I'm not well learned concerning the ins and outs of cryptography, but I saw this article (http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/02/crypto-crack-makes-satellite-phones-vulnerable-to-eavesdropping.ars) and was wondering if anyone could shed any light on what this does/doesn't mean for the cryptography behind Bitcoin.

http://www.regretsy.com/2011/12/05/cats-1-kids-0/


Maybe someone should let them know about Bitcoin?

Edit:  Regretsy promotes some of the lesser-thought-out items found on Etsy.com. Etsy.com is like an E-bay for arts-and-crafts, without the auction.

Regretsy has a pretty large following, due to the writing style of the author as well as the many charitable things she's done.

I think this issue has come up before, but I'm not very technical and could never discern a definitive answer:

Super computers which are measured in FLOPs, how much of a threat are they to Bitcoin?  I've read that hashing in BTC involves 0 flops, but then I read something about integer processing is easier than FLOPs. Hah as you can tell... I'm not very technical.

However I would like to start a discussion on super-computers and how they relate to bitcoin, and hopefully compile the data into a laymans Q&A guide.

Can't login.  It accepts my password, but never logs me in.

Anyone else having issues?

[just a game]

Please, if you're mining SC, be fully aware that it's officially just a game.

Edit:

Putting all that BTC on the front line like that is kinda ballsy



Grats to everyone involved in LTC, looks like some folks are starting to notice.

The Case against Solidcoin:

Greetings Meta,

I come here to present various reasons Solidcoin representation should be removed and no longer tolerated on bitcointalk.org.

SC 1.0 was a cryptocurrency launched by CoinHunter on Aug 20th.  It was primarily based on Bitcoin, with just a few variable tweaks: 3m blocks, 32 coins per block, and a 30k premine for bounties. Just a few weeks after launch, a flaw was discovered in SC 1.0 which caused CoinHunter to shut down the chain.  There was no discussion about the idea, and only a ~5hr window of warning given to people.  To those who didn't want to change, they were threatened with being taken off the SC 1.0 website, even though many of those people had supported SC from the beginning.

On October 10th, SC 2.0 launched. Here is how 2.0 is different from 1.0:

Centralized: It's not peer<->peer, it's peer -> supernode -> peer.

Premine: The premine was announced to be 1m inorder to compensate SC 1.0 coin holders.  After launch it was later revealed to infact contain 13m+ premined coins. 12m+ were given to 10 anonymous people.

Tax:  Each block is 'taxed', and the tax is sent to CoinHunter.

Closed Source:  SC 2.0 is closed source -and- using the Oracle Berkeley DB, which means CoinHunter is promoting and distributing pirated software on bitcointalk.

Arbitrary enforcement:  Yesterday CoinHunter announced he could and would arbitrarily change the block reward from 32 to 5.

Voided Coins:  Since 2.0 is centralized, CoinHunter allegedly has the ability to void ones coins. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49859.msg593817#msg593817). CH has taken it a step further to purposefully -void- legitimately mined coins because he didn't like the guy who mined them.

FUD: Find out about SC on bitcointalk?  Here is a taste of what you'll find on their website: (http://solidcoin.info/solidcoin-ready-for-bitcoin-collapse.php)

-----------------------------

Because 2.0 is closed source, the only way anyone knows how 2.0 works is from what CoinHutner says, and apparently it's subject to change at any time. I believe the above is enough to warrant a discussion on whether or not SC representation should further be tolerated on bitcointalk.org, and what steps CoinHunter would need to take for SC to continue being promoted on bitcointalk.org. Also, I believe there may be sufficient reason to open a scammer investigation on CoinHunter for allegedly 'stealing' electricity to support his *coin by nullifying legitimately mined coins.

From the looks of it, SC 2.0 isn't designed to be a 'cryptocurrency', it's designed for the sole purpose of making CoinHunter and his closest friends richer off the backs of the naive, and as such has no place here.

Thoughts?

Anyone have any information about this?

Makomk pointed this out, but I believe it warrants it's own topic (and I really want to know the explaination)


CH says the 'beta' of SC 2.0 was wrongly reporting hashes



Now he is saying it's correct



What I want explained is how something goes from correct->incorrect->correct.

Further, I would like explained how people are supposed to trust your other claims about SC 2.0, given this flip-flop.

