I mined some Testnet coins just for fun.
I offer to sell at a very low, symbolic price of 0.0001 BTC per Testnet coin.

Mine Testnet coins with it. It is a clone of Bitcoin intended for testing only. The coins are worthless, so you can give them away. Your charitable donations will be good for your soul and the heat from the ASICs will make your home heat up.

Connect to a pool here - http://testnet.ckpool.org/

It makes sense to mine testnet coins with an old ASIC that's no longer profitable for BTC-mining.
For a tiny amount of electricity you receive a relatively large share of testcoins.

Hook up to testnet here : http://testnet.ckpool.org/

Windows installer

SO EXPENSIVE.

I considered buying it as a heater/miner hybrid for my basement. Even then it's so expensive I rather buy used S1's

Namecoin is not an altcoin.
It is a decentralized DNS system.

Namecoins are merge-mined with Bitcoins. So anyone who mines Bitcoins is also interested seeing Namecoin succeed.

So why is it that some invest millions in mining farms but no one cares about the success of Namecoin?

Namecoin is actually a very good project that enables decentralized DNS. It just needs a tiny bit of development and marketing. A few thousand dollars is all it takes.

I cannot open my wallet anymore. It first happened a few days ago, and I haven't been able to since. When I double-click the icon on the desktop (targets the wallet file, has always worked) nothing happens. All I see is that the computer hourglass (or circle as it is now) shows for five seconds, then nothing.

I use Win7, 64bit.

My wallet has roughly 300 transactions and 100 addresses used. Other wallets open as normal.

I have the same wallet on another machine. It works there, albeit slowly.

I guess the problem is that too many transactions clog the program. But why does it not open at all?

The marginal cost of mining is very low. They'll keep on mining until mined BTCs are worth less than electricity consumed. Now it is only Europeans with expensive electricity and old ASICs who are at this point.

The problem is over-investment in new capacity. I don't think anyone, not even producers, will make back their investments in hardware and data-centers now. The reason they still put up capacity may be backlogs or overpriced cloud hashing contracts.

Shoe dryer and food defroster

1h 15 min and counting.

Do you know what the record is?

Latest block 320330.
59 minutes old.
See blockchain info.

Has there ever been such a long block time? New record?

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw Cointerra's prices : http://mining.cointerra.com/shop/

2 TH/s Plan : $7,999–$11,999

Thats $4 per GH, equal to 0.0084 BTC.

CEX.io's GH contract is "only" 0.0038 BTC.

Bitmain's Ant S3 sells at 0.0013 BTC per GH, and even this is so expensive that you'll likely never break even (or ROI as so many like to say).

I guess it's not a crime to sell apples at $100 per pound, but to all mining n00b's I say ... you better get another hobby. If you want to get involved with Bitcoin, very good, buy some coins at an exchange and/or spend your efforts on making apps/services related to BTC 

Can even a chip manufacturer mine profitably these days?
Even if the hardware is cheap to produce, there are huge logistical costs with operating large data centers, not to mention locating to another country with cheap electricity.

Is cloud mining the reason new hardware / data centers are set up?
If you can sell your capacity as expensively as CEX' contracts, you'll make a whopping 3.8 BTC per TH upfront.
You'll even make more as you go along from overpriced maintenance and electricity (meaning some of what you is paid back to customers, and some you keep yourself).

Is it possible to set the operating temperature higher, e.g. at 50C ?

The intent is to run the Ant hotter so that the equilibrium fan speed will be slower.

The growing size of the Blockchain may kill Bitcoin.

At its current 20GB and linear growth it is manageable assuming normal use. My concern is that people will find other uses that bloat the chain, or that an attacker will spam it.

It is cheap to embed data at 0.01 mBTC per kB. That's half a cent per kB. 1 MB of data costs $5 and one GB costs $5000.

An attacker can add 10 GB for $50,000 only... or 100 GB for half a million. This is much cheaper and convenient than acquiring 51% of all ASICs.

Regular users are also a threat. Once they discover that they can use bitcoin to store data, you'll have all sorts of love poems etc forever on the blockchain.

The worst potential use is by terrorists and pedophiles. Imagining them embedding videos. No thanks! 

Since the ASIC solves double-SHA256 and this is used in generating bitcoin addresses, may mining hardware be used to generate vanity addresses?

I tried resistance between ~2.3kOhms and ~2.6kOhms. Both my Ants run stable at around 128 GH with HW error well below 1%.
New score is 150W @ 128 GH = 1.17 W/GH

I use
#option 'freq_value'    '0981'  #250M
        #option 'chip_freq'      '250'        
        #option 'timeout'         '56'  

I suggest you try this first. If HW error is very low you can try at a higher frequency. If the HW error is high (>1%) you can try a lower frequency. List of frequency settings is in this thread.

EDIT: A bonus is silence. Fans run at only 1320 RPM, hardly noticeable, and to eliminate any vibrations I put foam under the miners.

Thanks for replies.

I conclude that good old VISA is still best 

I don't understand how anyone can make a profit now, even with cheap electricity and no VAT.

You can still make a small profit running your existing equipment, but no way investing in new equipment can be justified.

Is the current spike in hash rate due to:
Randomness?
Hardware turned back on after summer?
Investment back log?
Irrational investors?
Or people buying miners for heating?