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Showing 20 of 20 results by forests
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Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: bitcoind crashed
by
forests
on 27/11/2013, 20:42:30 UTC
Sounds like you're running out of RAM.
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Topic
Board Project Development
Re: Lottery guy bets entire BTC fortune and ... loses? :)
by
forests
on 18/06/2011, 03:06:02 UTC
Don't worry: I can't
I don't know who plays or who wins. Only if the person announces they won do I know. So far one person has remained anonymous while the other created a new account to announce their win so I don't really know who they are either. If you win it's up to you.

No, I know you can't. I hope the following clears up what I meant.


I think too, as more people win who announce they won, people will slowly trust me more.

Well with all the hackings and malware going around if I won I wouldn't publicly announce it.

Announce what?

Announce that I won the lottery.
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Board Project Development
Re: Lottery guy bets entire BTC fortune and ... loses? :)
by
forests
on 18/06/2011, 02:40:46 UTC
I think you mis understand. The BTC was in the BitLotto wallet. I just send one payment. It did all the moving of coins. It doesn't combine the coins before moving to the next person. It happens all the time when sending BTC. I say to it send 100 it then sends 100 but looking in blockexplorer it sent 1 but 100 times. It's ok, doesn't really change anything.

Announce what?


Yeah, I meant I was just noting that I didn't know you couldn't just transfer in one transaction.

Announce that I won the lottery.
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Board Project Development
Re: Lottery guy bets entire BTC fortune and ... loses? :)
by
forests
on 18/06/2011, 02:02:24 UTC
Had to look it up to make sure I'm using English right:
digit - The digits of the decimal number system are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, and those in the hexadecimal number system are those in the decimal system along with A, B, C, D, E and F.
Letters count. Ultimately I'm looking to find the transaction hash that matches the beginning the best.
Although you're sourcing that from a wiki dictionary and not a word authority like Merriam-Webster, I agree. Just be aware that your usage of digit in your details page is a bit vague if you don't specify the hexadecimal numbering system.


That's the bitcoin software that does that not me. Since I was paid in 1 BTC amounts when I paid the winner it just moved them. When they spend coins though it will probably be combined now.

I don't think I'd change the 1% fee. I know it's very tiny! I know, I barely afford the hosting for the lottery. BUT, hopefully because it's such a good deal for everyone BitLotto will grow based off of customer satisfaction not by advertising. I hope. I think too, as more people win who announce they won, people will slowly trust me more. As the trust grows, hopefully the jackpot will too. I want people who like to play the lottery to have the best experience possible where they KNOW they got their BTC worth and got exactly what they paid for. I want BitLotto to be the place that people go to play the lottery.

That's odd, I didn't know you couldn't just transfer whatever balance you had.  Well with all the hackings and malware going around if I won I wouldn't publicly announce it.  Looks like you're running the most popular lottery, I don't think anyone is even close to $1,200 USD in payouts.
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Board Project Development
Re: Lottery guy bets entire BTC fortune and ... loses? :)
by
forests
on 18/06/2011, 01:31:20 UTC
That was the old method - it was too confusing and still could me manipulated with expensive super computers.

"ec" is just part of the hash. Each payment will have a hash 1-9 and a-f. All mixed up. The draw hash is compared to transaction hashes to find the winner. The hash can not be predicted or controlled since mega millions numbers are added after all the payments are in.

Ah alright, just I misinterpreted "digit" as a traditional 0-9 number, not as a hexadecimal digit.
I see you transfer the payment via 1 bitcoin transactions, that's an odd way to do it.

1% is a really small operator's fee, it might be wise to take a bit more to invest in advertising and to put some coins as the jackpot minimum at the start of every round.
both would benefit the players after all
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Topic
Board Project Development
Re: Lottery guy bets entire BTC fortune and ... loses? :)
by
forests
on 18/06/2011, 00:52:19 UTC
Did you read: http://bitlotto.com/details.html ?
It's all there and always has been. Otherwise I could change how I pick the winner! I did change/tweak the method a few times before BUT EVERY TIME it was done well in advance of the draw and announced so I couldn't cheat.

