Cryptocurrency Miners Force Changes to Free Tiers at Docker (thenewstack.io) 43
From today's edition of Mike Melanson's "This Week in Programming" column:
This week, Docker announced some changes to Docker Hub Autobuilds — the primary one of interest being that autobuilds would no longer be available to free tier users — and much of the internet let out a collective groan to the tune of "this is why we can't have nice things...!"
"As many of you are aware, it has been a difficult period for companies offering free cloud compute," wrote Shaun Mulligan, principal product manager at Docker in the company's blog post, citing an article that explores how crypto-mining gangs are running amok on free cloud computing platforms. Mulligan goes on to explain that Docker has "seen a massive growth in the number of bad actors," noting that it not only costs them money, but also degrades performance for their paying customers. And so, after seven years of free access to their autobuild feature, wherein even all of you non-paying Docker users could set up continuous integration for your containerized projects, gratis, the end is nigh. Like, really, really nigh, as in next week — June 18.
While Docker offered that they already tried to correct the issue by removing around 10,000 accounts, they say that the miners returned the next week in droves, and so they "made the hard choice to remove Autobuilds...." For its part, Docker has tried to again stave off the criticism, offering users a discount on subscriptions, and offering members of its open source program the ability to continue to use autobuilds for free...
Docker says they've also changed Autobuild "to take advantage of BuildKit by default for improved build performance," increased the number of parallel builds for subscribers, and increased the build instance types, "so you get a beefier machine to build on!" While the changes were apparently inspired by their struggles with cryptocurrency miners, "All of these improvements should see a faster and more stable build experience with lower queue times..."
"We really appreciate your support and the community's understanding as the whole industry battles against these abusive few."
"As many of you are aware, it has been a difficult period for companies offering free cloud compute," wrote Shaun Mulligan, principal product manager at Docker in the company's blog post, citing an article that explores how crypto-mining gangs are running amok on free cloud computing platforms. Mulligan goes on to explain that Docker has "seen a massive growth in the number of bad actors," noting that it not only costs them money, but also degrades performance for their paying customers. And so, after seven years of free access to their autobuild feature, wherein even all of you non-paying Docker users could set up continuous integration for your containerized projects, gratis, the end is nigh. Like, really, really nigh, as in next week — June 18.
While Docker offered that they already tried to correct the issue by removing around 10,000 accounts, they say that the miners returned the next week in droves, and so they "made the hard choice to remove Autobuilds...." For its part, Docker has tried to again stave off the criticism, offering users a discount on subscriptions, and offering members of its open source program the ability to continue to use autobuilds for free...
Docker says they've also changed Autobuild "to take advantage of BuildKit by default for improved build performance," increased the number of parallel builds for subscribers, and increased the build instance types, "so you get a beefier machine to build on!" While the changes were apparently inspired by their struggles with cryptocurrency miners, "All of these improvements should see a faster and more stable build experience with lower queue times..."
"We really appreciate your support and the community's understanding as the whole industry battles against these abusive few."
Re: Failure to consider physics (Score:1)
I guess you run your own business alternative to Docker, Coward. Or it just took you six key strokes to type the word "idiots"
Crypto currency ruins everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Enough already. Our civilization isn't set up to make crypto pay it's own costs, so instead it devours the commons. And no, we're not going to completely reconfigure our society for the sad dreams of fedora wearing shleps.
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2021: You'll own nothing and you'll be happy. ...
2020: Cryptocurrency needs to be banned. It's a blight on all humanity.
1980: Money is the root of all evil.
1930: The stock market needs to be regulated through a merger of state and business.
30: Greed is a sin.
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Re:Crypto currency ruins everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Money is the root of all evil.
It's the love of money which is the root of all evil. Money itself is just a tool.
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> it needs to be banned. It's a blight on all humanity. Mining it always going to either guzzle power or be insecure.
Did crypto kill 300 million people last century? How about this century?
Or was that the mechanism that issues your preferred type of currency and is also the largest polluter in the world?
Oh, right, Ethereum has 2.5 million people in concentration camps in Xinjiang. Let's stop Vitalik's power before another million people are killed.
> Proof of Stake will just be dominated by a few big
Re:Crypto currency ruins everything (Score:4, Interesting)
> Did crypto kill 300 million people last century? How about this century?
Yes. It's accelerating the greenhouse gas emissions were were soooo on track to reversing, because cryptobros bought coal plants just to generate cryptocoins.
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That's factually inaccurate. Who modded you Interesting?
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No it isn't. He said that cryptocurrency killed 300 million people. In no way, shape, or form is that true. Note that "killed" is past tense.
Re:Crypto currency ruins everything (Score:5, Insightful)
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it needs to be banned. It's a blight on all humanity.
Not bannable anymore; that horse already left the barn. Countries are starting to make it their legal tender -- banning it's not going to happen.
That said... creating and running mining facilities/businesses as an organized enterprise can be regulated: just like every other industry has to observe regulations. A good start would be to start charging carbon taxes in every country; miners won't pay an infinite dollar amount for electricity to turn
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Just how much "specialized" computer hardware do you imagine will be required for Proof of Stake?
Steering the fault. (Score:2)
For its part, Docker has tried to again stave off the criticism, offering users a discount on subscriptions, and offering members of its open source program the ability to continue to use autobuilds for free...
Why should the victim need to stave off criticism?
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The victim of abuse of free services shouldn't need to stave off criticism, so they've stopped offering a free service, and thus people have criticized them. It's not that complicated.
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The victim of abuse of free services shouldn't need to stave off criticism
The provider of free services is not the only victim, they are also in a sense themselves an abuser in that by not controlling abuse, they enable nefarious use of computing power... things such as malicious actors running password crackers off their infrastructure, Etc. The "free" compute power effectively becomes compute power available to bad guys for the use in actions which are harmful against many people not just the ser
This is obvious, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Those who have embraced cryptocurrency are at the opposite end of your philosophical spectrum. They not only don't care about a physical asset like gold, they don't even care about the blessing of a government. It's just an imaginary thing that they buy and sell.
But let's consider your position. What intrinsic value does gold possess? None, really, it only has value based on how much people want it. In the end, money of any kind is simply a medium of trade. You want something I have, and I want something yo
Re: This is obvious, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the exact opposite. Money is a way to free yourself from a resource that could otherwise be productive. Trading cattle is inefficient because the cattle have an inherent worth that you could use instead of using it as a store of value. You could eat it, say. But then trading it becomes a struggle of whether you want to eat it or get something else. Money that can be only used for money fixes that.
The problem with cryptocurrency is that we are now taking otherwise useful electricity and churning through it to make...bits that we use to trade. It is a regression, because we already had a system where we trade bits in a database and it didnâ(TM)t have this insane overhead.
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You know why we left standards based on a physical asset? It's because it doesn't work for modern economies. If you've got problems with your economy, devaluing the currency is one of the few tools a government has. Furthermore, a small amount of inflation is a good thing. People need to be encouraged not to hoard money but to spend it on things.
Crypto offers nothing new (Score:2)
Crypto offers nothing new (Score:1)
It was the finance version, of "rewriting old code from the ground up".
Any experienced programmer knows why that is often a terrible idea.
Turns out people will exploit whatever they can. Be it Bitcoin or the traditional financial system.
Come on, intelligence agencies (Score:5, Insightful)
Find a way to break cryptocurrency before it ruins everything else.
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That's easy. You just need to have China nationalise all the Bitcoin miners under its jurisdiction. The Chinese government will then own Bitcoin.