Good grief, this thread (and tbh, this entire forum) makes it impossible to find actual updates. Maybe someone should start a self moderated thread? Oh wait.

Josh shows his intimate understanding of Ohm's law:

There's no way a USB cable would support 120v, it would melt almost instantly the minute it touched anything.
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/hardware-discussion/6446-any-one-get-electric-shocked-jalapeno-his-ac-adapter.html#post67969

Thats right Josh, cables are rated for voltages, not amps 

Fortunately he is better at his job as COO and 2 weeks after the original promised shipping date, he is clearly on top of things:

".. I still don't have all the information I want to make a specific statement on who's affected and who isn't, as I don't know exactly how many chips we are getting in the first batch. ....  I'm not making any commitments, but I'm going to hazard a guess ...  With the bullet run being delayed, it may end up that we get all the chips ... I really hate making comments like this, because they get taken as commitments and that is absolutely not what this is. It's me speculating without all the information I need to make a firm statement."

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/monarch-discussion/6502-2013-dec-02-monarch-discussion-2.html#post68223

Im guessing its basically just software controlled over/underclocking and volting, and perhaps some other parameters not unlike KnC's "tuning suite".

Either way, a 20% performance increase doesnt warrant a long delay when the network is growing by almost 20% every week.

This. 28nm processes have been around for a while, they are mature and very well understood. As such its predictable and relatively low risk.

20nm is anything but. Its brand new if not still experimental. Its not even certain TSMC will be able to deliver on its roll out schedule, something totally out of KnC's control.  20nm is also quite a complicated beast , among other things, requiring double patterning masksets. Unexpected things and delays seem almost inevitable.

Im not aware of a single 20nm consumer product that is currently scheduled to arrive on the market before Q3. To be fair, what KnC is doing is of course low volume and high margin compared to nvidia/AMD/qualcomm/whatever, so they can afford yield issues and its not unthinkable they come to market before AMD or nVidia, but just assuming KnC will deliver this before Q2 (much less in Q1) because they delivered their 28nm miner only a week or so late, is fairly naive.

You wrote this back in september:


Am I right guessing that now in December, there is still no such video? Nor any independent proof of your hardware existing?

I said evidence. There is a sam noi in the US too, and one in France.
And we all know scammers create accurate linkedin profiles for their non existing alter ego's. And if they do, they tend to chose Nigeria or Ghana because that instills confidence with investors (along with writing their profile in ALL CAPS in badly broken english).

Even BFL has been floating pictures of several prototype boards for Monarch for many weeks now, and I suspect thats many months before they ship anything.

The only "evidence" Ive seen of any africa link was based on a misunderstanding of blockchain.info, showing 0N, 0W (which works out to be in the ocean near Ghana) when there was no IP geolocation data. There is no other evidence whatsoever that Ive seen that suggests Alberto/sam is african and mountains of evidence proving he is italian.

Impressive. Particularly the fact you still dont seem to have a populated PCB to put the chip on, 6 weeks after promised shipment. Not that populating the board is going to be a problem, but even BFL has had that for months now and not having it means you cant have tested the board either. If the only problem was the chip's substrate, why did you not move ahead on all the other fronts?

Why are there only 3 dies on that substrate anyway?

Fabrizio might have been aware of the labcoin project name, that doesnt mean he was aware Alberto did a bitcoin IPO of the non existent company. The signing of those documents also predates the IPO by a significant margin AFAIK. I still maintain its quite likely fabr's involvement ended in June when he started working with Zopo. Until then it was no scam, they were just exploring the feasibility of such project.

Its possible Alberto told Fabrizio there is a "sam noi" running the show, but never told him it was a fictional character or an alias of himself.

Those are fakes, dont fall for it.

What really works is putting some magic healing crystals on top of the miner,  along with some Chakras aligning holographic power balance magnets.
For best result soak them first for a day in a top grade homeopathic energy enhancing 30C memory solution.  

I will sell you a complete set for only 1 BTC. Shakras alignment of your KnC miner is guaranteed or money back. PM me for details.

Sigh. You are clearly trapped in your flawed analogy. There are some parallels, but the mechanisms are fundamentally different. The revenue of my mining pan (in gold ounces per day) doesnt get affected in any way when someone opens a new gigantic mine in South Africa or starts mining asteroids. The dollar revenue of my pan might change, perhaps even quite dramatically if they ever manage to mine millions of tons of gold floating in space or near the earth core,  but not the amount of gold I can mine.