Sorry about that, don't know how I missed that page.

Quote
Jackpot size: 134.6 BTC (1,200 USD)
Secret Hash: 589db849967abfb35c85c9dd5db89ea0f814603acf9430b768474f5fc057962a
Block1: 127866 Block 2: 127867
Winning picks: ec88c8e216
Winner: 1FYLEjcJo9BiTEMet7GLpqbFJpTbnwhWWy
Winning hash: ec913c96b4315e4639539a5a58a3d8f9cb409b0cabe18597f3c3dd3c8788096

I'm not sure I'm clear on the formula yet.  What exactly does the secret hash mean?  I don't see a reference to it on the details page.
Did the winning picks come from the secret hash? or did you hash block1 & block2 together?
If the only relevant part of the winning picks are the digits, why does "ec" win? Those aren't digits.


cheers
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Topic
Board Project Development
Re: Lottery guy bets entire BTC fortune and ... loses? :)
by
forests
on 17/06/2011, 23:17:04 UTC
This is an interest debate. I've read through Bitlotto's website and statements in this topic, and I've found a way he could cheat.

The algorithm he uses to compare the sha-256 hash of the block hash and the mega ball number, against the transaction hash.  I haven't seen any place where he's disclosed this algorithm.

So as of now he could be cheating.  This is easy enough to fix though, by just disclosing the process so anyone can replicate it.
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Topic
Board Project Development
Re: New BitCoin Project?
by
forests
on 16/06/2011, 18:30:54 UTC
I'm working on a new Windows & OS X miner.  The goal is to provide a user friendly miner for people new to bitcoin, that can be installed and run on either platform without a problem. I'd appreciate some help, it's not an easy project.
Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: the three doors problem, increasing the chance of finding the right hash
by
forests
on 15/06/2011, 23:41:46 UTC
Most times I ran it the monty hall implementation ran with the lowest average tries, but when the purely random method won it would usually win by a larger margin than the monty hall problem.

Good, run it a few more hundred thousand times and then run a chi-square analysis.

I think you will find that they are not significantly different in terms of how often they find the hash.



thanks, that's an excellent suggestion.  seeing how we're dealing with random numbers and the doors aren't guaranteed to have prizes I don't really doubt that statistically this method is completely unsound.  However I didn't know about chi-square tests and I've got other ideas I'd like to map out using this method.
Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: the three doors problem, increasing the chance of finding the right hash
by
forests
on 15/06/2011, 21:59:07 UTC
Indeed, this doesn't work. The "host" needs to know which door to open that doesn't have the right thing. The extra odds comes from the information the host gives you. If miners just discard blocks at random, it does nothing to help your odd.

To show you the truth of this, imagine that the host doesn't know anything about where the car is. You pick a door, he opens one, then you switch. 33% of the time you'll have picked the right door to start, 33% of the time, the host will open the right door (ending the game early) and 33% of the time you will switch and find the right door. As you can see, your odds didn't go up by switching doors.

When the host picks the right door at the start you win. No more need to switch.

When the host picks the wrong door, then what exactly is the situational difference between this and the monty hall problem? In both cases you've gotten one wrong door open, and two doors closed. That gives you 2/3 of a chance if you switch.

I wrote a C implementation, source here http://pastebin.com/PN2k6HZP

Basically it makes a hash from a random number between 0-99,999, then the number is found via two methods, each run 99 times.
The first method is an implementation of the monty hall problem.
The second method is purely random.  Neither ever tests the same number twice.

example output
Quote
results for hashes randomly found with doors
found behind door 1: 46
found behind door 2: 53
average number of tries: 48972.77

results for hashes randomly
average number of tries: 52223.12

Most times I ran it the monty hall implementation ran with the lowest average tries, but when the purely random method won it would usually win by a larger margin than the monty hall problem.
Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
the three doors problem, increasing the chance of finding the right hash
by
forests
on 15/06/2011, 18:34:02 UTC
Many of you may be familiar with the three doors problem, aka the Monty Hall problem. (info on wikipedia).

