bitcoin is not the problem.



web security is the problem.

sony got hacked
cia got hacked
pbs got hacked
mtgox got hacked


It's evident that no site is hacker proof.

[Edited on June 21, 2011 at 4:02 AM. Reason : .]

6/21/2011 4:01:33 AM

just as long as they don't steal my fucking cloudsong

6/21/2011 6:21:03 AM

so.. who decides what the magic block is?

6/21/2011 8:20:01 AM

for page 2

first understand that a hash function takes some input and outputs a seemingly random number. if you change any part of the input, the output is completely different. the whole point is to make it practically impossible to figure out what the input was based on the output (when a website stores your password, it stores a hash output... you don't want anyone being able to figure out from that what your password actually is). for example, the following is what you get when using md5:

aaaaaaaa -> 3dbe00a167653a1aaee01d93e77e730e
aaaaaaab -> 2125ea8b81bc0ab7a16e47ca82c06735

Quote :

"Any new transactions (people exchanging bitcoin) need to be confirmed by the network. All these new, unconfirmed transactions are grouped together in a "block." Then we generate a block header, which is a combination of 1) a summary of block info and 2) a number we choose (called a nonce). Here's a bit more technical explanation of the header: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm Solving the problem would mean that we hash the block header and end up with a sufficiently low number (less than the current "difficulty"). For example, say our hashing function took the block header and the output produced is (for all practical purposes) a random number out of 1,000,000. If the difficulty is set to 10, we need to find an input to the hashing function such that the output is less than or equal to 10. Obviously, you'd only have a 1 in 100,000 chance of doing this on each try. And the network can and does change that difficulty at any time blocks are being solved too fast. The only way to change the output is to change the nonce. All we do is just iterate through all possible nonce values and hash until we hit gold."

6/21/2011 8:45:11 AM

finally got my money into dwolla. damn that took a long time. mtgox is still foobar.... not sure how I'm going to buy in

6/22/2011 5:38:48 PM

I thought the idea was to get money out of this system. Are you buying in on the idea of it being an actual currency? I'm just wanting to get my money back, then get some free gear in the process.

6/22/2011 9:45:12 PM

see people try to get in so they can ride the next Bitcoin bubble

then they try to get out before it bursts

of course most such speculators are suckers

6/23/2011 1:46:18 AM

I get free trades for a month wooooooot

6/23/2011 3:39:35 AM

Quote :

"I thought the idea was to get money out of this system. Are you buying in on the idea of it being an actual currency? I'm just wanting to get my money back, then get some free gear in the process."

Please explain to me why "the idea was to get money out of this system." Everyone claiming the "demise of bitcoin" doesn't have a fucking clue what actually happened. If you see a failing in bitcoin that no one has mentioned, go ahead and enlighten us.

6/23/2011 8:32:00 AM

^no, I haven't found any glaring problems. I just think that it's still inherently higher risk than, say, the stock market.

In fact I'm about to drop $600 into my first mining node. I believe there's money to be made here.

However, I'm putting my money into equipment. If I put $600 in a new computer and there is a major breach in the currency (other than some stupid website getting hacked) I can just flip all that stuff on Craigslist or keep it for a personal computer. If you convert your cash to currency and it goes to pot you've got nothing. In a way it's exactly the same as converting some cash to Euros because you think their currency is going to increase relative to the dollar, but there's a central bank and several member governments there as filters to make sure at worst you'll break even. Bitcoin lacks all the filters (borrowing power of the supporting governments) to regulate it's value.

6/23/2011 12:27:25 PM

i lolled

6/25/2011 12:19:03 PM

Wow, dumbasses are actually trying to generate these things

6/25/2011 1:26:49 PM

and?

6/25/2011 2:22:42 PM

the moment of zen

6/26/2011 12:08:51 PM

Quote :

"In fact I'm about to drop $600 into my first mining node."

lol...

