If i remember correcty (i haven't used electrum in a couple of months), if your fee is to low or if there is an other technical problem with the transaction you created, electrum actually shows you the error message of the node you were trying to use to broadcast your transaction, so i doubt it's a fee problem... (not sure tough).

I'm thinking in the same direction as ETFbitcoin, are you sure you are connected to an electrum server?
You can try to close electrum and restart it, or click the button in the right hand corner and manually change servers untill you find one that's working for you (like ETFbitcoin already said: the indicator in the right hand corner should be green).

Like ETFbitcoin already said: you can always "save" your transaction locally instead of broadcasting it (you already figured out how to re-broadcast a transaction, IIRC, the save button can be found in the exact same menu you used to rebroadcast), then open the locally saved transaction using a text editor , copy the hex transaction (minus the quotes) and use an online tool to broadcast it (if you use google, you can find at least 5 free online tools to rebroadcast, but if you really don't find one, you can always PM the signed tx to me and i'll broadcast it from my node)... It sounds hard to do, but it's actually pretty easy, you just need a text editor and internet access.

Yeah, i must admit i'm not the person who wrote the browser miner... I used a thirth party app, but even the author clearly indicated it was in beta-phase, so i'm not sure i'll get it fixed
BTW: the script that credits you for the submitted shares runs once an hour, and if less than 5 satoshi worth of XMR was mined, the payout is rolled over to the next hour... I hope everything works, but even in case something goes wrong and you don't get credit for your work i'll be able to manually credit your credit line.

Thanks for testing my new payment method

Thanks
This last remark is a bit harder to fix, since i'm not a good designer... I'll have to fiddle with the design a bit more to get everything looking nice, so i'll probably do this the next time i do a major change of the layout.

The ad is only there because i was testing my new ad rotator, i'll remove it right away
Thanks for the feedback, it's really helpfull!

Thanks for letting me know.. It's the NSFW message indeed... I don't have this problem with my browser, but it seems some browsers do hang because of it. I'll do a quick fix by removing the popup message altogether and just setting the NSFW to 0 as a starting point. People that want to see NSFW images can do so by selecting the appropriate option on the left hand side anyways.

EDIT: *should* be fixed now, but since i'm at work, i can't really test it out...

I'm currently expanding the payment methods of my site: https://unblur.ninja and i'm done beta-testing these methods, so i'm opening them up for wider discussion/critisism.

I'm looking for bugs or improvements... I'm not looking to start a topic about the good or bad quality's of the lightning network, any altcoin i accept, XMR, coinpayments,.... I know these technologys have their pro's and con's, i don't want to discuss them here tough... I'd like the discussion to be focussed on the implementation of these technologies instead...

Eventough i don't offer any direct incentive for testing out and giving feedback, the 0.005 BTC raffle is still open, so if you test out my new methods, you have a chance of winning the 0.005 BTC price pot.
As you might realise, such a raffle isn't provably fair (i didn't see a way of making it provably fair TBH), however, you CAN always check if the price pot is still untouched at the time you unblock the image one step further
https://unblur.ninja/image.php?id=79

existing payment method 1: pay by lightning network
make sure you either have a channel open directly with my ln node OR check if there is a route between us, then pick an image that hasn't been unblurred completely, complete the captcha, chose the number of steps you with to fund and click on "generate lightning invoice".
Once the invoice has been payed, my lightning-charged daemon immediately picks up the payment, and edits the database (adding the additional unblurring steps you payed for).
This process is 100% automatic and has been tested both on the testnet and the mainnet, by myself and at least 1 other client (since i don't keep logs, i don't know if i've had 1 client that made several purchases, or several clients that made 1 purchase)

existing payment method 2: open a credit line
Because i got a question from somebody who refused to use the lightning network, but still wanted to unblur an image, i have added the concept of credit lines. A credit line is a prefunded "key". You can contact me and discuss any payment method. After payment i created a new credit line and added funds to this line.
A user could now pick and image, chose a number of steps, click on "pay with other crypto's using an active credit line", enter his/her credit code and click on "pay".
The system checked if the credit line was still funded, substracted the invoice amount and edited the unblurring database.
The problem with credit lines was the fact that they needed manual intervention from me: you needed to contact me and arrange a method of funding.

