ASDFnz - Slashdot User

Submission + - Another bitcoin exchange in trouble (mineforeman.com)

Submitted by

ASDFnz

on Saturday December 22, 2012 @03:51AM

ASDFnz writes: "As early as last September there has been talk in the bitcoin community about concerns with BitMarket.eu. BitMarket was one of the very first exchanges in the European Union and began operating on February 25th, 2011, just under two years ago.

There have been a few issues with BitMarket account details being stolen (along with the bitcoins in those accounts) and yet other accounts being mysteriously frozen without explanation or response from support.

It now appears that those concerns were justified, in a thread on BitcoinTalk the user M4v3R who is the Owner/Operator of BitMarket made a post announcing "Right now there are 1786 BTC pending withdrawal, which I can't honor..."

M4v3R goes on to explain that he considers the problem with the 1786 BTC pending withdrawal (approximately $24,111 USD at today's rates) is his own fault and explains that the difficulties began when he decided to provide a hedge fund service using his previous trading experience and yet another bitcoin service, Bitcoinica.

When Bitcoinia went offline and subsequently into liquidation on August 1st, 2012 19,980 of BitMarket's clients bitcoins went with it. BitMarket did not decide to inform its users it seems.

M4v3R is asking for donations to be sent to 1Km5GFMat1DXcbvMTeH9ZvLGKvFCLBA9dM and is now looking for investors to bail BitMarket out."

Submission + - Ada 2012 Language Approved as Standard by ISO (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec on Friday December 21, 2012 @03:24PM

hypnosec writes: The Ada Resource Association (ARA) announced that the Ada 2012 programming language has been approved and published as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Announcing the development, ARA and Ada-Europe said that the new version brings with it the concept of contract-based programming, Concurrency and Multicore Support, Increased Expressiveness and Container Enhancements. Under the contract-based programming, developers will have the “ability to specify preconditions and postconditions for subprograms, and invariants for private (encapsulated) types.”

Submission + - World ending? Take your money with you using a Bitcoin Brainwallet! (mineforeman.com)

Submitted by

ASDFnz

on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @07:13PM

ASDFnz writes: "The end of the world is nigh! With traditional currencies there is a saying “you cannot take it with you” but believe it or not with Bitcoin you can.

It occurred to me that when the world ends in the upcoming apocalypse tomorrow on the 21st 2012 you can use a BrainWallet to take your fortune to [fill in your appropriate afterlife location] with you. Once there you can connect up to the local blockchain and you are ready to go, complete with your earthly wealth."

Submission + - Bitcoin ASIC Mining Hardware Roundup (mineforeman.com)

Submitted by

ASDFnz

on Sunday December 16, 2012 @08:42PM

ASDFnz writes: "With the recent press activity surrounding Bitcoin ASIC miners I thought it time for an article explaining what they were and what might soon to be available. I say might because as so far as I can tell even the supposed suppliers of these ASIC devices have not seen a single “retail ready” unit.

First, a word about ASIC. ASIC stands for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit. I realise that’s quite a mouthful to say and sounds quite exotic but they are more common than you might think, chances are that from where you are sitting you can touch two or three devices containing ASIC’s. In fact if you look under your right hand right now (or left if you are a lefty) your mouse almost certainly contains one or more.

ASCI’s are chips designed to do one thing and one thing only, but they do that particular task very well. When it come to talking about bitcoin up until now (or more precisely shortly from now) people have mined with general purpose processors designed to do other tasks such as the CPU and GPU in your computer, while they can mine for bitcoins that is not what they were designed to do. FPGA devices, or Field Programmable Gate Array devices have also been used to mine bitcoins and while they are far superior to CPU’s and GPU’s they are still general purpose devices that have had the bitcoin mining software “programmed” into them.

ASCI’s bitcoin miners on the other hand are built ground up and fully optimised to do those complicated SHA256 computations at rates that totally obsoletes any mining technology seen to date at a fraction of the running cost.

