2Xo | | Efficiency wise, the comparison between a heat pump and a | furnace depends on the outside temperature. Heat pumps | lose their efficiency for high [?]T, so for winter in a | Russia, a furnace is likely the better option | pimlottc wrote: | You're ignoring heat pump technology, which can result in | greater overall efficiency than converting energy | directly to heat. | Aunche wrote: | The parent comment already addresses heat pumps. I'm | explaining that there is virtually 0 practical use case | for using mining to heat people's homes. | maerF0x0 wrote: | that assumes the use/utility of the computation is 0. We | can all debate if that's true or not about cryptomining. | | One day we may heat our homes with distributed computing | like BOINC. | | Consider the house that marginally has electrical | resistive wall heaters (Like the bay area) and an excess | of spare computers sitting around (also like the bay | area) ... It's marginally better for the house nerd to | leave their PCs on using BOINC than run the wall heater. | Aunche wrote: | If by mining, you mean cryptocurrency creation, the | utility is effectively 0. You can achieve the same | utility if a cryptocurrency simply credited all new coins | to my wallet. If by mining, you mean validating | transactions, then that's something you have to do all | year round, even if it's warm. That makes about as much | sense as asking VISA to send me a rack that does | computations for them only when my home is under 20 C. | maerF0x0 wrote: | yes, which is why the rest of my comment was about BOINC | namibj wrote: | Unless you assume CCS for the fossil plant, which is not | a setup that would work well for a typical residential | forced-induction gas-fired central hot water heater | (combined with passive radiators in rooms or underfloor | heating). | daeken wrote: | I've been doing a lot of ML training, particularly when my | office is cold. Kills two birds with one stone. | NorwegianDude wrote: | You can still use a heat pump that takes the heat from the | exhaust air to warm the fresh air. That way you can get the | same amount of heat as if you were using three+ times as | many graphics cards. | | I usually use GPUs for heating during winter as the power | has to be used anyway, so why not get ethereum for it. | stouset wrote: | > You can still use a heat pump that takes the heat from | the exhaust air to warm the fresh air. | | I don't think you understand how heat pumps work. Heat | pumps have significantly greater than 100% "efficiency". | They don't turn electricity into heat. They use | electricity to move preexisting heat, and it turns out | that's far more efficient in terms of Joules of heat | delivered to your home per Joule of energy spent. In | fact, for any given Joule of energy spent, you can | generally move two to three Joules from outside your home | to inside of your home. | | If the source of heat you're pumping is coming from | resistive heating you're using electricity for, you're | only getting 1 Joule of heat for every Joule of | electricity. Adding heat pumps to this system doesn't | help you. | | > I usually use GPUs for heating during winter as the | power has to be used anyway, so why not get ethereum for | it. | | Because owning and operating a heat pump is almost | certainly cheaper than the costs of owning and operating | a mining rig, even offset by the value of the | cryptocurrency you generate. You'd almost certainly be | better off by heating your home with a heat pump and | using the energy savings to buy that same cryptocurrency. | | The exceptions to this are if you are in a location where | energy is _extremely_ cheap, or perhaps if you generate | more than your household usage of electricity (including | resistive heating) through solar or wind but aren 't able | to sell that electricity back to the grid. | NorwegianDude wrote: | I know very well how heat pumps work, and I find it | ironic that you assumes others don't know because you | don't understand it or haven't heard of it. | | A heat pump doesn't have to take heat from the outside. | By using heat from the extracted air, you can use | whatever you want to generate heat inside and get | multiple times the effective heating as it's reused. Use | wood, electrical floor heating or GPUs. It doesn't | matter. The energy from the extracted air is transferred | to the fresh supply air. The exhaust air will be | freezing. | | Also, electricity has been expensive the last two years, | but mining has still been profitable, considering I | already have some GPUs in my workstation and home server. | | You don't earn money by using a heat pump, you do(or at | least did) by mining. By mining and using a heat pump on | that energy I increase the usage of that energy. Win win | win. | blagie wrote: | There was a comment on another web site a while back: | "The words you're using - it's like you know what a | microwave is, but you keep calling it a fridge, and you | want that fridge to do an oil change on your cat." | | You insist you know about heat pumps, but your comments | indicate you don't understand the fundamental principles. | | It's an interesting topic, if you find the time. | stouset wrote: | > I know very well how heat pumps work, and I find it | ironic that you assumes others don't know because you | don't understand it or haven't heard of it. > > A heat | pump doesn't have to take heat from the outside. | | If you're already spending 1J of energy to get 1J of | heat, a heat pump is not going to