[Archive] BFL trolling museum

[psilan]

Priority to high profile individuals is a joke. Not happy.

This was not in the terms of ordering.

Keep in mind that I will not release any order until I feel that we have enough orders to ship out to everyone in the first batch.  I don't want a few select individuals to end up with the ASIC days or weeks in advance of others.  We will release a few demo units to high profile individuals (not high profile miners necessarily) to check out if we are in the accumulation phase of assembled equipment.  

I don't see why this is unfair. I would happily have BFL send a unit to ckolivas or any other dev to guarantee that when the items do ship, we have software to use them!

Giga getting his TH units first cuz he's a long time customer? Unfair. Sending test units to devs before the release? Totally fair.

Devs have remote access to the devices. This can be said of anybody that BFL thinks should have these devices 'first'.
This is quite off putting.

[kano]

...

Devs have remote access to the devices. This can be said of anybody that BFL thinks should have these devices 'first'.
This is quite off putting.

I have yet to understand why ANYONE would think this to be in ANY way an advantage to devs to have ACCESS to these devices.

I do not see BFL in any nice standing at all with regards to this.

BFL: How can we get people to buy our hardware?
BFL: I know we'll make something that hashes fast.
BFL: Oh hang on we also need software for that.
BFL: I know! We can get the bitcoin miner devs to do that for free.
BFL: Then BFL is happy since people now have a reason to buy their hardware and BFL didn't have to pay anyone to make the software, without which no one would have any use for the BFL hardware ...

I own a BFL single, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna give them a >= 3 month free loan and effectively pay twice the price of a BFL single and get no help from them ... when I have asked about dev issues in the past with regards to the BFL single and they wouldn't answer.
(Apparently, how to upload their bitstream to the BFL is some major trade secret.
And they don't want anyone to know how to do that on linux)

... Yes I am one of the other cgminer devs ...

With Icarus, I was given one for helping with getting the code to work with it and I've been instrumental in having that code work optimally with the Icarus

I will also point out that the best Icarus gain that I did (minimising work lost during a longpoll) was also put into the BFL code ... at my badgering ... by ckolivas ... quite some time after I was considering doing it myself (after I did it for Icarus) but I didn't do it myself due to politics (that no longer exist) and the negative response I got from those 'politics' to doing it at the time

I'd actually like to hear from BFL why they think that someone like ngzhang can directly support the software development the way he has for Icarus yet BFL will not do that for their own hardware
Hell, ngzhang even gave Luke-jr an Icarus simply for being a dev in the vicinity of cgminer ...
As a dev, not having the hardware is a major stumbling block and in my case the FPGA windows binaries I release include only BFL and Icarus coz I have both pieces of hardware ...

I know for a fact that almost all of the other FPGA board developers have financially supported miner development ...

[ice_chill]

Yes, we will be filling them in order after that.  

Keep in mind that I will not release any order until I feel that we have enough orders to ship out to everyone in the first batch.  I don't want a few select individuals to end up with the ASIC days or weeks in advance of others.  We will release a few demo units to high profile individuals (not high profile miners necessarily) to check out if we are in the accumulation phase of assembled equipment.  

Yea since when do you use an ASIC dedicated to mining for not mining.

to check out if we are in the accumulation phase of assembled equipment.  

What on earth can this mean ? maybe another term like the 4-6 weeks, seriously you only been with them for a little while but are already talking crap like them.

[SgtSpike]

I agree on FIFO, but w/e.  I'm one of the first in line anyway (or should be), so it really makes no difference to me.  There were 300-400 orders placed in the first 24 hours, so my guess is, BFL won't even be shipping out the entire first day of orders when it starts.  Who knows though, maybe Josh can give a better idea.

We will release a few demo units to high profile individuals (not high profile miners necessarily) to check out if we are in the accumulation phase of assembled equipment.  

What's the point of this?  Reward the people that kiss your ass?  Either order numbers order or the original 1/3 process order, but don't just make up a new shipping order now.

You may want to call your state's FTC, the FTC in BFL's state(s) of registration, and the Federal FTC if you are in the USA.  They will act on shens such as this and levy fines or file criminal charges, if any apply.  At the least, it will send a bigger message than some forum posts and won't take much more effort.

Also, didn't they just hire a COO?  Preventing, handling, and resolving issues such as this exactly that person's job.  I'd fire the COO of any company where I had leverage who was so ineffective.  (Fortunately, I'm more careful with my hires.)

