I miss the good old days.
First company to do me a solid like that and I’ve stuck around since.
ATI was a great company back then.
All my contact with their customer support was stellar.
When I tried to get the 2070 replaced, they refused unless I paid full retail price for a defective card I had proof I'd returned.
I really regretted buying from them at that point, and wished I just had my original card back, which they couldn't provide.
People buying from scalpers is why scalpers can continue to exist. There's pretty much no way of stopping that, outside of making scalping illegal, then strictly enforce that. But, then, that pretty much kills the first-sale doctrine and I am not sure that is a good trade-off.
These cards won't be sold any time soon, they'll have been stolen for mining.
So it may not be immediately useful but can pay off down the road.
Once I started checking proactively I took delivery of a few hard drives that turned out to be "of questionable warranty period", again from various reputable distributors. I immediately had them replaced with no hassle.
If you are buying a new sealed video card, never used sold on craigslist/ebay, I'm guessing your not very suspicious and probably not looking for a warranty.
So you're essentially saying nobody is going to be looking for any warranties on any cards, which is quite wrong.
Nvidia already does this for things like DriveOS.
https://docs.nvidia.com/drive/drive-os-5.2.0.0L/drive-os/ind...
They apply the same type of gatekeeping to power management and reclocking in post-Maxwell GPU architectures. This is why the nouveau driver hasn't been able to maintain parity with the proprietary driver.
I can't quite remember the search engine contortions I did to home in on it the first time, but I think "Falcon high-security power-management reclocking firmware signature verification Maxwell 970 GPU driver" should get you in the right direction.
Basically, Nvidia cryptographically signs the firmware blob (digest), and I think uses asymmetric crypto implemented through a public key embedded in the silicon that can decrypt the firmware signature shipped with the driver for comparison by the Falcon microprocessor to gate access to what firmware code can gain access to the power management/reclocking API's that make modern gfx cards useful. I was doing some research on it at one point between jobs, but it's been a while. Long story short, if Nvidia doesn't bless your firmware, you can't get full use out of your card. Anti-competitive/anti-user as all hell, no network connection required, and you can technically still "use it" at a near useless base clock rate.
This practice is part of why there was all that controversy around that hash-rate limiter added to 3060/70 GPU firmware? A signed development version of the driver without the hash-rate limiter was leaked, meaning all the miners just used that as their driver to get full performance cryptocurrency mining on the cheaper cards.
This is why, God as my witness, I will do everything in my power to never support Nvidia as a company ever again, and I have become increasingly vigilant against other actors trying to sneakily push cryptography based anti-features elsewhere.
I was never interested in hardware at this level of gory detail before, but now that I've seen it it can't be unseen; and I must protect open computing for those who come after me.
Well, NVidia could require these, and make your card phone home every X minutes.
Probably not, they’re more likely to get used for mining by someone who knows they’re stolen. The thieves already know that selling them is extremely risky. Which is why tracking from the driver is an interesting idea, but also probably won’t work. But then again, we’re only speculating, so maybe it’d work!
Sure that runs foul of computer misuse act, millioms od people were downloading a driver, and you used it to get admin rights and take control of their computer, and 99.9% of them have no stolen GPU.
It's like if you broke into and searched every house in London to find a batch of srolen iPhones, you aren't allowed to do that
Let's ignore the privacy and consumer rights implications of what you're proposing for a second. Is the cost of adding remote tracking and disabling capability to every EVGA video card worth it? How does that impact their ORM customers knowing that they're now on the hook for any security failure EVGA has? They could introduce a vulnerability far worse than anything they prevent. Any hacker that compromises EVGA's remote kill switch keys could now hijack their entire user base.
So EVGA loses a truckload of hardware in a theft in an event so rare that the fact that it happens makes the front page of hackernews. Unless this starts to be a pattern, it makes far more sense for them to file an insurance claim and write off the loss than to try a risky technical solution - which might not even work, given that hackers are really good at bypassing DRM solutions anyway.
They might theoretically be on the hook for damages they introduce, but in reality, there's already a ton of services running on every device that can compromise you if the infrastructure behind it is hacked. EVGA wouldn't even be a worthwhile target.
And, as mentioned above, NVidia already has the necessary infrastructure in place. So the effective cost for doing this would be close to zero.
> which might not even work, given that hackers are really good at bypassing DRM solutions anyway.
Hackers are, yes. But the price you fetch for a card will go down massively if you need high technical skills to run it.
And I'm not against this either. The law can provide a strong set of rights for actual owners, but if your product is stolen, you have no rights over it.
Note: I'm just kidding.
The alternative for them is exacerbating the financial losses caused by the theft by offering free repairs/replacements on a product that they already haven’t generated any revenue on.
