Nicehash petitioning against Microsoft

[Sauron]

20 hours ago, Energycore said:

Nicehash argues that this is anti-consumer as it prevents consumers from mining

Probably the weakest argument I've heard, lmao. First of all you can just whitelist this and go on with your day. Secondly, you're not really "competing" with factory mining, either in terms of scale or in terms of market. And hey, maybe if this is a problem for you and you're that invested in mining maybe going with Linux is a better idea.

20 hours ago, Energycore said:

Now if you can't see the irony in this one, allow me to point it out. They argue that small home mining rigs tend to use less power and can more easily obtain more energy from sustainable sources [citation needed].

Not only is a citation needed, I can almost guarantee it's the opposite. A bunch of general purpose computers running 1-2 GPUs and a processor each are less efficient than a couple of dedicated mining rigs with 8 GPUs each and two processors total.

20 hours ago, Energycore said:

So all in all, I do think it's better if Antivirus Software doesn't block legitimate software of any kind. I don't think this is something worth crying wolf about.

In this case I can totally see why WD would err on the side of caution when it detects any type of mining - we know for a fact that plenty of PUP, malware and even some websites try to pull a fast one and use your hardware for crypto mining. If you intend to mine and know the bare minimum about what you're doing this shouldn't be a significant obstacle. If you would like to mine but can't get past WD threat detection you probably weren't going to earn more than a couple of bucks from mining anyway...

[SansVarnic]

On 6/2/2021 at 2:44 PM, Energycore said:

I don't think this is something worth crying wolf about.

Bout sums it up in my book.

[Mark Kaine]

On 6/2/2021 at 9:44 PM, Energycore said:

I'm hoping that a Linux distro that can put a dent in the behemoth that is Windows

Me too. But its not gonna happen as long Linux refuses to have a GUI thats better than windows, which would be easy to do, but the average Linux dev despises any kind of easily accessible GUI thoughts and thinks writing "sudo" a million times/day is the pinnacle of technical nirvana,  so its just never gonna happen.

 

Btw, i was just thinking about this today, if Linux ever wants to get more popular in the consumer space they need DX11, 12 etc… I know its MS tech, but this is exactly  one of these cases where a big corporation uses its market position to stiffle the competition, hence Direct X api needs to be open source. Probably also not gonna happen , just saying, this is an incredibly huge disadvantage for Linux.

 

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

11 hours ago, StDragon said:

LOL, I wonder if MS will offer their own mining pool inside Defender too.

 

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/cryptocurrency/norton-360-antivirus-now-lets-you-mine-ethereum-cryptocurrency/

Looking at my "DWM" GPU usage while idling makes me sometimes think they dont even need to do that anymore. :lol

[Bitter]

I just put the software in a folder on the root of a 2nd drive and made that folder an exception to Windows Defender and have had ZERO problems with it. I have had problems with OTHER software and WD, like a program to check if a flash drive is fake. THAT was super annoying and I just ended up disabling WD entirely for the duration of using the software because WD did NOT like the low level hardware access it needed. That was much less secure than giving me an option to say 'hey yeah no it's not sus let it run'.

 

Also a PC at work keeps having messages from WD saying it took action against threats but there's NOTHING in threat history since some protected folder access allowances over a month ago. I've scanned the PC with other software, nothing found. Annoying!

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

Me too. But its not gonna happen as long Linux refuses to have a GUI thats better than windows, which would be easy to do, but the average Linux dev despises any kind of easily accessible GUI thoughts and thinks writing "sudo" a million times/day is the pinnacle of technical nirvana,  so its just never gonna happen.

 

Btw, i was just thinking about this today, if Linux ever wants to get more popular in the consumer space they need DX11, 12 etc… I know its MS tech, but this is exactly  one of these cases where a big corporation uses its market position to stiffle the competition, hence Direct X api needs to be open source. Probably also not gonna happen , just saying, this is an incredibly huge disadvantage for Linux.

 

 

 

Have you not used any modern distros? Even Xubuntu with it's super basic UI is pretty easy to use and nice, Kubuntu is slick and fast and lightweight so it runs nice even on very old hardware. And DXVK kind of means they don't need DX to run native, it'll run with anything that can run Vulkan.

[Mark Kaine]

7 hours ago, Bitter said:

Have you not used any modern distros? Even Xubuntu with it's super basic UI is pretty easy to use and nice, Kubuntu is slick and fast and lightweight so it runs nice even on very old hardware

To be honest, i did not recently. Ive been talking with some people some time ago who told me how easy everything is on linux nowadays, then i looked up how to set a custom fancurve (for case fans) and oh boy, you were supposed to write a book, basically!  Maybe things have changed in the meanwhile, im just seeing so many theoretical hurdles for usability, besides being able to just play games… overclocking software, etc. I cant get OBS to work properly (on windows) for example, so Id definitely want Shadowplay (not sure if supported) etc.

 

7 hours ago, Bitter said:

And DXVK kind of means they don't need DX to run native, it'll run with anything that can run Vulkan.

But, there arent a whole lot of Vulkan games afaik?  And I know they can translate DX games, but I think the overhead is just not a great thing generally, also what about mods - they often seem to depend on certain  DX versions, i can see potential issues with that on Linux also.

That said I should probably try it again  at some point, just need a SSD i guess. 

 

But then Id really need to find one with good performance and a good GUI, preferably customizable, otherwise I dont have many hopes Id stick with it.