Cryptocurrency Miners Are 'Limiting' the Search For Alien Life Now (vice.com)

Since the latest graphics processing units (GPUs) are so popular with cryptocurrency miners, the SETI project -- short for "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" -- can't find the graphics cards it needs to expand its operations. The SETI@home project helps provide some computing power, as it involves thousands of volunteers who turn the power of their computers over to the project, but it's only a portion of the SETI project's total computing power. Motherboard reports: Searching the stars is intense work that "uses radio telescopes to listen for narrow-bandwidth radio signals from space." Analyzing all of the data from these telescopes uses a lot of computing power. "We'd like to use the latest GPUs and we can't get 'em," Dan Werthimer, chief scientist of SETI, told the BBC. "That's limiting our search for extraterrestrials." Manufacturers such as Nvidia are struggling to keep up with demand for graphics cards. It recently told investors it would rise to meet its manufacturing challenge while focusing on its core market -- gamers. It even suggested vendors limit purchases of graphics cards from individual buyers in an effort to stop miners from buying up all the cards. "This is a new problem, it's only happened on orders we've been trying to make in the last couple of months," Werthimer told the BBC. "We've got the money, we've contacted the vendors, and they say, 'we just don't have them.'"

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[Matt_H]

This is a duplicate of this story

Re:BeauHD is a moron

[gnick]

I do think that people who use illegal and/or non-prescribed drugs are personally and mentally weak.

Square. Anyone who didn't try pot in college is someone I don't understand. And for the people who tried it and decided it improved their quality of life? Toke on, laws be damned. Maybe when I need someone to judge me I'll visit your mountaintop.

If you can't deal with your life without using drugs, there is something wrong with you...

I won't entirely disagree, but that does imply that there's "something wrong" with just about everybody. A perfectly healthy body shouldn't NEED aspirin. It should produce everything it needs. But, aspirin's good for some people. Some people just find their morning more pleasant with a cup of coffee or a cigarette. Caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, THC, Prozac, Lipitor, cocaine, Viagra, Xanax, these are all drugs that enjoy popularity. Sugar's kind of on the fence and factors in heavily to the average American diet. Maybe when you said "drugs" you meant the "drugs D.A.R.E. warned me about", but drugs is drugs. The fact that the fed classifies pot as more dangerous than coke should tell you they don't know WTF they're talking about.