Thanks. Given your understanding of the current market state in ads, how likely (or unlikely) is for an advertiser to know that his/her ads will be served by malware (or other non-traditional means)?

Is there a sort of generic knowledge that buying ads on certain networks will end up being served non-traditionally? There was such an understanding in the very early days of AdBrite.

Is there a sort of generic knowledge how malware writers are able to target the ads better? Do they search the computer for installed programs or saved files? Or do they place a "ultra-cookie" that lets them see everything that was typed/searched/clicked in a browser? Any other ideas on why the current "non-traditional" means of targeting could be better/more accurate than the "traditional"?

Thanks again.

Thanks for an informative post.

I'm wondering why even use Linux to control chips via SPI? What is the point? I haven't worked on ARM recently, but I did on Xilinx and Microblaze. Going standalone for SPI and I2C access was a major win in terms of power usage, I didn't even bother to measure speed: it was much faster, but not critical in what I did. Only lwIP is somewhat harder to use than the network interface through sockets.

Did Linux SPI driver had any recent major improvements?

I wonder what bitfury has to say about it, or will he just shut up and smile to avoid disclosing some other, much better, solution to the competition.

I apologise for being too generic in my questions. I actually prefer to speak publicly, nothing to hide on my side. The historical example I used was: medicines that are OTC in Europe and Rx-only in the USA. Doubleclick used to frown on it and forced forfeit of the funds of the advertiser. On the other hand Pud, when he was launching AdBrite had no such reservations and was even giving some directions on how to best use the funds through the non-traditional means of adware, DNS redirect, strange bundled toolbars and other channels that AdBrite used to serve at that time.

You are saying that the BFL ad in the OP looks like a normal Double-Click ad.

I identified the screenshot as the result of adware infection: "Ads by Browse to Save".

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=141448.msg1506399#msg1506399

Obviously neither of us can be 100% sure without inspecting cypherdoc's computer. But just give me your professional opinion: am I full of bullshit and completely out of date? Can a legitimate doubleclick ad look exactly like so many examples of "Ads by Browse to Save" infection that are discussed in the past couple of week on the numerous web sites like Norton.

http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-Norton/Ads-by-Browse-to-Save/td-p/901189

You can be as unforgiving to me as you wish. I just wanted to avoid the possible trollfest against BFL, cypherdoc, Windows users or whoever else.

Thanks again for your time.

It was me who misasked the question. I understand your answer, but I just didn't ask properly.

I want to understand the situation from the point of view of an ad buyer: a vendor of a product that isn't an outright scam, but is of somewhat questionable value: no rebilling involved and no high chargeback risk. But also the general public will not explicitly search for it, it appeals only to a fringe.

Such a vendor might have run a test campaign on doubleclick and adbrite. Doubleclick yielded very bad conversion rate (which is bad). Adbrite yielded good conversion rate, but used not-really-legitimate means of ad serving: malware, DNS redirection, etc. (which is also bad, but short term good). (Network names used as a historical example, I have no current knowledge.)

My presumption about the screenshot in the original post: Zerohedge tried to serve a generic doubleclick ad. They don't bother with any targeting on their own, bud doubleclick may have meant to target. Adware intercepted it and served an ad from another network. Zerohedge and doubleclick have seen it as somebody using adblock or similar.

How difficult would be to organize such a campaign? Is anyone offering it, maybe not openly, but after a longer discussion and some sort of background check?

I see trafficholder as a sort of middle point between legitimate and illegitimate ad serving. They need at least token participation from the site owner. Am I right? Zerohedge would never use hidden, random redirects.

I'm assuming that a site like zerohedge is beyond reproach and would never knowingly trick their readers to install adware. Am I right?

I'm extremely curious. I don't want you to disclose any proprietary information, just generic market overview.

Is there any generic information on how likely "behavioral retargeting" is going to happen because:

1) site owner does retarget
2) site owner uses a traffic retargeting service, eg. trafficholder
3) adware will retarget

xorxor, I think you are doing very useful work by maintaing this list.

