Truckload of GPUs stolen on their way out of San Francisco US-based Nvidia partner EVGA has reported that a shipment of GPUs it was sending to a distribution centre has been stolen from a truck. A forum post by EVGA product manager Jacob Freeman states “PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that on October 29, 2021, a shipment of EVGA GeForce RTX 30-Series Graphics Cards was stolen from a truck en route …
I recall a guy in one of the US Southern states (May have been a Reg story).
Using Tor from a USB Bootable Linux distro, he had gone onto the dark web, bought some illegal goodies (from a site taken over by the FBI) then provided his real name and shipping address for the delivery.
Apparently, to sell on EBay as a "hobbyist", all you need to give is a name, phone number, and a social security number - not difficult to fake those. And even if they weren't fake, the info given to seller by their seller is probably fake (as they must have suspected because the product was cheap).
That makes the assumption that the product was cheap and the buyer could have known better. But with the current dearth of availability those carts will probably be sold with just as much markup and premium as "gray market"/scalped stock from resellers operating within the law.
The headline and the constant references in the article to GPUs implies it was the chips on the way to the factory making graphics cards that were stolen, except for the quote by the NVidia guy who correctly refers to "graphics cards". I expect more from El Reg authors and editors.
You do however mine other cryptocurrencies with GPUs, for which you often get paid in BTC...
Unless you're just trying to score nit-picky points, it really doesn't matter whether or not you're mining the BTC directly on your GPU, the end result is still an insatiable demand for GPUs from people wanting to convert GPU time into BTC one way or another (and being willing to pay above RRP for them), which has an undesirable impact on GPU availability (at more reasonable prices) for everyone else.
Once had a GeForce 8800 Ultra that failed several years after the warranty expired. While waiting for the replacement to arrive, I read on a forum somewhere that this could be caused by dry joints and sticking it in a hot oven could get it working again.
Nothing to lose, so gave it a try. It worked! Got the machine up and running again until the new card arrived then went into the box 'o' bits as an emergency use replacement.
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