NEW payment method 3: fund a new/existing credit line by mining XMR
I now allow people to fund their credit line by running a mining software of their choice on a machine of their choice untill they have mined enough to fund the unblurring steps they want to make. I don't force them to use "unknown" or "untrusted" mining software, they can pick whatever open source, peer-reviewed mining software they like and use it on whatever machine they like when they want to fund a credit line.
The process is quite simple realy:

• go to https://unblur.ninja/opencreditline.php
• go the the section "PAY BY CPU/GPU MINING"
• follow the directions

NEW payment method 4: fund a new/existing credit line with altcoins
I added the option of creating new credit lines, or funding existing credit lines with tons of altcoins. In order to do this, i used coinpayments.net. I know they don't have a great reputation, but since we're talking about micro-payments, i decided to use them anyways since they have a clear price structure, good api documentation, a simple POS and support many coins.

In order to pay for a credit line, just surf to https://unblur.ninja/opencreditline.php , read the section OPEN A NEW CREDIT LINE WITH CRYPTO CURRENCY and follow directions

I've purchased goods and services from all over the world with my EU paypal account, i don't see a reason why the fact you opened your account in the UK would stop you from paying a company in the US. is there something i'm missing here?

BTW: not volunteering for the job, i won't give away my anonimity for a couple bucks

I'm not going to start a pointless discussion, but I wholeheartly believe there is no 100% secure os. Even the os you recommended has had vulnerabilitys at some point.

As you might have noticed from the part of my post you didn't quote, I'm not a Microsoft fanboy either. As a matter of fact, I maintain Linux servers as my daytime job. I still stand by my earlyer statement... For example: I'd rather run a tool on a windows server that has been maintained by a skilled windows sysadmin that had enough time and funding to do and maintain a proper setup compared to running a binary on a Linux box that has been installed and used by a newbie that made a lot of mistakes (like running everything as root, installing unknown binaries, not updating, no firewall,...)

Which company?
That being said: if you've used the HD for 5 months and it already has a lot of bad sectors, i don't think the odds are in your favour here...

I'd personally suggest you to use dd (like i said in my first post) to save as much data as you can, then start looking for the seed phrase or an other backup method... If nothing works, it doesn't hurt asking for a quote from a professional disk recovery company... The odds of recovering a file on a broken disk that has been used for at least 5 months are small...

If you get a quote from a professional file recovery company, it's up to you to decide wether the costs outweigh the benefits... Also, i'd suggest finding a "no cure, no pay" company... That way you can minimise your costs in case they can't help you either.

EDIT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_erasure#Number_of_overwrites_needed

If i'm not mistaking, the department of defence usually overwrites a disk with 0's, then with 1's then with random data... At this point, nobody (not even a 3 letter agency) should be able to recover any data.

Depending on the usage of the disk in the last 5 months, several sectors *might* have been overwritten numerous times. On the other hand, if you just used the disk to backup a couple of very small files and never touched it afterwards, you might have a fighting chance.

First of all: stop using the disk... Any sector that has been overwritten is more or less lost... I've heared about 3 letter agencies that can potentially recover an overwritten sector, but for a normal guy on a normal budget, you should consider sectors that have been overwritten as lost...

I'd recommand to use dd to make a copy of all sectors on your disk before you try anything else.

Afterwards, i've heared people share success stories of recuva's recovery software...

I have to agree with OmegaStarScream, altough in my personal experience, i'd say *nix OS's are built with a different security concept... This, together with the fact that most virusses target microsoft products, do make *nix OS's more secure than microsoft products out of the box.

Offcourse, an end user can make the best designed OS vulnerable, or the worst designed OS secure... This is why you'll probably get a different answer to your question every time you ask somebody else... Everybody has their own experience, everybody has their own setup procedure, everybody has their own toolset they know how to configure,...