I'm posting here to try to convince you that "negative knowledge" is also valuable. The main value of it is by cutting through the misinformation, no matter whether the misinformation is intentional (propaganda) or not.

It may be worthwhile to extend your list with "known not cryptocurrencies" and add one paragraph each summary explaining why the particular offering shouldn't be considered a legitimate cryptocurrency. I don't think it is worthwhile to get involved into long discussions why something is put on the "not list", just state a brief synopsis of an argument.

Eg: "Amazon Coin" - centralized private scrip launched by Amazon and pegged to USD, possibly used "coin" in the name to placate those who persistently kept asking Amazon customer support to be able to pay in "bit coin".

Thanks again.

I'm just going to post here what I posted for jim618 in his Multibit thread.

Ugh. Please check your math.

In[1]:= 11^94

Out[1]= 7778796406007058285951393811497112871791787694\
6029329123560958680818697236800243835465535478292041

In[2]:= 94^11

Out[2]= 5062982072492057196544

Discussed already in relation to another chip using the same package:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91173.msg1428670#msg1428670

I get just regular doubleclick ads in that place, usual generic fin-serv ads. I also noticed that the screenshoot from cypherdoc has "Ads by Browse to Save", mine doesn't in any browser.

I binged "ads by browse to save" and there are removal instructions for them, like for a malware.

 

Edit: After further research: clearly a locally installed adware on cypherdoc's machine. But it would be still usefull to learn which ad network BFL is using to serve their adds. Following the interlinking between malware vendors and ad networks is always interesting and educational. I wonder if any recognizable brand-name ad network would serve a well targeted ad through the malware.

Wafer quantity/diameter is immaterial here. By the standards of semiconductor manufacturing this will be "short run" even if wildly successfull by the Bitcoin standard. The critical parameter was "shortest waiting time" or some variant of it.

This is kind-of mirror image of the Quantum Bigfoot story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bigfoot_(hard_drive)

where 5.25" drives were awkwardly mounted in cases designed for 3.5" hard drives using custom brackets. The reason: Quantum had a lot of 5.25" machinery available to manufacture them cheaply and quickly. It is noteworthy that Wikipedia had removed any mention of this because it wasn't properly sourced. Well, it would be hard to find internal Quantum documents on the open Internet.

Semiconductor manufacturing is the same, except the diameter gets always increased with the next generation of machinery.
 

Yeah, the "loans manufacturing" is a mistake in an otherwise well-crafted story. Active students wouldn't need to borrow money for manufacturing. For students the "sweat capital" would be completely sufficient to get the project running.

The smart students would do everything openly, even if it required setting individual course plan to get grades/points for developing and delivering the Bitcoin ASIC. They would most likely have to share the revenue with the university. There are many precedents for such academia-industry partnerships.

Not-that-smart students would try to do everything on the sly, probably in the hope of avoiding revenue sharing. This is also not unheard of, but you'll mostly read about it when it gets prosecuted and the students/faculty expelled.

This "hardcopy" comment is just misinformation.

Various FPGA copy processes need to be ordered through the respective intelectual property owner, eg.

HardCopy through Altera
EasyPath through Xilinx
etc.

In case of Avalon if this was an FPGA copy they would place an order with Xilinx not with TSMC.

It clearly is a custom ASIC.

Now the adjective "full" has no well-defined meaning next to "custom ASIC". By my reading of the posts in this forum only two persons creatures are working on a full custom ASIC: bitfury and yohan yohan's cat.
The distinctive mark of a full custom designer is that his simulation result errors are narrower than the manufacturing process variance. The way I interpret the words "full custom" would mean that the designer had run an analog level simulation on BSIM (or an equivalent toolset). The error-bounds on such simulations are very narrow, in fact the proper simulation would consist of multiple simulation runs modeling various corners of the manufacturing process. This is just time consuming.

It is of course possible that some vendor really does full custom design, but deliberately spreads misinformation on this forum to hide their intellectual property.