Reeses, meet the new COO:

The plan is still to do 1/3's on the shipping type.

I do want to mine the community here to flesh out my idea for this, though:

I want to use the block chain as the random number generator.  Something such as this:

After block X, every block's first Y bits will determine what order number gets their unit in the 1/3 random portion.  Obviously, this needs a little work to work out. So I am looking for ideas on how to implement this in a fool proof way that everyone will be satisfied with that we are not gaming the system or somehow twisting it to our own ends.

Keep in mind we will not be releasing any specifics on orders (such as name, order number, etc...) publicly, but only to the people who own those orders, if they choose to publish them here, that is their own business but we won't divulge private information or sales numbers.  So the plan needs to work from a blind standpoint.

So I'm looking for comments and ideas from the community that the community itself will be satisfied with and that is as transparent as possible without dipping into proprietary information.

[BitMinerN8]

While random could benefit me since i havent preordered yet, i would think based on order number would give you the best "transparency".  Those who were first in line to pay first should be first in line to receive -- however they would make a killing until difficulty adjusts and i understand your trying to split up the hashrate among as many people as possible...

I see where you are going with that. But then on that same line of thought BFL should only release all of the Jalapeno first, then all of the SC Singles, then the SC MiniRigs, you know... to keep it fair. 

That is like comparing a new Ferrari that is going to be built, they have taken pre-orders and then when they are close to it being done they tell all the purchasers, "We are going to randomize the release of this new model because it would be unfair for any of the individuals who had their money in the longest to soak up all the pussy and prestige". 

[DutchBrat]

While random could benefit me since i havent preordered yet, i would think based on order number would give you the best "transparency".  Those who were first in line to pay first should be first in line to receive -- however they would make a killing until difficulty adjusts and i understand your trying to split up the hashrate among as many people as possible...

I see where you are going with that. But then on that same line of thought BFL should only release all of the Jalapeno first, then all of the SC Singles, then the SC MiniRigs, you know... to keep it fair. 

That is like comparing a new Ferrari that is going to be built, they have taken pre-orders and then when they are close to it being done they tell all the purchasers, "We are going to randomize the release of this new model because it would be unfair for any of the individuals who had their money in the longest to soak up all the pussy and prestige". 

To be fair they have stated from the beginning that they were going to do the 1/3rd 1/3rd 1/3rd lottery style distribution for the orders of the 1st month

Do I agree with it ? NO

That's why I did not order !

[BFL_Josh]

Sorry guys, but you, as the community, decided on the 1/3 strategy. The majority of the folks that chimed in deemed it would be the best way to handle it and that's what we are going with.  It's not only coming up "just now."  It was decided on before we started taking orders.  It was what YOU chose and I find it incredibly unfortunate that there are people now complaining about it.  It is, quite literally, impossible to please everyone, I hope you realize that.

If you want the FIFO method, you should have ordered first and you would be in the 2/3's of the orders that are FIFO (depending on if you're upgrade or new order).  Simple as that.  If you failed to do that, if you waited or hemmed and hawed and someone got in ahead of you, then that's on you.  It was announced when we would be taking orders, the exact date and time, so it's not like it was a surprise, either. 

The details for the random, I am trying to solicit the community involvement on how to handle that so it's comfortable for the community.  If you want me to handle it internally, I will do that as well, but I wanted to make it a community project.  But you guys are dreaming if you think we are going to release proprietary sales figures just for the heck of it.  Seriously, what business does that?  The only ones are the publicly traded companies that are required by law - otherwise they would not be doing that either.

With regards to the high profile individuals, if we did NOT release them then you people who are complaining about releasing them would now be complaining about "BFL isn't releasing them because they don't live up to the specs!"  So again, it's impossible to please some people.  We think it is better to release a few units to some devs and media folks to vett and verify that the units exist and do what they are suppose to do, prior to us releasing them en mass to everyone.  If you folks that are complaining want to just take our word for it, then that's ok by us as well, but we certainly can't have you complaining that we are lying about the specs because we aren't showing a unit to anyone trustworthy.

Please excuse me for a bit while I hold on to my BFL hat very tightly to remind myself not to post what really should be posted in response to some of the complainers.

[P_Shep]

Please excuse me for a bit while I hold on to my BFL hat very tightly to remind myself not to post what really should be posted in response to some of the complainers.

