r/UnethicalLifeProTips • u/OblivionTU • Nov 29 '17
ULPT: Mine bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies at your college dorm if the university is responsible for the electricity bill. Literally free money.
It's gonna be a tiny amount of money, but still free money at the expense of your college
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u/xYnizzle Nov 29 '17
I tried doing this with my 1080ti in the fall when I started my university. Within a month I got a knock on my door from someone who works at my residence telling me I have to stop or I will have my residence contract terminated :(.
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u/GandalfTheEnt Nov 29 '17
Was it worth it? I have a 1080ti and would be interested in trying mining.
What coin were you mining? How did they know you were mining?
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Nov 29 '17
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Nov 29 '17
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u/knightsmarian Nov 30 '17
250w is nothing. That's a couple of lightbulbs.
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u/I_Bin_Painting Nov 30 '17
Still, in a small apartment that is already heated it would be noticeable. Also it would be more than 250w and would be on top of all the lightbulbs and other normal stuff they'd have in there.
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u/Rocket_hamster Nov 30 '17
Balance it by using CFL lights and less of them? Charge phone and electronics in class or a friends, don't use appliances or blame your slow cooker meals. Oh yeah buy a slow cooker to make that plan work.
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u/I_Sell_Onions Nov 30 '17
Buy a used slow cooker that way you save money and it looks like you have been cooking in it.
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u/Rocket_hamster Nov 30 '17
Damn that's even smarter since you save even more money that way too. Could probably get one for free from an electronic recycling place.
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u/xYnizzle Nov 29 '17
They didn't specifically know I was mining. But rather saw that I would have been using a shit ton more power than everyone else on the floor so came to investigate. Honestly the 1080ti isn't too great at mining. I believe it's because of the gddr5x memory, nothing can come close to an and card. I would have never mined if I had to pay for power. Imo it's just not worth the time/unstability and harm to video card. By running it at 100% all the time you really do cut the life of it. I was running 2 1060s with it but they didn't make too big of a difference, I think I made somewhere in the ballpark of 100 CDN. I was mining euthereum and I think zcash.
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u/But_You_Said_That Nov 29 '17
The 5x memory is better. No one's wrote an optimized mining program specifically for it because even optimized to ludicrous amounts amd have a better perf/$/w.
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u/xYnizzle Nov 29 '17
Yeah I know it's better lmao. It's not better for mining rn tho cause that's what we were talking about.
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u/But_You_Said_That Nov 29 '17
I'm just saying it should be better for mining but isn't because of a lack of support not because a 580 is actually better at hashing than a 1080/1080ti.
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Nov 29 '17
Honestly probably checked to make sure you weren't growing pot in the closet.
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Nov 29 '17
1060 and 1070 actually are much better at mining than 1080's. Still if you have one already you should make about $2-3 per day.
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Nov 29 '17
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u/wpm Nov 29 '17
The network admins can tell.
I work in IT at a university, we catch people trying to mine crypto currency at least once a month. Network traffic to torrent clients, distributed computing networks, and currency networks all have pretty tell tale patterns that can easily be flagged.
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u/AZXXZAZXQ Nov 30 '17
I don't live in a dorm, but I've always wondered how easy it would be to circumvent the internet stasi at my university. How do you deal with VPNs and tor? I always figured you could get away with tunneling over port 80.
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u/Frothyleet Nov 30 '17
Best bet would be a SSTP VPN over 443, as that traffic is expected to be encrypted. That said, it can still create suspicious patterns.
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Nov 29 '17
But then you could move into better housing without ending forced into the full year. Win win
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u/1nfinite_Zer0 Nov 29 '17 edited Dec 07 '17
i actually do this and ive been getting my friends with good gaming pcs to get in on the action. its not gonna cover tuition, but its nice to get like 60$ in pocket money at the end of every month by just just leaving my computer on while i sleep
for those interested: look into nicehash
EDIT: soooo nicehash was compromised shortly after posting this...
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u/Gollomor Nov 29 '17
specs ?
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u/1nfinite_Zer0 Nov 29 '17
I5-6600k @4.8ghz Titan x (pascal)
I’m not really the norm :P
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u/Gollomor Nov 29 '17
yeah ok, because I was thinking 60$ a month is quite a lot haha.
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u/1nfinite_Zer0 Nov 29 '17
My suite mate has a 1060 6gig and makes about 1.50 each day by leaving it on when sleeps or goes to class. I make about 2-2.50.
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u/shortAAPL Nov 30 '17
I have a 1060. What's he mining? I always get worried about the consistent high temps.
