You can use an ordinary computer PSU, with some care in selection for one that provides enough power on the pcie power connectors. Beyond that, they're basically self contained— a little embedded mips computer running linux and an ethernet port.

Bitmain is pretty great.  Their produces are delivered on time or faster (± normal noise that happens with international shipping), and their products are exactly as specified. Their products are industrial workhorses. They do not come in a sleek plastic case with useless decorative lights, instead— they actually work.

I don't get the impression that they have a bunch of fluent English speakers around, so communication is sometimes a bit spotty. Some people who've had packages get stuck in customs or received the odd defective part have reported it taking a while to get it resolved.

Like all current mining hardware companies their prices are so/so in that you're making a gamble on future difficulty, though they've been diligently lowering the prices as the expected future income goes away.  But the fact that they deliver on-time and to-spec— what really should be table stakes— makes them stand out in the business of Bitcoin mining.

Bitmain sent me a 90GH/s prototype unit before they started shipping, with the current firmware antiminers are awesome on P2Pool. Subsequently, I purchased a couple more on my own as a regular customer. 

I've recommended the antminer S1 to friends, and if you're thinking about getting into mining for fun and to support the network, I'd still recommend them. (Actually looking to turn a profit at it— well, thats a more complex question)

Thats not so. You can use clear terms and investment rather than pre-order nonsense. With transparency and equity in the business things would be much better off.

Right and I hope with this thread to advance people's understanding and thereby improve the whole market place. If miner hardware charlatans cannot exist without miner buyer rubes.  I've never bought mining hardware with grand plans of making a lot of money, I've bought hardware with the intention of supporting the network— and hopefully not losing (a bunch) on the process, maybe make enough to pay for the effort.  I'm a little irritated that it's become hard to do that and to sort out all the fraud because too many people are willing victims.

Generally all the continual update stuff comes with some messy costs: It greatly reduces the cost of isolation attacks, and it ends up making weird non-linear incentives likely (e.g. more profitable to mine in bursts) because the clamps become more significant.

For some fringe altcoin with no real usage perhaps it's necessary to prevent abandoning the chain— though to be honest I think merged mining is generally better— but I don't really see any applicability to Bitcoin.

I think it's more productive to speak concretely— People spent X coins, returned X*.8 coins or whatever, than to try to debate the fine details of "make good".

The hardware vendors have an enormous informational and control advantage over their customers: They know what the pre-order queue and delivery pacing will look like, they know and control how much of their own hardware they intend to buy with, they control how much hardware they sell to other people.  As such, I do think it's a little disingenuous to say "risk is yours to take". If it was pure uncertainty unknown the the buyer and seller then that would be the case, it's not so simple where the informational/control advantage exists.

Made good, but go compute the returns on their hardware—

At the moment the only ASIC hardware sales I know have broken even (or better) vs just sitting on your Bitcoin (or buying coin if you didn't already have it) are B1 Avalon, and  early Bitmain Antminers (jury is still out on ones being sold now).  There may be some of the bitfury devices included in that club depending on timing, but I'm not actually sure of that since the prices changed a bunch of times.

Might be interesting to build up a table of "device/when/cost in btc/yielded btc to date" to highlight how screwed up the situation is.

I don't know what you're saying I'm failing to acknowledge. The purpose of this thread is to raise awareness for other people about things I already know. I think that some of the problems will be diminished if the pool of potential victims is more savvy and refuses to accept the sketchy or outright dishonest behavior.

It's really quite annoying that HashFast posted on their thread making it sound like they're doing the write thing wrt me, and when I responded to point out that they weren't infact... they deleted it:

One possible way to address the head of line behavior is for us to put our funds in escrow (doesn't require risking the funds to a third party, see bitrated.com) only to be released if the product is delivered on-time, with clear pro-rating for late delivery.

The problem is that so long as there is an excess demand for mining hardware at any cost— including paying prices that can probably never make a profit— it will be harder for the community to get vendors to accept terms like that.  Why sell to the guy who armors himself against fraud when you can sell to a sucker?

I worry that the end result is that most sane people will sit back and not mine, most who do mine will lose their shirts and not continue, and more hashrate will end up consolidated with major private facilities that did have the leverage to secure preferential treatment to the ultimate detriment of Bitcoin.