A display of remarkable restraint

[imsaguy]

Sorry guys, but you, as the community, decided on the 1/3 strategy. The majority of the folks that chimed in deemed it would be the best way to handle it and that's what we are going with.  It's not only coming up "just now."  It was decided on before we started taking orders.  It was what YOU chose and I find it incredibly unfortunate that there are people now complaining about it.  It is, quite literally, impossible to please everyone, I hope you realize that.

If you want the FIFO method, you should have ordered first and you would be in the 2/3's of the orders that are FIFO (depending on if you're upgrade or new order).  Simple as that.  If you failed to do that, if you waited or hemmed and hawed and someone got in ahead of you, then that's on you.  It was announced when we would be taking orders, the exact date and time, so it's not like it was a surprise, either.  

The details for the random, I am trying to solicit the community involvement on how to handle that so it's comfortable for the community.  If you want me to handle it internally, I will do that as well, but I wanted to make it a community project.  But you guys are dreaming if you think we are going to release proprietary sales figures just for the heck of it.  Seriously, what business does that?  The only ones are the publicly traded companies that are required by law - otherwise they would not be doing that either.

With regards to the high profile individuals, if we did NOT release them then you people who are complaining about releasing them would now be complaining about "BFL isn't releasing them because they don't live up to the specs!"  So again, it's impossible to please some people.  We think it is better to release a few units to some devs and media folks to vett and verify that the units exist and do what they are suppose to do, prior to us releasing them en mass to everyone.  If you folks that are complaining want to just take our word for it, then that's ok by us as well, but we certainly can't have you complaining that we are lying about the specs because we aren't showing a unit to anyone trustworthy.

Please excuse me for a bit while I hold on to my BFL hat very tightly to remind myself not to post what really should be posted in response to some of the complainers.

Then have a media day and allow anyone that wants to visit the lab to see the units in action to do so.  Don't ship units out to hand chosen shills people so they can rape the difficulty all in the name of proving BFL isn't lying (again).

[BR0KK]

Or just pick out "proven" community members and invite them to the BFL lab....

Just give the community anything to trust in!


Not that "We have something that can hash very fast and we are taking money for preorder now...... aww u want proof .... go to hell or trust us ....radiosilence ...." crap  BFL is doing right now?


Why not showing us (the community) some details about the new Product, like you did with the FPGA singles?

[c_k]

You guys at BFL are doing a great job, the FPGA miners you were doing we're obviously using old chips that had sporadic supply and the design wasn't perfect.

Now you're taking the next step and releasing an ASIC product that is what has been viewed as the holy grail.

I am glad Inaba is there to help communicate with us better than has happened in the past.

Keep up the good work and we all look forward to your releasing these things I'm a timely manner given you are manufacturing them from scratch instead.

The only question that really matters to us that aren't jumping om the childish nay-sayer bandwagon: How quickly do you hope to ship all 4000-5000 orders so far?

[SgtSpike]

Sorry guys, but you, as the community, decided on the 1/3 strategy. The majority of the folks that chimed in deemed it would be the best way to handle it and that's what we are going with.  It's not only coming up "just now."  It was decided on before we started taking orders.  It was what YOU chose and I find it incredibly unfortunate that there are people now complaining about it.  It is, quite literally, impossible to please everyone, I hope you realize that.

If you want the FIFO method, you should have ordered first and you would be in the 2/3's of the orders that are FIFO (depending on if you're upgrade or new order).  Simple as that.  If you failed to do that, if you waited or hemmed and hawed and someone got in ahead of you, then that's on you.  It was announced when we would be taking orders, the exact date and time, so it's not like it was a surprise, either. 

The details for the random, I am trying to solicit the community involvement on how to handle that so it's comfortable for the community.  If you want me to handle it internally, I will do that as well, but I wanted to make it a community project.  But you guys are dreaming if you think we are going to release proprietary sales figures just for the heck of it.  Seriously, what business does that?  The only ones are the publicly traded companies that are required by law - otherwise they would not be doing that either.

With regards to the high profile individuals, if we did NOT release them then you people who are complaining about releasing them would now be complaining about "BFL isn't releasing them because they don't live up to the specs!"  So again, it's impossible to please some people.  We think it is better to release a few units to some devs and media folks to vett and verify that the units exist and do what they are suppose to do, prior to us releasing them en mass to everyone.  If you folks that are complaining want to just take our word for it, then that's ok by us as well, but we certainly can't have you complaining that we are lying about the specs because we aren't showing a unit to anyone trustworthy.