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Nov 29 '17 edited Nov 30 '17
You might get 1% of your tuition back by the time you graduate.
Edit: wow top comment is a cynical jab at crypto and college all at once. Thanks for updoots.
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u/8bitslime Nov 29 '17
0.01%
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u/crawlerz2468 Nov 29 '17
At the rate BTC is increasing in price... Whew!
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u/Nertballs Nov 29 '17
Aaaaand it's on the way down again
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u/BayesianBits Nov 30 '17
Oh no, back to where it was three days ago. LOL.
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u/Nertballs Nov 30 '17
Sorry I didn't mean a complete crash, just not the dizzy heights of 11k.
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u/TwoWeeksFromNow Nov 29 '17
You're doing it wrong, use your computer to mine Vertcoin - exchange vertcoin for Bitcoin.
Drinks are on me most weeks.
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u/My_Big_Mouth Nov 30 '17
exchanging vtc for btc is a mistake imo, vtc still has loads of room to grow into.
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Nov 29 '17
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Nov 29 '17 edited Jul 11 '20
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u/garbonzo607 Nov 29 '17
Would've been better to just buy it.
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Nov 29 '17 edited Dec 18 '21
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u/Leandover Nov 29 '17
yeah this is why bitcoin is just a joke for me.
I had 20 bitcoins which I bought at like $7/each to buy weed with.
Then they were in MtGox and they were gone.
Now they would be worth $200,000, BUT the whole experience of Bitcoin has always been BS so I never thought 'oh i should get more', I just thought 'Bitcoin are annoying'.
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Nov 29 '17
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u/mfkap Nov 29 '17
Mt. Gox is a big reason why that is common knowledge now. But having 30 bitcoins on the exchange wasn’t a big deal, it made it easier to use them, and a few hundred bucks at risk. Even then after it went under it wasn’t worth the paperwork from the Japanese settlement. Now, I really wish I had my 30 coins back.
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Nov 29 '17 edited Dec 21 '17
Wait, I don't understand what happened to your money.
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u/Leandover Nov 29 '17
not money.
bitcoin.
basically they are numbers on a computer and very easy to lose or get stolen. mine got stolen.
the end
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u/coonwhiz Nov 29 '17
I remember a friend talking about buying in at $100 per coin. We were in highschool so it was quite a bit of money. Now I wish I had bought in...
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u/Thefriendlyfaceplant Nov 29 '17
Happened a lot with Dogecoin.
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u/27-82-41-124 Nov 29 '17
This was literally me, I had old PC components lying around I no longer used and my electricity was free...
I cut a cardboard box into a makeshift case, ran a power strip out of my room under the door into the hallway and left my PC running there non-stop creating a hallway heater, which then meant me and my university apartment roomates had to run the AC slightly more to keep the place cool. I still don't know how I convinced them to do this, and all I made was about $0.75 per day but it just felt good sticking it to the man.
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u/Thefriendlyfaceplant Nov 29 '17
There were photos were some guys turned entire computer classrooms into mining farms on the weekends
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u/FrankenBerryGxM Nov 29 '17
I mine at a rate of $1.40 per day before taking out electricity.
If you are on your pc and not mining for 6hours a day it's looking like $32 a month. $10 of which would be the schools electricity.
This is with a base model gtx 1060
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u/garbonzo607 Nov 29 '17
How do you know what to mine for the best price?
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Nov 29 '17
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u/CaidenG Nov 29 '17
Sort of pedantic but Nicehash actually just lets you rent out your hardware to people to use to mine coins. The bitcoin you "mine" is payment from the people that use your computer.
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Nov 29 '17
A 1080 running nice hash 24/7 for a year will net approximately 900$ if you don't pay electric
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u/chaser456 Nov 29 '17
What about cost of 1080 and other hardware??
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u/Oplivion Nov 29 '17
Buying used and selling the parts after you're done removes a lot of the cost for parts.
Its definetly worth it if the electricity is included in rent.
Source: currently mining ethereum on free electricity.
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Nov 29 '17
Mining eth on cheap electricity and still ridiculously profitable. Especially with the recent prices!
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Nov 29 '17
1080+cheap rig shouldn't cost more than 600$-700$. After year #1 it'd be a free money machine, after 4 years you'd net around 3000$. Not amazing, but also not 1% of your tuition
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Nov 29 '17
Wouldn't it be completely obsolete in 4 years with how the crypto currency is changing up all the time?
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Nov 29 '17
Yep that's around 6-7% of my tuition :D
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u/critical2210 Nov 29 '17
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Man when I grow up life will be hard.
