I think I'm good with 2 years and better price/performance with these quads. Also colling, powering and building will be more easy than with singles (less y-adapter, usb-hubs etc.). And still I can invest less than 5k EUR / USD and have some Hardware soon.
Why? BFL Single = 830 MH/S ZTEX Squad = 850-870 MH/S You are getting roughly the same amount of hashing power per usb port or power plug. Now the BFL Singles do use ~2x the power which is an advantage but the pricing as listed is a non-starter. The largest issue w/ BFL is their abysmal delivery track record. Still even if ztex can have new boards delivered in two weeks I am not sure it is worth the premium charged. BFL Single - $600 ztex quad - $950 (as part of bulk buy 50+ units) To keep the math simple lets assume roughly the same hash rate. Pure and simple the the ztex quad costs $350 more. It does use half the energy but even at $0.15 per kWh that is only ~$70 saved annually. So the turning point is 5 years. After 5 years of continual mining the total cost of ownership (purchase price + all electrical consumption) between the two products will be roughly the same. Hard to justify choosing A when it becomes cheaper only after 60 months. While the ztex boards don't need to be cheaper they do need to close that cost gap. The quad @ $800 in bulk (and $1000 individually) would have been impressive. Between the $50-$100 annual power savings and the ~$80/mo opportunity cost* it would have been a solid competitor. At $950 it is hard to make the math work even under most optimistic scenarios. * By oppertunity cost I mean the delay between delivery of ztex board and delivery of BFL Single. 850 MH/s is worth ~80 per month. So IF delivery of ztex boards are 2 months faster it is like having $160 lower capital cost. |
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LOL its funny how one wrong character can screw things up.
If you notice that in the future (or any unexpected results) you can get detailed error messages by forcing the loading of config file. |
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can anyone confirm the fee being paid?
have had several payouts now, I have a guest using my p2pool, plus me using a different address on my miners (as if I was also a guest), and haven't seen a satoshi yet.
-- Smoov
As indicated above the fee is in the form of "free shares" to the operators address. To test: 1) use the -a option to set a static address which is a good idea anyways (use a new address to get a 0 balance on shares) 2) Don't mine under operator account 3) Set a high fee (something like 20%) and mine as a guest on your test instance 4) You should see the guest avg revenue decline by 20% and you should see ~20% of the shares being added to the address in #1. |
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No reason you can't use both. I have 2 instances of p2pool running on 2 different machines with a PPS pool as a backup cgminer makes it easy to maintain 100% uptime even when making upgrades. {
"pools" : [
{
"url" : "192.168.0.129:9332", <- dedicated p2pool machine
"user" : "WaterOne/1000+1",
"pass" : "pass"
},
{
"url" : "192.168.0.181:9332", <- my workstation which is always on
"user" : "WaterOne/1000+1",
"pass" : "pass"
},
{
"url" : "backup-pool:port",
"user" : "backup-user",
"pass" : "backup-pass"
}
],
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My question is, even if you load BTC to your smartcard's address without connecting it to your computer somehow, how does the card know how much is on it? Seems to me it'd be up to memory and luck to make sure you didn't overdraft, which would end up sending an invalid tx anyway. Loading is simple just send funds to an address the card has. Making the card aware of its current balance is a different thing obviously that requires (indirect) access to the blockchain. One option would be to keep the number of private keys relatively small and have that performed as part of every transaction. Each tx the card says "here is a list of my keys", and the POS machine says "here is your list back w/ your balances". Users could do the same thing at home with smartcard reader. More importantly, how do you set your pin without a central authority doing it for you? I think it's also worth noting that if a card continuously re-uses a single address, then it kinda kills your privacy too. PIN would be internal to the card. I would imagine a system as simple as connect card to computer, enter old pin, hit change pin, enter new pin. There would be no registry of PINs because each card would be smart enough to validate its own PIN. The simplest solution which provides minimal privacy would be to have deterministic key generation. All funds are held in one address (value address), all tx send balance to change address which becomes the value address, and the card "forgets" the old value address. Address A (100 BTC). Tx1: A (100 BTC) -> M1 (10 BTC) & B (90BTC) Tx2: B (90 BTC) -> M2 (15 BTC) & C (75BTC) Tx3: C (75 BTC) -> M3 (5 BTC) & D (70BTC) |
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Now that we have the easy part out of the way, lets tackle a harder question. What is this thing you folks are referring to as "economic growth"?
Yeah, good question. Ask an economist and she will give an answer that translates to increase in complexity, risk, and nearness to breakdown and collapse. I for one define economic growth as growth in the percentage of natural energy flows captured and put to use. And good answer  However it raises other questions.. when is a natural energy flow "used" ? Surely the phytoplankton are capturing solar energy, and doing "useful" things such as creating oxygen and feeding the food chain, does that count? Further, the burning or "flaring" of stored energy from natural gas quickly destroyed on the order of half or more of all hydrocarbon energy stored on the planet. While this could be considered a "use" (in this case making way for oil extraction) it demonstrates that some kind of efficiency of use should go into the calculation? Not easy questions, sorry. Cheers - Well one way to look at it is that (almost) all energy in a form which is usable to us based on our current level of technology comes from the sun. Even hydrocarbons are simply the concentration and storage of sunlight. A one time "cheat card" which allowed the human race to not just harness a % of the current solar energy but to use up the solar energy banked over millions of years by geology. Although fossil resources are finite (how finite is the only source of debate) the efficiency in which we use those resources can be calculated:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested |
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Another option would be to simply create a new empty wallet and then using older version of client transfer complete wallet balance to new wallet.
