The "Ignore user" feature is the best thing added to this forum in a long time. It makes even threads like these worth reading, since many - many - posts filled with complete drivel are silenced.

I consider myself to be way above average when it comes to electronics, but no where near the level of ztex and enigma. I could've done the same thing as you did in your situation - I actually did hook up another small consumer electronics device where the manufacturer psu had died upon me to a psu I found laying around just a few weeks ago after having just verified polarity and rated output voltage*.

It's possible I thus could've fried one of these boards as well, being that careless, and not immediately considering the difference between switching and transformer (which is where my mostly DC/digital knowledge of electronics ends).

However, there's no way I would blame ztex. I'm sorry, but consumer electronics are never protected against over voltage. There's no reason to assume these would be either, thus there is truly no responsibility on his part.

I do thank you for bringing up the subject, which has led to additional information and cautions now being available for those (which might include me) that buy boards from ztex or anyone else in the future.


*) edit: I also measured the voltage with my non-cheap multimeter, although it does not show max/min as most don't

I bought at bitmarket.eu on the evening (CET) of 9th of June, which should be very near the all time high, at 21.5€/BTC which according to the exchange rates at the time would be $31.23.

Yes, I make sure to tell everyone I introduce to Bitcoin that I bought at the height of a bubble. It helps in avoiding coming off as someone who peddles a ponzi scam.

Wall Street ponzi scheme HFT trading mumbo jumbo with no basis in actual reality. Bitcoin needs nothing more than miners wanting to recoup the cost of verifying transactions for people to be able to acquire the necessary currency for economic transactions.

A quick read through of the Speculation part of this forum is all that's needed to understand just how sad things can get. "My charts show that we're headed upwards. BUY BUY BUY".

The only way to profit from that is if someone else loses. No net gain for Bitcoin.

Oh I think I'm up to nine posts, or so.

I don't consider the trading of BTC to add anything to Bitcoin's success. A trader can only profit if another loses, and if we're trying to build a new kind of economic system where's the net gain in that?


Correct. And since GPU miners will be replaced by FPGA/sASIC/ASIC the cost of producing bitcoins will continue to fall, even if difficulty stays where it's at.

Agreed. Bitcoin needs to focus on its strengths, and that isn't in replicating business models that are successful in non-Bitcoin systems. There are a few low hanging fruits that should get more enough attention:

1) Replace Western Union. Seriously. Their fees are enormous, yet it's usually the only option for resellers of grey area items (modchips for games consoles etc). That these companies haven't already switched to Bitcoin surprises me a lot, they transfer quite a lot of money.

2) Meds. While this exists on Silk Road, there are customers who have no problems buying medication that happens to be prescription only in their country but otc in other countries. It seems "more legal", but they wouldn't want to be mixed up with SR. I think I've seen someone on the forum doing this.

3) VPN services. I'm happy to see that some are now accepting Bitcoin payments, but there are many more that could (should).

(Not that I'm advocating doing anything of the above, of course, if it's illegal in your chosen country of residence)

I don't mine, and never have. I don't consider "mining" to be of interest until we're at the level of ASIC/sASIC/FPGA. At that point (and we're very near) I'm going to put together a wall-socket mining system drawing almost no power and using the Wifi everyone has already.

It's not meant to make the owner money, it's meant to make sure that Bitcoin works and can be trusted. It's your own cheap little way of supporting a better currency and financial system, and there are a lot of people who'd buy and install one just to show their support.

Hopefully none of them will join pools, or ever sell any coins that might be "mined":

Great. I'm all for a rapid fall in the BTC/$ exchange rate followed by an immensely stable price point if so only to drive away all the traders.

If we want to replace the way the economy works I see no point in creating a second Wall Street. The worst part of Wall Street even, the ponzi schemers.

I've used them for all my BTC purchases except the very first. The difference between them and exchanges are that they're only brokering¹ the trades - the buyer pays directly to the seller. They do escrow though, which means they could in theory do something funny once the BTC are released by the seller into your account. So far, as you state, I've heard of no such issues. I also like that there are no day traders, too small volume and there's a general price premium² above the popular exchanges.

I alway withdraw immediately though, there's simply no point in not doing it. I think it's good advice.

(There's also some basic persona verification being done when registering)

¹²) That's also why I wouldn't consider them to be a "competitor" to you.

What we call "waste" from the reactors we mostly use is in reality 95% fuel. A modern reactor would continue to burn it until all is spent, and what would be left could easily be stored onsite (a few tonnes over the life time of the reactor) and would only be radioactive for hundreds of years instead of thousands.


The latter, I'm quite positive.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/07/fukushima-power-plant-worker-dies

Yes, it's absolutely correct. You also need to separate different types of radiation and the half life. Radioactive particles released from coal plants are alpha emitters with long half lives. While Chernobyl was an excellent example of how you can purposely cause a non-civilian type of plant to melt down and create a radioactive cloud (graphite moderator burning) Fukushima is a completely different matter and didn't release anywhere near the same amount of particles.

(None of the above is what anyone "thinks" btw. The physics is simple)

Irrational fear of radioactivity is bad for you.


Just to be clear, there are no deaths from radioactive exposure with regards to the Fukushima event.

Well. After having viewed the video and read the FAQ I'm still not sure what it is about. But then, I don't usually go about making bets (I can only assume there's nothing there until I would create on myself with others?)

Also, nothing indicates that there would be poker.

(I think there are more gambling sites available than the current BTC userbase can handle)

Not only that, it's just plain wrong.


The Pirate Party, neither the Swedish nor the international movement, aren't affiliated with The Pirate Bay anymore than your regular Green party is affiliated with Greenpeace. On that note, one of the founders of TPB votes green and not pirate.

While your goal is completely understandable, that's a very high number of paying (I assume) attendees for an unproven conference. Especially if most of them need to/will be traveling in and not local.

I go to a lot of conferences (both as attendee and as speaker), and have been to everything from well published recurring ones where the only attendees ended up being the speakers (!) to those where there are thousands of of local and hundreds of traveling participants. Many conferences end up doing last minute "bring # of your colleagues / classmates for free!" deals.

Here's hoping you will succeed From the outside (my schedule simply hasn't got room for me to join) it looks as if you're doing a great job.

I'll just keep repeating "LastPass", since it's by far the easiest way to get non-security trained consumers to use proper passwords. Always generated randomly, contains the full charset incl. numbers and special characters, never re-used and with no plaintext backups stored neither locally nor online.

Doubt away.

LastPass neither have nor can they retrieve your passwords. They're "in your hands".

Everything you've posted with regards to the utility of security-by-obscurity.


It's many orders of magnitude larger than the number of atoms in the universe. You fail at simple math.

We understand what you mean. We're just proving you wrong.

Sadly you don't know enough math to understand it.

I lol'd.

Assuming just lower case + upper case + numbers, no special chars, that's 62^50. Converting to a more familiar base 2 representation it's equivalent to 2^298. Tell me, in which universe where you planning on storing that rainbow table, and for how many heat-death-of-the-universe-eons were you planning on creating it?

When you fail at math, you fail at crypto. Hard.

(edit: Number of atoms in the visible universe: 2^266)