2013-06-29 How a total n00b mined $700 in bitcoins

[patricktim]

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/06/how-a-total-n00b-mined-700-in-bitcoins/

Butterfly Labs is a company that has drawn a fair amount of controversy for what the Bitcoin community at large perceives as a string of broken promises. The company sells ASIC-based Bitcoin miners—machines that are built around customized chips that do nothing except compute SHA-256 hashes very quickly. Its smallest miner (the one I had to get working) is codenamed "Jalapeño" and computes a bit over five billion hashes per second (or 5GH/s). The problem is that Butterfly Labs started selling the machines long before it actually had a product to sell. It began taking paid-in-full preorders back in mid-2012, and thousands of customers opened their wallets for Bitcoin miners ranging from the small 5GH/s miner at $274 all the way up to the large 500Gh/s miner, which costs $22,484.

[polarhei]

There's no noob.

If you like to say noob, then study economics, the you are able to find out

[escrow.ms]

Whoa so a noob bought jalapeno and received it before others and on top of that he is senior business editor at Ars Technica.

What a noobie pasta.

[aigeezer]

I found the tone of the article to be absolutely revolting, even though it contained several useful snippets of information.

YMMV, of course.

Here's how he describes breaking a fan blade, and what he does about it:

"As I walked away, I heard the whirring of the BFL miner take on a decidedly angry tone. I approached it and knelt, thinking that the fan bearing might have started to go bad, because that's certainly what it sounded like. I tapped with one finger on the top of the device.

"RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR—WHOCK," it said, before going totally silent.

I pulled the power cord and disassembled the machine to take a peek. One of the fan blades had snapped off, catching itself in the aluminum fins of the heat sink.

Clearly, the BFL 5GH/s miner's mining days were done—and at an odd number of BTC mined, too.

I contacted Butterfly Labs and let them know that the fan had broken, and they immediately offered to send a replacement miner."

[Cyberdyne]

Let's think about that wording for a minute:

they immediately offered to send a replacement miner
vs
they offered to immediately send a replacement miner

Good luck!

[aigeezer]

Let's think about that wording for a minute:

they immediately offered to send a replacement miner
vs
they offered to immediately send a replacement miner

Good luck!

No. Read the piece. He got the new miner immediately. That may be even worse, of course, considering the wait queue at the time.

[kjlimo]

Let's think about that wording for a minute:

they immediately offered to send a replacement miner
vs
they offered to immediately send a replacement miner

Good luck!

No. Read the piece. He got the new miner immediately. That may be even worse, of course, considering the wait queue at the time.

I received the same treatment when one of my FPGA singles didn't work.  Sent it back and received replacement immediately.

Here's hoping my ASIC Single ships in the next week or two!