I think you should try a third time at least!

This. anyone having a gpumax pass-through business will set up a proxy in no time, if they havent already. Its "regular" miners who lack the time/skill/devotion to set one up, but that mine from multiple locations that will be impacted, not the so called abusers.

You guessed right. Most new users that join have very recently restarted cgminer so we are talking about a handful of shares, if that, and even then I usually manually deduct the amount of "old" shares from the fees; in your case, I was asleep and your machine had been running for days, which is why the above happened. Once puppetmaster collected the initial stats, restarting cgminer no longer helps, as ppm keeps a rolling history.

But fear not, its all in the db, whatever you paid in fees is credited, Ill reset your stats.

Ill have to try your changes later (or if some 2.5 users want to chime in, please do), but just to be clear: Im not saying who should define the API, I would just like to see both forks implement it the same way as much as possible, to make it easier for everyone. I know you and luke wont get through the same door, but  I was contacted by Luke shortly after making this announcement, and I told him the exact same thing: please make whatever change you make to BFGminer compatible with cgminer. I think the fork was unfortunate, and still hope BFGminer and CGminer can be merged again eventually, but even if not, there is no benefit to anyone if the API implementations are incompatible.

Interesting. I think its rather nice of you to offer a free upgrade path.  It will probably still be a patch on a wooden leg for bond holders, but its better than no patch at all, and you didnt have to do this.

However, I dont think the paid upgrade path makes a lot of sense. IMO hashrate is going to increase by much more than 4x, so the upgrade will still end up being a downgrade from a coupon payment POV. At least in the longer run. If you get your machines early there might be some good months that could make it worth while I guess, havent done the math on that yet.

Yeah its mostly due to gigavps joining us, and fefox turning his minirigs on.
Still it took KAT with 0.20% of the hashrate to solve that block

And lets not mention power consumption. 'per chip' is an utterly meaningless metric, particularly when per GH costs and power efficiency of asics can be two orders of magnitude higher for any given process.

Anyway, there is no point trying to talk sense in to D3D.

Your shareholders will be thrilled once again.

BTW, abusing your moderator status to sticky posts like these and other anti BFL trolling is just shameful.

In that case:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=90062.0

No they weren't. Most miners actually made profits, a lot of them still do. As do BFL and I assume other FPGA vendors.


I dont disagree.
Although if BFL had plans to mine themselves, you would expect them not to say so while they are taking (pre)orders . The comparison with AMD is flawed in that respect; there is no point for AMD to mine bitcoins, its peanuts to them and they make more selling the hardware, if not for bitcoin mining then to gamers.

But ASICs have no other purpose, and more over, electricity cost is pretty much a non issue, so if/when sales dry up, BFL might decide to go for it themselves. Not saying they will, but there is nothing to prevent them from doing so either, other than a financial incentive from miners overpaying for their equipment.

The problem is not about being rich. Its about almost infinite pricing flexibility allowing the first vendor to market to price their chips somewhere near GPU/FPGAs prices per GH upon launch, while being able to drop prices per GH by one or two orders of magnitude before reaching variable costs.

Not only is there this possibility, but because market price of a bitcoin ASIC is directly linked with past sales (more sales -> higher difficulty -> lower ROI for miners) ,  the ASIC vendor is effectively competing with its past customers, forcing them to drop prices even absent any competing asic vendor. ASICs represent an enormous leap in performance/$ of 100 or 1000x where it is today; its this leap that allows the vendor to get a return on his very large investment. But this is a one time deal, another asic might be better, but not 100x better. So once difficulty catches up, and market prices for asics will have dropped to something much closer to variable cost, because the market is inherently limited, it will make no financial sense to invest another x million dollar for a slightly better ASIC, let alone an equally good one.

In a nutshell, if BFL chooses to play their cards right, they can end up being the sole beneficiary of bitcoin mining for the next few years at least. Its future competitors as well as its customers could easily be forced in to losses.

Yeah. With what will be left of his IPO funds after having to sell those bonds, Im sure he can afford a nice building



Sometimes I wonder what planet some of you live on.

I just bought two 4.3" qHD midrange chinese smartphones based on the mkt 6575 platform; as Im writing a review for a local site,  I thought Id let you know my experience here as well.

