Norton Crypto Mining

[DailyDi]

So Norton just popped me a new window, asking me to let it mine crypto-currencies when my PC is idle. Wonder how long it will be until they get sued for burning out people's graphics cards without warning of the risks of running at 100% all night.

[~Brian~]

7 minutes ago, DailyDi said:

So Norton just popped me a new window, asking me to let it mine crypto-currencies when my PC is idle. Wonder how long it will be until they get sued for burning out people's graphics cards without warning of the risks of running at 100% all night.

And I wonder how long it will take for Norton to get sued because they decide to ask that question. It’s one thing to actually set up your own machine to mine crypto, but it’s quite another for Norton or any other piece of equipment or software to decide to run whatever it’s running on your machine without your knowledge. Even if not and where to come on there and ask you for permission, I would be very hesitant to do it, because if it Hass to run at 100% all the time in order to mine crypto, your system will never get a break, your fans will be running at full speed, and your system probably wouldn’t last as long as it would have normally been if something I just ran a couple of times.

now, if I had my own machine that was separate from my server that could run crypto mining I probably would do it 24 seven. However, on my main system, I don’t want to be running applications that are very labor-intensive, because it could burn out more than just the graphics card, it could burn out your power supply or any piece of hardware that’s inside.

I have no problem running mining software, but with the amount of bad stuff out there, I would want to make sure that whatever they’re running isn’t going to be bad on resources, or be destructive to anything on your file systems.

Brian

[WetDad]

I want to know what that does to my power bill.

[~Brian~]

2 minutes ago, WetDad said:

I want to know what that does to my power bill.

@WetDad

I guess that will determine whether you would want to do it or not. I guess that would also depend on what you are running, how long you were running it, and how much you’re paying for power. Because I don’t pay for my electricity, I don’t have to worry about an electric bill, but I can just about imagine that if you were running something that was a resource intensive process, such as crypto mining, it might raise your power bill, but I am not sure how much.

Brian

[WetDad]

4 minutes ago, ~Brian~ said:

@WetDad

I guess that will determine whether you would want to do it or not. I guess that would also depend on what you are running, how long you were running it, and how much you’re paying for power. Because I don’t pay for my electricity, I don’t have to worry about an electric bill, but I can just about imagine that if you were running something that was a resource intensive process, such as crypto mining, it might raise your power bill, but I am not sure how much.

Brian

Some European countries are considering a ban on crypto because of the extreme amount of power it takes relative to the value given. While it could work for you Brian, it won't for me. Plus I do not trust Norton, spent too much time debugging that garbage.

[~Brian~]

6 minutes ago, WetDad said:

Some European countries are considering a ban on crypto because of the extreme amount of power it takes relative to the value given. While it could work for you Brian, it won't for me. Plus I do not trust Norton, spent too much time debugging that garbage.

@WetDad

I agree with you! I gave you the laugh because Norton has always been “garbage” regardless of what they make. I don’t exactly know why a company like Norton thinks they can “eradicate the virus is spyware and everything else” when 90% of the time, they’re particular programs “Are a virus“.  Additionally, there is a special program that needs to be run in order to “fully remove Norton“ from any machine out there. I would rather have antivirus/anti-Mauer software, anti-whatever software that you can use to get rid of multiple things, that will work every single time, and will not fall to work for every single thing. Norton just doesn’t have it, and it is not worth it. Why Norton wants to get involved in cryptocurrency, I have no idea – but I do know that none of my machines will run any of that Norton garbage.

Brian

[Crinklz Kat]

I cannot believe a reputable company would ever engage in that behavior.  Not unless they're granting you services in return (which I would find unlikely) - otherwise it's theft of service, regardless if you give permission or not.   There's no guarantee that the person "granting permission" has actual right to grant permission to use the hardware or other resources that will be consumed - think minors. 

And China has already banned crypto mining.  So a lot of it has moved to the US which is just creating a demand for older coal plants to keep running. 