turn that 1J of heat | into 2-3J of heat, nor is it going to recover any of the | Joules you've spent to generate that heat. So sure, you | can use a heat pump to move that heat around a space. But | doing so just spends more energy and decreases the | overall efficiency of the system. | | The principle of a heat pump getting such efficiency | numbers is _entirely predicated_ upon the notion that you | 're able to move that heat from somewhere it already | exists "for free" in sufficient bulk. | | > You don't earn money by using a heat pump, you do(or at | least did) by mining. By mining and using a heat pump on | that energy I increase the usage of that energy. Win win | win. | | You fundamentally misunderstand the economics of this | situation. Mining costs money in the form of hardware and | electricity. In exchange you can potentially extract some | amount of revenue. If your alternative was to use that | energy to generate one Joule of heat for every Joule of | energy spent, you might as well mine to get a rebate. | | But the sum of mining revenue minus mining costs are | almost certainly _less_ than the costs of simply | operating a heat pump instead. Again, you 'd be better | off using a heat pump to heat your home and using the | money saved on energy to simply buy $CRYPTO at market | prices. | NorwegianDude wrote: | As I said, I already have GPUs. If you don't think mining | has been profitable for me and others during e.g. the | last year then you need a reality check, cause it has | been profitable. | | > If you're already spending 1J of energy to get 1J of | heat, a heat pump is not going to turn that 1J of heat | into 2-3J of heat, nor is it going to recover any of the | Joules you've spent to generate that heat. | | It's not magic, or complicated. The energy spent is used | multiple times, as I said. You can save energy using a | heat pump both by using it for initial heating, or | transferring existing heat that would otherwise be thrown | away. | | So no, I'm not misunderstanding anything. If you think | it's not possible then you too can get this "magic" using | e.g. Nibe F750 + SAM40. Check their documentation, it | even has charts for everything! | delecti wrote: | > You can still use a heat pump that takes the heat from | the exhaust air to warm the fresh air | | Unless I'm misunderstanding part of this proposed setup, | I'm pretty sure this doesn't work. The higher efficiency | of heat pumps comes from the fact that the outdoors is an | effectively infinite (for the purposes of a house) source | of temperature differential. You can only move as much | heat as exists, so you can't use a heat pump to multiply | a finite heat source. | NorwegianDude wrote: | I'm not sure what there is to misunderstand. Heat is | taken for the outgoing hot air, and transferred to the | fresh air coming in. So instead of hot air going out, the | air going out will usually be freezing. | mook wrote: | That sounds like heat recovery ventilation; while useful, | it serves a different purpose than heat pumps (which | heats up enclosed spaces without the ventilation). Also | HRVs normally work with whatever existing air and don't | use extra heated air... | NorwegianDude wrote: | You are recovering the heat from the ventilation, yes. | But you're doing so using a heat pump. | | Check out e.g. Nibe F750 with SAM40. | | I'm using the heat pump to heat water using the extracted | air. That water is then used for floor heating, | ventilation air heating and ofc. hot water. | delecti wrote: | In my experience, people usually try to avoid exchanging | air with the outdoors when they're concerned about | significantly heating/cooling their homes. If you're | exchanging air then a heat pump could super heat/cool the | outgoing air, and that's the piece I was missing from | your proposal. | NorwegianDude wrote: | A house must exchange air. Better insulated houses are | basically air tight, so you must have ventilation to get | fresh air. | | A pro with that solution is that the extracted air has a | high temperature all year, making it more efficient that | using a heat pump to extract heat from outside that might | be -30 celcius. A downside is that the amount of air is | limited, so if you need more heat then you have to | supplement it with something else. | | You get it, but it seems there are a few others that | don't realize that a heat pump can also be used to | increase efficiency by reducing the heat lost. While I do | get that it's unknown to most people, some people here | perfectly illustrates the Dunning-Kruger effect... | bluGill wrote: | But with bitcoin mining your heat pays for itself, while if | you use a heat pump you have to buy power to run the heat | pump. So while heat pumps are more energy effient, bitcoin | miners are far more economically efficient. | stouset wrote: | This is only true if the value of the Bitcoin you mine is | higher than the difference in cost between buying and | operating a heat pump and buying and operating a mining | rig. | hinkley wrote: | I don't agree with a lot of things in CAPEX vs OPEX, but | this is one that is clearly right: | | Having equipment sitting around unused is way more | expensive than most people care to think about. | | A heating coil might not be terribly valuable in July, | but come November it will have roughly the same value it | had the previous February. Bitcoin mining hardware that's | switched off for five months is losing value at an | alarming rate, and very quickly _won 't_ be a net | reduction in costs. | | Very quickly a heat pump becomes cheaper to operate, and | cheaper to purchase. And if you amortize the cost over | the life expectancy, that threshold is very, very low. | People who have recent memory of living paycheck to | paycheck are constantly screwed by the latter, and that | Venn diagram overlaps heavily with several other circles | that make crypto super attractive to some people and | super ridiculous to others. | | I went down this avenue of compute as radiator long ago, | and I could never get the math to work, unless I moved | somewhere that was cold most of the year, and that sure | as fuck is not going to happen. | mwint wrote: | Curious, what things in "CAPEX vs OPEX" do you not agree | with? I'm no economist, but this sounds interesting. | hinkley wrote: | In a very brief nutshell, the ways in which buying a | little hardware or a tool to save thousands of hours of | frustrating development work is not a slam dunk because | of colors of money. | stickfigure wrote: | Heat pumps are not cheap, $10-$15k installed for a small | one. | [deleted] | HWR_14 wrote: | Neither are GPUs that are run 24/7 at full speed | [deleted] | stefanfisk wrote: | the one in my cabin cost me $800 including installation. | pvarangot wrote: | A split AC unit that can also run backwards is less than | 1000 and basically a heat pump. Not all split units that | heat will do that, but a bunch do. | stickfigure wrote: | Are you talking about something that fits in a window and | warms a single room? | | I recently replaced the 3 ton hvac unit on my small 1500 | sq ft single family home with a heat pump and all the | bids were in that range. | quickthrowman wrote: | 2/3rds of that cost is labor. 3 ton multi-zone heatpump | kit is $2500-3500, another $250-500 for an electrician to | pull #6s and a ground to a 60A disconnect outside and | sealtite whip into the heatpump, and 60-80 hrs at $125/hr | to install the heat pump and air handlers, including all | the exterior wall penetrations and sealing, running | glycol lines, installing thermostats, wiring air | handlers, etc. | pvarangot wrote: | Yeah single room. There's dual room splits that run a | bigger compressor with two heads too. They are usually | way cheaper than bigger units even when you account how | much juice they eat up but you should do your own math | because it depends on the house and the setup. | | Also if you want to control every single room including | bathrooms and walk in closets it gets tricky. | 8note wrote: | In either case, you still have to compare against using | the fossil fuels to heat your house instead of turning | them to electricity first, to heat your house via the | heat pump or the resistive heater | hunter2_ wrote: | This video does a great job at considering that aspect: | https://youtu.be/MFEHFsO-XSI | namibj wrote: | In that case you would still have an absorption | refrigerator that "cools" the outside and dumps to the | inside as an alternative. They are usually either gas- | fired or running off of district heating (well, 50-120C | seems usual). | bouncycastle wrote: | For bitcoin mining to pay for itself, you need to leave | it running to the max 24/7. Each miner is a noisy ~3000w | machine. So that's a 3000w heater. You would normally | turn down the heater during the day, but if you turn off | your miner during the day, you won't break even. | thinkmassive wrote: | Apparently you haven't heard of immersion cooling. It's | essentially silent, and many people are using DIY setups | to augment a heat pump or hot water heater. | | Commercial solutions have been in development for a few | years. Here's one example: https://www.wisemining.io/ | | Edit: after re-reading your comment I realize you also | aren't aware that miners can be throttled. Powering it | down is not the only alternative to consuming 3kW. | TaylorAlexander wrote: | It pays for itself in dollars but what about the carbon | emissions? | lazide wrote: | A lot of places that do electric resistive heat have | cheap electrical sources - often hydro or nuclear. | voidfunc wrote: | Do you really think anyone in Siberia, one if the poorest | places in the world, cares about carbon emissions? | fpoling wrote: | For a guy in Siberia various climate models show that the | global warming will improve life. Winters will be much | milder, agriculture will be less risky. | [deleted] | sobkas wrote: | > Do you really think anyone in Siberia, one if the | poorest places in the world, cares about carbon | emissions? | | Unfortunately they care. For now only poor face real | consequences of climate change. They are to poor to | mitigate its effects. | [deleted] | dsizzle wrote: | It seems Siberia is one of the places where living | conditions might actually improve | https://eos.org/articles/climate-change-could-make- | siberia-a... (the "big bog" scenario does cast doubt on | that -- e.g. existing structures may collapse). | ClumsyPilot wrote: | The problem is almost noone there can afford a heatpump | TaylorAlexander wrote: | My point is that when we as outsiders look at this | practice and evaluate its merits, _we_ should care about | the carbon emissions even if the people there don't. | enraged_camel wrote: | If you live in Siberia you presumably want the planet to | warm up more. ;) | sobkas wrote: | > If you live in Siberia you presumably want the planet | to warm up more. ;) | | No you don't, when permafrost melts it causes ground to | move. It is really bad for everything build on or