If you want a really secure, free operating system, you might want to take a look at openBSD

I'm defenately not accusing them, and I'm pretty sure they mean well... However, I don't think that the fact they've invested a lot of their time is a valid argument for a flawed airdrop distribution model.

$2k is $2k, and since there is no "provable fair" distribution method (as a matter of fact it's pretty easy for them to cheat) there is no way of being sure everything is distributed fairly.

I also think the argument of "some people being able to claim a couple wallets" is not just. I'm not going to invest my time in cheating, but i guess it wouldn't be to hard to:

- write a bot that monitors the project's telegram channel
- as soon as the wallets are posted, the bot will download them, together with the passwords
- as soon as a wallet is downloaded, he can use a script to automatically decrypt the wallet and export the xprv and first private key
- the script can then create a transaction that spends all funds in the wallet, and immediately broadcast said transaction to a lot of nodes.

I'm pretty sure that if a dedicated, knowledgeable thirth world programmer (because, let's face it, for somebody in a first world country, the $2k might not be worth the time you'd have to invest) really put his mind to this, he could grab all hundred wallets before honest participants even get the chance to download, open and spend from a single wallet...

Well, there's always the possibility the team already exported all private keys before the wallets were posted, maybe even generated transactions beforehand to spend all unspent outputs controlled by those 100 wallets but didn't broadcast them yet. After all, they were the ones that generated those wallets and funded them... So they have the wallet file and the password, nobody can prove wether or not they exported any keys.

If they wait 10 or 15 seconds after they've published the wallets untill they broadcast the pregenerated spending transactions, nobody will be able to prove they claimed everything themselfs. After all, it could be a member of the public who wrote a script to download the wallet files, decrypt them, export the private keys, generate a spending transaction and broadcast these transactions just a couple of seconds after the wallets were posted. The wallet is open source, it shouldn't be to hard to reverse engineer the encryption and write a script to decrypt those password protected wallets + rip the xprv or private keys automatically.

I'm not saying that this is what they'll do, i'm just listing a potential abuse scenario...

There are ways to create a fair distribution, i'm not convinced this one.

Just a dumb question, but you aren't using the --listpass argument when you actually try to bruteforce your password... Right?

source: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/TUTORIAL.md#btcrecover-tutorial

I don't own any physical lealana coins, but if i'm not mistaking, a firstbit address is basically just the first characters of a "normal" P2PKH address. Firstbits just parsed all transactions and kept a database with all funded addresses. If you entered the first characters of an address, they'd look up which address started with this exact sequence.

So, you'd basically have to start parsing around the time your Lealana coin should have been funded, and see if you find any transactions that fund an address starting with the character sequence printed on your coin...

Then again, i can be completely wrong with this theory... Anyways, good luck!

EDIT: Since LoyceV already came to the same conclusion, i'm pretty sure i'm correct... The only difference between his theory and mine is that i think you'll only need to parse part of the blockchain, since addresses funded AFTER the Lealana coin has been purchased for the first time are not interesting in your case.

here you go: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=167.0

epochtalk has been in the pipeline for years now, but i'm confident one day we'll make the switch (don't know when tough)

Thanks for the warning... I usually install untrusted apps on an old phone whose speaker died a long time ago tough, so it shouldn't be a real issue to test out their wallet

But you're right: as a public announcement i'd like to state that it's not because i'm willing to test an app on an old phone that it should be considered safe for other people to do the same!!! Use your own judgement before installing anything on a phone that is being actively used!

I'm defenately interested in testing your wallet, however i don't use telegram (don't like to give out my phone number, don't like to use a fake number either).
Is there any other way to see the rules and/or register?

OK, time to set the record straight (again).

As usual, it seems like a thread about mining has been derailed, and the amount of misinformation is starting to grow. I'm not going to point fingers here, i'm just going to try to give a newbie-friendly explanation about mining, omitting a lot of technicality's that would make it hard for somebody to understand what's going on.

