Nice.
Malaysian Police crush crypto-mining kit to punish electricity thieves
Police in the Malaysian district of Miri have used a steamroller to crush 1069 computers allegedly used to mine Bitcoin. The accused in this case, according to Miri Police's Facebook page, were stealing electricity to power their mining operations. Local outlets report that the electricity theft was so substantial it caused …
COMMENTS
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Monday 19th July 2021 16:11 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Ecological vandalism
"Stupid publicity stunt."
If they had just sold them on, would anyone else have heard of the action taken? Probably not, IMHO. Police are supposed to try to prevent crime, not just deal with it after it's happened. This has driven the message home around the world, not just to the locals.
Of course, it's just drive the remaining miners further underground :-)
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Monday 19th July 2021 10:09 GMT Lunatic Looking For Asylum
Looks good but probably ineffective
The drives will probably still be intact and the data read pretty easily. There is no way that a roller could crush aall those PC's flat enough to destroy the inner disks, even if they were running them over one at a time.
Publicity stunt just about sums it up. Probably a lot of bent coppers using bent disks to carry on the mining :-)
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Monday 19th July 2021 11:42 GMT GrumpenKraut
Re: Looks good but probably ineffective
Very unlikely any data will be recoverable. While it is quite difficult to flatten a hard disk, a steam roller(*) will have no problems. Just note how flat the rigs are afterwards. A hard disk may still be one piece, but the platters will be very much non-flat. For SSDs, a single chip (of several) might survive if it is very lucky, not sure what one would get out of that.
(*) weight up to 30 tons for not really huge ones.
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Monday 19th July 2021 16:19 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Looks good but probably ineffective
"The drives will probably still be intact and the data read pretty easily."
Assuming they even had hard drives, did you click the image for the larger version of the pic showing the final result? They looked pretty damn flat to me. Even disk-on-a-chip type SSDs quite probably got flattened or crushed by other components or the case being flattened on top of them. It looks like they spent quite a lot more time than the short video clip making sure everything was flattened as much as possible.
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Monday 19th July 2021 10:36 GMT EvilDrSmith
I dunno, they didn't say that the miners were still in them at the time...
Less flippantly, if the miners were stealing enough electricity to cause power cuts, the houses may have had some 'interesting' wiring or other features that made them fundamentally unsafe (as far as residential properties go), and it was thus easier/cheaper/safer to demolish them rather than try to make them safe.
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Monday 19th July 2021 14:39 GMT deadlockvictim
Better mask needed
The first thought that came to mind is that they needed much, much better masks. There are much worse things for your body in the air once all of the rigs have been pulverised. Breathable metals that body can't rid off? Maybe the Malaysian police ought to take a course on toxicology and what some metals can do to your kidneys.
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This post has been deleted by its author
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Monday 19th July 2021 18:49 GMT Dave 15
Pathetic
Typical stupid idiot police action, it would be nice if anyone could employ police with brains that arent brand new.
That equipment could easily have been donated to schools, the poor in other countries etc. Far better even than trying to recycle squashed boxes (which are probably now impossible to recycle at a sensible cost.
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Wednesday 21st July 2021 15:22 GMT jtaylor
Re: Pathetic
"That equipment could easily have been donated to schools, the poor in other countries etc."
On planet Earth, very few schools run bitcoin mining farms.
And not many poor people have cheap, reliable electricity and good Internet connection in their climate controlled homes. That's really not what being poor is like.
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