It may have earlier today, but it seems to be working fine now (I just signed in successfully).

I understand what you mean, they have terrible manners at the dinner table and they're impossible to potty-train.  However, if you make them a nice place in the backyard they can probably get along with your rabbits. 

Indeed, for better or for worse, bc.i is the best-known block explorer and while I don't begrudge them for doing what they have to do to keep their service responsive, it's better to be more transparent rather than less.  Since so many people are going to them for information about the blockchain (ahem, it's kinda in their name!) they really ought to be upfront about what information they're actually providing and what they're ignoring/not-providing.

I can't gurantee the accuracy or up-to-datedness of these sources but coinmap is probably the best known:

https://coinmap.org/

There's also a page on the bitcoin wiki:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Real_world_shops

And I turned up a few places in my town by just googling the name of my town and "bitcoin"---where they restaurant had a webpage saying the accepted bitcoin on the page, I could find them this way.

Good luck!

Lol, feel free to reward me (you can find a BTC addres in my profile).  Cheers!

But more seriously, I think it'd be wonderful to see.  Imagine, you beg and instead of being told "no begging" suddenly you are thrown into a room of all beggars---a taste of your own medicine, so to speak.  It's kinda wonderful.

In major cities (especially in northern europe) there are a lot of pubs and businesses that provide for bitcoin payments.  In my city in the USA, the waiter usually brings over a tablet and shows you a QR code.  I then scan the QR code and send btc to the address and that's that.  They don't even make me wait for a confirmation (thank God, that would have been terrible during the spam/stress-tests).

That's another really good idea and I'm not sure why I hadn't given it too much thought.  Probably basically because I'm a total noob at buying hardware and I'm finding the comparisons between prebuilt systems terribly confusing, but yes, I'll think carefully about this option.  And thanks for the link to your list of parts!

I'm not in a rush for this project, so it make sense to gather info and do some comparisons, etc.  I'll probably try to get something going before the end of the summer.

The idea is that you keep that private key of the address you staked.  Then you can sign a message from it if/when your account gets hacked in order to prove that you're the original owner.  You point Theymos to your unedited (and quoted for safety) post with your staked address and you sign a message from that address saying that you're account has been hacked and you'd like Theymos to help you recover it.

As long as you keep the private key of the address you staked originally, you shouldn't have to keep staking addresses just because you're using a new address now for other things.

Cute eyerolly smiley, Quickseller/acctseller.  But clearly the reason people are muted for begging is because no one wants to hear them begging.  Let me try it now:

If you're afraid that people are tipping their own accounts or faucet farming or whatever then that's obviously a separate issue from begging and it should be dealt with accordingly.  You'll be really impressed that I have an idea for that too.  Here it is: remove the ability for that person to tip!

You're right that there must be something different about them.  Looking at the product specifications though, the only difference I found was that the more expensive version had a row called "Grahics Coprocessor" which said "HD Intel" but the cheaper version didn't have this line.  I have to admit, I find this very confusing.  Thanks for the advice!  Let me know if you see anything else that differentiates these two boxes.Thanks for the link!  Just looking at that badass thing I can tell it's more than what I need (three fans!).  I agree, I'm not really trying to get into GPU mining, but I would like to (say) be able to transcode a 45 minute video in less than 24 hours (which is approximately what it takes on my laptop).  Or, say, watch an H265 movie without huge amounts of framedrop.I agree, I wouldn't be doing vanitygen everyday, but if I'm going to spend a little money on a desktop I'm not really hoping for the "high end", I'd just like to be somewhere above the very lowest end, as that's basically where I've always been with respect to computing hardware.  I'm trying to figure out if there's a sweet spot somewhere in the middle.

Thanks again!

Whoops, in fact you're right.  I did read all the posts but quite quickly.  I'm not sure if I just got distracted by the giant "because reasons" or by the run-on sentences with the grammatical errors.  But you're right, it was brought up and I missed it.  In any case, I think my comment still stands.  OP asked why people use these sites; probable-fairness is the reason why.

Thanks notlist3d.  I understand from your reply that opencl would work on this box, just not very quickly?  That's a step ahead of what I experienced on the ASUS zenbook.

Follow up, I also saw this ASUS chromebox: http://www.amazon.com/Asus-CHROMEBOX-M107U-ASUS-Desktop/dp/B00O1A4OBQ/ and it's listed as having the same chip i3-4010U, but it has an additional line in the specs "Grahpics Co Processor".  At least at first glance, this is the only difference between the two chromeboxes.  Do you think this second one has a "real" GPU?

I guess my goal here is to get an "okay" linux desktop.  I've been living for a long time cheap-o laptops and these function well for me 95% of the time.  The other 5% of the time I'm trying to compile a big program and I have to wait 10 minutes per build, or I'm playing agar.io and my CPU is maxxed out, or yah, maybe I want to do a vanitygen and a 5 character address is going to take 5 days.  Does this make sense?  I don't need a really great GPU, but if I'm going to spend some money on a desktop, I want to at least have something.  For the record, that ASUS zenbook I had was just a loaner, it was a great laptop, but it wasn't mine.  Mine (currently) is a three year old Acer Aspire One 722-bz545 (AMD C-50 APU).

I wonder if you have any suggestions, then, about a "real desktop".  I'd be running GNU/Linux (most likely debian) and I'd like to keep the cost < $500.

Thanks again!

