There is absolutely no problem with these numbers, its not indicative of a problem. For some context, a year ago we would have been happy with <1% error rates.

Hurrah, an adult discussion!


The investment itself isn't being considered a preorder. What is suggestive of a preorder model though, is that unless a huge investment is received, you either can't do that generation or it has to be funded using preorders. And so in the absence of an investment - you're business model is one of preorders.

Its not acceptable to say "but we can/will get investment" and so we won't need to use preorders because its not a certainty and its not taken place. It would be like ASICMiner putting out a press release saying they can make 0.01W/GH chips with the stipulations that they need $15M, Intel will license the use of proprietary technology for free, TSMC will rush them in ahead of all other companies, and as long as their simulations are correct. ASICMiner can not be accepted to have 0.01W/GH chips until they actually make and prove them. This situation is analogous - ST is not a non preorder company / business model until they can prove it.



Its getting a bit harder to pick out questions here but I'll try. To start I'll say that this rating system uses discrete states in order to 'score' various factors as its less subjective and *should* provide less arguing and more transparency. In a system where a company can score 1-10 on any criterion then there will be endless bickering point for point both insulated within a company's own rating and comparative to other companies.

The side effect of discrete states is that its more unforgiving for those near boarders or in transition. At some point you have to set a mark and put a rating on one side or the other. Theoretically, as long as you impart the same methodology on all companies then there can physically be no disagreements without going down the conspiracy theory line like we have here. "You made it up just for us, even though you imparted the exact same methodology on another company, 3+ months prior". There isn't anything I can really do about that.

I'll answer your question with another scenario as its not really a yes or no-able question. If Bitmain continued to sell out of hand as it has done for a long long time, but said "right that's it, S6 onwards is preorder", would YOU take it into account now? I would say it would be taken into account as its clear that they're a preorder company and for the foreseeable future will be. How many notches that would put a similar company down during the transition period is debatable. Its worth remembering that going from a preorder model to a not preorder model should be and is treated differently as its not as straight forward a switch. Even with best intentions its not always possible.



As in my first paragraph, I don't consider investments themselves to be preorders. If you raise investment money via financing, private equity investment etc then good on you. In regards to the specific ST case, I object to the claim that they can do non-preorders, as long as they raise investment. Receiving an investment and wanting investment certainly aren't the same thing and so don't receive the same treatment. If we see an article on CoinDesk that ST has raised a further $XM or $XXM then great on them, and then it would go a hell of a long way towards proving it.



I keep clarifications to a minimum even when they're beneficial because it leads to all sorts of conspiracy theories as you can see. Apparently others are able to judge my criteria, my interpretations and my intentions better than me. On top of that, its the same reason why I keep updates to a minimum. Regardless of what a company scores, consumers and / or the company will be mad at me one way or another. Its not fun being flamed for days and days as a result of providing a free resource designed to help the community, by people who provide NOTHING themselves.



Never make assumptions. We've seen publicly that BFL has more bitcoins in cash than ST raised publicly in equity.



Yes, they do. I let ST know today that I've terminated our NDA but it doesn't release prior information unless Guy authorises it. If anyone's counting, I do have also have an NDA but its in a very different form which means I can disclose anything if its done in the best intentions of the company / not maliciously and has a MUCH shorter expiry time.

So tldr your current business model / situation can not support generation 3 without preordering (/ preordering under another name) or some miracle investment. Under no circumstances could those statements EVER qualify you for running a business model that can get by selling purely out of hand.

You have a transitional arrangement that allows you to prove otherwise and raise the $Ms need to make it happen.

When you mention 'errors', specifically which column are you referring to?

Nope. The first 3 sentences are in reply to Josh's "Delivered miners" questions, that's pretty obvious.



Irrelevant under the criteria because your business model can't support non preorders, as below.


Can you afford generation 3 without selling preorders, raising millions of $ or using 'investment' orders? Its a simple yes or no.

Well, yes I did. You claimed:





I proved all the above to be false. I evidenced a mirror image discussion with BFL about the SAME CRITERIA and the SAME IMPLEMENTATION in SEPTEMBER, 3 months before you claim I made them up from scratch for you in DECEMBER.

LOL what? I categorically and irrefutably disprove your claims and you deny the posts' existence? Is this another conspiracy? Did Theymos plant pages of posts back in time?

Cool. If you still have some time on your hands, you can read about a week before and after this post to see that the criteria was not changed, was not changed just for you and that you were not even the first company for the methodology to be applied to.

How can one conclusively prove that a cloud mining operation is fake though, or a ponzi? Even when it appears impossible you can't be 100% sure that its not someone with a bit too much money doing changetip style donation. Entirely unlikely but entirely plausible.

Then we're cool then?

That's okay, you're free to hide behind it all you like.

Yet I'm the one ignoring the topic, right?



Then you'll have no problem releasing me from the NDA, right? Or are you going to hide behind it again?

There is nothing to 'admit' to. He's suggesting that because he ..... [the issue HE is hiding behind an NDA on, not me]... that he believes:

1) I opposed spamming threads as marketing, which I did, and still do. For all companies.
2) Asked an incorrectly moved thread discussing said topic to meta so we could have an adult discussion about the above issue, which I did and would do again? If it was not appropriate then the thread would have died immediately, instead it grew to 7 pages and spawned important discussion between the mods.
3) Reported his posts, which is both untrue and irrelevant. As much as he wants to believe his 1 word posts were deleted as part of some conspiracy, I am not a moderator.
4) Reported someone posting 5 threads in a manner that should have just been one thread? Yes, and would do it again because I was not the only person to report them. And I reported one post asking for a mod to see what he though. The mod decided that it was inappropriate and there were multiple ways in which it should have been done in one thread.

My reply in regards to he 'also believes in ghosts' is in response to that he believes the above are all in some huge conspiracy against him and his company [including the mods], when it was and still is one of the highest scoring companies of all time, and is poised to be the first company ever to get a perfect score if he follows through on his word. He's still not revealed the reason why exactly he wants that to happen prematurely though, also hiding behind an NDA on that one.

Anything else?

Then you probably believe in ghosts as well. You're free to start a scam accusation thread but its becoming off topic here.

Bitmain did not buy them, they contracted their hosting services for a period then stopped.

Mine already is, max clocks and still silent (with a fan RPM cap). Quieter than any PSU I can put it with other than an RM1000.

I'm not on trial here, nor do I have to prove my 'innocence'. Even so, I checked and the oldest version dropbox archived is 9th Jan 2015. There is an internet archive version here from October which shows the only description was:


As I said, I added more descriptive text.

Which rating do you not agree with?



Yes? I openly posted that I was proving tech support for them on the forums. And since that started, they had the lowest rating they'd ever (?) had for months and months.

Yes, its what I recommend.

That itself doesn't kick the firmware over to following the SD card over the flash memory last I tested. The latest instructions we had for that process don't work.