And some more delays in BFL shipment plans / no shipment before 14th Jan 2013

[SgtSpike]

Syke, that's because, at the time, they WERE close to shipping.  
Until the chips came in wrong, and they had to redo them,
and now they're stuck waiting on the foundry to make the changes.

You're completely pulling this out of your ass, am I right? Ten bucks says I'm right.

What does "the chips came in wrong" even mean?

You believe they had actual chips, but were "unsatisfied with performance" and trashed them?

That was Nasser's late November spin on the situation IIRC.

Then the latest story: "The fucking foundry, man... Made our chips all wrong so that we have to redesign them."

And let's not forget, they were "close to shipping" in October.

Lol, that picture makes me laugh every time I see it.

I am simply speculating here, yes.  Based on everything I have read coming from BFL over the past months, I believe they received chips in late October or early November (shortly before they posted the pictures with the chips attached to them), and they didn't work properly (or performed so sub-par as to require a revision).  They're doing the clock buffer revision (and who knows what else they are revising and not admitting to), and now waiting on the fab for the new chips.

I really wish they would be more open about their happenings, but it is what it is.  I could be completely wrong, this is just my guessing based on what I have read between the lines in their statements.  I truly do not believe they have intentionally misled, only that they have made estimates that turned out to be wrong.  They were fully intending to ship in late October, provided everything went right.

Syke, that's because, at the time, they WERE close to shipping.  Until the chips came in wrong, and they had to redo them, and now they're stuck waiting on the foundry to make the changes.

Without working chips, they were never close to shipping.

They sure thought they were though, and every post prior to late October indicates their confidence in this fact.  Once they realized their first batch of chips were bad, they then revised to the date they thought their foundary would be able to ship out a new batch.  And that part keeps taking longer and longer.

[1715113339]

1715113339

[1715113339]

1715113339

[MPOE-PR]

Seeing as how BFL customers have been very insistent on the products not being tested, so they can get them sooner, BFL should just send out the units no matter what. Who cares if they don't work, it's what the customers wanted.

This will go down in history as a case study of what it means to have a company run by idiots.

Basically what the CEO muppet (Vleisides, Nick the Nameless, whoever) + board muppets over at BFL did was, they took equity from "customers" --because call it what you will, a few millions paid 6 months before there's a product do not constitute any sort of orders, pre or otherwise. They constitute equity investment.

This was a horrible idea, because the deal was horribly structured. For one, the equity investors received nominally no equity, just some bizarre sort of implicit redeemable notes paying no interest. For the other, they were in no way selected. And so fifty or a hundred random Dicks and Janes picked off one of the most accomplished cesspools of human stupidity on the whole Internet --this very forum--  ended up with nigh-on a controlling interest, which nominally controls nothing. Worst possible deal, some people who have no actual interest in the continuation of the company and no actual anything of value to contribute to its success.

Because that deal was so poorly structured, at the first sign of trouble the company finds itself in the position of being forced to do the most stupid thing possible. I mean, sometimes inept corporate owners will force an engineering company with a chance into the ground. It happens in VC land all the goddamned time. But never before, at least never before as far as any of us here at MPEx ever heard, was it the case that a company found itself forced to do an ASIC run without tests because that's what nonshareholding investors voted on.

It's beyond boggling. This is why you need real CEOs doing real CEO stuff for you, people. This is why it's not the case that any random schmuck can be a CEO. Citizen dentists, citizen bankers and citizen CEOs do not work.

[Syke]

Without working chips, they were never close to shipping.

They sure thought they were though, and every post prior to late October indicates their confidence in this fact.  Once they realized their first batch of chips were bad, they then revised to the date they thought their foundary would be able to ship out a new batch.  And that part keeps taking longer and longer.

That's what they want you to think. They know they can string you along with ship dates that are just around the corner.

Early Oct: "We'll ship this month."
Late Oct: "We'll have chips and ship next month."
Nov: "We'll have chips and ship next month."
Dec: "We'll have chips and ship next month."