Hello Hashfast, You're saying you've won the race to a 4U 2TH box in the lab, but why should I care about that when you've taken 97.95849881 and failed to live up to your contract to deliver goods by your self-specified deadline or return the funds.  Everyone here can verify for themselves that you have not refunded me: https://blockchain.info/address/1MWwwz9gpViE3u7o6Sx6huYNBrHyze8QrA

Why should anyone purchase more hardware on the basis of your lab-boasting when you haven't made good on your prior commitments?  What reason do people have to believe that you'll actually deliver these 2TH 4U devices when you have simply walked off with people's funds in the past?

What is the relevance of this product offering to the members of the forum? I'm struggling to see it.

I would remind people to not post identical things here again if they've been deleted, go bump the non-self-modderated thread instead. I know this can be hard when you can't see what has been previously deleted since such a substantial chunk of this thread has been deleted, but please make an effort to keep posts on-topic (primarily about HF's new product offering) and to not repeat posts.

Mining is the process of converting energy into proof-of-work
for the purpose of establishing a tamper-resistant historical
record in Bitcoin.

While mining rewards miners with transaction fees and freshly
created coins, mining is not a magical money making process.
In theory, Mining exists in perfect competition, so mining
profitably can be difficult or even impossible.

Currently the Bitcoin system releases ~3600 BTC per day and
these coins are shared proportionally by the miners according
to their relative hashpowers. As overall hashpower increases
the return per hashpower decreases. In recent times hashpower
has been doubling every month or so.

Many mining companies engage in a practice of selling
"pre-orders" thereby shifting the substantial risks of hardware
development entirely onto their customers. The practice of
preorders also exploits ignorance about the future income
mining will yield: People compute their income as if they
had the hardware today, when it's not scheduled for delivery
until months later...

And then almost every hardware maker has missed their
scheduled deadlines. Because of the rapid growth of hashrate
a weeks delay can mean the difference between a nice profit
and a loss. Many makers have also delivered devices substantially
under spec, many others have been outright scams which have
failed to deliver anything at all.

Some of the most experienced people in Bitcoin have lost out
in these offerings, don't just assume you won't be taken.

Companies which have cost people thousands of coins that
they'll never recover are still operating with impunity,
fueled by a seemingly never ending wave of people eager
to get involved who think that mining is a lower risk
way of obtaining coins.

Hosted mining companies with immediately available hashpower
often sell it at greater than it's expected value and themselves
represent enormous consolidation risks to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

In reality, mining is risky: It's riskier than holding
bitcoins because it's comparatively illiquid, and current
mining hardware is not really useful for any other applications.
These risks are multiplied by the unreliability of hardware companies
and the uncertainty of future mining income. Keep in mind: few
companies disclose how much hardware they are selling to other
people, and many of them roll their profits into buying their
own gear at cost and mining in competition with their investor-customers.

That said— I enjoy mining and I would not discourage people
joining in. Mining is essential to the security of Bitcoin.
It's important that mining be widely distributed and especially when people
mine using P2Pool it contributes to keeping Bitcoin decentralized and secure.

Just don't rush in thinking you are going to make a ton of riskless
money. At current retail prices I doubt most hardware available will
break even unless the growth rate slows substantially, which seems
unlikely in the near term. I think the exuberance of miners has
fueled the irresponsibility in hardware companies and driven more
competent and cautious parties out of the market.

It's all our our responsibility to behave sensibly if we want bitcoin
to flourish.

Nodes? why would they?

Miners— well maybe some already are. How could you tell?

Sorry, you're describing desired behavior here, not an actual mechanism. Without multisignature I don't believe what you're describing is actually possible, which is why I asked for the mechanism.   "incapable of fully decrypting" and "primitive bundle" and "fully decrypt" are not meaningful to me in the context of the cryptosystem the bitcoin uses.

Sorry. That wasn't my question. I certainly understand the advantage of additional factors. Assume the mobile and desktop devices exist. What prevents one from completing the transaction entirely without the aid of the other (esp. including a second transaction with the same keys as the first)?

They can't go into the blockchain half completed. You sign on one device, and then it's half completed, and sign on the second device— assuming the second device agrees-, which fully completes the transaction. This is precisely what multisignature is for.