in it. | Something like houses sinking and falling apart. In some | cases it cause big holes in the ground and they got even | bigger over time. | qwytw wrote: | Most of Siberia does not have permafrost, though. | gwbas1c wrote: | I'd assume that they were going to use carbon-generating | fuel, and that someone somewhere would already run a | mining rig. IE: It's murky. | | If they were going to heat using an electric space | heater, it's a wash. | | If they were going to heat using natural gas, but the | electricity comes from nuclear, it's lower carbon. | | If they were going to heat using natural gas, and the | emissions are higher. BUT, if they were going to run the | mining rig anyway, and they've merely turned off the gas | heat, the emissions are overall lower. | TaylorAlexander wrote: | They could heat with an electric heat pump with can be | 2.5x more efficient than an electric heater. | gwbas1c wrote: | But heat pumps don't pay you to run them! (I wish mine | did.) | l33t2328 wrote: | Which is really interesting because electric space | heaters are 100% efficient. | gwbas1c wrote: | (Apologies if you already know this.) | | Heat pumps work by moving heat, they usually move more | heat than input energy. | | Basically, a refrigerator is a heat pump. The input | energy runs the heat pump, which it uses to move heat out | of the refrigerator. Typically, for every watt of | electricity, more than a watt of electricity is moved out | of the refrigerator. | | They work by compressing gasses into fluids, and then | letting the fluid expand back into a gas. Basically, when | a fluid evaporates, it absorbs heat as potential energy. | The energy can be harvested by compressing the gas at a | high enough pressure that it condenses into a fluid. Do | this in a loop, and you can move heat. | | No laws of physics violated! | hunter2_ wrote: | Or an example that might be more readily acceptable, | being something that a person without any domain | knowledge could simply test* to prove it to themselves: | | Suppose you built a shed around the outdoor unit of a | central air conditioning system and let it come up to max | ambient temperature. Then right next to it you built a | shed with a resistive heater which consumes the exact | same wattage as the air conditioner. The first shed will | be much warmer because you're not _creating_ heat so much | as you 're _moving_ heat. If you increase the resistive | heater 's wattage by about 2.5x then the sheds will be | about the same temperature. | | * Don't actually do this and expect the system to | survive. | InitialLastName wrote: | Yes, heat pumps use 1 watt to apply 2.5 watts of heat to | a room (by using the outdoor ambient air as an energy | source). | almostdeadguy wrote: | Why would we assume they are (I'm not sure that the | "someone somewhere" part of that is material either) | going to use a mining rig already to assess the merits of | mining rigs for heating? That's tautological. | tenthirtyam wrote: | This was the best blog I ever noticed on this topic,an | Australian using exhaust air from their miners to pre-heat | incoming air to their heat pump. TL;DR - it's worth it. | | https://blog.haschek.at/2021/how-i-heat-my-home-by- | mining.ht... | peri wrote: | Ah, money laundering, the international past-time-space- | crime. | dangerface wrote: | Is the sec concern trolling nvidia? What do they mean by impact? | | > the sale of its graphics processing units (GPUs) designed and | marketed for gaming | | SEC recognises that these cards where marketed to gamers and even | recognise that the parts of NVIDIA marketed toward crypto mining | was reported as crypto mining. | | It seems like nvidia did business as usual and the real problem | is those filthy gamers that aren't gaming. | | If NVIDIA reported its gaming cards to SEC as crypto cards, now | that the crypto market is dead and those cards are being used for | gaming would SEC still consider NVIDIA to be in the wrong for | their undisclosed impact on gaming? | | Seems like SEC is mad at gamers for making money instead of | gaming and they are taking it out on NVIDIA. Im just glad some | one is standing up to these filthy gamers. | ideamotor wrote: | You sound like Elon Musk. Rule of law and fair play is what | makes the US economy work and grow. | Sakos wrote: | > Seems like SEC is mad at gamers for making money instead of | gaming and they are taking it out on NVIDIA. Im just glad some | one is standing up to these filthy gamers. | | 1) Weird of you to add everything after your first sentence | without indicating you edited your comment. | | 2) I have no idea what you're talking about. This isn't about | nVidia reporting their cards as crypto cards. This is about | nVidia not reporting what portion of their revenue is subject | to volatility in the cryptomarket. SEC isn't mad about | anything. It sounds like you're mad, tbh, and I'm not sure why. | dangerface wrote: | > This is about nVidia not reporting what portion of their | revenue is subject to volatility in the cryptomarket. | | Nvidia doesn't know what customers use their cards for and it | especially doesn't know the volatility of the market, no one | does. If nvidia knew market volatility before hand they | wouldn't need to make gpu they could just trade the market | more efficiently than every one else. | | You and SEC are talking about pure speculation as if it was | fact, nvidia didn't speculate in their reporting they gave | accurate numbers as they should. Until you can show