I just noticed that a lot of people seem to step up out of the blue to get involved with projects with various alt-coins.  Some may be swayed by bounties or personal gain, but I believe many of them are excited to get to do 'something new' and to tinker around with something that sparks their interest - each step gaining more information and ideas for the entire cryptocurrency community.  Yes, even Coinhunter is in this category


Aside from intent, for the advances alone I just want to say thanks.

[First thing, Coinhunter you got your ass kicked and you know it!]

First thing, Coinhunter you got your ass kicked and you know it!

Second Thing
DoubleC can verify this my post as my emails to him are from Justin Guss and Gmail.

Status update.

The reason that difficulty is only 25% of what it should be after 75 increases is real simple. I haven't let up LOL  
So I am telling you this BEFORE it happens that my now 600+ EC2 instances will reach the max cycles of free usage and start dropping off. I expect full drop off to occur by in about 12 hours after this post. What you will see is the complete and utter freezing of SC 2.0, think Namecoin but a lot worse. A 16,000 difficulty on CPU only chain, cracks me up. LOL No way in hell an average user can mine this solo.

Trusted Nodes My Ass

The trusted nodes are controllers and gateways in addition to being profit generators for CH! When I started consolidating some of the wallets a strange phenomena occurred. After about 25 or so wallets sending to the primary address the transactions slowed down to about 20 minutes each, I suspect manual approval. A while latter the address received none of the transactions it was sent from other wallets. Furthermore the sending wallets could no longer send. Let me clarify, they sent but the funds were never recieved more than likely going to CPF.

Repeated the same thing with 30 more new wallets and a primary address.

I suspect Coinhunter contacted his huge miners and verified it wasn't them and logically concluded the only other HUGE miner out there is me. Coinhunter has the ability to regulate the transfer, track it and kill individual users and transactions at will.

Forewarned
I made a preview post of Solidcoin 2.0 and just about everything I predicted has come true including this. In that post I told you how a pissed off private beta tester was remotely killed by Coinhunter after asking some the questions that revealed themselves. This is the real world application of that control.

We will NEVER see the source released.

Bad news though, there are some working on dis-assembly as we speak. Coinhunter your only choice is to pull the plug and attempt a restart.

Looking forward to playing with Solidcoin 3.0  

~BCX~

No idea if it's legit, but it does appear to be in the same tone of BCX's previous posts.

I guess we'll see in 12hrs or so.

That was unexpected.

Glad I bought at 3.87

[We trust the person with the most money, as they have the most to lose.]

https://i.imgur.com/bTGmi.png

A few highlights

"Why can you trust someone with a million dollar account? Simply because if they have that many coins they are well invested into the SolidCoin system, if they tried to attack the network they would obviously devalue a great amount of their assets. But it's not just this simple, multiple people can have million dollar accounts so how do we sort out who is "more right" if they submit blocks at the same time? We trust the person with the most money, as they have the most to lose."

"One initial problem with this p2p security feature is SolidCoin only had 1.112 million coins prior to this security feature being implemented. To solve this, 10 accounts of 1.2 million were created in the genesis block. These are special accounts that cannot be spent on the network, effectively making them "Null accounts used for special purposes", until SolidCoin does have real millionaires."

Wait, we're supposed to 'trust' the super nodes because they have 1m SC, but these SC are worthless (can't be spent). On top of which the more-than-obvious fallacy of money=trust.  Also, nice mentioning now that you actually premined 13m coins.

And the kickers

"With this new 51% protection feature there is a finally p2p cryptocurrency large businesses and users can rely on."

Right.  13m premined, 1m mined per day, a borked difficulty... don't all you merchants get up at once

Edit: I'm going to go ahead and press that CH recieve the forum 'Scammer' label due to gross bait-and-switch.

1) CH first said that there would only be 1m premined  Now there are 13m which he had to of known was going to be the case while lieing about the initial 1.2m. A premine is a premine regardless of when the coins become 'active'.
2) SC 2.0beta reported grossly false hashrates at the time TBX was on the up-n-up. This was clearly done on purpose to falsely demonstrate a 'superior' CPU algorithm.
3) SC 1.0 -> 2.0 protocol changed dramatically, coupled with the gross inflation SC 1.0 coins have endured due to an apparent borked difficulty (24hrs into launch, 20k blocks, 53 diff. adjustments, and still at <10s blocks)
4) CH has intentionally misled people with paid spam


The scam lies in miners must invest electricity into this chain - and this investment has been manipulated and consolidated by CH. His bait-and-switch technique has landed him in control of millions of coins on top of an unending supply via the tax.


