BTW, I can't help but notice that this whole "home/hobby miner" and the "small business miner" industry reminds of of the earlier days of Internet providers. Back in 1999 I became interested in Bulletin Board Systems (AOL being the largest commercial one at the time) and there were lots a small BBS systems that guys were running out of their homes and making a few bucks. So I bought some equipment and software and started my own local BBS with local content, etc. it quickly became clear that I had to offer Internet access too. So I brought in a fractional T1 from a whole Internet provider and a fiber optic line from Verizon, started selling unlimited internet for $14.95 month. This was before cable modems, satellite,etc. I was using 28.8 modems and the new "fast" 56kb modems cam out, so I upgraded my equipment and kept going. I built the business to about 200 customers and was starting to turn a small monthly profit, but illness in the family forced me to shut everything down (sent my customers to another local provider - didn't even have time to sell). well in retrospect, there is no way I could stayed in business anyway, because once cable and other high speed internet came along, all the small guys went out of business - they just couldn't compete with the big guys.

This is what I'm seeing in btc mining. Big guys with millions of $$ are squeezing out the small guys. Who can compete with the likes of a BitFury data center? I hope I'm wrong, because the small guys are what keep the network healthy and widely distributed.

I apolgize if this is off topic or wrong forum for this discussion, but I just wanted to share that experience with the group.

Ok, back to cracking that stubborn block!