I'd certainly like to understand this better... though it's offtopic for the thread.  It's not unique to KNC, e.g. we saw it with BFL.  But I think we've mostly not seen it with hashfast or cointerra.  I've speculated before that some people are afraid of getting ripped off and have to aggressively back their own horse to justify themselves, but even that is incomprehensible to me. Then again, I don't really get team-sports fandom either.

... And I suppose some things are just unknowable.

Well, it's true until they actually get a box in someones hands. I was explicit about it and said it was a bit pedantic. Perhaps some people are unable to read any text which doesn't come with a meme image and from a user with a urinary-tract-infection-yellow ignore button?

[As an aside: If you think a thread is dumb it's best to stop posting in it so that it can fall down the page!]

You appeared to be claiming that KNC was testing their operational asic devices on testnet. This claim appears to be false. Do I understand correctly that you mispoke and the device has not actually been tested on testnet and cannot be actually shown to have successfully produced a block?

Not being a KNC customer I can't speak for them, but I'd be really surprised if they demand their manufacturer mining coins and ultimately reducing the customer's own income, ... instead of, you know, shipping the products the customer ordered and paid for. I've certainly seen a lot more people asking for shipping information than for evidence of how much money KNC is making off the not yet shipping hardware.  After all, some account on eligius doesn't actually show that any KNC hardware is running at all. ... but a box in customers hands sure would!

If y'all are crazy enough to believe some random hashrate graph as proof of hardware, man, have I got a bridgeminer to sell you.

Uh. I direct your attention to the first post in this thread:
AFAIK, at this point most of this sub-forum has sworn off doing business with Avalon in the future.

I comment generally pretty infrequently. Consider the responses here if you wonder why.  I said at the outfront that I was being a bit intentionally inflammatory about it, but I do think that its a sad state that we've created an environment where the community takes all the risk of the NRE in building a mining device and the end result is these consolidations which undermine the value of that investments. KNC is but one example of it— and not the worst, but with all the claims of how much integrity KNC has, perhaps its the best example that the community here tolerates the behavior rather than something exploitative. Take it for what you will.

Besides, everyone knows that I'm secretly YipYip and Crumbs.

I did? Really?  Of course, everyone here has free will, and if anything I think people's unwillingness to selectively read and reply contributes a lot to trolling around here. I certainly don't feel the need to respond point by point to every question, and none of you should either. If you feel I've missed something essential, please hit me up and PM and I'll reply more if I agree!

In any case, I don't see any evidence on testnet of KNC mining there. Bitcoinorama made a falsifiable claim which appear to me to be false. I'm just asking him to clarify here to avoid any confusion.

Thank you for your super helpful and descriptive problem report. The complete lack of information about what version(s) you're attempting to build and what reasons the build are failing have helpfully freed me from making any actual effort to assist with your problem.

Perhaps next time you could be a little more vague about your problems, insulting to people who write software you use without any compensation from you, and indifferent to any benefits (of whatever change is implicated) tob other people?  ... because as is I still feel some residual desire to solve whatever problem you're having here but I'm sure from your yellow ignore throbber that you could do better.

We seem to have a different outcome in Bitcoin... with people racing to the lowest variance possible even with rather high fees to get there.

I've understood this to be at least partially as a result of misunderstandings about mining, since people seem to strongly prefer variances lower than just about any business venture would have anywhere. Do you have a different argument?

Which blocks did your employer mine on testnet?

I guess I'm a little slow, feel free to spell it out for me.

Are you kidding? I'm perfectly happy to watch people with poor emotional control and interesting agendas show their true colors.

Why would I be blaming Avalon? I'm not blaming KNC.  If anyone at all, I'm blaming their customers.  Avalon customers— well, post-batch-1 customers have already been punished enough to not get flak from me, dontcha think?

I'm generally pretty harsh on hashing power consolidations. They undermine the security assumptions of the Bitcoin system. Review my posts if you like.

Goes well with the hilarious desperate defenses. ... If you don't think there is anything wrong with how some miner hardware companies compete with their own customers even while late on their delivers— then there is nothing to defend and nothing to see here.

Indeed, but "no more than 5%", after it was demanded by customers. It's currently 100% as far as I can tell. Pedantry, ... sure, a bit, but the most important mining is the earliest.

See the OP: "I do not understand why miners keep funding mining hardware companies that mine in competition with their own customers."

Besides, sometimes it's fun to watch the crazy partisans froth here and there.