6/26/2011 5:05:51 PM

this is nuts







this is insane






the value is going UP

6/26/2011 5:29:34 PM

price != value

6/26/2011 7:57:33 PM

What he said wasn't wrong.

6/26/2011 8:35:37 PM

I'm confused why spending $600 on a computer is all of the sudden. If it makes you feel better it's going to be a network render node for Vegas and Blender3D. And it's going to be in the back room at work where it will get free power, free cooling, and I can VPN into any time and use it for personal tasks.

6/26/2011 9:03:42 PM

nice little rally going on

6/26/2011 11:06:33 PM

Only made $5.7240 today

6/27/2011 4:32:52 AM

Quote :

"all of the sudden"

also all that power isn't free

you are stealing it

6/27/2011 7:06:53 AM

^no I'm not stealing power. As I mentioned it's a render node for Vegas at work. We make like 50-60 short movies per day. We already have I think 6 or 7 other nodes that run all day for the same task. Plus our power is included in our rent, so the boss doesn't care. He's getting a free render node for the ~6 hours of crunch time we when we need an extra machine and I'm getting free power for the other 18 hours to bitcoin

6/27/2011 8:14:11 AM

does "the boss" pay the utilities

or does the buck stop elsewhere as far as theft of corporate resources goes

6/27/2011 8:38:55 AM

^"the boss" is the owner, not just some supervisor. The rent on our facility covers our power as well. There is no theft...

blah blah blah "theft from the landlord" is probably up next. But we're talking about an insignificant increase. My best guess is somewhere around .25% based on how many machines we have crunching 24x7 anyway.

6/27/2011 8:49:57 AM

of course

it's only a crime past a certain threshold

6/27/2011 9:01:35 AM

i don't disagree with frosh in theory, but it makes me lol to hear him talk of ethics

6/27/2011 9:08:14 AM

I'm still failing to see why this is a problem.

Quote :

"The endgame is that hopefully once or twice per month we can have the office out to lunch for free (since the office is supplying the power and cooling for the rig). "

That was on the first page... Once we recoup our investment we just want a free office lunch once/month or something. Everyone benefits and ideally we're out no cash.

If I had 16 computers in the back room with 4x graphics cards in them sucking down 18 kilowatts I could see it. But we're talking about a single machine with 2 graphics cards just trying to get free lunch.

You could still say we're getting lunch via the expense of the landlords power; but that's a stupid argument. That's like saying you've never browsed TWW or Facebook at work pissing away their (albeit minute) resources. Or that you've never used a company cell phone to look up something on eBay. Or used a company pen to sign a personal check. This whole "semantics" stuff is utter BS.



[Edited on June 27, 2011 at 9:44 AM. Reason : certain threshold, pfft]

6/27/2011 9:39:06 AM

Quote :

"Once we recoup our investment"

6/27/2011 10:49:20 AM

6/27/2011 11:13:15 AM

question:

I need a GPU in the $150-200ish range for mining. Would prefer something not on backorder. Got any recommendations from this list? I believe the 5830/5850 was what I was looking at last, but they are backordered as shit.

I too pay no electricity costs.

http://bitminer.info/

6/27/2011 11:17:52 AM

will pay 25% of retail for any unopened/in box cards and 10% of retail for any cards used in bitcoining.

6/27/2011 11:31:06 AM

LOL we're burning 132736 Teraflops/s based on numbers from bitcoin watch. Supercomputer to nowhere.

6/27/2011 12:09:23 PM

I have an ATI 4850 card made by Sapphire. If I want to get another for my second PCI-E slot, are there any issues or will any 4850 card do for crossfire purposes?

6/27/2011 12:31:33 PM

bitcoin is the beanie babies of our time.

6/27/2011 1:13:42 PM

Quote :

"will pay 25% of retail for any unopened/in box cards and 10% of retail for any cards used in bitcoining."