USA is a free market. Everyone is authorized all the time to sell every safe product. The term "authorized reseller" is a linguistic manipulation which benefits manufacturers at the expense of everyone else in society.
Warranty goes with the product until it is used. Companies cannot refuse to honor a warranty because they dislike the person who sold it to you.
Because eVGA did not sell the stolen cards, business laws do not apply to eVGA's dealings with holders of the cards. Therefore eVGA does not have to honor any warranty that would have applied to the cards if eVGA had sold them (to anyone).
I wrote a bit more about this in [0].
"nasty move".
Only on HN would this even be an issue. Most places, if you don't buy from an authorized dealer - no warranty. My HVAC system was the same way. If you bought grey market / off market - no equipment warranty.
Same thing with solar warranty.
The concept that warranty would suddenly be void due to "unauthorized" resellers or retailers is very weird.
Then again, these stolen cards may be earmarked for crypto mining operations by organized crime, and then the issue warranties to those who knowingly use stolen goods is much less grey.
One shipped to an eBay freight forwarder and ultimately to a buyer in Qatar.
One shipped to an eBay freight forwarder and ultimately to a buyer in Kazakhstan.
Gamers aren't the ones paying huge markups on eBay. These aren't going to be warranty registered.
EVGA can't sell the cards as new even if they recover them, so I suspect that EVGA will let people keep the cards if they cooperate.
The goal is to find the chain of thieves. And the best way to do that is make things more public, not less.
What a lovely system we've created, and what lovely incentives.
I'm not sure what you mean by "easy", but "stolen and available" is a lot easier than "legal but require waiting if available at all".
My video card has completely paid for itself almost double what I initially paid for it ($2K in cash from a seller on craigslist, back in January).
Probably more than the entire market cap of Bitcoin.
Was the Fourth movie, in 2009. First one was The Fast and The Furious. Definite articles and no ampersand.
Yeah exactly, I would expect like spaceship load or sth...
"More than 400 Silicon Valley businesses had been robbed by chip thieves in the last 18 months. The businesses range from giants like Sun Microsystems to small companies of 100 employees. The apparent record for a heist was $9.9 million worth of computer parts stolen from Centon Electronics in Irvine, Calif., in May."
I think deficit MCUs are now joining this list. China similarly sees mass break-ins into warehouses of component distributor companies now. Some MCUs fetched up to $100 bucks from their original <$1 price at the peak of the shortage.
If I would buy a card on eBay for example, I paid for it, install it and during registration I learn it is stolen, am I just basically f-ed? I mean, will anyone reimburse me the money I paid for it?
I would assume EVGA won't (since it was stolen from them), police won't, seller won't, eBay will say that it is between me and the seller.
How something like that gets resolved?
This is fine as long as you realise during the initial window (30 days?). I bought a cellphone a few years ago in the UK and 3 months after buying it it just stopped working. I spoke to my network and they told me that the IMEI had been listed as stolen. eBay basically said "it's been too long, nothing we can do".
This is preventable by the totalitarian combo of serial numbering + point of sales reporting + hardware root of trust + account registration + mandatory activation, though it is also an almost immediate danger against an free and open society.
The warranty is transferred from the manufacturer to the consumer through the chain of commerce. Theft breaks the chain.
That's much harder to provide with stolen goods... No way to know the thieves didn't take apart / damage the cards.
I've dealt with this plenty of times with stolen employee laptops that get resold on craigslist. If the buyer purchased it in good faith, and the asset is replaceable, you aren't getting it back.
How do you know that?
the other poster's argument that it interrupts chain of custody is a bit stronger of an argument, but at the same time - this sounds like a great way to fuck customers who participate in the resale market even if the original company could theoretically fix a 3rd party sale of a core product.
Good luck recovering these, EVGA, have fun
* It is a criminal and civil offense to “buy or receive” property that has been stolen. Cal. Penal Code section 496(a).
* If you are able to successfully register your product and see it under My Products, then your product is NOT affected by this notice, you can also check the serial number at the EVGA Warranty Check page to see if it is affected.
Sounds to me like, if you bought a card in some shop, and you're in good faith, but you check by registering, then you risk turning yourself in for a crime you didn't know you committed, from there, you cannot do anything to amend the situation since you already committed the crime.
Fuck laws.
It's a crime to knowingly obtain stolen goods. Otherwise it's not a crime but you will definitely have to return the item and recover your money some other way.
(I'm saying that with two EVGA SuperNova P2 1000w PSUs in my household.)
Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://forums.evga.com/Notice-of-Stolen-EVGA-GeForce-RTX-30S..." on this server.
PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that on October 29, 2021, a shipment of EVGA GeForce RTX 30-Series Graphics Cards was stolen from a truck en route from San Francisco to our Southern California distribution center.
These graphics cards are in high demand and each has an estimated retail value starting at $329.99 up to $1959.99 MSRP.