While the cost for each individual ASIC is also quite low, sometimes even measured in cents for large orders of hundreds of thousands of individual units the cost to design, prototype and manufacture a single ASIC is measured in the millions so while the cost to the manufacturer for an individual unit may be low they still need to recoup those millions"

Submission + - Butterfly Labs push back bitcoin ASIC delivery (Again) (mineforeman.com)

Submitted by

ASDFnz

on Wednesday December 12, 2012 @07:13PM

ASDFnz writes: "In a not totally unexpected move Butterfly Labs have pushed back the delivery date of their next generation ASIC bitcoin mining products. In a statement on the Butterfly Labs Forums dated the 10th of December BFL_Josh writes “After talking with our liaison tonight and still having not received a final confirmation date, we were as tired of this as everyone else is, so we continued to push for a date and they gave us 30 days from today”.

While he also says in the same statement “it may very well be that things will wrap up sooner than that” with receiving, repacking and outward shipping it seems that the 9th of January is going to be the very earliest anyone is going to have an ASIC device on their desk."

Submission + - Want to destroy bitcoin? I am going to tell you how. (mineforeman.com)

Submitted by

ASDFnz

on Sunday December 09, 2012 @08:08PM

ASDFnz writes: "For every person that advocates bitcoin it seem there is at least one person who will tell you that it is a colossal waste of electricity, effort and time as well as being some sort of scam. If you are one of those people, this article is for you.

There is a badly kept secret with bitcoin, it is vulnerable to attack. The attack itself is technically quite easy to execute and would result in the total paralysis of bitcoin. Properly executed you would be in control of the entire bitcoin network and you would be able to bring the entire thing to a screaming halt destroying bitcoin once and for all (or at least as long as you can keep the attack going)."

Submission + - Bitcoin Bank Defeats the Purpose of Bitcoin (vice.com)

Submitted by

Daniel_Stuckey

on Friday December 07, 2012 @03:35PM

Daniel_Stuckey writes: "Here's yet another sign that bitcoin is a legit currency: A new bank for bitcoin is up and running at Bitcoin-Central.net. With euro signs in its eyes, French bitcoin exchange Paymium says it plans to regulate and institutionalize the crypto-currency with Bitcoin Central, bringing along insurance standards guaranteed by the French version of FDIC. My eyebrow just hit the ceiling.

Regulating bitcoin? Banking it? Issuing bank cards? Gaining 'attractivity' from second and third-round investors? It's a classic sell-out story cruising along under some shield of financial nerdery. That bitcoin is money, and money is bitcoin, seems to have led these determined guys into the savagery of orthodox financial standards. In itself, the very idea of a centralized, compliant, investment-seizing bitcoin bank defies the earliest notions of the untraceable currency. Just have a look at some of Bitcoin Central's boasted advantages, as posted in an announcement:

Each user will soon be able to order its own debit card that will use their EUR and BTC balance to honor purchases and cash withdrawals
We'll have direct access to the banking networks which will let us 100% automate all incoming and outgoing transfers
Corporations will have an actual financial institution talking with them if they wish to start accepting Bitcoin and be safe from a regulatory point of view
Paymium will have a much better legal standing and a much higher attractivity for second and third-round investors
Let's go back in history to the original unveliing of bitcoin as we know it today. Here's the first sentence from the abstract that bitcoin's pseudonymous creator(s) Satoshi Nakamoto published: "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."

Like an eager child opening his Christmas presents without first reading the card from his aging grandparents, the guys at Bitcoin Central don't seem to give a shit about the founding principles of the P2P system in place."