Please excuse me for a bit while I hold on to my BFL hat very tightly to remind myself not to post what really should be posted in response to some of the complainers.

I am confused as to why you NEED to have people vett and verify that the units exist and do what they are supposed to do?  Why not just let the first shipment tell everyone that?  Do you expect a huge wait time between the time when you have a handful of units that you could ship out to high profile individuals vs when the first large shipment will go out?  Personally, I don't think you need to prove anything.  Your FPGA singles have already proven that you can produce a good mining product.

Let the skeptics be skeptics until the first large shipments go out.  Remember that when you shipped the "test" FPGA's out, plenty of people were still skeptical and said that those individuals were in cahoots with BFL, etc etc.  I don't think you'll get many more people to trust you by sending out units to special people - most people who would trust BFL after seeing a few ASICs out in the wild already trust BFL after seeing the previous-gen Singles.  Just my opinion - certainly, feel free to do what you want.

[crazyates]

I am confused as to why you NEED to have people vett and verify that the units exist and do what they are supposed to do?  Why not just let the first shipment tell everyone that?  Do you expect a huge wait time between the time when you have a handful of units that you could ship out to high profile individuals vs when the first large shipment will go out?  Personally, I don't think you need to prove anything.  Your FPGA singles have already proven that you can produce a good mining product.

Let the skeptics be skeptics until the first large shipments go out.  Remember that when you shipped the "test" FPGA's out, plenty of people were still skeptical and said that those individuals were in cahoots with BFL, etc etc.  I don't think you'll get many more people to trust you by sending out units to special people - most people who would trust BFL after seeing a few ASICs out in the wild already trust BFL after seeing the previous-gen Singles.  Just my opinion - certainly, feel free to do what you want.

The difference is that this time around, they aren't trying to prove the legitimacy of the company. They're trying to prove the claimed specs of their new product.

[imsaguy]

I am confused as to why you NEED to have people vett and verify that the units exist and do what they are supposed to do?  Why not just let the first shipment tell everyone that?  Do you expect a huge wait time between the time when you have a handful of units that you could ship out to high profile individuals vs when the first large shipment will go out?  Personally, I don't think you need to prove anything.  Your FPGA singles have already proven that you can produce a good mining product.

Let the skeptics be skeptics until the first large shipments go out.  Remember that when you shipped the "test" FPGA's out, plenty of people were still skeptical and said that those individuals were in cahoots with BFL, etc etc.  I don't think you'll get many more people to trust you by sending out units to special people - most people who would trust BFL after seeing a few ASICs out in the wild already trust BFL after seeing the previous-gen Singles.  Just my opinion - certainly, feel free to do what you want.

The difference is that this time around, they aren't trying to prove the legitimacy of the company. They're trying to prove the claimed specs of their new product.

If they've sold as much as they claim to, then they don't need to convince anyone because people have already voted with their bitcoins. Right?

[SgtSpike]

I am confused as to why you NEED to have people vett and verify that the units exist and do what they are supposed to do?  Why not just let the first shipment tell everyone that?  Do you expect a huge wait time between the time when you have a handful of units that you could ship out to high profile individuals vs when the first large shipment will go out?  Personally, I don't think you need to prove anything.  Your FPGA singles have already proven that you can produce a good mining product.

Let the skeptics be skeptics until the first large shipments go out.  Remember that when you shipped the "test" FPGA's out, plenty of people were still skeptical and said that those individuals were in cahoots with BFL, etc etc.  I don't think you'll get many more people to trust you by sending out units to special people - most people who would trust BFL after seeing a few ASICs out in the wild already trust BFL after seeing the previous-gen Singles.  Just my opinion - certainly, feel free to do what you want.

The difference is that this time around, they aren't trying to prove the legitimacy of the company. They're trying to prove the claimed specs of their new product.

If they've sold as much as they claim to, then they don't need to convince anyone because people have already voted with their bitcoins. Right?

That's exactly my contention as well.  As long as they have a backlog of product, they don't need to prove anything to anyone.  Focus on shipping out the backlog, THEN work on convincing the skeptics (which they won't need to at that point, since the shipment of the backlog would have proven everything they can prove).

