Thank you for being helpful. I'm surprised the Avalon powered on at all without all the proper connections in place.

My comfort level is not far above consumer. Sure, I've built my own computers, but it's been many years. I've replaced laptop components and such, but I don't even know what the components inside the Avalon are. I don't have any instruments.

Damaged components:

The main board the ATX cable plugs into appears to be damaged. What is that called? Can I get a replacement? If so, how?

Is the module next to it damaged? I don't know. Can I find out other than repairing everything else and turning it on?

USB cable is fried.

ATX cable is fried.

Any help with getting replacement parts?

As for RMA, I was referring to the power supply, which is what their employee told me to do.

I'm screwed. I incorrectly thought the ATX main cable was the only one needed (since, unlike a normal PC where the modular devices need to be powered individually and don't even work otherwise, the Avalon modules all connect directly to the board). I've had power supplies in the past that supported both ATX and AT and I thought this was similar.

I plugged it in yesterday, had a little trouble with the USB not being connected, but after a few times taking it apart and putting it back again, I got it working. It ran great all last night and this morning. When I got back after a meeting, this is what I found:







I emailed Avalon, and they asked me to post here. Talking with the vendor of my power supply (OCZ ZX Series 1250W), he said 600W is too much to go through one wire, but it wouldn't trigger any concerns on their power supply as it doesn't measure power output per wire. The wire itself just melted.

What do I do now? I'm starting the RMA process for the power supply but as for the miner... I don't know where to begin.

I feel discouraged. I feel like an idiot.

I get annoyed at my business partner at times for not promoting our affiliate program enough. Go sign up here: http://affiliate.foxycart.com/

We should give a special bonus if someone refers a user who pays us in Bitcoin. I'm still waiting for that to happen (we do offer a 5% discount).

Yeah David and FoxyShop are great. We also have some really exciting stuff coming too. Four major projects, actually, but we just decided last week to focus on one at a time. Stay tuned to our blog.

Wow! Thanks for the great review!

In a world of paid and fake reviews, these mean so much to us. Mind if we add it to our site's testimony section?

How loud is it?

Thanks Ente. That's some really useful information. I've tinkered around with Tor, but have never really used it. I consider myself fairly technical. Where does that leave most "every day" users? I think we should steer clear of calling Bitcoin private or anonymous until people fully understand the implications of being anonymous/private on the Internet in the first place. I wonder if promoting Bitcoin will go right inline with promoting things like Tor for those interested in a way to completely separate from central banks and totalitarian government controls.

On a related note, you may all find these resources helpful: http://prism-break.org/

As Gavin said at the conference, privacy is not an easy problem to solve.

The only thing worse than no security is a false sense of security. At least with the first, you are aware enough to take proper precautions.

I'd love to offer BTC as payment for our team, but we'd like to get customers paying us in BTC first. If you need a shopping cart that is seamlessly integrated with Bitpay and the traditional payment systems (PayPal, CC gateways, Dwolla, Ogone, etc), please consider going with FoxyCart. The sooner we start getting paid in BTC, the sooner we can offer (at least a portion) of our team member pay in BTC (I blogged about our support here, if you're interested).

Sorry for the self promotion, but this is really important for business owners. If they don't have an inflow of BTC, they can't easily pay it out to their team members and vendors without paying extra in exchange costs, administrative overhead, and the fight against a deflationary currency. Sure, it can be done right now converting USD to BTC every pay period, but it doesn't make as much sense to me from a business standpoint.

Chicken. Egg.

I want a chicken omelet.

Articles like this are why I've been thinking about the importance of Anonymity for Bitcoin: http://business.time.com/2013/06/11/big-brother-is-watching-you-swipe-the-nsas-credit-card-data-grab/

People may see that article and think, "Oh, Bitcoin will solve all these problems!" without realizing it could make things potentially easier for them, since all the data is completely public. I'd still like to know what "insurmountable" means in the Bitcoin wiki page because I think that's important and should be understood by non-core developers.

I also kind of chuckled after reading that article and seeing "Prepaid is a giant mess"

Just wait until Bitcoin (used properly) really comes on the scene.