What I got:
x310e with android 4.0."9"
http://elifekey.en.alibaba.com/product/576406221-213148745/X310E_mtk6575_android_4_0_Wifi_GPS_3G_smartphone.html

Star B79, but with android 2.3.6
http://www.uuelf.com/B79-Android-40-3G-Smartphone-43-inch-Dual-SIM-WCDMAGSM-WiFi-GPS-Capacitive-Touch-Screen-Black.html

Both of these phones can be found online for ~$180. These are essentially the same phones underneath, and almost identical to the somewhat more expensive but better known and supported Zopo ZP100.  They are all based on on the 1GHz mkt6575, 512Mb RAM, 4GB ROM,  have dual sim/dual standby, 960x540 display, 5MP autofocus camera, dual flash, 5 point multitouch etc. Most of the things you would expect to see on a highend smartphone, except there is no NFC, and the cpu is only single core. I would have liked to see 1GB Ram too.

Built quality is not what I expected from a Chinese knock off phone. Especially the B79 actually looks better than any  samsung galaxy Ive ever held, including the S3. Its really nicely made, thin bezel, sturdy, nice looking rubberish finish on the back, not the cheap looking plastic of many actual highend phones. The screen is not mounted at an angle and the back cover fits perfectly. Im impressed with both, and most by the B79.

Performance wise, these phones also perform way above my expectation. Specs would suggest performance somewhere between a galaxy S and galaxy SII as they are built around the mkt6575 (single core 1GHz cortex A9+SGX531), compared to a Galaxy S1 which has a 1GHz single core cortex A8 and an S2 which has a dualcore cortex A9. for most apps that dont make use of multiple cores anyway, this phone should perform pretty much like an S2. In practice they are simply very, very fast indeed. Ive never seen android boot this fast, browsing works without a hitch, demanding games like Need for Speed, or Samurai II work flawlessly, no stutter, no lag. Impressive, particularly considering the price and the fact these phones have quite high resolutions.

Display quality is also better than I expected. AFAICT, they sport the same LCD.  Images are very crisp (qHD really rocks), viewing angles and sunlight readability are reasonable, contrast is good  but the colors seem perhaps a little washed out compared to some AMOLED screens Ive seen. Still, its a joy to look at.

Touch screen is a mixed bag. On the B79 it works perfectly and is extremely responsive. Seriously, an iphone is no better. The x310e however, only works well when holding it in your hand. When you put it in a cradle or on a flat surface, it usually doesnt work at all. And i mean, nothing. You cant even unlock it. Just touching the phone with another hand makes it work again, well, usually.  Weird. Not sure whats causing that, but its pretty annoying. Even when holding, the x310e doesnt seem quite as responsive as the B79, but that may be due to software.

The dual sim works a treat and is a godsend for me. Both sims work simultaneously, you dont have to switch. Both can support 3G and you can manually select or predefine which sim to use for what.

Camera's are okay too. Not fantastic, but 5MP (often advertised as 8MP, but thats just interpolation) and autofocus do what you would expect, but not more than that. It wont replace my SLR anytime soon, but Ive seen far worse shooters. The dual flash is pretty good though, quite powerful for a led flash. Front camera works fine in Skype.

Call and audio quality are very good. More than loud enough, crisp and with a headset listening to music, I found the audio quality beyond criticism.

GPS reception is definitely a weak point on both phones. Perhaps even more on the B79. I found them acceptably fast to acquire a signal, but the lock is easily lost when driving, or inside a building its almost impossible to get a signal. Its usable, but only barely.  I knew this when I ordered them, its a known weakness, but Im still a little disappointed its actually true .

Wifi reception is ok, not superb either. But its performance is very good, downloads are actually faster than on my laptop! Installing apps through Google Play store is almost shockingly fast.

Battery life is again decent, but not stellar. As you might expect with a 4.3" phone, if you use it heavily, particularly when gaming, it wont last a day. But with light use you might eek 2 days out of it. Nice touch is that you get 2 batteries with both of these phones, though without external charger to charge the second battery, thats of limited use.

Then there is the software. Both phones firmware have a few quirks. The internal memory (4GB) is split between internal and "sdcard" while the actual sdcard gets mounted as sdcard2. Few apps can use that. You can use the sdcard to store music or movies, but dont expect to install apps on it. There are alternative ROMs out there that fix this, but I havent tried them yet.

My x310e came with android "4.0.9", which doesnt exist. Its just 4.0.3 that they ruined. Its buggy, it fakes information (it will report 2GHz clock speed and 1GB Ram, in reality its half that), its more sluggish than it should be. On XDA forums some people have flashed it to 4.0.3 ROM from zopo with promising results, it cures most of the bugs, apparently fixes the touchscreen, and makes it faster. I will have to try that later, but for now, if you want to buy this phone, make sure it either comes with 4.0.3 or 2.3.6.

