Not publishing unverifiable claims from anonymous sources is an option too. I understand news pieces like „we’re seeing an uptick in people claiming X” but this is just one random guy making a post on Reddit.

My point was taking a picture of a box of rocks doesn’t prove the rocks were there before you opened the box. And if you disagree, explain your reasoning.

Those rocks don't look igneous to me, so they have most likely been there for millions, if not billions of years before they opened the box

Ah yeah, the old "a picture isn't enough proof so they think everything is false" argument.

You'd make a great lawyer.

My point was taking a picture of a box of rocks doesn't prove the rocks were there before you opened the box. And if you disagree, explain your reasoning.

How would an independent investigation prove anything further?

There’s no proof anywhere that this is truthful, and no, pictures don’t lend credence.

What would you accept as proof then? Because to me it sounds like this logic implies nothing can be proven at all, ever.

Does that gpu really weigh as much as four rocks of that size?

also the rocks weigh way more than a gpu, so the ups or post office would have a record of that

I wish we'd stop writing "news" articles about reddit posts. There's no proof anywhere that this is truthful, and no, pictures don't lend credence. I have a gpu box right now I can put rocks in for sensationalism.

Correct. While a chargeback is a last resort, if the consumer is not lying, then Best Buy advertised a GeForce RTX 5080, but instead gave worthless rocks while taking the consumer's money. That is fraud and the consumer is well within his rights to seek a chargeback. Then the credit card company can seek the damages from the retailer, which they will almost certainly pay because they don't want an outside fraud investigation which could find them criminally liable. Of course when it is on them to investigate, they will find for themselves, take the money, and keep the product, and hope the consumer just goes away. A credit card company with its own lawyers will not, so at that point it's just good business sense to refund the money. It puts them at net zero anyway, as opposed to being up $1200. They were never at risk of being down $1200, which isn't that much for a company the size of Best Buy to fight for stealing from a consumer. They'll do it if they can get away with it, but if they can't, they'll cave.

This is a Reddit post packaged as a news piece without any independent investigation done by reporting website. Someone could have been scammed or robbed but it’s also possible that this post a scam against retailer as well.

So you chargeback the purchase on your card, and never shop with the dying retailer again. Best Buy provides absolutely no service that is unique and unavailable elsewhere.

I wish them a very bankruptcy

Wow, ordered an external SSD from them two weeks ago and it couldn't be delivered, because none were in stock anymore. Guess I'll order a different brand...

File under "Happened because of wealth concentrating at the top"

They're ending Fiscal Q2 2026, or end of February for them. Since the AI bubble seems pretty ready to pop, this seems really poor timing.

Idiots

But everyone assumes they are special and some goverment is watching how they jack off.

I never mentioned but you're not wrong.

I really don't think mining would be something anyone should be concerned about.

Mining stuff draws power like mad, and needs to connect to a server somewhere, both are very easy to spot.

Not necessarily and especially if it's at the hardware level.

If there's an exploit baked into the drivers then it's entirely possible it may not be noticed for some time - doubly so if it's closed source. But likely that it will be eventually.

Anything at the hardware/firmware level and it could take ages before anyone finds it, if they do at all.

That would be noticed like right away though?

Not saying they won't do it but I bet if it isn't some quite deep rarely used stuff in the drivers, security people will find out quickly?

Drivers are part of it.

There can also be built in back doors that can be leveraged to extract display information.

As it's a gpu I'd imagine a backdoor could also be used to covertly run a malicious llm, could be used to crack hashed encryption keys (not a huge risk tbh but possible) as well as allowing for the covert exfiltration of display information directly. As part of any display device is output, either hdmi or DisplayPort, backdoors could allow for the interception of en/decrypted display information. Over hdmi at least. I'm not sure if DisplayPort video signals are encrypted or not but I'd assume so.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but what trust do you need for rendering stuff? Invasive drivers?

No one's going to trust that shit, so they'll be in the same boat as Nvidia.

And they've fallen behind mainly because they haven't delivered a real innovation since coming up with the MX switch. As soon as the patent expired, their competitors delivered improved products that they had years to come up with but didn't.