As opposed to working for nothing in a socialist economy?

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If you are lucky... More often than not, when its your turn after 3hrs+ of waiting in line, the bandaids are gone. "Try maybe next week, or try walking some miles to the next health center, they might have some there..." Then at the next center: "The bandaids were stolen, try elsewhere". At another one: "we don't have electricity, center is closed.", etc, etc, etc.

To mine bitcoin probably Bitmain's S15 or MicroBT's M10. They should last a couple of years, they are loud and power hungry, unsuitable for most homes unless you quiet them down by putting them inside a wooden box with holes and noise insulation fabric inside, etc.

Its not profitable to mine unless your electricity costs lower than 10¢ per KW/h.

Stay away from cloud mining.

Confusing as it may look, this probably just means a unit of measure. As in: number of Giga-hashes per second in 1 minute (the numbers inside the graph, at the left).

The real time measurement is in the small numbers at the table below: Real rate, Chip Rate.

Perhaps this is meant to indicate the refresh rate on the graphic, so it could be perhaps changed to 15m or 24h stats instead? (or planned to).

Here is another youtube video on the subject:



Why SpaceX Built A Stainless Steel Starship

I don't think they support downgrades. Why do you want to downgrade?, is there a problem with the current firmware version?

Lies, i have told countless times in this forum, and yet you people repeat the same falsehood again. We were never stopped from using USD by anyone but the regime itself. Quite the irony at that. Petro wasn't introduced to bypass US sanctions against Venezuela, it was possibly introduced to bypass US sanctions against corrupt and criminal individuals from Venezuela, who are suddenly finding their ill gotten money frozen. But more likely, to cover the horrid policy of creating fiat money from nowhere and blaming it all on the "Evil Empire".

Let me repeat this to you in case you don't get it. Up until 2019, yes THIS YEAR, Oil (Petroleum) from Venezuela has been going into the USA (to CITGO), and sold there for USD. That money then enters PDVSA (the Venezuelan State Oil company) and "by law" is all given to the Central Bank of Venezuela, where the regime "assigns it" to a few select elite at "preferential price" and spends the rest only God knows how (because they suspended accountability, by declaring the National Assembly invalid when they lost most of their seats there). We know SOME of it is used to buy food at outrageous prices from other countries to sell subsidized here. You can rest assured some elite, either good friend, family or military close to the regime gets to keep the profits from importing that.

And just you wait until you learn about the money making scheme the "foreign currency exchange control" does to them... I might hold to explain that with more detail in a separate thread. When the American asic manufacturer butterfly labs went bankrupt, why was a Venezuelan willing to buy the whole thing and sell it back at price? Because of this...

Venezuela has two separate USD prices: One "legal" the select few Elite can obtain, and one "illegal" everyone can buy at 3x or more. Of course, those who obtain the legal price, proceed to illegally sell it (directly or indirectly by buy/sell things) in the parallel (black) market.

So in "socialist" Venezuela, you get to make lots of money if you happen to be real friends with someone with the decision to assign things to you, just like it always has been in all socialist countries. At the expense of the misery, disease and starvation of the masses, of course.

So by having the right connections, you can convert 1,000 USD to 3,000 USD, 3,000 USD to 9,000 USD, 9,000 USD to 27,000 USD...
But wait, that is not even the most lucrative business...

100 USD fills a gasoline tanker truck. Make that tanker "somehow" cross the border, and it becomes 40,000 USD. Are the military involved? Yup. Does this occur by sea on ship tankers too? Yup. Socialism is a machine for corruption, and those are the only people getting sanctioned, not Venezuela.

Something similar has been occurring with the subsidized food too, on a smaller (but sometimes even more lucrative) scale. And well, since everything is technically illegal anyway, and you are bribing all over the place, some bonus drug-trafficking goes on too. That is how Maduro's nephews using a plane belonging to State Oil PDVSA, ended arrested in Haiti with a LOT of cocaine they intended to bring to the USA.

When you see a rich Maduro official (diplomat or whatever) getting his/her assets frozen abroad, do no feel the least sympathy for them, and do not think the sanctions are against the country, they are not, that is a blatant lie. The sanctions are against specific individuals, with full name, not "anyone from Venezuela".

Ah, so only 1% can start a shop now? Only 1% can do freelancing? Only 1% can buy stocks, forex or crypto and earn a living from it? Are you still living in late 19th century? I suppose only the wealthy get to ride the train too?

Free healthcare, free education, free housing, free food, free gasoline, where does it end? Why bother working when the State is in the obligation to provide all? And how does that State gets wealth to keep everything running? And who gets to watch that wealth is used according to plan? Oh it all works perfectly, nobody treats it bad because its public ownership... Reality: everyone treats it like garbage "because its not mine, I don't care if it breaks". Now extend that disease to society... What you own you care for, what you don't own you don't care. The "New Man" is not coming, ever. Socialist countries do not freeze in time by choosing, they no longer have the means to renew. If something breaks it might be the last time you had that thing.