[MrTeal]

Seeing as how BFL customers have been very insistent on the products not being tested, so they can get them sooner, BFL should just send out the units no matter what. Who cares if they don't work, it's what the customers wanted.

This will go down in history as a case study of what it means to have a company run by idiots.

Basically what the CEO muppet (Vleisides, Nick the Nameless, whoever) + board muppets over at BFL did was, they took equity from "customers" --because call it what you will, a few millions paid 6 months before there's a product do not constitute any sort of orders, pre or otherwise. They constitute equity investment.

This was a horrible idea, because the deal was horribly structured. For one, the equity investors received nominally no equity, just some bizarre sort of implicit redeemable notes paying no interest. For the other, they were in no way selected. And so fifty or a hundred random Dicks and Janes picked off one of the most accomplished cesspools of human stupidity on the whole Internet --this very forum--  ended up with nigh-on a controlling interest, which nominally controls nothing. Worst possible deal, some people who have no actual interest in the continuation of the company and no actual anything of value to contribute to its success.

Because that deal was so poorly structured, at the first sign of trouble the company finds itself in the position of being forced to do the most stupid thing possible. I mean, sometimes inept corporate owners will force an engineering company with a chance into the ground. It happens in VC land all the goddamned time. But never before, at least never before as far as any of us here at MPEx ever heard, was it the case that a company found itself forced to do an ASIC run without tests because that's what nonshareholding investors voted on.

It's beyond boggling. This is why you need real CEOs doing real CEO stuff for you, people. This is why it's not the case that any random schmuck can be a CEO. Citizen dentists, citizen bankers and citizen CEOs do not work.

I can't really speak to what greyhawk was implying with any authority, but I read his comment to be referring not to BFL not doing a test wafer first, but to the insistence of some customers on the BFL forums that they don't want their units burn-in tested or tested at all, so that they can be shipped out 6-24 hours earlier. If you want stupidity on a scale of 1-10, those few are pulling a page out of Spinal Tap's playbook.

[MPOE-PR]

I can't really speak to what greyhawk was implying with any authority, but I read his comment to be referring not to BFL not doing a test wafer first, but to the insistence of some customers on the BFL forums that they don't want their units burn-in tested or tested at all, so that they can be shipped out 6-24 hours earlier. If you want stupidity on a scale of 1-10, those few are pulling a page out of Spinal Tap's playbook.

Indubitably.

[repentance]

Based on everything I have read coming from BFL over the past months, I believe they received chips in late October or early November (shortly before they posted the pictures with the chips attached to them), and they didn't work properly (or performed so sub-par as to require a revision).  They're doing the clock buffer revision (and who knows what else they are revising and not admitting to), and now waiting on the fab for the new chips.

Based on what they've posted, they've never received a batch of ASIC chips, bad or otherwise.  Josh is the only one who implied that they had and Nasser quickly corrected Josh's statement.

Producing custom chips requires foundry scheduling and forces us into the queue with other chip developers (from all industries). The design is complete. It’s just a matter of waiting for production and delivery.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/content/127-bfl-asic-delays-depth-expanation.html

The design is complete.  Period.  That is where things are at.  They do not yet know when the production run of their chips will happen, only that BFL should be able to take delivery of them in January (after which other things still need to happen before they can be assembled into mining rigs).  Nasser and Dave's statements imply that Josh was not fully aware of where the process was actually up to before and was simply assuming that the fab had fucked up in some way.  As Josh's role in the production cycle doesn't begin until it's time for the chips to be sliced and packaged, it's easy to see that he mightn't have been kept up to date on every little thing which has been going on up until now and has been making statements based on assumptions he's drawn from what information was available to him rather than hard facts.

[SgtSpike]

Based on everything I have read coming from BFL over the past months, I believe they received chips in late October or early November (shortly before they posted the pictures with the chips attached to them), and they didn't work properly (or performed so sub-par as to require a revision).  They're doing the clock buffer revision (and who knows what else they are revising and not admitting to), and now waiting on the fab for the new chips.

