Given that I live in Vegas I'd be ashamed to not show up

Any other bitcoiners gonna meet me there? Perhaps we can arrange a very special edition of the Las Vegas bitcoin meetup group with special guest attendees!

Leave it to vlad to pose a solution that doesn't work for the little guy 

In all seriousness it's a good idea and I'd take it and run with it but we do still need a Dwolla-esque solution for the $20 spenders or we're about to see some serious liquidity problems.

I still haven't seen a mathematically founded answer to a question I've been asking for ages:

What percent of 0/unconfirmed transactions become orphaned, are fraudulent or otherwise never make it to 6/confirmed?

If that percentage is lower than current merchant service company fees, we're still a point-of-sale winner when accepted at 0/unconfirmed and that much IS instant.

Hadn't noticed that, I stand corrected. It's still a pretty big fee increase from Dwolla but if they can't get their act together and fix this nonsense I'll take it.

From Paxum's web site, main page:

Granted you'd have a visa/mastercard that you can use to spend money from your Paxum account, but $50 is a bit much to move cash from one place to another.

Tradehill is the biggest MtGox competitor for USD trades and it has 7.8% of Mt Gox's volume. Also, for moving USD into and out of exchanges, Dwolla is the standard right now. Perhaps the EUR or PLN markets would still thrive elsewhere but for USD trades, MtGox + Dwolla accounts for the vast majority of the market. How exactly would such a merger be "Not even close"?

Mt Gox buying Dwolla = instant monopoly...

*cough*PM for an invite*cough*

Edit: *cough*Out of invites please god stop spamming me*cough*  

Oh god, bitcoins are "bearer instruments" and can be used to launder money! OUTLAW THEM!
Oh god, money orders are "bearer instruments" and can be used to launder money! OUTLAW THEM!
Oh god, personal checks are "bearer instruments" and can be used to launder money! OUTLAW THEM!
Oh god, gold is a "bearer instrument" and can be used to launder money! OUTLAW IT!

Are you seriously trying to claim that because bitcoin could potentially be used to launder money that simply trading them at an exchange is (or should be) illegal? Good Lord, we'll have to outlaw everything! I could stab someone with my ink pen, better outlaw ink pens!

Whoa, just downloaded c00w's latest after hearing everyone talk about it. Looks PHENOMENAL. I'll be switching back from ryouiki's fork when I get home from work tonight methinks 

BTW, I haven't had a chance to really dig, is slicing implemented in c00w's branch yet or is that still in the works?

We should set up a page somewhere (maybe a wiki?) that tracks the various pools and their scoring method / hoppability status

+1, wish it were as easy as Linux' gcc for win32

My fiancee (yes, a woman) is working out the details of a somewhat more stylish bitcoin clothing line than the standard "white text on black shirt" we geeks seem so fond of and plans on offering the whole line for BTC. I had to help her get opencart working with the bitcoin plugin but otherwise she's done the whole mess herself. (she's geek enough for HTML/CSS but not for PHP... yet... give me time  )

Of course she also shares my habit of starting far more projects than ever get finished so who knows if it'll actually happen. In any case, I have learned from her directly that women will not admit to lacking a Y chromosome on the internet, probably won't respond to these polls and if they do respond, will probably lie. I've seen firsthand what happens when women openly admit their gender in certain corners of the net, and I don't blame them.

PayPal account closed. Haven't used it since I discovered bitcoin anyway, though for some reason I do still have the little authenticator keyfob on my keychain...

The 451F thing is largely popular opinion based on the book "Farenheit 451" but realistically different kinds of paper will have different autoignition temperatures depending on their thickness, coatings, impurities, cotton/wood ratios, etc.

Here's the real way to find out:


Yeah that's way more complicated than pulling 451F out of your ass, but suffice it to say the resulting number IS somewhat higher than the 105C (221F) most cards shut off at.

As for the solder, yes some varieties melt at temperatures as low as 90C but those varieties would never be used for computer parts. More likely would be solders in the higher end of the temperature range - some solder doesn't melt until 450C - so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

The problem isn't really on the mining/supply side of the fence, there's just not that much demand.

also, is anyone else having problems with polmine again? I updated to the regex above and still get 10^10 shares.

I blame this in part on the extreme youth of namecoin. If namecoin had a GUI it'd be more popular, if there were an exchange that was better looking and (more importantly) easier to use it'd be more popular. It's kind of sitting right now where bitcoin sat a year ago. I think it's got potential but it needs a lot of work still. That said, I'm hoarding every namecoin I mine just in case... Not like they're worth much of anything right now anyway  

The heat here IS pretty atrocious during the summer, though it's not so terrible to keep a data center cool so long as you're not foolish enough to have giant southern-exposure windows or something (like my apartment complex, the morons). I pay 11.28 cents per kW/h flat rate (unlike the crappy tiered pricing I had in CA) so electric costs are reasonable enough.

You might attract unwanted attention at the table games. Slots can have their odds trivially manipulated and usually have the worst payout percentages in the house. Video poker games, on the other hand, can be very low-loss depending on the game itself and the strategy you play - Jacks or Better can be up to 99.6% payback if you play the right odds. The casinos will also notice if your coin in (i.e. the number of credits bet) is less than your cash in (actual money inserted) so sticking $100 in a game and then cashing out a $100 voucher without play might turn some heads. Realistically you will want your coin in to be at least twice your cash in, so if you put $100 in a game that costs $1 per hand, you'll want to play at least 200 hands before cashing out. Over a long enough run you'll still lose under 1% of whatever you put in since you only subject each dollar to an average 0.4% loss twice before cashing out.

Of course that'd only work if you have a LOT of money to launder since the 99.6% odds include all the royal flushes, aces with and without kickers, etc. that you could possibly hit and some of those hands are absurd odds. Realistically the table games are a better bet for laundering small amounts but you'd have a higher chance of getting caught.

Of course as someone who lives in Las Vegas, works in the gaming (casino) industry, and holds gaming licenses in well over a dozen states I feel comfortable giving you the above information because I can also give you this word of warning: Casinos are in business because they are better at math than you. They gather data on EVERYTHING, run reports on EVERYTHING and perform absurd accounting on EVERYTHING. I maintain the databases that WILL catch you if you attempt any of the above and of course must inform you that money laundering in any form is illegal. Should you choose to do something illegal, at least be smart about it and pick some place less likely to catch you than a casino.

At the very least I'd be happy to pay the monthly premium during the summer months. I live in Las Vegas and my air conditioning isn't as up to the task as I'd like

As long as mining profitability stays high enough to make it worth the price (which is looking questionable these days) I would love a service like this.

Edit: Where would this be physically located? I'd be much more likely to partake if I could physically hand my rigs to someone instead of ship...