I'm a customer of Hosted Mining.

This news is unfortunate. Can anyone confirm that they've talked to him by phone or email?
I haven't heard back from him myself.

The new and improved site looks great, zif! Nice seeing all the photos of the farm.

It's awesome seeing these photos and videos, Zif.

For those considering mining, but are not sure of building or even hosting themselves, definitely consider Hostedmining.com. I'm a recent customer, and it's an excellent service.

I was interested in a 4 GPU rig, and Zif was very helpful in preparing the parts list and answering questions.

Once the hardware was shipped to him, he assembled, installed, and configured the rig in a very short time.
He had the system pointed to the pool of my choice in less than a day after the shipment.

Even though the fourth GPU required the use of risers which were waiting on a separate order, he had three GPUs running for me during those days. Once the risers arrived, the hardware setup was rapidly upgraded for all 4 GPUs, and the mining configuration was updated.
 
The rig has been running for over a week now, and I'm very happy with the whole process from start to finish.

It's been very smooth and professional. Thank you Zif!

I'm one of Zif's customers and found his services through this thread, so I thought I should provide an update about this excellent service.

Zif was very helpful in preparing the parts list and answering questions.

Once the hardware was shipped to him, he assembled, installed, and configured the rig in a very short time.
He had the system pointed to the pool of my choice in less than a day after the shipment.

Even though the fourth GPU required the use of risers which were waiting on a separate order, he had three GPUs running for me during those days. Once the risers arrived, the hardware setup was rapidly upgraded for all 4 GPUs, and the mining configuration was updated.
 
The rig has been running for over a week now, and I'm very happy with the whole process from start to finish.

It's been very smooth and professional. Thank you Zif and Hostedmining.com

Being able to send money, both among friends and in commerce, with no or extremely low transaction fees got me considering it as an advantage and therefore truly viable in the long run.

"Shipping date said to be Last half of May straight from Butterfly Labs."

When was this said? In September last year? Given Butterfly Labs' immense number of backorders with no firm date on even the Jalapeno models, the above claim of "last half of May" can't mean much more than "possibly this year", can it?

Unless BFL has recently publicly announced these 30 GH/s units are to be expected this month, you shouldn't really advertise with "last half of May."

From reviewing the "Alternate cryptocurrencies" forum on here, the claims on this new coin's client containing a trojan were almost certainly false. The consensus seemed to be that it was someone trolling and attempting to manipulate people's perceptions of the coin.

That said, there's still reasons to be cautious about the various alt coins, including the possibility that someone could release a coin with malicious software attached in the future.

I can see why there would be speculation, but has anyone verified that MtGox volume is substantially lower than before the news about Dwolla?

Yesterday was a big day for the Bitcoin protocol and clients. This was the second hard fork this year, and it appears to have went smoothly. Nice job by the developers (and user base).

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/05/15/bitcoin-weekly-2013-may-15-bitcoin-hard-fork-today-mt-gox-dwolla-account-sized-by-dhs-bitpay-hires-core-developer-jeff-garzik/
Bitcoin blockchain hard fork happens today as versions migrate

Today, Wednesday, May 15th, is the day that the Bitcoin blockchain—the public record of all transactions over the entire peer-to-peer network—hard forks from a previous version to a new version. The newer version will allow updated protocol for v0.8 to use different sized blocks from v0.7 and will cause older Bitcoin clients to fail to operate in the future. Most people and a vast majority of Bitcoin miners are already upgraded so no ill effects are expected.

...

This is necessary to prevent what happened last time when a disagreement happened between different versions of Bitcoin clients and started to cause a less-controlled hard fork. That too was handled extremely well and while it gave insights into what could happen should a similar event happen with the protocol in the future, it also revealed how robust the current infrastructure is; but it raises questions about the governance and scalability of the community.

Just have a little patience, like the rest of us.  =)

Hi, I'm also newly registered, though have been reading for a while. I'm not sure of the best answer to your question, but there is a wealth of information in the Mining - Hardware forum, so when you are able, perhaps repost your question there.