Submission + - Bitcoin-Central Gets French Approval to Operate as a Bank (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec on Friday December 07, 2012 @03:17PM

hypnosec writes: Bitcoin is set to make an entry into the world of real currency and Bitcoin-Central is going to be the first exchange of this virtual currency that will operate as a real bank in France. The exchange managed to gain the status of a real bank after it received new approvals from French regulators. User will be able to make deposits in euros, convert them to Bitcoins and vice versa, and their accounts will be tied with the French banking system. They will also receive debit cards through which they will be able to spend Bitcoins at retail establishments. Bitcoin-Central along with France based payment processor Aqoba and bank Credit Mutuel has created the payment system based on Bitcoins. The deposits made by customers will be insured by Garantie des depots.

Submission + - Bitcoin-Central begins operating as a Bank (Sort of) (mineforeman.com)

Submitted by

ASDFnz

on Thursday December 06, 2012 @05:32PM

ASDFnz writes: "In an announcement on BitcoinTalk earlier today Bitcoin-Central reviled that they have partnered with Aqoba and Credit Mutuel to begin operations as Payments Service Provider (or a PSP). While not quite exactly the same as a bank a PSP falls under all the regulatory restrictions and requirements as a bank except they are not able to issue credit.

They will fall under the European Union regulatory body but they are open to international clients so no matter where you live you can now open the equivalent of a European bank account (assuming your government allows it).

If you look at the story on BitcoinTalk you will find quite a few advantages to this move but a short list of advantages to this are;-

* Non bitcoin Deposits stored in individual Credit Mutuel accounts.
* An IBAN Number will be issued within the next few months.
* Non bitcoin deposits 100% guaranteed by the French Government.
* You will soon be able to get a Debit Card issued.
* You will be able to use your BTC with your Bitcoin-Central Debit Card.

As with any new service there are downsides, the one that I can see most bitcoin users borking at is to take full advantage of the service you must positively identify yourself with a scan of a government-issued photographic identification document (Passport, National ID Card, Driver’s License etc..). While this is not an issue for most bitcoiners quite a few value their anonymity and it also opens a new avenue for Identity Theft.

It seems to me that Bitcoin-Central has just gained a step ahead of the other bitcoin exchanges."

Submission + - Cassini and MESSENGER to be Shutdown? (nasaspaceflight.com) 1

Submitted by

iONiUM

on Tuesday December 04, 2012 @06:17PM

iONiUM writes: "There's been a lot of rumours today (including twitter) that Cassini and MESSENGER projects will be shutdown due to the new budget, even though they are still functional. Since they are still operating, maybe someone else can start communicating with them, to at least continue to get data? Maybe even a private company could buy the rights?"

Submission + - Reddit bitcointip bot in Beta (mineforeman.com)

Submitted by

ASDFnz

on Tuesday December 04, 2012 @05:27PM

ASDFnz writes: "As the bitcoin Reddit users will tell us, Reddit has taken the plunge into the bitcoin world with its new feature, the bitcointip bot.

After last months post from Reddit CEO Yishan Wong saying that “So – no promises, but we’re looking into it.”. The expectation was that if anything was going to happen it would be months away, but no, it seems that they have had something cooking all along.

I wont go into the specifics of how to use the bitcointip bot, Reddit already has it well documented. I will say that this seems to be large step forward for the general acceptance of bitcoin. According to Alexa who track global internet traffic, Reddit is the 131st most visited website in the world and 66th in the US.

The idea is that you can use bitcointip bot to reward Reddit authors for comments and posts you particularly enjoy. While I cannot see anyone actually earning a living out of this (I have been wrong before though) it seems a nice way to give people the thumbs up."

Submission + - Bitcoin GPU Miners still going strong (mineforeman.com)

Submitted by

ASDFnz

on Sunday December 02, 2012 @07:43PM

ASDFnz writes: "One of the predictions that I posted might happen when the mining reward dropped from 50 BTC to 25 is that GPU Miners will get switched off because the price in electricity to run them would far outweigh the bitcoin reward they generate, I proposed that this would lead to a drop in the bitcoin network computation speed.

Well, I was wrong.

If you have a look at the graph provided by the great team over at http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ you will see that today, the 3rd of December 2012 a full 4 days after the reward drop the network computation speed is actually growing."