otherwise | its all just speculation. | Sakos wrote: | > NVIDIA had information, however, that this increase in | gaming sales was driven in significant part by | cryptomining. Despite this, NVIDIA did not disclose in its | Forms 10-Q, as it was required to do, these significant | earnings and cash flow fluctuations related to a volatile | business for investors to ascertain the likelihood that | past performance was indicative of future performance. | | What proof do you have that the SEC is speculating about | NVIDIA having this information? | someweirdperson wrote: | Speculation? It is well-known that their drivers contain | extensive telemetry functions. This removes any shadow of | a doubt that they know what the cards they sold are being | used for. | Sakos wrote: | > In two of its Forms 10-Q for its fiscal year 2018, NVIDIA | reported material growth in revenue within its gaming business. | NVIDIA had information, however, that this increase in gaming | sales was driven in significant part by cryptomining. Despite | this, NVIDIA did not disclose in its Forms 10-Q, as it was | required to do, these significant earnings and cash flow | fluctuations related to a volatile business for investors to | ascertain the likelihood that past performance was indicative | of future performance. The SEC's order also finds that NVIDIA's | omissions of material information about the growth of its | gaming business were misleading given that NVIDIA did make | statements about how other parts of the company's business were | driven by demand for crypto, creating the impression that the | company's gaming business was not significantly affected by | cryptomining. | | > "NVIDIA's disclosure failures deprived investors of critical | information to evaluate the company's business in a key market, | Aissen wrote: | The settled charged which Nvidia agreed to pay: $5.5M. What they | will pay for failing to buy ARM with all this inflated stock | cash: $2B. | daniel-cussen wrote: | This is true. I met a prince once, named Mikhail von und Zu | Lichtenstein Oyarzun. Weird fucking guy, but that's how princes | are, I didn't judge. | | But then lo and behold he traveled to Spain, a country which | recognizes nobility, and tried arrogancing his way into a party | (like "what do you mean I'm not on the list!?"). The press asked | who the fuck is he, asked his parents, his parents weren't his | parents, his parents had no idea who the fuck he was. Said as | much publicly. "I have no fucking idea who this asshole is" said | his father. | | And then he was on TV in 2017 or 2018 as the world-class | bullshitter of all time, but with much contempt. He had hours of | talk-shows just for him, his law school professor going in front | of the camera saying what he did was illegal because he pretended | to have authority. He was a scammer, in particular he posed as a | human-rights lawyer targeting victims of torture to get their | secrets and extort them. Tried to do it to me, but you can't con | an honest John. | | So what happened, going back to your point? He brainwashed | himself, told himself he was a prince 10 million times. But lied | to himself literally 10 million times. | dang wrote: | We detached this subthread from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31408429. | alisonkisk wrote: | > He was a scammer, in particular he posed as a human-rights | lawyer targeting victims of torture to get their secrets and | extort them. Tried to do it to me, but you can't con an honest | John. | | You are calling victims of tortures liars? | daniel-cussen wrote: | daniel-cussen wrote: | EDIT: You're right I did in fact say victims of torture are | liars, at least it can be read that way! Wow, didn't | realize it, didn't intend it. So I don't know what he was | saying to the others, but he set up many many scams like | talking really loud on his cell about "an opportunity going | to waste" when we met at Metro el Golf staircase, trying to | get me to ask on my own accord what that opportunity was, | but I had no curiosity for it. So helping me with torture, | I fell for it a bit, but it was something I could not fail | to want. | | So honest John means many things, but basically it's hard | to get someone to engage in a scam without engaging greed. | Now with the tortured that's disgusting, it's not greed but | he verbally claimed a government payout to the tortured--a | pension--ten times higher than the real amount. It's like | 230.000 CLP whereas he claimed like 2.200.000[1]. And | that's designed to get them to pay him something, very | difficult money for a torture victim to earn because their | careers are ruined as part of the torture, to keep them | down. The torturers advise to steal and impoverish them, | never pay back debts. Torture involves bankrupting the | victim, it's property crime too. Coerce signatures of | course, give up deeds, give up property, give up a car in | one case, betray people, betray yourself. | | But then the torturer tells you the solution is to get a | job. Try to get one with that ruined resume though! "Where | did you work in April 2009? No good answer? No hire!" | | [1] Morally that's 10x as much, so he didn't actually quote | 10x as much because that's too disgusting, too easy to put | that in a newspaper headline, it burns too much. But that's | how he got the number, multiply it by ten, and then | subtract a meaningless amount strictly in order to reduce | hatred against him, which he also did with a nonprofit | called Sin Odio, Without