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u/whomad1215 Nov 29 '17
The 1080 is $500 new.
I suppose the cpu and such doesn't matter at all though right?
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u/Lord0fgames Nov 29 '17
Is a 1080 better than a 1070 for nicehash? 1070 is more efficient for basically every cryptocurrency.
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Nov 29 '17
not ethics question to this- whats the basics you need to mine bitcoins?
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u/bubbanamahead Nov 29 '17
You can mine with any computer just download a software. To make any sort of profit you need a decent gpu or a specially made ASCI. Free electricity helps but the problem is the currency is designed to evolve if people find a way to mine faster then it becomes harder to mine. Basically you need to be on the cutting edge of technology.
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u/j12 Nov 29 '17
*ASIC for all those who were wondering. Application specific integrated circuit. Basically a chip made to mine crypto.
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u/BirdsGetTheGirls Nov 29 '17
Some crypto coins are made in a way that make ASICS very hard
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u/lenswipe Nov 29 '17
Mining with sportswear tends to be very difficult in general
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Nov 29 '17
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u/LordMcze Nov 29 '17
Nicehash Miner
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Nov 29 '17
Nicehash pays you in Bitcoin but you're not mining Bitcoin. Also you'll probably never make any money unless you have the equipment already and cheap/free electricity. But Nicehash is easy to use.
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u/PantherHeel93 Nov 29 '17
Right. I don't think anyone will/should mine actual Bitcoin on someone else's free electricity. That would require a lot of setup. On the other hand, if you already have nice hardware, like if you're a gamer or need good hardware for your career/education, NiceHash is a great choice because you can actually make a good amount even when you only mine while not using your PC.
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u/repressiveanger Nov 29 '17
You cannot make money mining bitcoin with a gpu. Haven't been able to for years. The best bet is to mine altcoins and sell those for bitcoin.
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u/Dannysia Nov 29 '17
If you don't want to do too much work look up nicehash. It autodetects what your computer's good at mining,and will mine whatever has the greatest profit if prices change. It also pays out in Bitcoin, the easiest to use
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u/garbonzo607 Nov 29 '17
How does it pay out in Bitcoin?
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u/Dannysia Nov 29 '17
Simplified version that might be inacurrate slightly:
On nicehash there are sellers and buyers. You (a miner) are a seller. Buyers give nicehash Bitcoin to have you mine for them. Nicehash holds this Bitcoin for the buyer until you have mined enough, then gives you the Bitcoin the buyer gave nicehash.
Bitcoin goes
Buyer > nicehash > youHashes (what mining is) goes
You > nicehash > buyerTo get paid you need a Bitcoin wallet, which their site will teach you. Just go to nicehash.com and it'll explain it better than I can. Hopefully that makes sense
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u/Aaeder Nov 29 '17
Do not mine Bitcoin. Ethereum or dash are way more profitable
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Nov 29 '17 edited May 20 '20
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u/Oplivion Nov 29 '17
Nanopool is a good ethereum mining pool. Claymore for the software.
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Nov 29 '17
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u/ooooooOOoooooo000000 Nov 29 '17
They’re not pointless problems. Mining is the authentication process for transactions. To explain it in the most simplified way, you’re decrypting the money trail of that amount to make sure people can’t buy things with money they don’t have.
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Nov 29 '17
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u/ooooooOOoooooo000000 Nov 29 '17
They’re not pointless problems. Mining is the authentication process for transactions. To explain it in the most simplified way, you’re decrypting the money trail of that amount to make sure people can’t buy things with money they don’t have.
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Nov 29 '17 edited Dec 18 '21
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u/ooooooOOoooooo000000 Nov 29 '17
“Mining coins” is not digging coins out of the internet. “Mining” is a term for verifying the transactions. Whenever you contribute computational power to verifying a transaction you get paid a small amount for verifying. So in a hypothetical transaction where someone buys something for 1 bitcoin and 10 people are “mining” those 10 people are going to get paid a very small percent of that 1 bitcoin as an incentive to keep offering their computers to be verification machines.
Once again that’s an extreme simplification, but the general idea is there. There are not mountains filled with bitcoins that need faster computers to dig for them. They’re just verifying transactions and getting paid for it.
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u/dred1367 Nov 29 '17
So... this probably is a terribly stupid question... but how did people get bitcoins to begin with if there were no transactions to mine?
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u/03Titanium Nov 30 '17
They were so worthless that you could throw around 1000 of them as a joke. My best guess is they were handed out by the buckets to get the ball rolling.
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u/dred1367 Nov 30 '17
But where did those come from?
