Even though generally funds can be "reverted" and the "TOS are not very Bitcoin friendly"  the is a material difference between sending funds to fund an account (of any type) and purchasing an item.   

Paypal's  'Mass payment' option is not an disputable item.  CT should look into that as a paypal funding option

How accurate are profitability calculators? According to all of the ones I've checked, profitability will go way down in about 5 months from now. It seems that the next three to four months are all that are left for mining in the black.

I want to jump in, but difficulty is not making an investment in hardware very attractive.

Try this link to calculate your earnings >
http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

However be aware that is not 100% correct because of difficulty changes...

@d5000 I haven't had any issues accessing the site nor logging in.

Since this thread has been fairly quiet lately; It had been awhile since I last read the contract so I just wanted to gloss over it again in case I was missing anything. I found a few things fairly interesting:







I realize the situation has vastly changed since the contract's birth but it is certainly unnerving to see communication develop to where we find it now.

dump a lot of money in cloudhashing and check it once a week. thats whats i do 

The percentage of your holdings to put in a Roth IRA depends on your age and how likely you are to want to access that money before you reach retirement age.

If you are young, you probably only need a smallish number of bitcoins in the IRA.  By the time you reach retirement age, their value will probably either have grown a whole lot, or they won't be worth much at all.  So a small investment in a Roth IRA today either means a very comfortable retirement or a small loss.  At some point making a larger investment multiplies the risk without significantly improving the outcome.  Your retirement won't be that much different if you're worth $100 million instead of just $10 million.

However, the rules of the Roth IRA allow unlimited, tax-free deductions once you reach age 59 1/2 (as long as you have had any Roth IRA account for at least 5 years).  So if you're already that age, or are willing to wait until that age to touch the money, you would want to put most of your coins into the Roth and avoid all those capital gains taxes!

I think every miner, that bought an asic, would of made more by buying btc instead. if there is anybody, that has more btc from mining I would be very surprised.

We have a lot of the "silliest" answers here, from people who have no datacenter or AC experience. You put up a bounty, you get stupid spammers and beggars.

You basically have two choices:
- Traditional refrigerant air conditioning with a condensing outdoor unit,
- Evaporative "Swamp coolers", where facilities allow large outside berth for building flow-through, and the local weather is favorable.

*snip*


Evaporative cooling is measured a different way, in the temperature drop from intake air temp, with accompanying increased humidity. You can make 100F outside air into 75F inside air. However, you will need to look at the cubic feet per minute ratings of the systems to see what can keep up with your heat load. You may decide that 85F will be the maximum "output" temperature rise after air goes through your racks - for this much cooling, you will be looking at garage-door sized walls of fans from the outside and gallons of water per minute.

However, the evaporative cooling does have the advantage that you are putting in a massive outside air circulation system - the 75% of the day and year when outside air is below 75F, you will need nothing more than to run the fans.

Inside a closed air conditioned building, evaporative cooling may enhance efficiency a bit. AC removes humidity, to the point where the IDUs need to pump water out. You could add some humidity back to pre-cool the hot AC intake air (you can't humidify cold air AC output). The humidity would have to be strictly monitored to not go overboard or add more humidity than the AC can remove.

Whatever system is implemented, you need to direct airflow through your facility and systems, ideally in a typical contained hot/cool-aisle system:
*cut*

first off I am not the op.  i did not brute force 28 knc machines he did.  now when he did the brute force on the 28 machines he did not tell us he had permission to do it. so stop defending him for  doing something that is not legal.

 did his brute force attack hurt this person?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=31163.msg4140767#msg4140767

maybe I do not know but time wise it matches.  was he off line for 3 or 5 hours extra due to the password attack ? do not know.  I ask you this. would you want someone coming to the front door of your home and testing your door knob to see if it opens easily ?  

  so to the op  did you have permission to attack the 28 machines? yes or no?  my apologies if you informed those miners. before you attacked them

No, the details are not public yet.
There is a significant difference in making a custom rom, and explaining how you can gain access to thousands of remote miners out there.

Custom ROM is intented to use on your own hardware.

My hack is intented to remotely control another miner, making it useless to the owner, since he can no longer login.

Hi all,

So, what else to do in my spare time while mining some BTC? Exploiting security holes in my hardware.
It turns out that every KnC miner can be hacked within 5-10 minutes, making it possible to control the CGMiner remotely.

I've submitted a higly detailed report to KNC, explaining how i did it, and how they can patch it with a new firmware upgrade.
To avoid a huge breach, i will not reveal all details, but i give you a short summary [proof of concept].

1: Scan the internet, using a special tool, for the default KnC Miner header response

EVERY miner uses this header, so in 10 seconds, i found about 1180 responses vulnerable to my attack.

2: Cricial information remains hidden for public, but the http digest can be bypassed with ease.

3: Run basic HTTP bruteforce. Since the digest is bypassed, i can run unlimited bruteforce attempts.
Within a timespan of 20 minutes, i managed to bruteforce 28 miners !! (Most of them poor passwords tough)

Now comes the fun part...

Login using SSH. If the SSH port is not enabled, simply login to the web console and enable it.

The source code of tells us exactly what we need.

VI (edit) the default factory files, as found in the factory reset code, making a second login inside the factory reset files.

The digest file requires you a special hash to create the password. This can be done using special tools, but for safety reasons, i will not go further on this part in public.

Alter these files to gain access after factory reset


Now remove all the default credentials in the factory files, making it impossible to login using the default admin:admin for the owner

RUN THE FACTORY RESET...

And enjoy your personal miner, that just became unusable to the owner, since he can no longer login.

Disclaimer:

I intend to do no harm. No miner has ever been in my control, or ever will be. I just expose this threat to put pressure on KnC to hurry their firmware upgrade.
Do not ask or PM me for information about this hack, it will not be provided !! Only KNC has the entire manual !


Note to all KnC miners out there: Please change your passwords to long, safe password!
If needed, simply hashing your firstname to MD5 will do the trick to scare away hackers.

PLEASE USE A ROUTER INSTEAD OF DIRECT INTERNET ACCESS !!!


Greetings!!

EDIT: Email to KnC