Based on what they've posted, they've never received a batch of ASIC chips, bad or otherwise.  Josh is the only one who implied that they had and Nasser quickly corrected Josh's statement.

Producing custom chips requires foundry scheduling and forces us into the queue with other chip developers (from all industries). The design is complete. It’s just a matter of waiting for production and delivery.

https://forums.butterflylabs.com/content/127-bfl-asic-delays-depth-expanation.html

The design is complete.  Period.  That is where things are at.  They do not yet know when the production run of their chips will happen, only that BFL should be able to take delivery of them in January (after which other things still need to happen before they can be assembled into mining rigs).  Nasser and Dave's statements imply that Josh was not fully aware of where the process was actually up to before and was simply assuming that the fab had fucked up in some way.  As Josh's role in the production cycle doesn't begin until it's time for the chips to be sliced and packaged, it's easy to see that he mightn't have been kept up to date on every little thing which has been going on up until now and has been making statements based on assumptions he's drawn from what information was available to him rather than hard facts.

You know, I think this is a fair assessment and conclusion as well.  I will have to take it under consideration.

[DutchBrat]

As Josh's role in the production cycle doesn't begin until it's time for the chips to be sliced and packaged, it's easy to see that he mightn't have been kept up to date on every little thing which has been going on up until now and has been making statements based on assumptions he's drawn from what information was available to him rather than hard facts.

Seeing as Josh's role is Public Relations / Investor Relations and not head of slicing and packaging I find it hard to believe that he was left out of the loop on that one. Seems in his role at BFL he should be made aware of all those pesky little details....

[repentance]

Seeing as Josh's role is Public Relations / Investor Relations and not head of slicing and packaging I find it hard to believe that he was left out of the loop on that one. Seems in his role at BFL he should be made aware of all those pesky little details....

According to Josh, he'll be personally over-seeing the slicing and packaging which I would call a significant role.

Generally speaking, you don't keep PR updated on every little detail of a project because it's just not necessary for them to be filling in customers on every tiny detail of the production process and doing so can be extremely counter-productive.  This isn't a time-critical project in the conventional meaning of the phrase.  End users were treating it like one and demanding information because so many of them had foolishly counted on ASICs being available before the reward halving. 

The company made a rod for its own back by announcing unrealistic timelines in an attempt to dominate the ASIC pre-order market.  Once it started giving explanations (real or fabricated) for date slips, end users then felt entitled to constant updates and BFL got locked into the "just a little further" game.  While it could certainly be argued that customer retention is part of PR's role and that reassurance that their needs will be met soon is one aspect of that, PR often creates illusions with smoke and mirrors and they often don't need hard facts to do that.

[Inaba]

As Josh's role in the production cycle doesn't begin until it's time for the chips to be sliced and packaged, it's easy to see that he mightn't have been kept up to date on every little thing which has been going on up until now and has been making statements based on assumptions he's drawn from what information was available to him rather than hard facts.

Seeing as Josh's role is Public Relations / Investor Relations and not head of slicing and packaging I find it hard to believe that he was left out of the loop on that one. Seems in his role at BFL he should be made aware of all those pesky little details....

Hey, where'd you hear that?  Why wasn't I informed of this?  Argh!

PS - My job is not PR or investor relations, which is why I don't coddle idiots like Frizz and PuertoLibre when they display their stupidity over and over.  If I were the PR guy, I'd have to tell them warm fuzzies and make them feel good about themselves.  Thankfully, my job is much different and it involves firing "customers" like Frizz et al because they cost far more than they generate in revenue and we do not want them as customers.  Ever.

[Third Way]

Let's just accept the fact that the day these things ship, if they ever do, that the mining difficulty will have already made mining, no very profitable.

[repentance]

Let's just accept the fact that the day these things ship, if they ever do, that the mining difficulty will have already made mining, no very profitable.

This is kind of self-adjusting, though.  If people abandon mining because it's not profitable, difficulty will drop and the remaining miners will get a bigger share of the pie.  Also, people tend to forget about transaction fees.  If mining is not profitable then those maintaining the network can use fees to keep their participation in the network worthwhile - after all, Bitcoin is planned so that more income will be produced by fees than by mining over time and that switch needs to happen progressively to keep the network stable.

