I do it often with no responses.  fc changed completely awhile back in terms of communication.  don't know the reason. very strange.

on bitmain: the U1, in my opinion is made in the same factory that the ASICMiner USB was made in.  Some of the tiny physical aspects/details of the U1 and ASICMiner USB are IDENTICAL.

If I had to guess, I think the simplest explanation for what's going is: fc and ASICMiner had some sort of a revolt occur and a split occurred.  it wouldn't surprise me one bit if this was true.  But this is just SPECULATION on my part.  nothing more nothing less.