Europe has always been in the top of the world cup. If you look at historical results, UEFA is at the top, with CONMEBOL as a close second, mostly thanks to Brazil and Argentina(and Uruguay). The rest of the confederations are way behind these two.

Yeah, it's a bit random.

I think it's good practice for the teams that didn't qualify for the world cup, and other weaker teams.

For the big teams it just seems like a bit of a waste of time and energy that could be focused preparing for the big tournaments, or just resting really. Some teams have crazy schedules which end up lowering the performance of their players.

It's tricky to use probabilities in normal language because there are many possible ways to interpret what a person means.

Let's make it crystal clear continuing the dice analogy:

The probability of rolling a 6 with a dice is 1/6.

The probability of rolling two 6 in a row with one dice, which is the same as rolling two 6 with two dices, is 1/6 * 1/6 (independent events), which is 1/36.

Now, the probability of rolling a second 6 given that the previous roll was a 6, is still 1/6. In the end you still see two 6 rolled in a row, but the probability will be only 1/6 because the other event already happened or has a known outcome.This is different to the scenario where you still don't know the outcome of the two rolls, in which case the probability of it happening is 1/36.

This concept has even been used as a joke:

I have never heard of Mycelium Gear before. It looks very promising, as it's non-custodial, open source, has plugins for websites, and you can even get it for free for up to 0.1BTC a month. Really interesting. The only downside I can see about it is that it doesn't seem to support lightning.

Coinbase Commerce seems to have lightning, and it's just 1% fee. Not too bad really. I always assumed it was custodial only.

Thanks for the options, they look really easy to use. Will have a look at them.

Costa Rica didn't attack as much as New Zealand did. Although New Zealand missed so many chances, it was a bit ridiculous sometimes.

At the end there was a really good shot but the keeper from Costa Rica did a wonderful save. Man of the match right there, saving his team.

New Zealand scored once actually, but it was after they committed a foul, so it was not a valid goal. Such a shame that one of the few times they actually attacked properly was cancelled.

In the end the early goal from Costa Rica, which wasn't even good, ended up giving them the qualification.

At the end of the day, you have to score more than your rival, even if you attack less.

Australia used to win all the time in OFC, so they moved them to AFC. I think they will continue to dominate AFC now.

And in theory New Zealand should be dominating OFC now, but they still need to learn and practice a lot more, after watching this game. They need better strikers, who actually score. They lost so many chances.

But yeah, next world cup will be a bit easier to qualify, hopefully that doesn't bring the whole level down in the actual competition.

There's no "memory" in probabilities.

The chance of finding a block is the same every time (given same difficulty).

The fact that a block was found right now doesn't mean the next one can't be found right after (or even at the same time).

It's like saying the probability of getting a 6 in a dice roll changes if you just got a 6. It doesn't. It's still 1/6 for the next roll as well.

Absolutely.

There's no need to buy altcoins when the real thing is still available for purchase.

Just like gold lookalikes, altcoins pretend to be as good as Bitcoin, but they're not.

Don't buy fool's gold, get the real thing!

Costa Rica ended up winning against New Zealand, with an early but not beautiful goal. So Oceania will be represented by Australia only.

After watching the New Zealand vs Costa Rica match, they both look a bit weak to be honest. Not sure how much will Costa Rica advance in the world cup.

What a game.

New Zealand was attacking all the time, but never actually managed to score. The only time they did score it was after a foul, so it was not valid. And close to the end there was a great save by the Costa Rican goalkeeper. After watching this I reckon New Zealand should practice more at actually shooting the ball into the goal, there were many attempts, but the vast majority were not forced mistakes from the striker.

In the end the early goal from Costa Rica sealed the deal for them. It wasn't pretty, but it's all it takes to win. That's football.

Yeah, I remember that one from an older thread.

How can they work without a node but BTCPayServer can't?, are they using a light node fallback?

Yeah, it's a permission issue.