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sounds like fubar to me. No matter how cool you are able to keep it, it will never go faster than the bitstream thats loaded on it
While that is true a well cooled FPGA should be able to run a faster timed bitstream. ztex (and others) take this a step further and use dynamic clocked bitstream where the clock is adjusted in realtime depending on error rate. Cooler board = lower errors = higher clock. Even if BFL didn't want to go that route there is no reason they "couldn't" (not to say they ever will) offer for multiple bitstreams at different clocks (and thus different power consumption and heat loads). |
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I don't think standardization is required because things like the key derivation function, parameters, rounds, and salt AREN'T SECRETS. The important thing is to make sure they are well documented and stored in a variety of locations.
There should be sufficient documentation that the wallet could be recreated from scratch as summing the author, all his files, and all his work product are all lost.
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I know alot of sellers get around ebay/paypal by selling a coin or baseball card with free bitcoins included. You are only buying 1 penny or baseball card and getting free bitcoins in the process. Ship the Penny or baseball card with tracking and you can be as safe as you can selling stuff on ebay.
or not. It takes a dedicated scammer about 0.00002 sec to work around that "protection". |
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It shouldn't take more than 10-15min to throw luck out of the equation as far as shares are concerned right? Does anyone else notice the same thing? Depends on how of a difference. If it is 50% higher then yes 10 minutes is more than enough. However if it is more like 3% higher it could just be variance after 10 minutes. You really want 3-4 hours to reduce variance enough to make small changes comparable. this is going by the share/minute average in cgminer, maybe this isnt even accurate who knows? [/quote] |
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High level of interest IIRC is > 500 registrations. They only had 500 developer kits which were offered at no cost.
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I am not sure if it is available but it would be interesting to see IPO price for each bond (in BTC/MH).
The bonds had widely divergent IPO prices but given the near fungibility of MH/s (bonds really only differ in trust of principal) we should see the prices converge. That means under priced IPO showing a profit and over priced IPOs showing a loss.
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Thanks but I already have a power cycling board for 8 rigs. There wasn't enough interest for me to try and mass produce the boards.
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VRM are only capable of certain discrete voltage values.
So if 0.959v isn't a valid voltage the card will actually be running at voltage > 0.959V whatever the next higher step is. Which according to johnyj (not verified by me) is 1.06V
So 0.959V, 0.96V 1.0V, 1.0123456789V it doesn't matter the card is running at the next higher valid step which may be 1.06V.
The only way to verify for sure is to pick a static clock (lower is better) and connect rig to watt meter (like kill-a-watt). Change voltage and look for a change in wattage. No change in wattage = no actual change in voltage. Since wattage is going to have some variance anyways it may require measuring power instead (kWh) and time to get average wattage.
So something like
Set clocks to a static 700 Mhz.
Set voltage to stock.
Measure power for ~10 minutes.
Divide power by exact time to get avg wattage.
Lower voltage and try again.
You will notice something like this
Voltage: 1.05V, 1.04V, 1.03V, 1.02V 1.01V = same wattage. Then at some point the wattage will drop. THAT IS THE DISCRETE STEP.
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105/110% PPS sounds much better than 2.1/2.2 MH/s per share, right?  I got to agree it is just stupid. It would be kinda like a CD/bond offering 105% of 5% interest instead of just offering 5.25% interest. All that matters for a perpetual bond (beyond trust) is the price in BTC per "real" MH/s. Maybe I should offer a .... DRUMROLL ... 500% PPS bond (sold @ 5x the price per MH/s) |
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If the documentation is that difficult to acquire I imagine the chips are impossible to get short of yanking them off another card.
That is likely the only place you are going to find them. Ebay routinely has dead (for parts only) 5870s and 5970s. Tend to go for $150 or so each. Annoys me when I am searching because I think I found a deal. |
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What does this have to do with bitcoin?
The (non) possibility of cracking SHA2 due to increases in computing power and also increase in total network hash rate. The first point is valid. SHA2 is likely secure for very long time likely a century or more unless some flaw is discovered which short cuts brute force attacks. The second point isn't valid. The nominal hashing power of the network is irrelevant. Think of Moore's law as computer deflation. The cost of 1 MH/s will drop by ~ 50% every 18 months. It isn't hashes that secure the network but instead the cost (in hardware & energy) necessary to defeat the network. When the cost per PH (as in hashes not hashes per second) is cut in half then so is network security. Say over next 3 years the cost per PH is 25% of today. Well then the if the network was 40 TH/s it wouldn't be any more secure than it is today with 10 TH/s. Just like we need to adjust prices for inflation (i.e. using terms like $100 in 2010 dollars) we will need to adjust our expectation of security and adjust hashing charts by Moore's law deflation (i.e. you could show a chart adjusting all hashing power to "2012 hashes"). |
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Thanks for the info. Yeah I figured the 5970 would eventually be out of stock but I always assumed they would give you a 6990. A 6970 is a dog of a deal. At least with 7970 you get some improves power efficiency and easier cooling (due to single GPU design).
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