PLEASE TAKE FURTHER NOTICE that under state and Federal law:
It is a criminal and civil offense to “buy or receive” property that has been stolen. Cal. Penal Code section 496(a).
It is also a criminal and civil offense to “conceal, sell, withhold, or aid in concealing selling or withholding” any such property.
If you are able to successfully register your product and see it under My Products, then your product is NOT affected by this notice, you can also check the serial number at the EVGA Warranty Check page to see if it is affected.
EVGA will NOT REGISTER or HONOR ANY WARRANTY or UPGRADE claims on these products.
If you have or receive any information relating to these products, please share that with us at stopRTX30theft@evga.com.
Thank you, EVGA Management
Just the other day there was a whole article on here about a guy who bought a house from a scammer and ended up being allowed to keep it because he bought it legally and was under the impression the scammer was the real owner. Nice of EVGA to put this warning out but it's not quite as simple as they make it out to be here, possession being 9/10ths of the law and all that. A person buying one of these at retail prices from a store would have no way of knowing that it was stolen, and someone buying one second hand at a reasonable price for the second hand item would likely also not be aware of its history. Of course buyers need to make sure that what they are buying is legit but that burden is not exhaustive, you don't have make more than a reasonable effort.
Not on a VPN.
I don’t want to buy stolen goods from a thief.
Make sure you see a receipt before buying an EVGA graphics card for the time being, I guess.
Why so sure? This doesn't look like a crime of opportunity - one has to know the truck will contain graphics cards, and that such cards are valuable in today's market. It doesn't say how many cards were stolen, "a shipment" could be the whole truck - and robbing a truck is no joke. If there is some organization behind the heist, I would expect them to be sent directly to a lined-up buyer that has a use for them - possibly an unscrupolous miner, possibly not in the country. At what price-point will it cost less to hire a bunch of goons than to pay RRP...?
So if you budget to lose X% of shipments a year that's inline with the savings of Y% payments.
The possible cases I can see are: the insurance prices are reasonably fair (roughly equal to risk percent times insured value, plus some profit buffer), or they're significantly higher or lower than that "fair" amount. Given that, I have trouble seeing a case where the rational action is insuring part of the value. If the cost is significantly higher than the risk-adjusted value, then it wouldn't make sense to insure at all, and if it's roughly equal or significantly lower then it would make sense to insure as much as possible.
I think it has more to do with impact and experience than how recent something is.
Example: I spent a lot of time reading the phrases 'EGA' or 'VGA' in my life, much more so than I ever dealt with the brand 'EVGA'. When my eyes cruise over those letters together, something in my head always trips the concept 'EGA/VGA' first, even though I have known for years and year that EVGA is a brand and that EGA/VGA are now obsolete phrases.
I don't know why that is , and maybe that's exactly the concept that parent was trying to get across : when you get older your brain tends to keep certain biases that were built during an earlier (now obsolete) era, even when they serve no real good purpose anymore -- likely because that concept was so exercised mentally at an earlier time.
Now, if I were an actuary or accountant or business person working for EVGA and I had to write their name out 100+ times daily, i'd probably be singing a different tune.
I would really hope there is a "knowingly" qualifier on that.
Also, you're assuming whoever stole these cards are rational beings and not characters out of Ocean's Eleven.
The internal storage space of a large trailer truck is ~50ft long × ~8ft wide × ~9ft high, give or take.
The box containing each RTX 30xx card is at most ~1ft × ~0.5ft × ~0.5ft, give or take.
Assuming the stolen trailer truck could be packed end-to-end and floor-to-ceiling with cards, there could have been up to (50÷1.0)×(8÷0.5)×(9÷0.5) = 14,400 cards inside the trailer. That's the upper limit on how many cards were stolen.
EVGA RTX 30xx cards retail between $1000 and $3000 each, depending on the model.
Even if I'm off by a factor of 10× on the number of cards, we're talking about a fortune.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Less-than-truckload_shipping
https://www.evga.com/warranty/check.asp
Check serial number before forking over payment. Safe to assume they will not offer warrantees for the affected items.
Why would you do that differently with a rare ressource like graphic cards?
I've mentioned the same things before but their vocal customers are price sensitive gamers, otakus and teenagers who require a boogeyman for their place in life
Unless you mean EVGA putting a method to brick cards within their own software, such as "EVGA Precision X1" (their overclocking/fan control/rgb lighting tool).
Both are terrible options in my opinion, as the most likely destination for these cards would end up being a mining operation, with most likely little care for keeping slightly outdated drivers if it meant lower hardware costs. Or an unwitting customer, who ends up with a nice brick.
Especially considering that EVGA or whoever owned the cards when they were shipped will undoubtedly be insured and get paid on the cards regardless.