I’m a little shocked that this hasn’t been happening more:
Engineers at Russia’s top nuclear research facility have reportedly been detained after they attempted to mine bitcoin on its computers.
Several employees at Russia’s nuclear centre in the city of Sarov have been detained after making “an attempt to use the work computing facilities for personal ends, including for so-called mining”, a spokeswoman for the centre, Tatiana Zalesskaya, told Interfax news agency.
Various governments have huge chunks of computing power. I would expect (recall, I spent some time in Russia, I have a view of the use of govt assets driven by experience) more of this to have been happening.
I assume that being a Russian scientist does not pay as much as it used to. So think what else they could be doing with their time. North Korea and Iran have found a lot of work for idle hands. People should be happy.
“an attempt to use the work computing facilities for personal ends, including for so-called mining”
So bitcoin mining wasn’t the only thing? Don’t tell me they have branched out into Nigerian letters? Looking at your average nuclear physicist I hope it wasn’t webcam work.
Probably explains why the Met Office forecasts have been shit recently.
https://twitter.com/guy_herbert/status/961531684800823296/photo/1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkinruG0hbk
I would have thought that doing a bit of bitcoin mining would be a good test of the processing power of a supercomputer.
Sarov? Not Chelyabinsk?
Presumably the real crime was not paying off the right people?
I know it’s free but is there much left to be mined? AIUI the payment for each new bitcoin mined -> $0 as they reach the limit?
Ops, forget that, I was thinking of the payment for min8ng not the market value of the bitcoin.