This is completely different with bitcoin where my btc revenue is 100% dependent on what the rest of the network does, and bitcoin value is almost completely independent of that.

Its needed. No offense, you are probably legit, but you registered here in august when the labcoin scheme started falling apart. It is not something labcoin shareholders should have to worry about that their legal defense donations might end up being yet another scam.

BTW, doesnt anyone of the shareholders have an insurance that covers legal costs? I know I have. It only covers costs up to a certain amount (10K or so? should have to check)  and for a limited amount of legal cases, but afaik, it wouldnt cost me a penny to retain a lawyer for this. Surely IM not the only one?

Whats the gold analogy for difficulty? There is none. And thats why the analogy breaks down completely. If you send an army of slaves to scour your land and in to your mines, they will mine more gold per day. And if you mine a lot more gold, price will drop.  But you can invest $10B in mining hardware and your equipment will still only mine ~150 BTC per hour, if it werent for the reward halving, exactly the same as what Satoshi was mining alone on his $1000 laptop.

The result is that bitcoin price is not dependent on mining cost, since production is fixed through difficulty. The opposite is true, mining cost and mining equipment, especially since there is a huge shortage, is currently priced solely in relation to expected revenue, which is function of (expected) difficulty and bitcoin's price. There is no opposite mechanism.

Its not so hard. Its more work than I thought, but all the steps are fairly easy. The manual, well PDF, is almost comically detailed, showing 5 large photographs each time you have to solder 2 wires together. It shows you how to cut, how to strip, how to put heatshrink on, solder, and shrink. Thats like 2 or 3 pages lol. Same for putting on a bolt with some spacers. Thats easily 3 high res photos. As a result,  the manual is almost 800 pages long!

So far I only encountered one challenging step, that was to solder the SMD thermistor on the heated bed. That thing is TINY. I was happy to let my electronics freak brother do that. Other than that, it only takes basic soldering skills (literally soldering wires together). Mechanicaly its just a big mecano toy box.

Mind you, I havent finished yet, it may not work, and I still have to do the fine tuning and calibrations, so I may revise my opinion. But so far, most people should be able to build this if you take your time.

Printer has been upgraded to an all metal E3D hotend, allowing even better prints

Here is a small sample, printed in PLA at medium resolution (0.125mm) and medium speed, untreated:



Same object printed at low resolution (0.25mm), medium speed in ABS:



I can do any PLA print you want in one of the following colors:
- Black
- Gold (/yellowish)
- Red

And small to medium size ABS prints in
- Glow in the Dark white (glows green in the dark)
- Blue
(I dont have an enclosure yet, and I have a fine nozzle, so large ABS prints tend to warp and split. Working on a solution.)

Just in, but not tested yet:

- Taulman Nylon. Supposedly even stronger than ABS, and very flexible in thin prints. Natural white/translucent but this material can also colored with textile paint. Special color effects are possible too by dying the filament in various colors before printing.  Not tried yet.
- SoftPLA. Rubber like material, broken white.
- SmartABS. Pretty much like ABS but would be easier to print large objects with. Also white.

Pricing:
Currently im offering the service for free. You only pay for the filament (~5 euro per 100gr) and shipping from the EU.
I will not print (or at least not ship) guns, no point in asking.

FAQ
Q Why do you this?
A Because I like playing with my large toy and its idle often enough that I may as well print your designs at cost. Im also curious what kind of demand there is out there for such a service.

Q What size can you print?
I can print up to 20x20x20cm with my current printer. However, large objects in ABS are still problematic due to warping of the material. If your object is large, PLA will work better until Ive upgraded my printer.

Q Can you print any shape?
A Hmmm, not really. My printer only has 1 extruder, so I cant print washable support material. That means that objects with very steep overhangs or large "bridges" where I would have to print "in the air" can not be printed, or only with generated support material (think scaffolding) which to be honest, is a PITA to remove and you will have to do that yourself. When in doubt, just give me a link to the object, I can usually tell on sight if I need support material or not.

Q Can you paint printed objects?
Yes you can. Its recommended you use a (automotive) primer first, then acrylic paints will work fine on both ABS and PLA

Tough crowd. Everyone was screaming for updates, and now that they provide some interesting and very detailed updates, its still no good because you dont understand what they are saying.

While he sounds genuine enough, and I presume he is legit, it would be a good idea if some older members acknowledged virtualspade has been vetted/doxed and if the contract with the laywer has been verified.

Sure it could.  The "big" names werent in with bitcoins anymore, they long cashed out, instead they set up pass through schemes to funnel fresh money to pirate in return for a cut.