How many more instances of CH outright lieing and deceiving bitcointalk forum members does he need to give before he gets the label?

There seems to be some debate on weather or not SC 2.0 has a properly functioning difficulty.  All that's been observed is the difficulty going up.

How do you think it'll respond while falling?

Showin that in the last hour or so there have been 2-3 spikes 5+, yet none of the orders have moved.

Recently I've noticed your spreads aren't updating as frequently as I would expect with orders from MtGox.

For instance, in the past 20 minutes, someone has put a buy for 1000 btc @ 4.97, and ~1600 btc @ 4.92... but the best your spread can offer is 4.93?

What seems odd to me is the spread didn't seem to update once the 1k @4.97 bid went live, nor has it in the past 20 minutes since.

I admit up front I don't quite know how everything works, so if anyone could enlighten me I'd be appreciative.

For a shot at that snazzy Treasure Chest, and as an attempt to build (some) trading rep, I'm asking the IBB for a 1.5 BTC loan to be paid back within 1 week six days.

I'd ask for a bigger loan, but I only mine .25 BTC a day and want to be sure I'm within my means.

If this loan is too trivial for a shot at that sexy chest, I'll still submit it for trade-rep alone.

Thanks for your time.

[ONE PERSON]

I've seen a lot of newer members down here in the 'wild-west' Alt-Currency board.

There have been a few alt-currencies. IxCoin, I0Coin, and SolidCoin. Now, it's tempting to get in on a new currency whether you want to be an 'early adopter', try out a different system, or make a few quick BTC from speculation. Solidcoin however has made the boldest claims.  CoinHunter/RealSolid (the only SolidCoin programmer) promises a lot of things.  But before you jump in, here are some things you should know:

-------------
Solidcoin is run by ONE PERSON. THAT ONE PERSON IS INTRODUCING ONE-MILLION PREMINED COINS AND TAXING MINERS.

The 'official' Solidcoin can be shut down at the developers whim - and has been.

CoinHunter has provoked attacks on his own chain. Due to an alleged successful attack on his testnet, CoinHunter shut down his chain, halting transactions for all SolidCoin users.

Solidoin's developer has admitted to using malicious propaganda to influence Solidcoins userbase.
-------------


You may still be interested in some of the designs in SolidCoin - that's fine!  There is an alternative completely OPEN SOURCE client floating around here, and I believe another one is in the works. Ask around for more details about them.

I highly suggest if you're interested in SolidCoin or any other p2p project that you promote an open and free environment.


UPDATE: Is this a joke?  I -hope- so.  In either case after reading this, I am NOT installing ANYTHING CH/RS releases:

So I was fine on 2.1sdk with 10.4 drivers.  Got a new card (2x 5770, not crossfired, no bridge). Reformatted (just to be sure nothing got mixed up).

Ran into a few snags bug got everything running.

Now for the life of me, I can't shake the 100% cpu bug.

I've installed 2.1 with 10.4, but it didn't recognize openCL.  Uninstalled that, 11.6 (with sdk that comes with it).  It recognizes that, but 100% bug. I uninstall that, and try every mix of 2.1/2.4 with 10.4/11.6 I can imagine.  Bug still there.  Then I try the 11.9 RC build.  Bluescreen on windows.

Reformat.

Then I try 11.6 with the sdk that comes with it (in case the previous install got things mixed up with 2.1) WITHOUT CCC.  100% CPU bug still there.

Can anyone offer any suggestions?

EDIT:

I'm willing to switch to linux if someone wouldn't mind walking me through it.

So I just got another card.  I've never used two cards, so I didn't know how to install the right drivers, so...

I reformatted.  Got a 100% fresh install.

MSI is showing readings for the two, but I can't get a miner to recognize the other one.  I had read that people need dummy plugs, but I thought that was only for 6x series.

I may be missing something very obvious, but if someone could point me in the right direction I'd appreciate it.

(Win7x64, SDK 2.4 Cata 11.6, 2x 5770)