It's kinda amazing that this thread has gotten 6 or 7 posts in and no one has brought up provable-fairness.  This is the really crucial factor.  Why do I trust that PD isn't cheating me?  Well, it's not just because "reasons", it's because proof.  If you don't know anything about provable fairness, then I can see why you would be surprised a the popularity of these venues.  Before provable fairness, they weren't so popular.

It's pretty amazing that you were able to convince someone to accept bitcoin on first try.  This person must have already had a bitcoin wallet going or something.

I definitely bought some beer and a meal with bitcoin almost a year and a half ago in person.  It was really fun.

However, I'd also say that when I've bought stuff online with bitcoin and it gets shipped to me that's also "real/physical goods" it's just not face-to-face.

This isn't exactly a mining question, as I know that these days you need and ASIC for that.  However, I'm trying to figure out some stuff about hardware and I think you guys can answer some questions that I'm a little confused about.

I was looking at this ASUS chromebox which has an i3-4010U processor (with some kind of onboard HD 4400 graphics).   I've sen online that you can remove some screw and then flash whatever system you want, so I'd be running debian on it.  What I'm trying to figure out is if this kind of machine could run openCL stuff, like, for example, vanitygen-ocl.

In the past I had an ASUS zenbook which supposedly had an Intel HD gpu, but I couldn't actually use the GPU for gpu mining or OCL because apparantely it' wasn't the same thing as the "standalone" graphics card.  Is that coing to be the same deal on this chromebox?

Thanks for the insight, hardware gurus!

Thanks for the confirmation that indeed no one has been taking credit for the recent attacks/tests.  I miss a lot of stuff and I'm pretty sure you follow this more closely than I do, JorgeStolfi.

RealMalatesta:  I'm not saying you're wrong about the "fakeness" of coinwallet or KingAfurah, I just found it strange that only the first "test" was being talked about openly and these others have been "anonymous" in some sense.  I also think that if your goal was to attack bitcoin, the best strategy would be to save up your money and do one badass attack, rather than lots of little ones that end up strengthening the network (as people response to and prepare for more of the small attacks).

I have a great idea!  Instead of muting beggars, Stunna should make a begging jail.  Then, when someone is begging in main-chat, mods press a button and all that person's chats are directed to the begging jail.  What's more, the only chats that person then sees are other messages sent to begging jail.  The result being that basically the beggars can all be in one place begging from each other---taking a taste of their own medicine without bothering anyone else.  Who knows, maybe they'll actually start funding each others' begs.  In either case, it seems like an appropriate punishment.

Just for my own clarification, it's 2^160 because of RIPEMD?  Is that correct?  Clearly the private keys are 256 bits.

Thanks for this really informative thread, you guys!

to echo each other robotically?  How is that a good thing?  Doesn't this make default trust network into some kind of thoughtless monolith?  I have to admit, I don't understand what you meant by this parenthetical.Closer to 3 years, actually, but anyway, This is exactly what I'd expect you to say to tradefortress, were he around and listenging to reason "hey, tspacepilot and you seem to have had some misunderstanding, maybe it's time to let it go".  However, tradefortress isn't even involved here.  What's going on is that QS is using tf's false accusations to try to smear me.  QS has no knowledge of the original situation and shouldn't be prentending to.  What's happening is that he's taking the word of a known scammer and using alts to trust-spam me with it.  It really should be making him look very bad.  I'm quite surprised that anyone with such an MO would be added to a default trust list.
I appreciate your sentiment, DC.  The only thing I'd like to add is that while it may seem like I'm also doing some sort of "scorched-earth", my motivation here is merely defensive.  Yes, I've been fighting back against QS for months now.  But crucially, I'm not jockying for power (or trying to get on default trust).  I'm just trying to defend myself against an unwarranted smear campaign.  When I say that QS is trying to do a scorched-earth strategy on his march to the top I'm referring to his quick-temper, his intransigence and unwillingness to admit he's been wrong.  He neg-reps and walks away.  Then makes mocking posts saying he'll offer money to anyone who can convince him he's wrong.   While I am indeed fighting back against QS's attacks on me, I'm not doing any scorched-earth strategy because I'm not going around picking fights and neg-repping people.  I basically spend my time on here chatting about the technical details of bitcoin, trying to help newbies (especially with linux-related topics) and learning a lot (I invite you to look through my post history of the last 3 years for evidence of this).  I don't trade and I don't scam and I don't fight with people (unless they are attempting to smear me, in which case, yes, I *do* fight back).

I think that QS really, honestely expected to be able to steamroll me off the forum (or at least into creating another account, or purchasing a new account---maybe from him?!).  That seems to be what happened to the other people he's attacked.  But I'm not going to give him that satisfaction.  I haven't done anything wrong and I'm not going to let a bully force me off here.  QS has cost me time and money but I'm going to keep on defending myself until he leaves me alone.

You say to try an alternate route, but what alternate route is there for me?  Guy has left me 3 neg-reps using 3 accounts and was only recently making direct threats against me.  What else can I do but call him out in meta for this behavior and ask him to stop?  The real surprising thing to me in this situation is TC's silence.  Last time he brought QS onboard he made an effort to fix this (and it was fixed, for a while).  Why would he pre-emptively PM-block me?  I find it very weird.

Anyway, QS/TC, yet another respected community member is calling for you to fix this.  Please listen to reason!

That's really good news, imo.  I hope the keep the limit even after he returns.  Pay-per-post campaigns are already treading on thin-ice.  They are fine if they're well regulated but when people are dropping 400 posts a week, that's completely nuts and there's no way it can all be contributing something useful.