[~Brian~]

39 minutes ago, Crinklz Kat said:

I cannot believe a reputable company would ever engage in that behavior.  Not unless they're granting you services in return (which I would find unlikely) - otherwise it's theft of service, regardless if you give permission or not.   There's no guarantee that the person "granting permission" has actual right to grant permission to use the hardware or other resources that will be consumed - think minors. 

And China has already banned crypto mining.  So a lot of it has moved to the US which is just creating a demand for older coal plants to keep running. 

@Crinklz Kat

I also think that it would be kind of hard for any company to be able to legally “ask“ anyone via pop-up message whether they want to “mine crypto.  Just as DD does not allow minors, For Obvious reasons, Norton probably would, as well as anybody else who would do this would get in trouble for doing this. There is no way to determine the age of the individual or individuals that are using the computer hardware, and as such putting out some thing like that would be a “slippery slope argument” and Norton would LOSE!  
 

i’ve had my brother asked me whether I should set up, or whether I would allow him to set up our machine to do the crypto mining. He says that we’d be able to “make a lot of money“, but I have a suspicion that we might end up either running up a humongous bill, or ruining computer hardware because of the amount of CPU power that must be necessary to mine Krypto currency. Right now, I will not mine anything, because I don’t wanna run my machines at full power, risk them burning themselves out. There are more things in life that are more important than to mine crypto.

Brian

[Crinklz Kat]

"Make a lot of money" --- not likely if you're only running a few mining rigs. 

I don't remember the timing for how often a hash is generated (I think it's roughly 10 minutes), but with Bitcoin, as soon as any machine world-wide generates a successful hash, EVERY machine must stop, reset, and start generation from scratch.  This is purposely engineered scarcity, which is why it's sky high.  So your machine might be the lucky one every now and then, but more often than not, your machine will have to start over every 10 minutes with nothing to show for all the power it's consuming.  It's the mining groups that have hundreds (even thousands) of rigs set up that are raking in money.  I don't know about any of the other cryptos (and an aside - the cryptography industry really hates the the abuse of the term crypto with these e-coins) as to whether they have similar reset cycles or not. 

 

Now, as far as having hardware running in the house for hosting my web stuff -- it's almost always running at low capacity but it still generates quite a bit of heat.  Winter time it's not so bad.   Summer time not so good.

[ValentinesStuff]

Are they going to share the crypto they mine? Or is this like the local pizza delivery guy wanting to borrow your car from 4-12 everyday?

[DailyDi]

10 hours ago, ValentinesStuff said:

Are they going to share the crypto they mine? Or is this like the local pizza delivery guy wanting to borrow your car from 4-12 everyday?

Yes, they share it, but it's meager. I let it run for an hour just to see how it performed and the expected earnings was $22 a month, not worth the power use and system abuse in my opinion.

[square_duck]

I was thinking this could be spam or a phishing thing, to attempt to get into your system..it does'nt sound like something a reputable "internet security" company would do.

 

[DailyDi]

1 minute ago, square_duck said:

I was thinking this could be spam or a phishing thing, to attempt to get into your system..it does'nt sound like something a reputable "internet security" company would do.

 

Nope, it's in my Norton control panel

[square_duck]

Wow!...odd

 

[MegaChar]

What really puzzles me is if they need all that graphics power to yield a few crypocurrencys.

Why not use a quantium computer to mine crypo instead? They process information ALOT quicker and muuuch more then any regular computer would.

[barnburner]

I wonder if Norton will tell its new miners that they will have something new to add onto their taxes.

[Crinklz Kat]

Now you got me wondering if even Norton is paying taxes on that "revenue"! 

On 12/21/2021 at 11:45 PM, MegaChar said:

What really puzzles me is if they need all that graphics power to yield a few crypocurrencys.

Why not use a quantium computer to mine crypo instead? They process information ALOT quicker and muuuch more then any regular computer would.

Well, first off, quantum computers cost millions of $ and each is a one-off creation.  So investment isn't worth it when you can buy thousands of GPUs.   And for you gamers, if you ever wonder why you can't find the GPU you want... it's the f'ing crypto miners fault!