PayPal's BTC  a scam?
No!
Folks seem to forget that PayPal is a payment provider geared to servicing merchants as an alternative to merchants having to work deals with the credit card companies. It is not a bank or exchange.

When PP first started consumers had to load their PP account with fiat, then they could use that reserve to pay for items on eBay and other places accepting PayPal. AFAIK, at least in the beginning consumers could not 'cash out' their PP account after loading it with fiat but of course merchants can - after all, it is a payment processing service.

PayPals foray into using crypto is exactly the same thing. You CAN will be able to spend your crypto stored there starting early 2021 and the only limitation is that it has to be spent at merchants who are in the PayPal network. All they have done is now make it easy for merchants to accept crypto as well as fiat.

edit: correct statement that currently you are not able to spend at merchants.

Someone does not know how to use a search engine?
Simply searching for "92233720368.54277039 bitcoins"  or "block 74638" returns http://blog.theshayan.com/2017/12/01/once-there-were-184-billion-bitcoins/ as the #1 hit on Google with the full history of what happened...

There is also a WIKI about it

In short it was an overflow bug which the Core devs very quickly caught and and acted upon as soon as the 2 Tx's happened. In response they did a soft-fork rollback within 5 hours of the incident to nullify the transactions.

I agree - a big yawn here as folks will simply not use said pool. Unless a government is going to force ISP's to filter (whitelist/blacklist) traffic to/from pool nodes there is nothing that could be done to enforce KYC.

The only possible 'good' side to what Blockseer is trying to do is that because a fair amount of Tx validation is involved it could finally eliminate the idiotic practice of mining empty blocks that some pools are so fond of.

Very true. However the most important parts of it uses the main pools code. Solo is more of an accounting thing and following discussions the past few months on Discord we know that the code has been extensively tested, a few bugs found and squashed then tested more before it went live. Unlike code from a certain anesthesiologist and hobbyist coder, Kano is a professional programmer with degree in Computer Science who's only job is being a programmer/pool operator. That gives me far greater confidence in what he codes.

Another bonus is that with two full nodes which are not based in the US including one behind the GFW there is no need to use a pass-thru service if your country blocks access to US servers.

edit: I should add that it supports multisig and sub-accounts refer to https://kano.is/index.php?k=soloinfo

Then this belongs in the altcoin areas. Requested mods move it there.

Kano's Solo is now live and working perfectly. I've said 'you're fired!' to the -ck solo.

Main restriction is that you MUST either use OEM firmware or BoS (Braiins) and yes running Sidehacks miners with vh's firmware is fine. Aside from BoS (which is a clean re-write of cgminer), any miners using 3rd party firmware are automajikly disconnected because of cgminer GPL license violation. While there has yet to be any verifiable proof that BoS finds blocks, being allowed only on solo presents zero risk to the main pool. Adder to that - IF someone using BoS does find a solo block here then BoS will also be allowed on the main PPLNS pool.

For those wanting to use it:
1. Register to create new account & verify using the code that will be emailed to you - you cannot directly mine to just a BTC address
2. Use a new payout address
3. Select Solo
4. Only then using the new Solo worker name point the solo miners @ any of the normal pool addresses & fire them up.
For further info refer to https://kano.is/index.php?k=soloinfo

Key points are that it must be a new account and the payout address cannot have been used before with Kanopool. Very nice to finally have a solo that is ran by someone who knows how to correctly code and more importantly - thoroughly TESTS their code along with logging everything that goes on...

edit: I should also add that rentals are allowed on the Solo accounts. Reason of course is that the Renter bears all risks regarding how the rental hash performs and not the main pool.

As wndsnb said it is NOT thermal paste. Thermal paste does not mechanically bond things (heat sinks) to chips - it only fills gaps/voids between surfaces and relies on clips or other means to hold things together. Same applies to self-sticking thermal pads. Either solder or a thermal epoxy adhesive MUST be used or the heat sinks will eventually fall off.

Really - I'm rather surprised there aren't any. While I was thinking of someone specializing in it, no doubt it may occur to folks to have a local 'trophy' or sign engraving company do it which again raises security concerns.

Same with folks using their own Maker laser engraver - some like the ones from Glowforge use cloud-based data processing AND state in their TOS that designs you use can become part of their stored IP and available for the companies to 'use as they see fit' much like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook et al do with pictures/vids uploaded to them. Not good!