No they wont— it's not possible to "fix" testnet mining any more than mainnet mining, hashing is it's own proof....  at least not anymore than you have on the mainnet:  How do you know thats KNC hardware hashing and not just a bitfury device or a couple avalons/bfls?
And the contracts they form with their investors and customers. I wonder why so many people here give money to companies that use it to turn around and compete with them?
No, it's not proof— after all, it could just as easily be some other hardware. They won't stop either— perhaps temporarily, but you can go find pictures of their build-out in the thread.

So, my ability to just use the forum like anyone else vanishes when I say something you don't like? I see.
Nothing. I was idling in Eligius' IRC channel and Bargraphics linked to the announcement. I thought it was ridiculous that KNC was mining on mainnet, competing with their own customers, while they are waiting on now late equipment. Thus the post.

"troll the reputation"— uh, pointing something out, and saying that I'd be furious about it if I were a customer...  If their reputation is going to be dinged by some disapproval, then perhaps they ought not do things that are so easily disapproved of.   If you don't think this is a reason someone should be unhappy, then please feel free to ignore it.

It's a bit trolly to pick on KNC with only .5 TH online— which is why I made the "I guess I feel left out of the trolling" comment. But I really don't understand why people tolerate manufacturers competing with them. Battered wife syndrome perhaps.
It's funny, before avalon had products in existence they made a nice strongly worded comment about how competent testing doesn't involve mining on the network (a position I agree with). As far as I know they didn't mine at scale on the mainnet to test batch 1 units... but the later stuff?  Yea. That also falls into my bin of "why the heck are people tolerating this??".

I guess I feel a bit left out of all the trolling—

KNC is now mining on their hardware, while customers wait for it to ship:

http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/17Czc8RVL3FU5T2MLx2zLbRnpfBNgH9vFo

This is, as far as I know, 100% of the KNC hashrate in existence. Pedantically speaking, it means that KNC is violating their 5% commitment.

Testing doesn't involve using the production network. Production mining is unlikely to test finding blocks— whereas testnet, or replays of past found blocks are more complete tests.  Mining on the mainnet increases the difficulty and takes income from customers who are waiting on units that will be late.  Every bit of earlier mining is worth large amounts of future mining due to expected growth.

I do not understand why miners keep funding mining hardware companies that mine in competition with their own customers.

The problem with that simplification, beyond it being pedantically wrong, is that it results in incorrect understandings about what malicious miners could do and what purpose the other nodes on the network serve.

All Bitcoin nodes audit all transactions. Bitcoin is predominantly zero trust... everyone checks everything, and this is important to creating the economic incentives that keep miners honest.

Mining exists to make transactions irreversible through people expending energy "cementing" the transaction history they believe to be the official history, and in doing so producing a consensus which can be cheaply validated by anyone.

Not being able to answer that was why I spent a bunch of time trying to come up with "attacks" that selection of a non-obvious G could yield. But all I could come up with doesn't seem to be too much. ::shrugs::

Not just that, but if there are subgroups there are reductions that allow you to solve the DLP with basically no more work than solving it over a field thats the size of the largest factor.

Your request seems a little backwards.  It's not your obligation to prove an address isn't yours— thats basically impossible— if someone owes you money its their responsibility to prove to you the address they paid was one you gave them.

There have been a bunch of people showing up in IRC in the last couple months with BC.i wallets with stuck double spent transactions from concurrent use. Be careful.

Hm. I would have expected an _underclocking_ service to be more valuable: increase reliability, increase power efficiency.

I absolutely agree that should be done, and I didn't intend this to be an alternative. There are protocols which this suggestion cannot help.

But, I believe it will take a minimum of two years remove malleability.

Fully eliminating malleability requires a soft fork with fairly invasive changes in script validation because you need to catch things like "Push onto the stack that had no effect" and "Used something other than the smallest possible push". It may be difficult to convince some alternative implementers to make these relatively risky changes, since the removal of malleability is only really essential for transaction patterns which are nearly non-existent today (chicken and egg: until the malleability is removed, you can't grow the use of transactions which depend on it not being there).

... and this is assuming that it doesn't turn out that there are any more ways to mutate DSA signatures (e.g. by jointly modifying R and S). Adam Black was very concerned that there were.

In any case, having a workaround means that someone who wants to do something the work around works on has an alternative... and doesn't have to wait for the network to believe their use case is justified.  A simple extortion free escrow for doing instant payments or the like is possible this way with entirely standard transactions.