[Third Way]

How can I profit from maintaining the network?

[bitboyben]

How can I profit from maintaining the network?

By mining

[Third Way]

How can I profit from maintaining the network?

By mining

I was thinking more about what was said about " more income will be produced by fees than by mining ".

Who profits from transaction fees? And how do I get in on it?

[Phinnaeus Gage]

As Josh's role in the production cycle doesn't begin until it's time for the chips to be sliced and packaged, it's easy to see that he mightn't have been kept up to date on every little thing which has been going on up until now and has been making statements based on assumptions he's drawn from what information was available to him rather than hard facts.

Seeing as Josh's role is Public Relations / Investor Relations and not head of slicing and packaging I find it hard to believe that he was left out of the loop on that one. Seems in his role at BFL he should be made aware of all those pesky little details....

Hey, where'd you hear that?  Why wasn't I informed of this?  Argh!

PS - My job is not PR or investor relations, which is why I don't coddle idiots like Frizz and PuertoLibre when they display their stupidity over and over.  If I were the PR guy, I'd have to tell them warm fuzzies and make them feel good about themselves.  Thankfully, my job is much different and it involves firing "customers" like Frizz et al because they cost far more than they generate in revenue and we do not want them as customers.  Ever.

I may be reading it wrong, but... (in 15pt bold toward bottom)

First, let me start off by saying I apologize for the length of this post.  I wanted to get all the information out there at once.  Normally, I would not make a post of this nature, but given the current circumstances, I think it is warranted.

Many of you on bitcointalk.org forums know me as “Inaba,” the operator of the Eclipse Mining Consortium bitcoin pool.  In approximately two weeks I will also be wearing a different hat.  As you may be able to guess from my new forum name, I will be working with and for BFL.  Effective August 13, 2012 I have accepted the position of Chief Operating Officer of BF Labs INC. (Butterfly Labs)

BFL is the clear technical leader in the FPGA and upcoming ASIC mining space.  As a direct result, the company has grown very quickly over the past year.  Unfortunately, its customer service, which was initially very good, did not scale fast enough, which caused customer relations and transparency to suffer. BFL is eager to improve and one of my top responsibilities in this new position is to focus on that specific issue.  I am, have always been and will always be committed to good customer service and transparency when it comes to bitcoin in general and the daily operations of related activities.  This is where I will be focusing much of my initial attention, specifically to take the pressure off of everyone involved so that they can focus on the other important factors, such as getting the hardware delivered on time!

While I may not be universally liked by everyone in this community, I believe I at least have the respect of many people. I have always stood behind my integrity and commitment to what I promise and I take ownership of my mistakes.  This will not change going forward and I will give my best level of effort to deliver on the promises I make to this community as a representative of BFL, as I always have.  If for some reason I am unable to deliver on those promises, I will provide an explanation as to why.

While there may come a day when bitcoin does not need the Bitcointalk community, that day is still far in the future.  As I have cultivated a relationship with this community through EMC, I also plan on cultivating a rewarding relationship with the community through BFL.  There is some history and baggage to overcome, but I do not believe it is insurmountable.  I also will not be part of or lend my credibility to an organization I do not believe in or one that I believe is working to undermine bitcoin at the expense of the community just to make a quick buck.

To forestall some of the most likely questions, I’m going to answer them here:

Q. Have you been working for BFL all along?
A. No. I have had no business relations with BFL beyond being a customer and also providing some technical assistance getting their equipment to properly talk to pools.

Q. Seriously.  You’ve been working with BFL from the start, you can admit it, haven’t you?
A. Seriously, no!  I first discovered BFL at the same time as everyone else, back around November of 2011.  It was purely coincidental that I happened to work, literally, across the street from their registered address of operations.  I was just as skeptical as everyone else, especially when I discovered the registered address appeared to be a Lebanese restaurant that I frequent (but never really paid attention to the address).  I learned more about BFL along with everyone else and since I was local and close by, I reached out on behalf of the Bitcointalk community to BFL, specifically Sonny, to see if I could gather more information.  I had been running the EMC pool since May/June of 2011 and had no knowledge of, or association with BFL or any of the parties involved in BFL up until it was first noticed on these forums.