In real socialism you do not own anything, and you can't start a shop, it belongs to the State. And only the State decides if a shop there is worth having, and who is going to run it, and what prices should have and what wage you will earn. At the end of it, it would have been better to stay at home than waste your time with such a miserable pay that you end working for free for the State, and sometimes even paying for the "privilege".

The reason you defend socialism is because it sounds so pretty from your theoretical utopian point of view, but you haven't lived in the results from it. You point to free healthcare, but real socialism doesn't end there. It takes everything from you, destroys it, and then blames "others" from all the failures.

Starvation in China's Mao? Imperialists. Starvation in Sung's Korea? Imperialists. Starvation in Castro's Cuba? Imperialists. Yet all the surrounding "capitalist" countries with the "masses of poor exploited workers", happen to be well fed and living worried on things like: When its the next drama episode coming out?, or the new "shiny new toy", will i be able to afford it? Should i get a second part time job to buy it? While someone in the socialist countries wonders if the bar soap will hold for the next year before he/she might (or might not) get to obtain the next one...

When someone mentions me socialism, image of stagnation and misery is what comes to mind. I don't need to imagine it, unlike the theoretical socialists living in wealthy nations like most of you are, all i need to do is go outside...

Why do you think it failed in Venezuela with all that Oil that would make it perfect for the socialist experiment to "finally work"? After all, the others were poor countries and surely couldn't afford those dreams; but Venezuela could right? Nope, they broke the State oil company. The socialist machinery leads to corruption, and a new super elite and wealthy class, this time protected by the state (just like the old monarchies) emerges under the guise of "socialism" while the masses die outside the palace/presidential villa. The irony is that a similar country, with an actual monarchy (The Saudis) actually got much better results. Because unlike real socialism, they didn't mess with the market.

When you lie about the market not being free, its to justify your meddling. This is where the destruction starts. What you don't explain upfront, is that socialism needs to impose and coerce your ideas into others. It is about forcing YOUR thinking into others. In a free society wealth can be redistributed by choice (ie. charity, sponsor, patronage), under socialism, you are ORDERED to surrender your wealth to the State or else...) And sure enough, all wealth is quickly gone, and the hyper giant Socialist state goes bankrupt. But because money is a "capitalist lie", and "inflation does not exist", we add zeroes to the State bank accounts and everything should fix itself... NOT.

The only reason you don't oppose socialism is because you haven't lived in it, period. Leave you life (and money) behind and move to Cuba or North Korea some years and see if you like it. Hey, at least you don't need to pay for healthcare, right? Good, because you might need it soon...

In the 80ies anyone touching a computer (or even computer games) was labelled that. Today even babies are given tablets to play with (most with Linux under Android HA!). Is this a compliment of something bound to become main stream even if some don't understand the insides of it?

But people don't really understand banks, or the fact that they don't keep all the money you deposit to them, but only a little fraction which could make them go bankrupt should enough people go to withdraw. If more people learned those things they would stay away from banks, but that would create a chain reaction and make the banks go bankrupt so your chance to go away from the banks would close instantly, it would be too late by the time you seriously think of moving your money off the banks (same as a Ponzi/MLM ending phase).

Were Einstein or Newton nerds? Probably. Did they not change humanity with their nerdy thinking? Certainly. If anything, its a compliment, I think...

Ironically here i am, weeks into syncing the blockchain and run a full node, but I'm barely halfway there (84g). I like bitcoin core solution, and the market likes bitcoin core as well regardless of what fork supporters say.

This is not "a war" though. It is about CHOICE. If you have a "better" idea, you are free to fork and see if others follow you. So far what others have proposed is clearly not good enough to take over the crown. Bitcoin as it is handled by the core team remains The King.

LN provides neat things like (true) decentralized exchange, you could theoretically directly exchange litecoin for bitcoin and back without using any web site (wallet to wallet). LN is optional, you may use it or not. Either way, providing this option is already offloading the on chain network enough for it to scale. Each shop could run its own LN node, and why not, a full Bitcoin node along it (and while you are at it an Electrum server pointed to your node).

Perhaps someone will sell some raspi pre-installed with everything so its plug and play and shops can have their solution ready, or same as there is a linux distro for "miners", a linux distro foe "nodes" (or the same distro could do both).

Anyway, enlarging blocks is dumb, I wish newbies stopped requesting that as a "solution" for a "problem" that is no more... Spend that energy pushing for faster wallet LN adoption...

I'm not worried by the Electrum phishing attempts. If you get a message telling you to download a "new" Electrum version, just ignore it and switch servers.