[Unacceptable]

Sorry guys, but you, as the community, decided on the 1/3 strategy. The majority of the folks that chimed in deemed it would be the best way to handle it and that's what we are going with.  It's not only coming up "just now."  It was decided on before we started taking orders.  It was what YOU chose and I find it incredibly unfortunate that there are people now complaining about it.  It is, quite literally, impossible to please everyone, I hope you realize that.

If you want the FIFO method, you should have ordered first and you would be in the 2/3's of the orders that are FIFO (depending on if you're upgrade or new order).  Simple as that.  If you failed to do that, if you waited or hemmed and hawed and someone got in ahead of you, then that's on you.  It was announced when we would be taking orders, the exact date and time, so it's not like it was a surprise, either. 

The details for the random, I am trying to solicit the community involvement on how to handle that so it's comfortable for the community.  If you want me to handle it internally, I will do that as well, but I wanted to make it a community project.  But you guys are dreaming if you think we are going to release proprietary sales figures just for the heck of it.  Seriously, what business does that?  The only ones are the publicly traded companies that are required by law - otherwise they would not be doing that either.

With regards to the high profile individuals, if we did NOT release them then you people who are complaining about releasing them would now be complaining about "BFL isn't releasing them because they don't live up to the specs!"  So again, it's impossible to please some people.  We think it is better to release a few units to some devs and media folks to vett and verify that the units exist and do what they are suppose to do, prior to us releasing them en mass to everyone.  If you folks that are complaining want to just take our word for it, then that's ok by us as well, but we certainly can't have you complaining that we are lying about the specs because we aren't showing a unit to anyone trustworthy.

Please excuse me for a bit while I hold on to my BFL hat very tightly to remind myself not to post what really should be posted in response to some of the complainers.

Whew,I thought you were trying to switch ALL orders to "random generated" orders 

Thanks for clearing that up Josh 

Now,get that Ninja Lady busy & get those ASIC's out 

[psilan]

Why wasn't this information in the ordering process?

Some obscure forum post, not even an official forum for Bfl decides I might miss out on maximum profitability.
And now, behind the scenes it is decided that 'special' people get to kill the Bitcoin difficulty while I wait!

I ordered ignoring all this anti Bfl Bullshit. Now I feel like i have been conned.

[fcmatt]

it is all about the money!

[crazyates]

Why wasn't this information in the ordering process?

Some obscure forum post, not even an official forum for Bfl decides I might miss out on maximum profitability.
And now, behind the scenes it is decided that 'special' people get to kill the Bitcoin difficulty while I wait!

I ordered ignoring all this anti Bfl Bullshit. Now I feel like i have been conned.

So you were happy as long as you thought there was a chance you could get your rig before (or at the same time as) everybody else, and mine the shit out of it before the difficulty went up. Now you're afraid that's not going to happen, and you're not happy, and you're blaming BFL.

Well sorry, but that's the way it rolls. I would love to get my Single on the first day of shipments, but there are 2000 orders before me cuz I didn't have the funds on day 1.

You are still getting the same product that you ordered, no matter whether it ships on day 1 or not. Sure it would be more profitable if you got yours first, but thats impossible to do for everyone.

[psilan]

Why wasn't this information in the ordering process?

Some obscure forum post, not even an official forum for Bfl decides I might miss out on maximum profitability.
And now, behind the scenes it is decided that 'special' people get to kill the Bitcoin difficulty while I wait!

I ordered ignoring all this anti Bfl Bullshit. Now I feel like i have been conned.

So you were happy as long as you thought there was a chance you could get your rig before (or at the same time as) everybody else, and mine the shit out of it before the difficulty went up. Now you're afraid that's not going to happen, and you're not happy, and you're blaming BFL.

Well sorry, but that's the way it rolls. I would love to get my Single on the first day of shipments, but there are 2000 orders before me cuz I didn't have the funds on day 1.

You are still getting the same product that you ordered, no matter whether it ships on day 1 or not. Sure it would be more profitable if you got yours first, but thats impossible to do for everyone.

So i should subsidise people that couldn't afford to order at the start?

Yes, I ordered asap to get in early. That is the way Bitcoin mining works. Early adopters get rewarded.
I even paid them more than the cost of the items to make sure my wire went through.

If you had the money earlier and ordered wouldn't you agree?