Q. Are you going to stop being such a jerk on the forums to some people?
A. Maybe.  It depends. Actually, yes.  As a pool operator and an independent individual I have far more latitude and freedom to express my displeasure with some of the more intense stupidity that can be encountered on the internet.  As a representative of a company, I am, unfortunately, a bit more constrained from explaining to various people exactly why they are idiots.  As such, I will likely be ignoring a lot of the more of the ludicrous posts than I have before. To those of you who enjoyed reading my rants, I am sorry that they will be far fewer and betweener.

Q. What are your qualifications in the endeavor?  What do you bring to the table?
A. I’m glad you asked.  From a customer service perspective, and more specifically, from an online community perspective, I have extensive experience on both sides of the fence.  I have run online forums since the Fidonet days, and have extensive experience in the often caustic, emotionally driven environment that an online forum can produce.  This allows me to effectively communicate with the population, since I am one of the populous myself.  Unlike many customer facing people in many industries, I also have a strong technical background; I am able to communicate effectively with you about your problems, wishes and desires from a technical perspective.  I will not make empty promises from a marketing standpoint if I know it’s technically unreasonable or impossible.  I am also able to effectively manage a project from end to end, which will be critical in getting our manufacturing and production lines going in the most efficient manner possible.  I have also run a number of startups, and I understand the unique challenges required of a startup to function properly and successfully.

Q. Come on, for real, you’ve been with BFL all along, right?
A.  No!  Really!  I have been working for an unrelated company that has nothing to do with bitcoin long before BFL was founded or I knew of any of the people involved, and I am still working for that company, until the day I start working for BFL.

Q. What will happen to EMC?
A. Right now, there are no plans to change anything with regards to EMC, other than more improvements as usual.  I will continue to operate EMC as I have since the start.

Q. You are going to have an unfair advantage when it comes to mining equipment, you’ll be able to get as much as you want before anyone else!
 A. I will not be expanding my mining footprint as it would be a conflict of interest.  I will continue with my current obligations and already acquired/paid for equipment but will not be purchasing or utilizing additional equipment as part of my mining operations.  This is one of the hardest changes I will be making, as I firmly believe there are plenty of opportunities in this space that I am going to be missing out on, but I believe I can do more good for the bitcoin community as a whole working to provide that equipment to people as opposed to using it myself.

Q. Why now?  Why not before?
A. The topic never really came up.  BFL as a corporate entity is a startup and has been running very lean and mean.  With wild success and absolutely spectacular outlook for products, it’s time to move to the next stage of business.  With my diverse skill set, I can replace both a technical lead and a PR/community lead, thereby eliminating the need for an additional person, which means we can move that much quicker in the market as well as have that much less overhead that can go towards development instead of human resources.

Q. Are you going to become just another mouthpiece for the BFL party line?
A. First of all, there is no “party line” coming out of BFL.  They have been up front and honest with their dealings in the community from day one.  There are a number of people on the forums that feel that BFL has been dishonest and some of those feelings are justified if viewed through the lens of “Every business should be perfect, always.”  However, both Sonny and the engineers, contrary to some statements you may have seen from others on the forum, have been honest in their assessments of capabilities and timelines.  They have been mistaken, yes, but they have not been willfully or intentionally dishonest.  Some can say they should have known better, and whether or not that is true is, at this point, academic.  I am looking at the future, not the past, and I will be doing my level best to provide accurate information from day one.  If there is some information that I believe to be inaccurate, a lie, or just plain wrong, I will not pass it off as fact.  I will not tow any “party line.”  I will give you the honest facts as I know them.  There may be times that there are trade secrets that I cannot reveal, but I do not believe this constitutes falsehood or anything nefarious, as there are times where revealing certain bits of information would put BFL at a competitive disadvantage.  That will harm not only BFL, but also its current and future customers.  If there are still people that, going forward, feel that this is somehow dishonest, then I apologize in advance and I also give advance notice that there will, in fact, be times where 100% of information cannot be disclosed, either immediately or possibly ever.