Quote :

"I need a GPU in the $150-200ish range for mining. Would prefer something not on backorder. Got any recommendations from this list? I believe the 5830/5850 was what I was looking at last, but they are backordered as shit."

at 220Mhash/s for $140, the 6790 is a pretty good deal. that's the one I just bought and they are currently in stock.

if you could run 2 6750s you'd be over 300Mhash/s for only $210. if you're not paying for power, that's probably your best best.

Quote :

"bitcoin is the beanie babies of our time."

The only difference being that bean babies actually have value. AMIRITE? HURHURHUR

[Edited on June 27, 2011 at 1:49 PM. Reason : d]

6/27/2011 1:45:35 PM

Quote :

"I need a GPU in the $150-200ish range for mining. "

As long as you don't mind used, there are alot of 5830-5870 on ebay right now. Apparently the Mt.Gox hack scared the little guys into selling hardware thinking the bottom would drop out when Mt.Gox opened up today.

6/27/2011 2:23:51 PM

Quote :

"It's evident that no site is hacker proof."

no one is getting in my secured network without coming on campus... and i haven't even had any breeches from people with machine access.

what's evident is that lots of "admins" don't think shit all the way through... they don't think like hackers -- and they also use the same passwords everywhere and fail to change default passwords on their hardware appliances and database applications.

lulzsec did some neat stuff, but they did it using the oldest tricks in the book

6/28/2011 9:43:46 AM

You never know what you never know.

6/28/2011 12:10:36 PM

When you say "It's evident that no site is hacker proof," what you seem to be implying is that those sites that were hacked were high profile and therefore must have top notch security. And so if the sites with top notch security were hacked, all sites are equally at risk.

In fact, a lot of these hacks are ridiculously simple to prevent against.

It's like having your house broken into and concluding that the burglar is equally adept at breaking into bank vaults.

6/28/2011 12:46:39 PM

If there was such a thing as hacker-proof code, I'm 100% sure hackers wouldn't exist.
Since hackers do exist, I'm 100% sure there is no such thing as hacker-proof code.

Therefore, danger is imminent at all times no matter how secure you may think you are.


Simple logic. Nothing special.

6/28/2011 9:09:33 PM

Quote :

"If there was such a thing as hacker-proof code, I'm 100% sure hackers wouldn't exist."

I hope this is sarcasm. If condoms were 100% reliable, do you think unwanted pregnancies would be nonexistent?

6/28/2011 9:31:02 PM

Quote :

"If condoms were 100% reliable, do you think unwanted pregnancies would be nonexistent?"

for everyone that used a condom, yes.

6/28/2011 11:09:15 PM

^wrong, because error on the part of the user determines whether it's effective or not.

Same with code. Most enterprise CODE is hacker-proof. But the people that use it aren't. You can create a secure system if you eliminate human interaction with it. But then it wouldn't be a very useful system.

6/29/2011 12:44:49 AM

Quote :

"Most enterprise CODE is hacker-proof."

That's ignorant.

6/29/2011 12:51:13 AM

You don't have any idea what you're talking about.

6/29/2011 5:02:49 AM

pizza store hacker, lol

6/29/2011 9:22:56 AM

Quote :

"Same with code. Most enterprise CODE is hacker-proof. But the people that use it aren't. You can create a secure system if you eliminate human interaction with it. But then it wouldn't be a very useful system."

This is just nuance though. Guns are entirely non-lethal when there are no people to point them at, right?

6/29/2011 10:42:58 AM

some bitcoins in a sock could be considered a deadly weapon.

6/29/2011 3:22:57 PM

Quote :

"Noen TWW Power User 29605 Posts user info edit post You don't have any idea what you're talking about. "

Quote :

" Username : GeniuSxBoY Major : Computer Science"

Quote :

"Username : Noen Major : Industrial Design"

[Edited on June 29, 2011 at 10:53 PM. Reason : .]

6/29/2011 10:52:28 PM