Hatred, which was linked to his | claims of being a human rights lawyer. | | My torturers did this too: I was under amnestic drugs from | March 29, with a few days on at the beginning, but in total | 29 days under amnestics, meaning they give you pills as | soon as you awake, all day long, and then you think | tomorrow is today, next week is this week, next month is | this month. Literally motivating the question, "what year | is it?!" Like in time travel movies. But it was less than a | month because that's bad PR, saying you tortured someone | for a whole month, so they say 29 days, so that I have to | say "almost a month" when morally the intention was a full | month, minus some meaningless amount to take away the PR | sting. Water down the accusation, but if it weren't for the | intent to water down the accusation, it would have | absolutely been a month! A lunar month, though. And so the | reason is they do this to women too, but they menstruate so | they know if they've gotten roofied for weeks, unless you | shoot the moon, 24/7 amnestics for an entire menstrual | period, 29 days, they end up at the same part of their | cycle as before the amnestics started, then it's not as | obvious. | isthisbothigh wrote: | Which drug is this bot on? Seems to be high. | ask_b123 wrote: | I looked Mikhail von und Zu Lichtenstein Oyarzun up and it | seems like the story might be true to some extent. Seems like | a person that was impersonating a prince. | daniel-cussen wrote: | Well looking up the name is difficult, and you'll have | better luck in Spanish. | | I think it's Miguel von und zu Liechtenstein, I misspelled | it earlier, it's a tricky one. Said his name was Mikhail | legally but when he flashed both copies of his Chilean ID | it was Miguel, not Mikhail. | | https://www.gamba.cl/2018/05/la-decadente-historia-de- | miguel... | | It was also in the papers, like Publimetro, and El | Mercurio. Also on a morning show, https://www.youtube.com/r | esults?search_query=miguel+de+liech..., TVN I remember. 30 | minute show about him, which I have no problem with it's | righteous justice and juicy gossip at the exact same time, | win-win. If only all television were that good in every | sense. | | That's how I found out he was full of shit, I saw his face | on a television at a cornershop and it all made sense. But | stayed in character to a literally insane degree, and was | very consistent about it. He even convinced high-ranking | politicians, the President, he went all out. Shot the moon. | And it sort of worked out, hey! Isn't that remarkable, | actually pulled it off haha, good one. | | He did his damndest to get everyone's hatred, too, | particularly with that foundation trying to outlaw hate | speech and instigation of violence, as a front to commit | extortion and virtue signaling. Yeah because then he got to | talk to people giving him early warning of pitchforks, | could do man-in-the-middle attacks by plagiarizing his | victims pleas to elicit the pity that was not rightfully | his, and gating access to government help to clean his | victims out. | | Human-rights corruption, like stealing candy from a baby! | [deleted] | omega3 wrote: | I think the gist is that they've intentionally misled investors | by misclassification of sales from more violative, unpredictable | crypto into stable pc gaming market. | voxic11 wrote: | There is nothing in this Press Release which indicates the SEC | thought nvidia's failures were intentional. | elevenoh wrote: | What a perverse incentive racket the SEC is | dean177 wrote: | "The SEC's order also finds that NVIDIA's omissions of material | information about the growth of its gaming business were | misleading given that NVIDIA did make statements about how other | parts of the company's business were driven by demand for crypto, | creating the impression that the company's gaming business was | not significantly affected by cryptomining. | | The SEC's order finds that NVIDIA violated Section 17(a)(2) and | (3) of the Securities Act of 1933 and the disclosure provisions | of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The order also finds that | NVIDIA failed to maintain adequate disclosure controls and | procedures. Without admitting or denying the SEC's findings, | NVIDIA agreed to a cease-and-desist order and to pay a $5.5 | million penalty." | Lukineus wrote: | > "NVIDIA agreed to a cease-and-desist order and to pay a $5.5 | million penalty." | | Cost of doing business. | H8crilA wrote: | More like the SEC lacked evidence that this was intentional. | | Remember about the SEC whistleblower program, if you had | inside proof of intent the fine would be a lot higher, and | you'd get a share of the fine! | Melatonic wrote: | Wait seriously? What kind of percentage do you get? That | is.....both interesting and terrifying in a way | smnrchrds wrote: | 10% to 30%. | | https://www.sec.gov/whistleblower | JumpCrisscross wrote: | This sets the stage for shareholder lawsuits, which are | better equipped to assess actual damages. | ekianjo wrote: | thats pocket money for nvidia | hef19898 wrote: | Yes, on the other hand not being called out by the SEC for | insufficient disclosures helps with investor trust. | nullc wrote: | Many of these actions are specifically geared to tee off | civil lawsuits, so the total cost can be significantly | greater. | whatever1 wrote: | I was always wondering why the big players don't just make ASICS | for crypto mining that would make happy both the miners (with | their faster