Q. Help me!  Order Status?  Why is the sky blue?
A. I will not be able to answer your questions with regards to order status, etc… via PMs.  The PM system does not allow me to track or correlate information to provide accurate answers.  I will, however, be able to do that via email and our new support system that I will be facilitating in the near future.  PMs requesting information that should be directed to the support system will be ignored.  I apologize for this, but it’s just not feasible to handle the volume of requests that it would generate.

Q. Are there cookies?
A. Yes, there will be cookies.  The cake, however, is still a lie.

[creativex]

How can I profit from maintaining the network?

By mining

I was thinking more about what was said about " more income will be produced by fees than by mining ".

Who profits from transaction fees? And how do I get in on it?

BY MINING

[smoothie]

OH REALLY?

As Josh's role in the production cycle doesn't begin until it's time for the chips to be sliced and packaged, it's easy to see that he mightn't have been kept up to date on every little thing which has been going on up until now and has been making statements based on assumptions he's drawn from what information was available to him rather than hard facts.

Seeing as Josh's role is Public Relations / Investor Relations and not head of slicing and packaging I find it hard to believe that he was left out of the loop on that one. Seems in his role at BFL he should be made aware of all those pesky little details....

Hey, where'd you hear that?  Why wasn't I informed of this?  Argh!

PS - My job is not PR or investor relations, which is why I don't coddle idiots like Frizz and PuertoLibre when they display their stupidity over and over.  If I were the PR guy, I'd have to tell them warm fuzzies and make them feel good about themselves.  Thankfully, my job is much different and it involves firing "customers" like Frizz et al because they cost far more than they generate in revenue and we do not want them as customers.  Ever.

I may be reading it wrong, but... (in 15pt bold toward bottom)

First, let me start off by saying I apologize for the length of this post.  I wanted to get all the information out there at once.  Normally, I would not make a post of this nature, but given the current circumstances, I think it is warranted.

Many of you on bitcointalk.org forums know me as “Inaba,” the operator of the Eclipse Mining Consortium bitcoin pool.  In approximately two weeks I will also be wearing a different hat.  As you may be able to guess from my new forum name, I will be working with and for BFL.  Effective August 13, 2012 I have accepted the position of Chief Operating Officer of BF Labs INC. (Butterfly Labs)

BFL is the clear technical leader in the FPGA and upcoming ASIC mining space.  As a direct result, the company has grown very quickly over the past year.  Unfortunately, its customer service, which was initially very good, did not scale fast enough, which caused customer relations and transparency to suffer. BFL is eager to improve and one of my top responsibilities in this new position is to focus on that specific issue.  I am, have always been and will always be committed to good customer service and transparency when it comes to bitcoin in general and the daily operations of related activities.  This is where I will be focusing much of my initial attention, specifically to take the pressure off of everyone involved so that they can focus on the other important factors, such as getting the hardware delivered on time!

While I may not be universally liked by everyone in this community, I believe I at least have the respect of many people. I have always stood behind my integrity and commitment to what I promise and I take ownership of my mistakes.  This will not change going forward and I will give my best level of effort to deliver on the promises I make to this community as a representative of BFL, as I always have.  If for some reason I am unable to deliver on those promises, I will provide an explanation as to why.

While there may come a day when bitcoin does not need the Bitcointalk community, that day is still far in the future.  As I have cultivated a relationship with this community through EMC, I also plan on cultivating a rewarding relationship with the community through BFL.  There is some history and baggage to overcome, but I do not believe it is insurmountable.  I also will not be part of or lend my credibility to an organization I do not believe in or one that I believe is working to undermine bitcoin at the expense of the community just to make a quick buck.

To forestall some of the most likely questions, I’m going to answer them here:

Q. Have you been working for BFL all along?
A. No. I have had no business relations with BFL beyond being a customer and also providing some technical assistance getting their equipment to properly talk to pools.