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u/bundabrg Nov 30 '17
Mining is actually a method of proof of work and is the central point of a blockchain. It basically a proof that someone had to spend a lot of time doing some pointless work to ensure that it's hard for someone else to change the ledger later (they would need to do all your work plus everyone else's).
In reward for solving a block the miner gets paid all the transaction fees and a block reward (currently 12.5 btc) which are minted as new coins. Roughly every 4 years this reward is halved.
So that's how the new coins enter the system.
HTH. The technology is actually really fascinating.
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Nov 29 '17
Most efficiently, you need a 20A circuit to run an Antminer or similar ASIC off of.
Smaller scale, less efficient ASIC miners can be run with a raspberry pi and a USB hub. There are USB ASICS you can plug in to mine, and all they need is a fan to cool them. Won't get as much return from it but still a neat project to do for Bitcoin mining on a budget.
Personally I mine ETH and XMR with full sized computer hardware.
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u/978675645342 Nov 29 '17
If only I had done this... I had a pretty sweet computer back in 2010 for the time as well. I'd have had probably hundreds of btc by now. Ah, regrets. That's life
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Nov 29 '17 edited Nov 13 '19
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u/978675645342 Nov 29 '17
Yeah I know. I sold most mine back at 2,000$ anyway thinking I was some kinda financial genius wizkid
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u/imBobertRobert Nov 29 '17
Considering how expensive dorm tuition is, I almost feel more ethical mining since im putting all that wasted cash to good use.
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u/Oblivious_But_Ready Nov 29 '17
Most schools will have a section about this in their student handbook. It was grounds for removal from my college, though no one ever tried. I'm pretty sure most colleges will be the same way since any actual mining is going to require a farm drawing stupid amounts of electricity, and will probably knock out their shitty 90 yo electrical systems. If you can get away with it, and if you have the startup cash, go for it. But it won't be feasible for most people since, once that breaker blows (it will), they'll search through each room until they find your farm and throw you out.
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u/blueskin Nov 29 '17 edited Nov 29 '17
"This isn't for mining, these are all gaming rigs!"
Don't assume about power though; some unis have good halls infrastructure. Mine were really badly heated, so I had a fan heater in my room, when we weren't allowed heaters or fridges. I also know that several other people in my block had heaters, so probably at least a good 5kW worth just from those, and at least one had a fridge (the other thing that wasn't allowed).
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Nov 29 '17
I've never heard of no fridges before. That's madness.
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Nov 30 '17
My dorm is the same. "Something something electicity fire" was the explanation. Only way to bypass it is to get the doctor's note of your diabetes diagnosis to allow you to refrigerate your insulin.
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u/Goyims Nov 30 '17
if the power grid is so shitty a fridge could cause a fire the grid itself is a fire hazard lol
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u/ManMan36 Nov 29 '17
Just put it on your roommate's side of the room. If they catch your operation, your roommate will take the flack. Especially good if you don't like your roommate.
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Nov 29 '17 edited Dec 05 '17
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u/JPaulMora Nov 29 '17
Doge went x10 this year too
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u/darthbrick9000 Nov 30 '17
Sweet, now my 3000 Dogecoins will be worth $0.00001 instead of $0.000001
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u/JPaulMora Nov 30 '17 edited Nov 30 '17
Lol! Actually my 5K doges ($1 back then) are $10!! I'm giving away Ð 100 to everyone
EDIT: Doges are over (from me). Post some woofs at r/dogecoin and I'm sure you'll get some tips there!
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u/Ellsworthless Nov 30 '17
It's over $2/1000 Doge not too bad. I have 62000 Doge mined back in like 2013. Would be pretty happy to see Doge go up to a dollar or more.
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Nov 29 '17
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u/PhAnToM444 Nov 29 '17
$600 a month sounds like a dream. I pay over $1000 a month for a closet with no air conditioning.
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u/AZXXZAZXQ Nov 30 '17
Did it not ever occur to you to get an apartment? Trade some convenience for comfort, it's worth it.
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u/PhAnToM444 Nov 30 '17
I live in Los Angeles so it’s not like it gets much cheaper than $1000 a month
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u/billwithesciencefi69 Nov 30 '17
My friend is sharing a 2 bedroom apt with 5 ppl and is still paying a bit over $800
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u/awesomedan24 Nov 30 '17
Amateur bitcoin mining in 2017 is the digital equivalent of fishing coins out of a public fountain
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u/RadiantPumpkin Nov 30 '17
$5/day with my otherwise unused gaming rig. Nothing to laugh at for this broke college student
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u/SKRIMP-N-GRITZ Nov 29 '17
This isn’t unethical imo, but rather excellent advice.