As you said, best way is to get a manual vibrating pen-type engraver und do it yourself.

But that raises the question of where you get the engraved plates from...
If you get a blank plate and do the engraving yourself - great! However using ANY type of 3rd party service/company to do it for you once again creates a security problem in that you must be 100% certain that the 3rd party is completely trustworthy about securing their systems and erasing ALL traces of your private keys from their systems.

Ja. Canaan's Moose was a nice drop-in block of hash but did nothing to address the PSU and cooling issues.

The Antrack promise PnP replacement/upgrades. The n+1 PSU redundancy is a damn fine move to both increase reliability/serviceability and reduce the need for maxed out single PSU's.

To keep from repeating things about the Antracks, ref my reply about it here In short - LONG overdue!

IMHO liquid cooling is long overdue. Coming from an industrial power systems background I can firmly state that it provides numerous advantages:

  Allows for very high equipment density
  Far quieter
  Far fewer fans to replace and no dust bunnies to remove as they gather and breed on numerous finned heatsinks
  The larger fans on the PSU's normally translate to lower rpm's needed and that generally = longer lifetime
  Far easier to move the heat outside via plumbing vs massive fans/blowers & air ducts

When properly done liquid cooling requires very little maintenance, just a filter and biocide to keep the water clean, if in an area that gets below freezing then glycol is also needed. Outdoor dry cooling towers are extremely reliable with near-zero maint required. Wet towers - ja they need a bit more monitoring but still very very reliable. With BM now offering 1-year warranties to me it make sense that they start getting rid of potential failure points such as the known heatsink misalignment/touching issues and the fans.

As for 1nm tech ROFL! Perhaps try asking in a few more years. There are better approaches to improving performance that are starting to come online that do not require the so far un-manufacturable smaller gate sizes.

Make sure you are running the most recent version of the software and miner MM firmware then select Low Power mode and in the More Options box use --api-listen --avalon8-fan 10-30

Instant quiet space heater.

Yes it IS accurate.  Using 110V input the APW3++ is only good for at most 1,200w and is happiest under 1,100w when fed 110v but will easily put out 1,600w when fed 220V which will run a full s9 miner at full speed. Depending on the speed the old s9's w/all 3 boards draw from 1,250w up to 1,375w.

It is not under powered, you just need to match the load to what it can put out. Ya gotta remember that for many years now most miners have been very power-hungry and so are powered with >200VAC - not 110v. BM offered PSU's that can run on 110v only because lots of folks throttle down the miners to be reasonably quiet space heaters so the lower power output is not a issue.

Then use Avalon 841's dialed down to what I call TV room mode. Use low power setting and in More Options use --api-listen --avalon8-fan 10-30 to throttle down the fan. Once the miner(s) do their 3 minute warm up they settle down to a nice quiet 8-9THs pulling around 850w which is very 110v friendly.

^^ Not necessarily. The Arctic Silver brand specifically state they are electrically non-conductive though do have a small capacitance value. Just make sure whatever you get states that it is electrically non-conductive.

When using any thermal compound that is conductive one trick often done is to simply apply a thin line of RTV (silicone glue for electronics) over the IC pins to keep the thermal epoxy from touching them.

Do a search for Arctic Silver or Arctic Alumina on your fav site. Key point is that it be a thermal epoxy so it holds the heat sink in place and is NOT just a thermal paste. Thermal pastes and stick-on thermal pads will not rigidly bond so things can move.

So instead of soldering, use a good epoxy thermal adhesive to reattach the heat sink... Assuming the chip itself was not damaged, should work just fine.

And do you have the right Pi image? There are different images for the different flavors of Pi.

That is my guess as well - they are simply thick copper busbars soldered onto the power planes in the PCB in that area and are used to increase the current capacity of the power planes. The fact that they are located around where power comes in reinforces that idea. Only way to tell would be to check the resistance between some of them - if they are all soldered to the same power planes it should be very close to zero.

While that suspect bar looks funky, to me it does not suggest overheating - more like simple oxidation and/or bad plating. Either way it should not affect their function and cause problems.

Tip when checking low resistances: First press the meter probes together to establish the resistance of the meter leads. Most of the time it will be around 0.1 ohms. If the meter has a zeroing function, use it otherwise just subtract the meter lead resistance from what you measure across the bars to get the true value.