Q. Seriously.  You’ve been working with BFL from the start, you can admit it, haven’t you?
A. Seriously, no!  I first discovered BFL at the same time as everyone else, back around November of 2011.  It was purely coincidental that I happened to work, literally, across the street from their registered address of operations.  I was just as skeptical as everyone else, especially when I discovered the registered address appeared to be a Lebanese restaurant that I frequent (but never really paid attention to the address).  I learned more about BFL along with everyone else and since I was local and close by, I reached out on behalf of the Bitcointalk community to BFL, specifically Sonny, to see if I could gather more information.  I had been running the EMC pool since May/June of 2011 and had no knowledge of, or association with BFL or any of the parties involved in BFL up until it was first noticed on these forums.

Q. Are you going to stop being such a jerk on the forums to some people?
A. Maybe.  It depends. Actually, yes.  As a pool operator and an independent individual I have far more latitude and freedom to express my displeasure with some of the more intense stupidity that can be encountered on the internet.  As a representative of a company, I am, unfortunately, a bit more constrained from explaining to various people exactly why they are idiots.  As such, I will likely be ignoring a lot of the more of the ludicrous posts than I have before. To those of you who enjoyed reading my rants, I am sorry that they will be far fewer and betweener.

Q. What are your qualifications in the endeavor?  What do you bring to the table?
A. I’m glad you asked.  From a customer service perspective, and more specifically, from an online community perspective, I have extensive experience on both sides of the fence.  I have run online forums since the Fidonet days, and have extensive experience in the often caustic, emotionally driven environment that an online forum can produce.  This allows me to effectively communicate with the population, since I am one of the populous myself.  Unlike many customer facing people in many industries, I also have a strong technical background; I am able to communicate effectively with you about your problems, wishes and desires from a technical perspective.  I will not make empty promises from a marketing standpoint if I know it’s technically unreasonable or impossible.  I am also able to effectively manage a project from end to end, which will be critical in getting our manufacturing and production lines going in the most efficient manner possible.  I have also run a number of startups, and I understand the unique challenges required of a startup to function properly and successfully.

Q. Come on, for real, you’ve been with BFL all along, right?
A.  No!  Really!  I have been working for an unrelated company that has nothing to do with bitcoin long before BFL was founded or I knew of any of the people involved, and I am still working for that company, until the day I start working for BFL.

Q. What will happen to EMC?
A. Right now, there are no plans to change anything with regards to EMC, other than more improvements as usual.  I will continue to operate EMC as I have since the start.

Q. You are going to have an unfair advantage when it comes to mining equipment, you’ll be able to get as much as you want before anyone else!
 A. I will not be expanding my mining footprint as it would be a conflict of interest.  I will continue with my current obligations and already acquired/paid for equipment but will not be purchasing or utilizing additional equipment as part of my mining operations.  This is one of the hardest changes I will be making, as I firmly believe there are plenty of opportunities in this space that I am going to be missing out on, but I believe I can do more good for the bitcoin community as a whole working to provide that equipment to people as opposed to using it myself.

Q. Why now?  Why not before?
A. The topic never really came up.  BFL as a corporate entity is a startup and has been running very lean and mean.  With wild success and absolutely spectacular outlook for products, it’s time to move to the next stage of business.  With my diverse skill set, I can replace both a technical lead and a PR/community lead, thereby eliminating the need for an additional person, which means we can move that much quicker in the market as well as have that much less overhead that can go towards development instead of human resources.