It is also possible that some vendor is in a posession of some EDA tool that they don't have a full license and/or don't fully understand how to operate and/or don't have all the required input data for models. This would be another explanation of unusually wide error bounds on simulation.

Paging Mr eldentyrell!

Avalon chip count and power usage are available. You can now update your comparison table.

chip count:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=141300.0

chip power:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140539.msg1497127#msg1497127

Thanks.

I wanted to restart the discussion from the thread that is now locked:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=120184.msg1402474#msg1402474

I cannot quote directly, so I'm going to do a little cut and paste quotes.

Pictures of the open Avalon modules are now available:

http://bbs.btcman.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1304

There are 80 chips per module.

OK, so stick had already deleted his reply. But let me clarify some points:

1) I understand why ethics discussion is not a good use of time when the business is in its most critical phase: late development but before revenue stream had started. The permanent lockout is one of the early decisions that you may regret afterwards.

2) You have many options to deliver variants of bootloader/firmware from the earliest stage:

2a) initially unlocked but lockable with an upgrade
2b) initially locked but unlockable with an upgrade
2c) on demand switching between 2a) and 2b)
2d) locked forever and not upgradeable

3) If you really do your cases by CNC mill (and not some form of molding) then it is quite cheap to add some trivial decorarive modification to the milling program to remove some more source material in a way that marks device as open and that is difficult to physically patch up.

4) I now regret mentioning 3DO withoout explicit context. 3DO is one of the first companies that used 768-bit(?) RSA signatures to lock out the renegades. It may have locked some renegades, but for sure locked out many developers and partners of 3DO. There was fairly detailed case analysis for that in Harvard Business Review (or similar publication for MBAs). The resounding failure of 3DO had relatively little to do with its take up in the target market of gamers. Briefly: imagine having to judge and sign competing releases by fiercely adversarial business partners; something like BFGminer and CGminer, but with actual staffing and funding for propaganda. Their lock code was in the mask-programmable ROM portion of their chip.

5) My thinking from (2) and (3) is that you could offer lock state as another option during ordering, similar to the color of the case. You'll have a first hand feedback channel on who's ordering: geeks or grandmas.

Thank you for your reply. I fully understand that you don't want to spend time on the discussion of ethics. But sooner or later you will have to, like everyone who had ever shipped a device with secured flash update. Its either early and easy when done with friends or late and difficult when done under duress of hacking or lawsuits.

Something really simple, like when bootloader signature check fails pop a question: do you want to continue flashing/booting unsigned software? Press X for yes, Y for no. Given small size of the screen probably some iconic rebus will be helpful.

No matter what you think about me right now, I really wish you guys well. But I've seen really close guys who failed while trying to take the paternalistic way, starting with Trip Hawkins and 3DO. It is easy to score cheap demagoguery points like cbeast did, but you aren't going to win with them.

Again, good luck, no matter what you think about me right now.

I was expecting this announcement. So now we'll have to wait for a jailbreak for Trezor. We've seen the enemy and its us!

This is actualy a good lesson on how voluntary slavery is sold as safety and security.

slush & stick: please do the ethical thing: allow explicit signature override by a special combination of keypresses. You know, something similar to what EFF asks from Microsoft.

I'm wondering what makes you think that Bitcoin needs more miners. It appears that the current pipeline is good enough at removing the capital from the newbies that no further improvement is necessary.

If you disagree with me, go help the newbie wannabe miner QualitySeeds that literally begs on the Technical Support forum to be ripped off by someone solicitious and polite.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140572.0
Do you need any more encouragement than this:

Two reasons:

1) PCB change may be a last-resort fix to avoid mask change.
2) PCB for testing/debugging may have significant (but trivial) layout differences than the PCB for mass production.

Remember that there are actually two production runs: (1) short engineering run and (2) normal production run. Engineering run ICs may have different package and/or pinout than the production run ICs.

Disclaimer: I'm not bitfury, nor do I speak for him.