Why would the second wallet sign something the owner didn't authorize? Why would it sign a transaction which is not valid?  How can an anonymous public network decrease exposure to MITM than directly connecting the devices?

You're misunderstanding what multisign is for. It is specifically intended for cases where the keys are not on a single device. It is pointless, other than for softwaretesting, to put the keys on a single device.

Please describe a specific mechanism where (two device threshold signing, with dual verification of the content being signed) can be accomplished without using multisignature.

Of the U2s?  hows the software support? do they use the same software as the prior versions?

Your illustration is very attractive, but it's still not clear to me what it's accomplishing.

If you are not using multisig how exactly is this two-phase transaction being completed? What specific technical mechanism prevents the desktop or the mobile device from unilaterally forming a transaction?

Contrary to your claim, multisignature would let you know an attempt was made and would allow you to reject it if it's not performing the requested actions.

Why do you not just send the transaction to the mobile device directly, since it is a necessary step in the process in any case? What purpose does the "precursor" network serve?

How do you protect this public network from being abused for bulk file transfer or other applications, especially since the data is encrypted?

Nitpick: The password protected QT wallet is itself two factors:  You must have the private keys on the computer (wallet file), as well as the decryption key. Adding the requirement for keying material stored/entered via the phone is a third factor— and a good idea. But this is what multisig was implemented for.

The wiki is a public document that anyone can edit. The scalability page is almost entirely the work of a single person who has removed views conflicting with his own onto other pages (including my own, for that matter).  You should be a sophisticated consumer of wiki content and not believe everything you read.
You haven't really addressed _any_ of the objections here, because apparently you do not understand them. I spent quite a bit of time on IRC trying to help you understand but I have failed you. I'm sorry that I'm unable to help further.

Every node verifies the history, this is how you can be sure that claims like "satoshi premined a billion bitcoins and is secretly waiting to spend them" cannot be true. We do not trust, and cannot trust— because it would be trust founded on nothing. Without verification there is no reason for unidentifiable, anonymous parties not to lie in favor of their own common interests. What actually makes the Bitcoin state trust worthy is because people verify it instead of trusting it.

I think you should stop using the word trustless while you have multiple bitcoin developers telling you that you do not understand it.

Site doesn't work after the first load, I wonder if I just got spear phished.

In any case, assuming it's not a scam. If you want legal advice talk to a lawyer. If you want forum guesswork:  You have no clue what relationship this site has with the sources, they may have some bulk agreement. If there is copyright infringement, it's probably the sites infringement not yours.

Because academic authors and institutions are almost universally unpaid enforcement is complicated by the fact that the publishers are obviously parasites and don't make particularly charitable plaintiffs. If you're worried about someone harassing you for your use— use tor. Or find out what it takes to get papers access from a university library if one is available to you.

FWIW, Hashfast-cl has posted claiming that the only reason people are giving them negative trust is their scammy-looking self moderation.  I responded, pointing out that while their self-moderation is concerning, my negative trust is because they've ripped me off.  Sadly, they decided they didn't want people seeing that post either.

An update:  Someone else mentioning this thread seems to have penetrated the reality distortion field which has prevented HF from acknowledging my existence— at least indirectly, and HF_CL commented on it.

I've responded inviting them to make good on their contract and refund me in a publicly verifiable manner:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=262052.msg5536343#msg5536343

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Oh hey!  Wow!  I am astonished to see anyone
from hashfast acknowledge my existence after my many ignored letters!
Maybe things are looking up.

To avoid any further miscommunication, I'll just instead invite you to
refund me directly using Bitcoin. This way everyone can tell you made
good on your promises and there will be no risk of he-said-she-said or
certified letters getting lost on someone's desk or whatever has been
going on.

Please pay 97.95849881 BTC to 1MWwwz9gpViE3u7o6Sx6huYNBrHyze8QrA reversing
orders #934 and #1560 and ending HF's obligations to me.

This way everyone will see that you've made good on it, and I can
comfortably tell people that there were some delays and our transaction
didn't go through but that HashFast ultimately lived up to its promises to
me. ... and everyone can check if you've made that payment for themselves
without asking me if HF has fixed it yet.

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