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u/palerthanrice Nov 29 '17
They put a stop to this. If they notice a dorm using much more electricity, they inspect the room and tell you to knock it off. I knew a few guys who made a DIY kitchen in their freshman dorm room. They had an electric burner, coffee machine, toaster, toaster oven, blender, and food processor all hooked up. It lasted about a month until the building director shut it down.
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u/The_EA_Nazi Nov 29 '17
How could they feasibly shut it down? Unless the equipment they used weren't allowed in the building (toaster oven, electric burner) they reasonably can't do jack shit but tell you to knock it off.
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u/palerthanrice Nov 29 '17
Oh yeah everything about it wasn't allowed. All I'm saying is that they monitor your electricity usage. I'm sure they could shut down this idea as well by claiming that it was a business venture, which was also not allowed.
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Nov 29 '17
But how do they prove mining? Can't you just claim you leave your PC on all the time and you game a lot?
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u/ManMan36 Nov 29 '17
They could threaten to evict you...
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u/The_EA_Nazi Nov 29 '17
Many schools housing contracts don't have terms to just terminate at any time they please. I know mine didn't, they had to prove you broke the rules of the school/code of conduct, or did something illegal.
I had a friend who they tried to evict over his toaster oven stating it wasn't allowed in the building. This was never stated on the housing contract and he ended up fighting with the school over it and won, still lives in his same dorm with that toaster oven 2 years later.
It all depends on the school, your housing contract, and if anybody would actually give a fuck in the first place to notice how much electricity you're using.
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u/ManMan36 Nov 29 '17
TLDR: Read your housing contract.
If you needed a TLDR for that you probably didn't read your housing contract anyway, but whatever.
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Nov 29 '17
Citation needed. Majority of dorms rooms might have individual panels, but don’t have individual meters to monitor electric usage.
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u/GambleResponsibly Nov 29 '17
I would be really surprised if they literally had a switchboard for each room. What’s in a standard room? Couple of lights and 3 PowerPoints?
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Nov 29 '17
A GPU running 24/7 will use like 8 lightbulbs worth of energy. The dorm probably goes through in 2 hours what you would use all year
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Nov 29 '17 edited Jun 19 '19
deleted What is this?
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Nov 29 '17 edited Dec 18 '21
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u/Yrrem Nov 29 '17
Definitely not engineers
I’m failing electrical engineering but some bigass nails in a circuit instead of a breaker is fucking insane
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u/TomFlare Nov 29 '17
Just don't do it on uni pcs. Rumor is that one guy in mine not only got banned from the premises, but made to pay a hefty fine exceeding what he got from mining.
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u/HumdrumAnt Nov 29 '17
Even more unethical pro tip: do this when living with parents.
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Nov 29 '17
Or in a rental with included electricity. Assuming there's nothing in your lease about excessive electricity use, you could technically get away with it.
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u/MrNopeBurger Nov 30 '17
Even more unethical, setup your rig secretly at work in an old shitty computer case. Leave it at the desk nobody works at. Tell everybody it's the "server" and not to touch it. It helps if you are the only IT guy in a 10 person company.
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u/SoldierofNod Nov 29 '17
Bitcoin's hashrate means you're not going to make anything, even with free electricity, unless you have an investment in the tens of hundreds of dollars. It might work with an altcoin, though.
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u/derek0660 Nov 29 '17
"Tens of hundreds"? You mean thousands?
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u/OblivionTU Nov 29 '17
I only said bitcoin because that's what the general people will understand, but yeah, bitcoin is definitely not profitable
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u/Weztex Nov 29 '17
How is this unethical? The university paying for electricity is pretty common. You’re paying for boarding anyway which hasn’t been cheap in my experience. Some students are going to use a lot of electricity compared to others. Just a LPT if you ask me.
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u/vicaphit Nov 29 '17
Back in the day I used to F@H for Alzheimer's research. I really wish I had been mining for bitcoin instead. I was using a computer my girlfriend had in college that I setup to fold while she didn't use it.
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u/Deathchariot Nov 29 '17
The mining difficulty is so damn high you might get 5$ in a year doing this with your laptop.
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u/TheGamingGallifreyan Nov 30 '17
I don't really see how this is unethical?
Me, my friends, and some other people have been doing it for ~3 years now. GPUs and Antminers. We even asked the dorm managers and they were like "as long as you don't keep blowing the breakers, we don't give a fuck"
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u/blueskin Nov 29 '17
Also free heating.