Bitcoin is built on top of the blockchain technology. A blockchain is basically a chain of "blocks". You can see each block as a datafile. This datafile contains a number of transactions. In bitcoin, the size of the datafile is limited.
A block also has a header. This header is built like this:
version - previous block header hash - merkle root hash - time - nbits - nonce

Some of these fields in the block header aren't interesting for my story... But the following fields are:

previous block header hash => because the header of a new valid block contains the hash of the header of a the previous block, the blocks actually make a "chain" (the blockchain). You can't just remove a block from the blockchain, because the next block actually uses the hash of this removed block in it's own header... So throwing away a block would make the next blocks invalid.

merkle root hash => i won't go into detail about merkle trees, but basically if you change any transaction in a block, the hash of the merkle root will change, so there is no way to meddle with transactions in a block without changing the block header

nonce => an increment... Important for mining.

Now, what is mining? A miner runs a normal node, this node builds an utxo set of all unspent outputs that can be spent in new transactions. It also fills it's mempool with all new transactions that are being broadcasted.
When a miner receives a new block, he immediately checks this block for errors, and if everything is ok, he removes all spent unspent outputs from it's utxo set, adds all new unspent outputs to his utxo set and removes all transactions in the valid block from his mempool.
He now puts together transactions from his mempool to form a new block, and creates a new  block header... Then, his ASIC starts to increment the nonce, leaving the rest of the block header static.
For each nonce increment, the ASIC takes the sha256 hash of the sha256 hash of the new block header. IF the miner finds a nonce for which the sha256d hash is UNDER the current target, he found a valid block, and he can broadcast this block to all other nodes.
At this point, all miners will re-start the process of utxo and mempool manipulations, building a new block, incrementing nonce,...

A miner can add a coinbase reward of 12,5 BTC (halving every 210.000 blocks). He can also add the sum of the fees of the transactions he has added to the block he's trying to solve. So the more fee per byte of transaction data (limited blocksize, remember), the more interesting it is to add a certain transaction.

The target is changed when the difficulty is changed. Every 2016 blocks, the algorithm calculates how much the average time between 2 valid blocks was. If the time between two blocks was bigger than 10 minutes, the difficulty gets adjusted downwards (and the target goes upwards making it easyer to find a valid block) and vice versa. This mechanism makes sure the average time between 2 blocks is ~10 minutes.
At the moment, the difficulty is soooooo high (and the target is soooooo low), the odds of you finding a valid block by yourself is allmost nonexistent (especially if you don't own hardware that was built for the sole purpose of bitcoin mining => this hardware is called an ASIC). People have joined together in pools. A pool is a way for many (sometimes thousands) of small miners trying to solve a block together. If a member of the pool solves a block, the coinbase reward gets distributed fairly amongst all members of the pool.

If you have other questions, try the forum's search function.... If you can't find your answer: don't hesistate to ask.

Eventough this question has been asked several times before, it's to important not to answer it this time:

From safest to least/safe (imho)

• [SAFEST] Latest version of bitcoin core, nonhd, on an airgapped pc running an up-to-date linux distro. Make sure you use encryption, and make sure you backup the wallet.dat on an offline device
• [REALLY SAFE] Latest version of electrum on an airgapped pc running an up-to-date linux distro. Make sure you keep the seed phrase safe! I'd suggest encrypting the seed just in case somebody finds it
• [REALLY SAFE] Properly generated paper wallet, bip38 encrypted, generated using a strong RNG on an offline machine, printed on an offline printer
• [REALLY SAFE] A hardware wallet, i personally have a ledger and a trezor, both work fine... Just keep them regularly updated and make sure you store the seed in a safe place
• [RELATIVELY SAFE] A recent desktop wallet on a clean PC, only use wel-vetted open source wallets tough! And make sure you download them from the correct place!
• [UNSAFE] An online wallet (this includes blockchain.info)
• [REALLY RISKY] Using an exchange/gambling site/... as a wallet

Next time, use the search function tough!