A gentleman in the southeast orange-growing state was caught and accused of mining cryptocurrency at work, according to the Tampa Bay Times:
TAMPA — A Department of Citrus employee was arrested after he used state computers to produce virtual currency for himself, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Matthew McDermott, 51, of Davenport was the information technology manager for the Florida Department of Citrus, the agency that oversees the state's citrus industry... [H]e used several computers in the Department of Citrus to mine for virtual currency, which include bitcoin and litecoin.
He wasn't just mining--he was allegedly really, really into it, to the tune of tens of thousands of Department of Citrus dollars:
Utility bills for the department jumped by more than 40 percent between October 2017 and January 2017, at a cost of about $825... McDermott also spent more than $22,000 using a state purchasing card between July and December, [buying] 24 graphic processing units, the FDLE said.
"Grand Theft" and "Official Misconduct" were his charges upon arrest. With bail set at just $5,000 (less than 1 BTC), he probably made bail pretty quickly.
It seems that mining cryptocurrency is the new en vogue temptation scandal.
Also at The Week, whose story mentions the previous incident at Russian nuclear facilities.
(Score: 1) by cwadge on Thursday March 15 2018, @07:19PM (2 children)
The x86 (going back to the 8086 with various levels of functionality) featured the "HLT" state which, when called at idle, could significantly reduce CPU power consumption. Unfortunately DOS didn't support it until 6.0, but regardless it's been around a pretty long time. Of course modern techniques, including frequency scaling, are much more efficient. But your CPU definitely used less juice at idle from about '93 onward. ;-)
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Thursday March 15 2018, @08:16PM (1 child)
FTFY
Alpha, 68k, MIPS, 6502, PowerPC -- These guys were all on the market in the early 90's and always ran at FULL BORE regardless of if there was any work to do. My God, what a glorious time in computing...
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 1) by cwadge on Friday March 16 2018, @01:07AM
x86 is a usually safe assumption, but you're absolutely right. Man, technology moved so much faster back then. Every year seemed like a quantum leap in processing power, graphics, sound, peripherals... by comparison it feels like we're stuck in a technological rut today.