My B79 came with Android 2.3.6, and though it lacks some of the features of android 4, IMO its the better choice for now. By installing some custom launchers and other utilities you get 98% of the looks and functionality of android 4.0 without the problems. The phone is upgradable to android 4, but the place I bought mine from recommended against it for now, and I have to agree. I will wait for some custom ROMs to mature first. Word of warning; when I reset my phone to factory defaults, I got a Chinese interface.

TL;DR. out of the box, particularly the B79 with android 2.3.6 is actually a great phone for a fantastic price. Heck, its cheaper than most second hand galaxy S1s around here, and its by far the superior phone.  The only real let down is poor GPS reception. The x310e with the software I got, I would only recommend to people who dont mind getting their hands dirty with custom ROMs.

If you want a cheap 4.3" phone with android 4.0 preinstalled, the zopo ZP100 might be the phone to get instead of either of these two. Its about $30 more expensive but zopo actually appears to do a decent job of making android work on their phones. I just didnt like the design of it .

I just checked the value of your bonds today:

15 GIGAMINING (5 mhash) = 15.00 BTC (75 mhash)  15
1784 YABMC (1 mhash) = 328.26 BTC (1784 mhash)  285
1053 BMMO (1 mhash) = 195.86 BTC (1053 mhash)  206
849 TYGRR.BOND-A (1 mhash) = 169.80 BTC (849 mhash) 144
994 BTCMC (5 mhash) = 755.20 BTC (4970 mhash) 746
941 OBSI.1MHS (1 mhash) = 178.79 BTC (941 mhash) 150
4 RSM (1.3 mhash) = 5.20 BTC (5 mhash) 1
450 BMF (3 mhash*) = 445.05 BTC (1350 mhash)
98 BFLS.RIG (4.15 mhash) = 68.60 BTC (407 mhash)
140 SYNERGY (1 mhash) = 27.72 BTC (140 mhash) 25

total of ~2085 BTC. Assuming market depth would actually allow you to sell them all at those prices, in reality its going to be a lot less. Add the 41 BTC you paid in dividends and so far, you have managed to lose almost exactly half your investors money while claiming to make profits.
Really, you should start buying greek debt, your profits will soar!

You mean the 41BTC paid in dividends or something that actually matters?

asset growth?
I may be missing something, but didnt you sell 4066 shares at 1 BTC while your holdings are currently worth 2189 BTC at market rate (and you will never even be able to actually sell for that much)?

Emails sent out.

If you signed up and did not receive an email, check your spam box and add my email address to your contacts.

If its not in your spam box either, you probably didnt give me your email address, contact me via btc.puppet.master@gmail.com

@everyone who signed up;
Dont worry if you got no response yet. To accommodate everyone, Ive had to order a bigger server, right now Im waiting for btclot to set it up, and I will need a day or two after that to make sure its ready. Hopefully this weekend.


removepool (and disable/enable pool) isnt really needed for this phase of puppet master; it is only needed when we do contracted work, where someone can buy a mining contract, a bit like on gpumax. THis is (crudely) implemented but not used at this point, as it does require me holding coins in escrow, and frankly, there doesnt seem to be much demand for shares at >100% PPS.

As for the new version of cgminer; if this gets implemented somehow, then great. You may also want to check with Luke who is making similar changes to BFGminer, it would be nice if you implemented it in the same way.

Puppet master users are asked not to upgrade to a new version of cgminer (or bfgminer) until it has been tested with puppetmaster. I usually send out emails when I deem it safe to upgrade to a new version. Backwards compatibility with cgminer has been good so far, but I rather be safe than sorry.

As for GPUmax; Pirate did ask to limit the per user hashrate that connects/disconnects from gpumax because it causes trouble with load balancing. Ive implemented some changes to that effect and its one reason Im not accepting more than 5GH per user.

As for the API key, obviously there is a risk involved in giving the api key to someone else,  but it cant be greater than giving me full control over cgminer, which is what you do when you use puppet master. You shouldnt mine at a pool if you dont trust the pool op, and likewise, if you are afraid I will steal your hashes, dont sign up for puppetmaster.

10 BTC  is ~ 6 weeks of mining with free electricity.

Anyway, I found a spare AMD fan, so I just replaced it and its up and running again. If prices have come down to this level, the only sensible thing to do is mine until they fall apart I guess.

Have to say, Im surprised to read elsewhere you guys are still holding on to most of those bitcoins and trying to sell them "otc" as to not crash the exchanges. Since I assume you paid BFL in $ (or didnt you?), you are perhaps betting the company on BTCs future exchange rate on this one deal alone.

Granted, this is not your typical sale, but Im not sure this proves bitcoin is ready for these kind of deals; I think you could argue it proves the exact opposite.