Basically it states that you have three doors presented to you, one which holds a car behind it.  You pick one giving you 1/3 of a chance of having the right answer, but then you're presented what's behind one of the doors you didn't pick, and it's not the car. If you switch your pick, your chances of being right increases to 2/3, instead of your original chance of 1/3.

Here's the results of a simulation
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Monty_problem_monte_carlo.svg/583px-Monty_problem_monte_carlo.svg.png

So what if we give miners the monty hall problem? We could increase the chances of finding the right hash by a nice margin.

So in a pool you could effectively have it so 90% of miners ditch 1/3 of the hashes that need to be tested, and 10% of the miners work on the ditched ones.
Post
Topic
Board Mining software (miners)
Re: flash based bitcoin miner?
by
forests
on 15/06/2011, 00:34:02 UTC
I've written a quick proof of concept in actionscript, and it turned out to be slower than javascript. Much slower, almost a factor of 10.
And I don't see how one could do calculations on the GPU with flash.

so how many hashes/sec can you get with the actionscript?
Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Radeon 5970 cards Priced in BTC
by
forests
on 14/06/2011, 07:57:27 UTC
I wonder if a manufacturer in India could be convinced to start making 5970's again...

looks like the chinese manufacturers don't need much convincing http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/453448294/AMD_ATI_Radeon_HD_5970_D5.html

they're selling $35-$120/unit, with a supply ability of 8,000 a week
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Topic
Board Mining software (miners)
Re: flash based bitcoin miner?
by
forests
on 13/06/2011, 08:38:46 UTC
I've been working on this.  I'm very familiar with Actionscript 3, and ABC - Actionscript ByteCode, having written a decompiler & flash injector.
However I'm getting familiar with the bitcoin protocol and code right now, so no ETA for the moment.
Post
Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: Rig Being Assembled
by
forests
on 13/06/2011, 03:49:26 UTC
Are you using this rig solely for mining?  I ask because high amounts of RAM are completely unnecessary for mining.
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Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: Porsche 911 turbo for BTC's any takers?
by
forests
on 13/06/2011, 03:44:57 UTC
8700 btc seem fair.

That's quite a large and risky investment.  Why not invest in mining hardware? You'd get your bitcoins, and keep profiting.
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Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: Does anyone know of a way to convert PayPal USD to BTC?
by
forests
on 13/06/2011, 03:41:23 UTC
You can buy Linden (Second Life currency) with Paypal, and then convert Linden to BTC-
Heard it is quite quick too but there are some limits to the amounts-

https://www.virwox.com/

Would love to hear the results if you go that route;


Wow, I thought paypal didn't allow USD->BTC transactions because it was alternative currency... but linden is fine?
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Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: Increased BTC Demand Next Week
by
forests
on 13/06/2011, 03:21:49 UTC
Speculation like this is likely to drive the market up.  While it may seem good to be getting all this press, the negative attention from US senators and the labeling of bitcoins as a hacker's currency by the guardian makes bitcoins seem like something illegal.  The public doesn't understand the concept, and with the cryptography aspects it's likely to never understand it.  I think what we'll continue to see will be biased and uninformed reports, including fear mongering about the illicit drug trade, money laundering, and about a potential pyramid scheme.
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Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: Is this a scam?
by
forests
on 13/06/2011, 03:16:23 UTC
if you are interested in the technical side, watch this video. It explains it. Also I can assure, this is not a scam. If it were a scam then the hundreds of business and trading sites that formed around it would have never started. Likewise, the source code is openly available and can be verified by everyone. If this were a scam, then someone would have noticed in the code and made a big deal about it. That has never happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTOhti7wxXk

well that's interesting, but they should re-do the video with actual voice overs instead of robots
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Topic
Board Beginners & Help
Re: How many newbies are mining?
by
forests
on 13/06/2011, 03:12:22 UTC
thinking about mining, but it looks like all 6990 cards are sold out.