With this head cold, I should be resting, but instead I'm catching up on the Bitcoin conference videos. I was really encouraged to hear Gavin bring up the issue of privacy 4 minutes into his presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=JfF5mJDgZWc#t=239s


I hadn't even considered Cloudflare's involvement, but that makes sense. Since legal money transmitters are required to know who I am, I figured any exchange in the US is far from private already.


Can you share more about this? Are there techniques that don't involve high risk and/or couldn't be seen as structuring or money laundering?

You raise some really important points. I used to believe governments (at least the US one which is supposed to be about liberty), were about protecting the rights of their citizens. I know think they are more about protecting their own existence. The founders knew this would be a concern, but it seems we didn't listen well enough.

I hope math is enough to win the day. Maybe we can figure out how to use math to fight drones.

Given the recent news of NSA's involvement in, well, everything, it got me thinking about Bitcoin and Anonymity.

When I recently got into Bitcoin, I read things like Max Keiser's post claiming Bitcoin's intrinsic value is privacy. The veterans around here will quickly say that's not true, it's only pseudonymous, but most people (myself included) probably won't fully comprehend the difference.

So I started reading here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity

Concerns I have include:
"...is designed to make this attack more difficult." -- But not impossible. I seem to be learning new things daily about the resources of the NSA.
"Each transfer needs to be painstakingly investigated and many transfers will present insurmountable difficulty." -- Can someone help me out with this? What exactly does "insurmountable" mean here, and what factors (or how much computing power) would make it surmountable again?

That wiki post ends with discussing coin mixers but then basically says, good luck with that, you'll probably get scammed or blamed for a version of structuring or money laundering anyway. Money laundering involves "illicit" sources of money. Since the government defines at any given moment what is considered illicit, and many are losing confidence in the government on a daily basis, where does that leave us?

I'm not the first to post about this. A quick search shows many others including:

What happened to Bitcoin being Anonymous? - June 11, 2012
Note: I like the argument for using the word "private" instead of "anonymous." Anyone who thinks Bitcoin is private should read that thread and see some of the examples of address ownership discovery.

Anonymity - July 7, 2010
One post summed it up for me with "super-strong privacy isn't worth the performance cost." If early adopting techies feel this way, every day non-technical users will feel it doubly so. They aren't going to set up a VPS or use Tor, etc.

There are probably other great posts out there as well, but most people (myself included) don't have time to read them all.

I've scanned through a 24 page "Analysis of Anonymity in the Bitcoin System" document, but most people probably won't read that either. The only reason I'm looking into this stuff now is that I'm lying in bed trying to get over a headcold.

So what's the point of this post?

To raise awareness.

I've been part of this community for a few months now, and it doesn't seem to be brought up enough, IMO. New people getting involved probably don't realize the implications, especially if Bitcoin is made illegal in their country someday. I've read the FinCEN ruling in the US, and I'm optimistic, but many of my friends don't share that optimism.

To be clear: other than a speeding ticket over a decade ago, I've never willfully broken the law (well, maybe in college I had some MP3s...). I have no interest in Silk Road. This isn't about "If you're doing nothing wrong, privacy doesn't matter." I used to use that argument also. I think recent political realities (and my own education on these topics) have changed my point of view today. The US Government, from my perspective, is increasingly less safe. Using Bitcoin doesn't easily solve that problem, though early on I let myself believe it could.

I love Bitcoin, and I've put my company out there to support it. I want to see it succeed, no matter what governments do. I spent some time today learning about Open Transactions which seems like a really cool project. Are there other similar projects going on? Should we be worried about Bitcoin being mis-represented as private? Am I just being paranoid?

Most of my identities online use my real name because I don't want to falsely think something I do online is private. I don't want newbie Bitcoin users to have that same sense of false confidence.

Thanks for your attention and comments.

(edit to fix broken links)

For those who's accounts were hacked, shouldn't you take responsibility for that? Use a password manager, secure your computer, etc. Passwords don't just "get stolen" unless something else is going on. Is your computer rooted? Do you have a key logger installed?

Ultimately, the answer is for people to not be stupid, like I was. There are systems in place for exchanging value and this forum (clearly) is not a good system for that, especially with the "remember me" login feature. Reputation and identity are incredibly important. After this event, I've learned to not trust any identity here unless signed messages are involved.

