SSL certificate renewed, sorry for the trouble.

First I tried to renew it too early, then I missed the renewal window. I better put that in my calendar.

Wow, 5 bitcoin blocks yesterday and 5 (so far) today. Keep it up, guys

It's because you run an old OpenCL 1.0 driver and apparently DiabloMiner requires OpenCL 1.1 now. You can upgrade OpenCL (not sure how that works on a Mac), or use an older version of DiabloMiner that works with OpenCL 1.0 or you can use another miner instead.

I'm not sure exactly when but at some point AMD started including OpenCL support in their Linux drivers. With older drivers you also need APP SDK. But with Catalyst 12.3 I believe OpenCL is included. Nvidia always included OpenCL, and they both always did on Windows. Not sure why AMD didn't on Linux.

If you have multiple GPUs you may need to get them all into your X config. And if you're logging in remotely you may need to set the COMPUTE environment variable to :0. In this case you could start the miner from the command line, like so:
With recent AMD drivers that include OpenCL I have experienced problems when APP SDK was also installed. You may want to try wiping both Catalyst drivers and APP SDK, then install fresh Catalyst drivers.

Yes, in the bitcoin-qt program there is a function to encrypt your wallet. It makes it more difficult for someone to steal your wallet. They would not just have to steal the wallet.dat file but also get the passphrase, probably through a keylogger. So it's not perfect protection, but it helps. If you have thousands of bitcoins you probably don't want to store them on a computer you surf the interwebs with.

The race is over. Congratulations to the winners: malavita26 (10 BTC), zerogravity (4 BTC), jeffklause (2 BTC).

The prizes are being paid out to your BitMinter accounts right now.

18 minutes left. Some serious GPUmaxing going on.

jeffklause gets a BTC block, positioning himself in 3rd place. Current standings updated in original post.

Only 1 hour 50 minutes to go and Turbor is cranking up the GPUmax power.

zerogravity got a bitcoin block. It's not quite as good as malavita26's and that puts him in 2nd place so far. jakob is pushed down to 3rd place and dextryn is out of the top 3. New namecoin blocks by dobo79 and Fefox are not able to reach the top 3. Original post updated with current standings.

At the moment we can again see Isokivi pushing 13+ GH/s, most likely another GPUmax run. It will be interesting to see how it pays off.

13 hours left of the race, as I post this.

Strangely the hash rate increase has been modest, and now we are past half way in the race with a namecoin block in second place. I wonder if we'll see any big miners make a move before it's over.


Awesome! By the way, how is it working out cashing out through OKpay?

Fire it up. We are half way through the race and we've only seen one bitcoin block so far. The competition is still wide open.

Mint Race updates: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83429.0

Interesting. I wonder if we will see some more GPUmax runs before the race is over.

The biggest miners are having no luck at all. malavita26's bitcoin block is still the finest minting of the race so far. After him we see jakob's namecoin block has taken up second place, pushing other contestants down on the list. Original post updated with current standings.

dextryn pushes up to 7th place on the top 50 list, taking 2nd position in the race with a namecoin block. That's unlikely to stand for long however, as any bitcoin block will beat it.

malavita26 takes the lead with hash 000000000000062b2f28d5aa47f9c7ee05dca83ad9ec16c5d72da2dcf4d79ace

Will it stand to the end of the race or can someone get a lower one?

Aaaaand they're off!

Surprisingly Isokivi has fallen back just as the race starts. flowklem is also greatly reduced. The only thing keeping Fefox from catching up with flowklem is his burned out miner. How the next 48 hours will go is anybody's guess.

With everyone pushing their hash rates that's pretty decent.

Currently we see flowklem and Isokivi knifing for pole position and the race hasn't even started yet. Isokivi hit a block but it was 82 minutes before start.

We just received a report that one of Fefox' rigs caught on fire. That burned out husk of a machine is not going anywhere this race. Still he is packing some serious hashing power even without this rig and Slipbye on fourth still has a long way up to Fefox on third.

45 minutes till start.

Update: Isokivi is pulling away, getting a small lead on flowklem.

Thanks, mate

With 1 hour and 30 minutes to go before start we see several miners pushing their hardware beyond their usual rates. Most obvious is flowklem running at 22-23 GH/s, about 10 higher than his usual. Those who have been watching could see him revving his engines to over 40 GH/s earlier. Below him we see some of the miners have moved up several places on the top 50 list in preparation for the race. Other miners again are less conspicuous, not wanting to give away what they are bringing before the race actually starts.

With many miners living in countries where summer has recently brought much higher temperatures they will have considerable problems keeping their rigs from overheating. Can their hardware deliver top performance for the full 48 hours of the race, or will we see some miners drop off as the heat forces their machines to shut down?

Watch the action live at https://bitminter.com/livestats/big

Update: With 90 minutes to go Isokivi makes a sudden move positioning him second on the top 50, just below flowklem and above Fefox on third. I don't know what he's doing to achieve this kind of performance, but you have to ask yourself, can his machines take the strain?

Yeah, if no block is found I'll have to write a little program to go through all the proofs of work and find the best 3.

Get reeaaady to ruuuumble... Mint Race Weekend is coming !

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83429.0

Get ready for Mint Race Weekend!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83429.0

We'll have something bigger and better next time if miners like this. I just wanted to get this off the ground and give it a test run.