speeds) and the gamers (who would not have to | compete to get a gaming card). | | But now it is obvious to me. It is better to have in your | earnings gpu sales because you can always claim that you expect a | steady source of income. If they had 60% of their revenue | explicitly from a volatile market like crypto mining, then their | stock would not look attractive. | _-david-_ wrote: | Nvidia has a GPU for crypto. I don't think it helped. | | https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/cmp/ | whatever1 wrote: | It was just paper released less than a year ago during chip | shortage, I doubt that they produced any significant amount | of them. | | Their performance was also luck luster compared to the | consumer rtx cards. | t0suj4 wrote: | So is this basically failure of disclosure that they made a quick | buck off the crypto craze and attributed that to the gaming | market? | gitfan86 wrote: | Which is material to investors like me who think that crypto is | a house of cards and gaming has long term growth potential | BlueTemplar wrote: | FYI 5.5 M$ is 1 hour 47 min of Nvidia's revenue and 16 hours | worth of net income. | Dave3of5 wrote: | I think the amount is far too low but charging them is | reasonable. Maybe they won't do it again. I suspect with such a | low fine they don't care really and they'll just pay it. | jijji wrote: | How would Nvidia even know what people are doing with the cards | they purchase? Thats like saying that Intel should disclose that | a large portion of its chips are being used to siphon porn off | the network. | sedeki wrote: | What's the rationale behind this omission on NVIDIA's part? | rcxdude wrote: | Two things: (GPU) cryptomining is extremely unpopular with PC | gamers, especially those who DIY build PCs, because the demand | for GPUs for mining is substantially worsening the general GPU | shortage, pushing prices even higher. NVIDIA has made a lot of | noise about how they are on the 'side of gamers' (such as with | their Low Hash Rate cards which have a software lock designed | to reduce mining efficiency which held for about a year or so), | but in general seems to have been happy in practice to make as | much money as they can off of it. So NVIDIA has a marketing | interest in downplaying the impact of cryptomining on the | shortage while selling as much as they can into the high demand | and high prices at the moment. (And tech journalists | communicating to these gamers do read these reports and tell | the consumers about this stuff) | | Secondly, from an investors point of view, GPU cryptomining | demand is seen as a lot more volatile than PC gaming demand. A | crypto crash or the planned ethereum switch to proof of stake | could reduce this demand substantially. If a larger fraction of | NVIDIA's sales (and thus revenue) is due to cryptomining, it's | less likely to be similar next year (not only because | cryptomining might buy less new cards, but also because they | might flood the market with used cards, reducing demand for new | cards from PC gamers, which happened during the last big crypto | crash). This is the main reason the SEC is not happy about it. | When reporting to investors NVIDIA also has an incentive to | downplay crypto-related demand. | synu wrote: | Presumably that the fine will be much, much less than whatever | the value of the benefit is that they earned from the omission. | infinityio wrote: | The fine was ~$5M, nvidia made ~$10B last year - It's | approximately equivalent to the amount of money they make in | 4 hours | blihp wrote: | Minimizing the perception of downside risk in sales when it | dries up to keep share prices higher than they otherwise would | be. Had they come out and said approximately X% of a given | quarter's sales were mining related, it would have most likely | been priced into the stock as cyclical sales with a lower | resulting multiple. | | edit: this is an old story see previous discussion | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31284952 | Out_of_Characte wrote: | Thats still strange as the lowered gaming sales are partly | due to increasing prices from crypto miners and higher | material costs. Their profit margin and sales only grew | larger during this time | Sakos wrote: | The point is that it's unreliable income. The cryptomarket | can crash, which will have an effect on future earnings. If | nVidia isn't open about how much of their revenue is at | risk, investors can't make informed decisions about | investing in nVidia. | peri wrote: | About damn time, IMO. But as I fix nVidia's bugs, I'm obviously | ignorant of anything impacting Serious Cryptographic Engineering. | DeathArrow wrote: | The punishment should be proportional with the sales for | cryptomining which they lied about. Investors can be seriously | affected by this. | | A few million is not a punishment it is encouraging Nvidia to do | nasty things in the future since they know they can get away with | it. | thathndude wrote: | Agreed. I was invested in NVDA during this period. Should look | back and see how the stock performed during the relevant | period. | runeks wrote: | I'm curious: how difficult would it be to win a suit against | Nvidia with this SEC charge in hand? | mbesto wrote: | > Investors can be seriously affected by this. | | > A few million is not a punishment it is encouraging Nvidia to | do nasty things in the future since they know they can get away | with it. | | Ok so tell me precisely how much NVDA benefited by not | disclosing