If you're running Ubuntu or similar, try running lsusb with sudo:


It should list the sticks.

And if you run cgminer with sudo it should work (sudo cgminer ...)

Of course, you might want to actually run the instructions correctly to not need sudo, but at least running it once will confirm that's the issue.

My guess is that you're not using the correct ticks here (`whoami`). Just change that for your username (kurutoga, or whatever it is), or simply copy and paste each step of the instructions. They work.

Right, that's the issue then. They're not being recognized in the computer through the USB interface, I just assumed those listed were the sticks but apparently they're not.

The USB hub data line could be faulty?, I think those hubs have independent power and data(power gets drawn directly from the power point, no power is received from the computer, so the sticks can be getting power(they show lights), but the data connection could be faulty, and therefore not showing up in the computer.

OP mentioned the card got fried, maybe in that episode the USB hub data channel got damaged.

I would suggest trying with a different USB hub.

After seeing lightning wallets like Blixt, Breez, Phoenix, and others, which basically run a full lightning node on the phone(LND for example), and use a Bitcoin light client(Neutrino for example), I started to wonder if it would be possible to have a similar setup for a light Bitcoin checkout.

Something like BTCPayServer is great, but it requires to have a Bitcoin node. Yes, you can prune it, but I'm wondering if there is any alternative checkout that uses a Bitcoin light client instead, and ideally has a lightning node on top of it, so that lightning payments can be received as well as on-chain payments.

I'm not sure if there's any technical impediment to do this, or if there's any huge drawback other than having to trust other Bitcoin nodes in the network. I think it would be ideal for small amounts on simple websites for example.

Of course you could already do this manually, just using any of these lightning wallets, I'm just wondering if there's anything more dedicated that you could setup on any website for example and it would create the checkout, invoices, etc, for you, without requiring to have a Bitcoin node.

Looks like it's all fine. How do you call cgminer? You need to make sure to call the correct options, like gekko-compacf-detect, and others.

Post either the config file you're using, or the command line that you use to run cgminer. It should detect it automatically.

Also, have you tried with just one at a time?

And finally, is the power supply to the USB hub matching what the USB hub requires? (check what's written on each one, Volts, Amps, etc.)

You can still "bet" with a miner though.

Instead of joining a mining pool, where you get paid a small amount every few hours/days, you could configure your miner to solo mine.

The odds of finding a block are extremely low with a single miner, but any miner can get a block, and you can get lucky. Even at the first try!.

Or alternatively you end up with zero, forever.

You haven't been mining BTC using Nicehash with GPUs.

You have been lending your GPU altcoin hashrate to someone else, and they're paying you in Bitcoin. That's how Nicehash works.

To actually mine Bitcoin, you need to do sha-256 calculations. ASICs are way better than GPUs for that.

A Compac F, which is a small USB ASIC does about 300GH/s, and it sells for about $200-300.

An Apollo BTC, which is a somewhat larger yet still silent, perfect for home, does about 3+TH/s, and it sells for about $500-600.

A GPU is not really comparable because it will be usually hashing altcoins, which have different difficulties. But for SHA-256, they're way worse than any of those ASICs.

Yeah, it's not an average, it's just the worst case scenario over the entire history of Bitcoin. The current hodl line remains the same as it was around the end of 2013. In most cases you're way better off in a shorter amount of time.

It hasn't been changed in years, but it will update automatically if the current hodl line is larger than the previous one from 2013.

Lightning is perfect for every day usage of Bitcoin.

Sites like https://stacker.news are using sats via lightning in a great way. Bitcoin is being transferred daily in sites like that. It's like magic!

Lightning really is changing how people use Bitcoin. It's almost instantaneous, and almost free of fees as well.

That amount of time is very close to the current hodl line: https://hodl.camp

It's currently at 3 years, 4 months, and 4 days.

That means that if you bought Bitcoin at any time in history, and waited that amount of time, your Bitcoin now has more purchasing power than when you acquired it.