Haha, guess I wasn't the only one, http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=785 is now ~1100 qgree, 100 disagree. Wonder what portion of the payout the johnny comelatelys can get. Can you drop enough BTC on this sure thing to make it worthwhile against early weighted bets? Hmm.


On another note, not sure why everyone is so terrified upon hearing the big scary 100,000 number of ASICs. Did no one previously think that BFL would get more chips in, to fill any further orders? They've always said that they plan to be able to make ASICs until the peeps stop ordering em, and want no delay such as having to wait for another batch of chips to come in. They were going to hit 750TH eventually and more.

Or is this a worry that potentially they will have 750TH in-hand, and if orders dry up sooner than expected, that TH might be used without customers to recoup expenses? That is a valid worry in my mind for sure.

If the forums are down then Tom has a good excuse why he didn't make his announcement on Tuesday.

I kid (or do I?), could be anything, server death, ddos, even the PR guy didn't know. Just gotta wait and see what happens at a reasonable hour for someone to be awake to handle it.

Actually the latest news is that the ASICs were borked, and that's the delay. Though that is still a component shortage I suppose.

I'm impressed at the No Shipping before end of 2012 bet, was created in June? And still even money both ways!

Strange that you can still bet on not shipping before Dec 1st though, as it is now basically a slamdunk bet.

Well, across the board, if a drive is going to fail, it is most likely to do so within the first 3 months, it is simply the most likely to do so in colder climates. [3months, 2years) all drive failure rates drop significantly, while cold climates remain the most likely to fail.
To quote:

Which suggests that at the extremes (Cold and Hot) you do in fact correlate temperature to increasing failure rates, perhaps for mechanical reasons such as hardcore-fs lists. Therefore it does seem wise to attempt to keep drives operating at more reasonable temperatures, and insulating at extreme cold temps like -24C is very highly suggestible.

I don't understand why people want to be mouthpieces for other companies, rather than other consumers, but I guess it is what it is.

I will start by saying that I probably would have been an early "no info" adopter, had I been around at the time, and now I'm fine with being a post first-batch adopter if they ever show up. C'est la vie.

But to chastise investors (more akin to what pre-orders are than customers), for asking a company for easily obtainable evidence that they haven't just pulled a heist is clearly reasonable (albeit a bit annoying).
The fact that I wasn't told my mother was going to be raped if I didn't buy a mining rig has nothing to do with anything. Investors in all fields, especially in new and risky enterprises need constant mollification that they aren't just pouring their money down a drain. This is common business practice.

That you think these companies deserve some special level of trust because bitcoin requires people just hope for the best in all things is more ridiculous in my opinion. Possibly why we see constant scams in bitcoin, that people just throw up Caveat emptor, and call it a day.

And remember, I have no special vested interest in having information in hand today.

I came in late, is the project still going forward despite all the GLBSE hoo ha?

That's ri-dicu-cold. Why not take your rigs inside to help heat your home?

Interestingly, it's actually a pretty good idea to insulate your drives to keep them a bit warmer:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Drives between 15-30C fail at a higher rate than 30-40C almost across the board.

The AX1200 is a fully modular PSU as well.

The molex 8981 connector standard is 11amp max current, not sure why Seasonic would limit it to 4A under that, nor if that is the standard, but I would suspect not.

EDIT: One product, the Corsair AX1200 has had techsupport answer 11A for their peripherals:

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=100140

TBFT (to be fair though), I'm not in love with either molex or PCIE for power.

Yes, an enormously huge gigantic advantage.

Difficulty is notching up slightly in 60 blocks (in about 9 hours, 4:30am PST 11/26/12), which is likely to slightly slow blockrate, after which there will be 336 blocks left, at ~6blocks / hr, will be about 56hours, or 2 1/3rd days, so likely about Noon on 11/28/12. But it's not very impressive predicting that with so few blocks left

You don't need to wait 6 months (unless you think there will be no shipment for the next 5-6months), if they ship anything, as soon as people get their machines there will be a flood of pictures and info and showing off. A week at most to ensure no one is horridly burned to death or hit by shrapnel, and you can place orders fairly happily. You've already missed the early adopter boat anyway (pre-orders filled).

Yes, obviously you do not need to make it 20x1, nor would anyone do that. It was simply a simplest case example to explain sizing issues.

The real world scenario would actually be a > 12V cluster (closer to 15-17V for actual usage) of cells in your panel running in tandem with other modules through a charge controller into whatever system you're running off, such that all panels can work efficiently (same output for all series connections). The calculations are then done with Solar-Hours available to you, to garner expected kwh, but that's more than I cared to do in a simple forum post, so I left it to you to figure that out.

Edit: not sure why I originally read 5000kwh, must have been late. 5kwh is easy (even per day), basically no power at all. Can do that without using much of a fraction of your roof. You certainly don't need 1500 cells to do that.

have they fixed the USB issue that people are suggesting would impede using Pi w/ ASICs? Obviously a $50 alternative would be preferable to $150, but only if it works.

You sound like a fellow CA brotha, unless there's another part of the world as bizarro as my state.

I think this is just josh being a douche, but I don't really take too much umbrage with this because apparently Tom has been a huge douche too. Basically both companies are acting in a far more immature manner than I'd like to see out of the keyholders of the future of Bitcoin mining, but what can I do about it, just a lowly end-user.

That said, it's obvious that BFL can and will not change their design to meet the new standard set by bAsic, for their first line of ASIC devices. Which is fine really, BFL has the Watt/Hash advantage, now it seems bAsic has the $/Hash advantage. People get to choose which they value more, short-term or long-term incentives (or mix and match). They both have merit. If they unleash a wave of slightly superior asics at the same price point immediately after shipping their first gen though, that will certainly be unfortunate.

I don't think BFL will, or should advocate overclocking their devices after the fact to meet competition, murdering ASIC chips will not yield happy customers, and if their lifetime warranty supports overclocked rigs, then you will also create headache in servicing burnt out machines.

All in all though, when your product hasn't shipped, and is months behind schedule, pointing fingers at another product and saying that they haven't shipped so it's all pie in the sky, and you MIGHT ship before them now, is a little bit much.

From 10/30/2012

20k chips covered all pre-orders as of 10/30/2012, and had some chips to spare for future pre-orders.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody/48-batches-really-we-dont-have-them.html


They don't have batches aside from the first big pre-order batch which will be number of units (unknown). After that it will simply be FIFO

Why come to these forums for BFL questions though? Seems like it'd make more sense to ask them on BFLs own forums.

As far as I understand it, all 3 major vendors first batch pre-order lists are full. Always room on the 2nd wave lists though (think they said that's scheduled for Jan '13)