how much sales were to crypto? | | I'm a NVDA stock holder and I just don't see what the fuss is. | It's been impossible to buy a Nvidia card over the last 3 years | due to scalpers and crypto farmers. I guess I thought everyone | kinda knew that? | birracerveza wrote: | The problem seems from stem from the fact that if NVDA | disclosed that crypto amounted to 5% of their market when | instead it's 5 times as much (random numbers for the sake of | the example), investors are bound to suffer more in case of a | crypto market crash, because the crypto exposure is much | higher than what was disclosed by the company. | mbesto wrote: | > investors are bound to suffer more in case of a crypto | market crash | | Do we know that actually? There was already outsized demand | (demand > supply) for Nvdia GPUs to the extent that | consumers literally couldn't buy GPUs for ~2 years (still | is a problem) without buying from a scalper. A few things | to consider: | | (1) In most markets where demand outpaces supply, new | entrants emerge. That is almost impossible to do in GPUs | due to compatibility/support. So we've had pent up demand | in that market. | | (2) Consumers waited for supply to catch up to make the | purchase even though they were ready to purchase. | | (3) AFAIK there was no surcharge implemented by NVDA and | this value was captured by scalpers. In fact, the price for | performance ratio for the latest series of NVDA GPUs was so | good that even if crypto wasn't a thing many consumers were | ready to replace their old GPU. | | (4) Crypto focused demand is a leading indicator of sales | for that channel. With the shift to PoS, the overall demand | for crypto rigs could shutter overnight. | | My theory (as an NVDA investor) is that sales wouldn't | falter because they were already selling products as fast | as physically possible due to supply constraints. The | question then therefore is what is the forecast 2-5 years | out? NVDA is IMO heavily diversified in markets that have | long term plays that easily could substitute any dip in | consumer GPUs due to less demand from crypto. | | TL;DR - I think people are overthinking this and if you | don't have any idea of how to calculate what a meaningful | penalty should be (i.e. "well the company was set to gain X | amount of profit due to their infraction") then it's hard | for me to take the argument seriously that $5M "isn't | enough". | flerchin wrote: | If I were the SEC, I'd say that they lied about it to avoid a | risk discount on their stock. The volatility of crypto | currencies exposes their business to more risk. Whether | that's true, or provable, IDK. However, it is motive for | Nvidia to lie, and they did lie. | remram wrote: | Punishing the company just hurts investors further. The board | members or CEO should be fined personally if they lied. | techwiz137 wrote: | It's interesting to note that their stock started to take off | somewhere in 2014 and exploded in 2017, correlation doesn't mean | causation, but it's fits so perfectly with the rise of mining. | | Well rise of mining is somewhat a misunderstanding, because since | I've been a frequent user of cryptocurrency since early 2011, | from my point of view that's when GPU mining started but I | digress. | tiku wrote: | So a GPU made for gaming is used for computing something, and | then it is their fault? Would they rule the same if you sell | knives for Bushcrafting, but they are using the knives in | kitchens? | | And one could argue that gaming is also rendering / computing / | solving problems. | tehbeard wrote: | It's not about how the customer used them. | | It's about what NVidia told their stockholders in reports. | | Rather than: "This years growth is fueled by sales to the | cryptominer market" (which is a pretty dang volatile market to | sell to as a crash will floor nvidia's market with cheap used | cards rather than selling overinflated new ones...) | | They lied and said: "oh yeah no, totes all those gamers buying | cards for sick rigs", and the pc gamer market is much more | stable, it's predictable, you know roughly when / how much of | the market will be buying new to replace a card that's now too | old/limited. | | tl;dr they lied about who they were selling to, because the | volatility (no guarantee of that market still existing in a | year or two's time) would make shareholders understandably | nervous. | dangerface wrote: | I have seen several people claim nvidia lied and was telling | investors that their increase in sales was because of a | fortnight boom but I can't find where nvidia allegedly said | that. | | It seems like they didn't lie they sold gpu and reported the | correct number of gpu sold. The only claim nVidia made was | that it marketed these cards to gamers which the SEC | acknowledges they did, this isn't a lie. | Linda703 wrote: | hexo wrote: | SEC charges company for not disclosing trade secret. What a | shame. | freemint wrote: | As a publicly traded company you have to disclose certain trade | secrets. Tough Luck. | duxup wrote: | Didn't they settle this already? | | https://www.engadget.com/nvidia-sec-settlement-crypto-mining... | vmception wrote: | Yes the dates match up with this article | | Its old news by a week or week and a half | alangibson wrote: | I'm pretty content to buy Nvidia on the way down. Their position | in the type of silicon that is essential to the future of | computing would be very hard to assault. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-17 23:01 UTC)