mining
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New York passes a bill to limit bitcoin mining
It's up to Governor Kathy Hochul whether to sign it into law.
Elon Musk's Boring Company plans to 'significantly' expand after funding round
Elon Musk's The Boring Company (TBC) is now worth up to $5.7 billion after a funding round that saw it raise $675 million.
Cryptocurrency mining in Kazakhstan is leading to power shortages
Cryptocurrency mining is putting such a strain on Kazakhstan's electrical grid that the country is grappling with power outages.
China limits investments in cryptocurrency mining
China has put cryptocurrency mining on a 'negative list' that could limit or ban investment in the technology.
PS4 'cryptofarm' reportedly used bots to grind in-game FIFA currency
Instead of a crypto mining operation, the consoles were building up FIFA Ultimate Team accounts for profit.
Malaysian authorities crush 1,069 crypto mining rigs with a steamroller
In a city in Sarawak, Malaysia, authorities got rid of 1,069 rigs at once by crushing them with a steamroller.
Norton 360 antivirus will soon mine cryptocurrency
Norton 360 will soon come with a built-in miner that will enable users to mine for Ethereum.
Elon Musk says North American Bitcoin miners will publish their energy usage
Elon Musk and executives from leading North American bitcoin miners pledge to publish mining energy use.
Legal questions linger as governments and companies keep pushing into space
The Perseverance rover’s landing on Mars is still fresh in people’s memories, privately-owned companies are ferrying people and supplies into orbit, and NASA continues to work on “the most powerful rocket” it has ever built. But as world governments and private enterprises continue to eye the skies for opportunities, a SXSW panel called “Who on Earth should govern Space” makes clear that the world’s laws dealing with space aren’t evolving as fast as the technology that gets us there.
NVIDIA limits RTX 3060 crypto speeds as it introduces mining cards
NVIDIA is limiting the GeForce RTX 3060's usefulness for cryptocurrency mining as it launches a separate line, CMP, for miners.
New York power plant mines Bitcoin using excess energy
A natural gas power plant can't always send excess energy into the grid, frequently leading to waste as the gas is flared or vented away. However, a plant in Dresden, New York thinks it has a solution: use that surplus to generate some digital cash. Greenidge Generation has revealed that it's using "behind-the-meter" energy at the facility to mine Bitcoin, with 7,000 mining systems producing up to 5.5BTC (about $45,000 as of this writing) per day.
NASA advances lunar crater modeling and asteroid mining projects
NASA doesn't just want to return to the moon by 2024, it also wants to establish a "sustained human presence" and to use the moon as a hub for future Mars exploration. In order to do that, it will need new ideas and technologies, like those solicited and supported by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. Today, NIAC moved two projects to Phase III, the furthest any concepts have made it.
China wants to ban Bitcoin mining because it 'seriously wasted resources'
As China tries to cut back on air pollution that has choked cities like Baoding and Shanghai, it's taking aim at cryptocurrency mining. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's chief planning regulator, has unveiled a paper with a proposal to ban Bitcoin mining, saying it has "seriously wasted resources."
EV batteries are born in Chilean evaporation ponds
Using Landsat data from the US Geological survey, NASA's Laren Dauphin recently imaged the Salar de Atacama in Chile. The enclosed basin is the world's largest source of lithium, producing 29 percent of the world's reserves. Much of it will wind up in rechargeable batteries used by EVs, laptops and smartphones, but how it gets there is surprising -- think salt production, not pit mines.
Volvo's self-driving trucks will haul limestone from a mine
Sometimes, it's the least glamorous uses of self-driving tech that can be the most important. Volvo has struck a deal that will have six of its autonomous trucks carrying limestone from a Brønnøy Kalk mine in Norway to a port roughly 3 miles away. That might not sound exciting on the surface, but the company isn't just selling the trucks and moving on. This is Volvo Trucks' very first end-to-end autonomous offering -- the mining company is paying for every metric tonne Volvo delivers. In other words, Volvo has a strong incentive to make sure its driverless tech works as promised, as it won't be paid otherwise.
Sacramento Kings will mine cryptocurrency to support good causes
The Sacramento Kings have a history of experimenting with cutting-edge tech, and now they're using it to better their community. The basketball team plans to mine Ethereum in an arena-based data center as part of a new MiningForGood initative. The cryptocurrency they'll generate will help Sacramento-based causes, starting with the Build Black Coalition helping local black residents with technology education and workforce development. It's reportedly the first team anywhere to mine digital money.
Apple bans cryptocurrency mining from its app stores
Cryptocurrency mining in apps has become such a big deal, Apple updated its app guidelines to make sure that developers don't sneak the function into any apps within the company's ecosystem. The update to the rules apparently occurred last week, possibly in response to popular Mac app Calendar 2 that bundled a Monero miner in with its premium upgrade.
UK's abandoned tin mines could be reopened to help build EVs
The last of Britain's tin mines were closed in the late 90s due to plummeting metal prices and languishing global demand. Now, with the advent of smartphones and electric vehicles, demand -- and prices -- are on the up, and these forgotten facilities could be reopened to help the UK gain a stronger foothold in the market.
Bitcoin miners turn Quebec's cheap energy into cold cash
Bitcoin mining is a weird industry. Vast banks of dedicated computers solve complex equations to generate hashes worth a fraction of a coin, consuming huge amounts of power in the process. For such operations to be economically feasible nowadays, miners need the cheapest electricity possible.
Intruders 'borrowed' Tesla's public cloud for cryptocurrency mining (updated)
Tesla isn't immune to the plague of cryptocurrency mining hijacks, it seems. Security researchers at RedLock have reported that intruders gained access to Tesla's Kubernetes console (where it deploys and manages containerized apps) without needing a password, exposing the EV brand's login credentials for Amazon Web Services. From there, the attackers both abused Tesla's cloud resources for cryptojacking and accessed private data held in Amazon's S3 service. The culprits were creative, too.