Q. Are you going to become just another mouthpiece for the BFL party line?
A. First of all, there is no “party line” coming out of BFL.  They have been up front and honest with their dealings in the community from day one.  There are a number of people on the forums that feel that BFL has been dishonest and some of those feelings are justified if viewed through the lens of “Every business should be perfect, always.”  However, both Sonny and the engineers, contrary to some statements you may have seen from others on the forum, have been honest in their assessments of capabilities and timelines.  They have been mistaken, yes, but they have not been willfully or intentionally dishonest.  Some can say they should have known better, and whether or not that is true is, at this point, academic.  I am looking at the future, not the past, and I will be doing my level best to provide accurate information from day one.  If there is some information that I believe to be inaccurate, a lie, or just plain wrong, I will not pass it off as fact.  I will not tow any “party line.”  I will give you the honest facts as I know them.  There may be times that there are trade secrets that I cannot reveal, but I do not believe this constitutes falsehood or anything nefarious, as there are times where revealing certain bits of information would put BFL at a competitive disadvantage.  That will harm not only BFL, but also its current and future customers.  If there are still people that, going forward, feel that this is somehow dishonest, then I apologize in advance and I also give advance notice that there will, in fact, be times where 100% of information cannot be disclosed, either immediately or possibly ever.

Q. Help me!  Order Status?  Why is the sky blue?
A. I will not be able to answer your questions with regards to order status, etc… via PMs.  The PM system does not allow me to track or correlate information to provide accurate answers.  I will, however, be able to do that via email and our new support system that I will be facilitating in the near future.  PMs requesting information that should be directed to the support system will be ignored.  I apologize for this, but it’s just not feasible to handle the volume of requests that it would generate.

Q. Are there cookies?
A. Yes, there will be cookies.  The cake, however, is still a lie.

[elux]

Seeing as Josh's role is Public Relations / Investor Relations and not head of slicing and packaging I find it hard to believe that he was left out of the loop on that one. Seems in his role at BFL he should be made aware of all those pesky little details....

PS - My job is not PR or investor relations, which is why I don't coddle idiots like Frizz and PuertoLibre when they display their stupidity over and over.  If I were the PR guy, I'd have to tell them warm fuzzies and make them feel good about themselves.  Thankfully, my job is much different and it involves firing "customers" like Frizz et al because they cost far more than they generate in revenue and we do not want them as customers.  Ever.

That does make sense. If you don't intend to deliver, ever.  

Since gullibility is unobservable, the best strategy is
to get those who possess this quality to self-identify. An
email with tales of fabulous amounts of money and West
African corruption will strike all but the most gullible
as bizarre. It will be recognized and ignored by anyone
who has been using the Internet long enough to have
seen it several times. It will be figured out by anyone
savvy enough to use a search engine and follow up on
the auto-complete suggestions such as shown in Figure
8. It won’t be pursued by anyone who consults sensible
family or fiends, or who reads any of the advice banks
and money transfer agencies make available. Those who
remain are the scammers ideal targets. They represent
a tiny subset of the overall population. In the language
of our analysis the density of viable victims, d, is very
low: perhaps 1-in-10,000 or 1-in-100,00 or fewer will fall
for this scam.

As we’ve seen, in Section 3.3, at low victim densi-
ties the attack/don’t attack decisions must be extremely
conservative. If only 0.00001% of the population is vi-
able then mistakenly attacking even a small portion of
the 99.999% of the population that is non-viable de-
stroys profit. The initial email is effectively the at-
tacker’s classifier: it determines who responds, and thus
who the scammer attacks (i.e., enters into email con-
versation with). The goal of the email is not so much
to attract viable users as to repel the non-viable ones,
who greatly outnumber them. Failure to repel all but a
tiny fraction of non-viable users will make the scheme
unprofitable. The mirth which the fabulous tales of
Nigerian scam emails provoke suggests that it is mostly
successful in this regard. A less outlandish wording that
did not mention Nigeria would almost certainly gather
more total responses and more viable responses, but
would yield lower overall profit. Recall, that viability
requires that the scammer actually extract money from
the victim: those who are fooled for a while, but then
figure it out, or who balk at the last hurdle are precisely
the expensive false positives that the scammer must deter.
In choosing a wording to dissuade all but the likeliest
prospects the scammer reveals a great sensitivity
to false positives.
...
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/?id=167719
http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/167719/WhyFromNigeria.pdf

[Bitinvestor]

Thanks for that, elux. Now it makes perfect sense why they act in the way they do.