In an ideal world everyone would use core. Here i have been running bitcoind to sync the blockchain, but by my guesstimates i will take me a whole month to sync... I simply want to run a full node, an Electrum server, and possibly a LN server; oh and a core wallet of course...

But for most people this is unacceptable, from a practical point of view, the light wallets are a necessary evil.

So my recommendations are:

• Electrum if you need a working wallet NOW.
• Bitcoin core if your internet has gigabit speeds.

In other news: Venezuela's inflation has reached 2,688,670% per year.

This year alone (1 month), inflation went up to 191%. But since January 2018, its up the aforementioned 2million+
So what last year (Jan 2018) 1 VEF could buy, today you'd need 2,688,670 VEF (27 VES) to buy the same.

The USD is back up to 3,000 VES, so you can imagine what could be bought with 27 VES (1¢?): nothing. The min monthly wage in Venezuela is 18,000 VES, so, 6$. The average monthly wage for a full time job is not far from that 10$ at best...

Reminder: The regime removed 5 zeroes from the currency last September.

Also: The first cargo of UN's humanitarian aid successfully landed by plane from Puerto Rico.
We are waiting to see what the military will do to the cargo coming from Colombia, what the "defending containers" intend to stop...

Did you know in Venezuelan banks you are not allowed to withdraw more than 2,000 VES in cash per day? And most banks only allow 1,000, not even 33¢ in USD...

Also wire transfers exceeding the equivalent of 100 USD can be frozen pending investigation on possible "criminal activity"...

Looks fine to me.

What does the upper value mean, input voltage? If its 228v it should be safe for the S15 no? China uses 230v @50hz, like Europe.

Good news for ollehto, this was just written in the telegram group:


So wait for the next version and your board might be supported!

You are assuming everyone will go out to "defend" against a "foreign invader", but that is not the case. Maduro does not have the ability to rally enough supporters as you may think... 30million? Already 4million fled the country, take out the children and the elderly, you are left with like 15million able. But from those... 80% oppose Maduro, you are down to 3million. Of those at least 2million are militia, as in, civilians with barely any training, beyond parading and some occasional physical exercises (i will spare you the meme jokes from videos of their activities). The military in Venezuela are no more than 100k, assuming no one would surrender or turn traitor. But don't forget the 80% discontent does include the military, and even among the Maduro supporters, not everyone able is going to pick up a rifle (and might not have access to, anyway) and do violence to risk getting killed...

If you look at Libya, NATO didn't bother with troops on the ground, they mostly just did air support to rebels and mercenaries, and that was conventional human piloted air support. The doctrine of asymmetric warfare was developed for a previous pre-unmanned era, they expect boots on the ground to shoot at... What happens if a sniper shoots where the air space is controlled 24/7 by unmanned aerial vehicles? He is instantly spotted and dealt with. The doctrine is useless against the unmanned aircraft, so what if you can take down a few, more will come. But each of your casualties is unrecoverable. They can't go guerrilla hiding like in the past, even the half century old guerrillas of Colombia have been defeated and or pacified (because they saw no choice) one by one.

In fact sooner than later even ground operations will be performed by remote controlled automated units, tho i don't think that is available quite yet.

I can talk to you about the "dedicated efforts" the US tried to destabilize Venezuela, under Chavez they got close but failed, but you already know that...

No, under Maduro it wasn't the US, it was Maduro himself. Maduro inherited tremendous international support and money, all done by Chavez, he burned it all, not just the money, but the trust. Even Russia is now showing signs of distancing away, but that was expected given the little involvement with Venezuela, beyond the occasional parade of the same two old bomber planes or the rare visit of their military ships. Now that i remember China once sent a hospital ship as well, not sure if its still here, it was technically a military vessel performing a humanitarian mission (red cross etc).

Now other countries are sending humanitarian aid as well, but Maduro's response is this:



What do you think should/will happen next?

Do not be mistaken, the vast majority of the people from Venezuela want Maduro and his lackeys gone. You can argue he didn't do "true" socialism if you want (Guidó's party is technically socialist, it belongs to the international socialist) but that doesn't change the sentiment against Maduro, he built that upon himself thru his own actions and some of his close people. Mind you, there is a significant former Chavez supporters, including ex-ministers and party members, who are against Maduro and are even supporting Guaidó. Rafael Ramirez has publicly stated he wants to run for elections to "restore" the project Chavez left.

I do not support them nor socialism, especially any system that involves "controlling" the economy, that doesn't work, and never will. Despite the problems, the poor live much better in a free market economy than in a socialist (controlled) economy. "Free things" involve a cost too high to pay in the end: The misery of everyone but those select elite few that manage to stay close to the ruler or his close circle...

This "law" is technically void, but it would take too long to explain here the parallel congress installed by Maduro's regime. Its formally called a "constituent decree", take what you will from the meaning of that... According to Maduro, the National Constituent Assembly is above the constitution...