Submission + - Dissecting Bitcoin Block 210,000 (mineforeman.com)

Submitted by

ASDFnz

on Thursday November 29, 2012 @09:57PM

ASDFnz writes: "The chatter is a buzz in the bitcion community, the 210,000th bitcoin block has been mined, there are now 10,499,925 bitcoins and the reward miners receive from solving a block has dropped from 50 to 25 bitcoins. At precisely 2012-11-28 15:24:55 UTC a miner called Laughingbear submitted the successful hash to Slush’s mining pool (https://mining.bitcoin.cz).

This is a pivotal step for bitcoin but lets forget about economics or technical stuff for the moment, lets look at the actual block itself. For those that want to collect a bit of history you can download the block data here (http://mineforeman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/210000.txt). For those of you who cannot read JSON here a few facts about the block;-

* The Hash was 000000000000048b95347e83192f69cf0366076336c639f9b7228e9ba171342e.
* The Merkle root was 3cdd40a60823b1c7356d0987078e9426724c5b3ab439c2d80ad2bdd620e603d8.
* The Nonce was 4069828196.
* The Difficulty was 3,438,908.96.
* There are 10,499,925 bitcoins in circulation ($127,784,087.25 USD).
* There 1,049,992,500,000,000 satoshis (individual bitcoin units).
* The block was solved in 23 minutes and 2 seconds.
* A single high-end CPU (Intel Core i7 3930k) would have had a 50% chance to have solved the block in just over 7 years.
* There were 457 individual transactions contained in the block.
* The Mt.Gox average trade price for 1 BTC was $12.17 USD at the time.
* There were 25,421.70093021 BTC worth of transactions in the block ($313,000 USD).
* The Reward was 25 BTC ($300 USD).
* The transaction fees, also collected by the mining pool were 13.56295554 BTC ($160 USD).
* The 25 BTC were deposited into the address 1NEU779yvLaFk39k4Q3QdLjwpWTdWCbzqL.

Laughingbear, the miner who generated the new block later appeared on BitcoinTalk (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=128221.0) and posted;-

"I am very new to mining, and have been at it less than a week. This was the first block I have ever found. I decided to become involved in Bitcoins, because I feel that it could be the answer to all the evils of government controlled currency. This isn’t a “get rich quick scheme” for me. I believe that what we are doing can change the world. I am incredibly honored to be a part of Crypto-Currency history.

Thanks to Slush’s pool for letting me join, if any new miners are out there looking for a great pool https://mining.bitcoin.cz/

In case this post somehow goes down in history, I just want to say. [censored] The Federal Reserve System.

Donations gladly accepted at :
17wnLRDGD9xSzxBTte8poWJzqXqkzr7Q9G "

I am unsure that “[censored] The Federal Reserve System” will go down in history like other famous quotes such as ”That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” but you never know.

Note: BTC and USD are abbreviations for Bitcoin and United States Dollar respectively. The USD figures are approximate as at the time of generation.

Authors Note: I have no strong feelings about The Federal Reserve System either way."

Submission + - Stephen Hawking Claims 1st MIC Multiprocessor (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29, 2012 @05:40PM

An anonymous reader writes: Stephen Hawking--the British physicist and cosmologist--claims his "Big Brain" supercomputer is the world's first shared-memory supercomputer powered by Intel's many-integrated core (MIC) architecture. Called Cosmos, the SMP supercomputers houses 32 Xeon Phi coprocessors with 1,856 cores in a SGI UV-2000 "Big Brain" chassis taking up five racks. Cosmos will be used to discover new planets and to answer other big-picture cosmology questions by the Miracle Constorium, which was founded by Hawkings and includes members from the most prestigious universities in the U.K.

Submission + - php development (mindinventory.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29, 2012 @06:02AM

An anonymous reader writes: Outsource your PHP development requirement to Mindinventory professional PHP developers team today. More than 75 programmers available for dedicated work, fixed price or T&M model.

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