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.'"

Comments

Simple solution

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"We've got the money, we've contacted the vendors, and they say, 'we just don't have them.'"

Offer more money and more hardware will get manufactured.

Re:Simple solution

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Offer more money and more hardware will get manufactured.

Well, why aren't the manufacturers investing in new factories to increase capacity? Probably because they see the current high demand as a passing fad, and that demand for their cards will return to normal levels after the bubble burst. They don't want to get stuck with a big new factory, when no one is buying cards for mining any more.

Re:competition...

[Viol8]

I agree about cryptocurrency, but I fail to understand why you think that discovering signs of aliens would be no use to humanity. Sure, its not going to affect you on a day to day basic, but it means life has arisen elsewhere and this in turn will influence scientific thoughts about biology and its origins. A lot of science is blue sky research that may lead nowhere, that doesn't make it pointless.

BeauHD is a moron

[TheRaven64]

The other post is still on the front page. I know it's too much to ask 'editors' to check in the archives that a story hasn't been posted, but not even reading the front page of the site that you're working for? Why is BeauHD still employed?

Re:BeauHD is a moron

[DaveV1.0]

When you limit your pool of applicants to those who will pass a drug test, you wind up having to take any gibbering idiot who will come along — usually some kind of evangelical, and those people are universally batshit insane.

I don't use illegal and/or non-prescribed drugs and I am neither evangelical nor batshit insane. I do think that people who use illegal and/or non-prescribed drugs are personally and mentally weak. If you can't deal with your life without using drugs, there is something wrong with you and your life and you should change yourself and/or your life. Grow the fuck up and take responsibility for your problems instead of hiding in drug induced stupor.

Re:Good

[azrael29a]

Searching for "alien life" is probably one of the most useless human activities ever invented.

Yeah, right, because computing hashes of transactions of essentially worthless virtual money (or money-wannabe) is so much better.