Wow. Yet another reason not to deal with MtGox.

Is this related to the Coinlabs lawsuit?

What's the best way in the US to get USD out of BTC? Coinbase?

"Oh, my password was stolen." How are we to know the truth? So frustrating. We're left with "trust no one" which, in my mind, seriously hinders real community development.

FYI, if anyone's curious about ripple's official response on this:

--

Please also mark these accounts as scam accounts:

crystalharmon13
fluffypony
kidcudi09
Brewins
alpha523
Kevla

They were used here and will probably be used again: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=202623.0;all

My problem was treating XRP like monopoly money and pretending it had no value. That was stupid. I never would have sent anything of value to someone without escrow, etc. Lesson learned. I had a momentary lapse in the "trust no one" policy because I didn't really care about the XRP I got free. That was dumb.

Here are the other accounts that should be marked as scammers:

crystalharmon13
fluffypony
kidcudi09
Brewins
alpha523
Kevlar

Can someone help with that? I guess I'll just report them all. Might not be a bad idea to track the IP as well and see how many other similar accounts have been set up.

Based on this: https://ripple.com/graph/#r9h3FfkBwHXmvZ2RGdbQdgGbBuJvu7r4gM it looks like they already transferred out their pirate booty.

For those interested in what a scammer's PMs look like, here's the dialog (note the timestamps to see the conversation in sequence):




It is sad to think how much time and energy went into this for just a few hundred bucks worth of value. Not to mention the complete lack of integrity on display.

You're acting surprised? Really? That's actually kind of funny.

I told you 20+ minutes ago I would post here unless you responded to my PM or changed your OP to indiciate you didn't currently have BTC available for transfer. Instead you bumped the thread trying to get more people involved.

I'll post our full DM conversation later for fun, but I'm headed to bed now with a smile. I got a nice lesson today.

I should have listened to you.

Since I got the XRP for free anyway, I've never really thought of them as having much value so I thought I'd give this a shot. I thought "hero member" meant something. One of the true value stores in life is reputation. Once it's lost, it can't easily be recaptured.

I've sent a few PMs to Aahzman and have done my best to give them the benefit of the doubt. The explanations given to me as to why an immediate BTC transfer as agreed hasn't happened yet strain credibility in my opinion.

I'm headed to bed, but wanted to post here for anyone else. Hold off on this one. Too good to be true usually is.

Hopefully this will be resolved by tomorrow, but I'm not optimistic.

(especially after a "friendly bump" and no reply to my last PM)

We (FoxyCart) have BitPay support as well if you're looking for more options (and want to accept other payment methods such as Dwolla, PayPal, Credit/Debit). FoxyShop is a great Wordpress plugin you may want to look into also. We sponsored WordCamp L.A. along with WordCamp Nashville this past weekend, and we will be sponsoring WordCamp Seatle as well.

Thanks for helping where Bitcoin needs it most: merchants!

I'm still fairly new to Bitcoin and the community, but if I can help, let me know. I could see each
member of the board having their own advisory council within their area of expertise. Tony G. from Bitpay, as an example, might have his pulse on Bitcoin business, but he may also like to bounce ideas off providers like FoxyCart, BitCoinStore, etc. One voice for each category makes sense, but mutiple views supporting that voice might also be helpful.

I called FinCEN not long after their ruling and asked them about their interpretation of miners. The guy I talked to said they are still working things out and mentioned having access to the guy who actually wrote the ruling. He said he would keep my contact details and possibly send me more information when he had clearer answers to my questions (specifically about mners). Most likely he meant I'm now on some government watch list. He was really friendly and seemed genuinely interested in working with (not against) the Bitcoin community.

I also talked to the person in charge of money transmitters in my state and he wasn't as familiar with Bitcoin, but he had been researching it. Both people told me about the processes needed to register, and it honestly didn't seem like that big of a deal. I'd like to hope if you follow the law, they will pretty much leave you alone. I have zero experience in these matters, so I'm probably naive there.

Adam did a great job with the podcast, and we were honored to sponsor episode number one. It feels good to contribute in a small way to its future while being part of its history. I'm looking forward to the next show.