But for those who still foresee operating under the de-facto goverment, the document has things like:

• Miners and anything crypto related must be registered (and you thought KYC in exchanges was bad...).
• If you don't have a "mining permit", you can get heavy fines, around 18k USD.
• Any startups, anyone making a wallet, coin or exchange must be registered to Sunacrip.
• Sunacrip will establish and collect taxes the registrants have to pay for their activities.
• This institution will also carry out inspections and can seize equipment and assets from people who are deemed outside of the "decree".

The document is located here: http://www.minci.gob.ve/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Gaceta-Oficial-Decreto-Constituyente-sobre-el-Sistema-Integral-de-Criptoactivos.pdf

As things go in Venezuela, that document is conveniently NOT in text form, but is printed and then scanned (as idiotic as that sounds). So no google translate without OCRing the thing first...

Take a look at the "first line of defense" by yourself:


Source: http://caraotalibre.cf/nacionales/en-fotos-asi-bloqueo-el-regimen-de-maduro-los-tres-carriles-del-puente-tienditas-en-frontera-con-colombia/

You think I'm joking? It gets worse...

This is Maduro's response to prevent the "imperialist" humanitarian aid that may help save lives in hospitals deprived of medicines by years of socialism. Of course, none of that matters to you it seems...

And again, the sanctions are a lie. There are no sanctions against Venezuela, only against specific individuals from Maduro's regime. They have personal assets frozen abroad, those assets are of course ill gotten from Venezuela by theft, corruption and who knows what else...

And who thinks they are not going to have more influence? Of course they will, but it won't be an "all or nothing", China vs USA thing. In my opinion both countries will have presence, and the Europeans. If anyone, maybe Russia and Iran would lose a few business deals, and Cuba will lose access to cheap oil and will have to go back to the market and pay international price.

China's influence is Venezuela is strictly business oriented, unlike Cuba they didn't even sent political or military advisors. If they did, Maduro would have opened the economy years ago while keeping political freedoms restricted, as in China or Vietnam. Frankly the only reason China is still openly supporting Maduro from a diplomatic level, is because of what Chavez did before him. To China Maduro is a fool that is ruining their (business) interests in the region, but they don't push for his removal because they are not meddling in the political level as some of you seem to think.

This is a lie and you don't live here. The source of the Venezuelan misery is Maduro's "real socialism" economy, aka. command economy. This was proposed by Chavez but was actually implemented in full by Maduro. No US sanctions affected anywhere the people, and i have told you elsewhere there have been no sanctions against Venezuela, only against the corrupt officials, and only recently in the last few years.

Stop repeating this lie about a reality you know nothing about.

Also you are deluded in political fiction. neither Russia nor China is going to sink anything, and they don't have ANY military forces stationed here. Russians have almost no presence here, there might be a few mercenaries as rumors say to "protect" Maduro, but that's about it. Putin isn't stupid to involve himself in a country where he has so little (or nothing) invested. And China is angry with Maduro's inability to fix the economy, they won't do anything beyond some diplomatic protest to save face while in reality negotiate a good agreement with whoever replaces the usurper. The opposition President Interim Guaidó has already openly stated that China has nothing to fear and in fact be grateful their investments would actually have a chance under a proper economy.

The Chinese learned the hard way socialist economies fail. THEY KNOW Maduro is going to fall. Even the Cubans know at this point, there is no turning back.

Thanks to the free market, there is so much abundance of everything where they grew up, that they think they could live off that and even redistribute the wealth (by force) without worrying about making more.

Unfortunately they don't stop to think that if everyone did the same, no one would produce anything and they too will end up in misery, just like it happened in Venezuela, and earlier with all the failed "real socialism" countries of the former eastern bloc, the Soviet Union, Mao's China, etc.

They didn't even have a concept of what life was in those places, how could they possibly not like the empty promise of socialism: "Everything you need shall be given to you..." Until you do it for real, and there is not enough for everyone, because everyone stopped making wealth, and those who get to decide who gets what under the new "system", end becoming the new untouchable wealthy elite class, which was ironically supposedly going to disappear...


Nobody forced you to sell yourself to others. If you can't find a job, start your own business, something socialism would never let you to do...

In socialism the free market is gone and replaced by a State institution that decides everything from prices, to what you can work in and when, therefore the power to freely choose is taken away from the people and given to the bureaucrats.

Therefore the natural entrepreneurial sense humans develop in free market economies, is replaced by corruption. Simply because in a free society your work provides your needs, but in a socialist society your needs depend on the will of the few chosen to manage the (everyday more limited) things.

So do a "favor" to a bureaucrat (party member, etc), and your family might be able to eat a month... Working under socialism does not provide enough to keep your family fed (despite what pretty slogans or laws they dictate), the system literally forces you into corruption to survive.

If you think capitalists "exploit" you, wait until you feel what being exploited by the State entails...