What I currently use for privacy (after almost 2 years of long investing into it)
First of all, my threat model: I'm just an average person that wants to AVOID the maximum I can to be monitored and tracked by the government and big corps, a lot of people out there REALLY hate me and I've gone through lots of harassment and other stuff, I also plan to take my activism and love for freedom more seriously and to do stuff that could potentially lead me to very high danger or even put my life on the line. That being said, my main focus is on something that is privacy-friendly but also something with decent security (no point having a lot of privacy if a script kiddie can just break into it an boom, everything is gone) anonymity is also desirable but I'm pretty aware that true 100% anonymity is simply not possible and to achieve the maximum you can of it currently you'd have to give up A LOT of stuff in which I don't think I really could. So basically, everything that I said + I don't want to give up some hobbies of mine (as playing games etc) Here's what I use/have done so far, most of it is based on privacytools.io list and research I've done. Mobile: Google Pixel 3a XL running GrapheneOS Apps: Stock apps (Vanadium, Gallery, Clock, Contacts etc) + F-DROID, NewPipe, OsmAnd+, Joplin, Tutanota, K-9 Mail, Aegis Authenticator, KeePassDX, Syncthing, Signal, Librera PRO, Vinyl, Open Camera and Wireguard. I also use BlahDNS as my private DNS. Other smartphone stuff/habits: I use a Supershieldz Anti Spy Tempered Glass Screen Protector on my phone and I also have a Faraday Sleeve from Silent Pocket which my phone is on most of the times (I don't have smartphone addiction and would likely advice you to break free from smartphone addiction if you have it). I NEVER use bluetooth (thank god Pixel 3a have a headphone jack so yeah, no bluetooth earphones here) and always keep my Wi-Fi off if I'm not using it. Computer: I have a desktop that I built (specs: Asus B450M Gaming, AMD Ryzen 3 3300X, Radeon RX 580 8GB, 16GB DDR4 2666Mhz, 3TB HDD, 480GB SSD) that is dualbooted with QubesOS and Arch Linux. Qubes is my main OS that I use as daily driver and for my tasks, I use Arch for gaming. I've installed linux-hardened and its headers packages on my Arch + further kernel hardening using systctl and boot parameters, AppArmor as my MAC system and bubblewrap for sandboxing programs. I also spoof my MAC address and have restricted root access, I've also protected my GRUB with password (and use encrypted boot) and have enabled Microcode updates and have NTP and IPV6 disabled. Also on Arch, I use iptables as a firewall denying all incoming traffic, and since it's my gaming PC, I don't game on the OS, instead, I use a KVM/QEMU Windows VM for gaming (search "How I Built The "Poor-Shamed" Computer" video to see what I'm talking about) I also use full disk encryption. Software/Providers: E-Mails: I use ProtonMail (Plus Account paid with bitcoin) and Tutanota (free account as they don't accept crypto payment yet, come on Tutanota, I've been waiting for it for 2 years already) since I have plus account on ProtonMail it allows me to use ProtonMail Bridge and use it on Claws Mail (desktop) and K-9 Mail (mobile) as for Tutanota I use both desktop and mobile app. Some other e-mails habits of mine: I use e-mail aliases (ProtonMail plus account provides you with 5) and each alias is used for different tasks (as one for shopping, one for banking, one for accounts etc) and none of my e-mails have my real name on it or something that could be used to identify me. I also highly avoid using stuff that require e-mail/e-mail verification for usage (e-mail is such a pain in the ass tbh) I also make use of Spamgourmet for stuff like temporary e-mail (best service I found for this doing my research, dunno if it's really the best tho, heard that AnonAddy does kinda the same stuff but dunno, recommendations are welcomed) Browsers/Search Engine: As mentioned, I use Vanadium (Graphene's stock browser) on mobile as it is the recommended browser by Graphene and the one with the best security for Android, for desktop I use a Hardened Firefox (pretty aware of Firefox's security not being that good, but it's the best browser for PC for me as Ungoogled Chromium is still not there in A LOT of things + inherent problems of Chrome as not being able to disable WebRTC unless you use an extension etc) with ghacks-user.js and uBlock Origin (hard mode), uMatrix (globally blocking first party scripts), HTTPS Everywhere (EASE Mode), Decentraleyes (set the recommended rules for both uBlock Origin and uMatrix) and Temporary Containers as addons. I also use Tor Browser (Safest Mode) on a Whonix VM on Qubes sometimes. DuckDuckGo is my to-go search engine and I use DNS over HTTPS on Firefox (BlahDNS as my provider once again) browsing habits: I avoid JavaScript the maximum I can, if it's really needed, I just allow the scripts temporarely on uBlock Origin/uMatrix and after I'm done I just disable it. I also generally go with old.reddit.com instead of reddit.com (as JavaScript is not required to browse the old client), nitter.net for checking twitter stuff (although I rarely have something peaking my interest on Twitter) and I use invidious.snopyta.org as youtube front-end (I do however use YouTube sometimes if a video I wanna see can't be played on invidious or if I wanna watch a livestream) and html.duckduckgo.com instead of duckduckgo.com other than avoiding JavaScript most of my browsing habits are just common sense at this point I'd say, I also use privatebin (snopyta's instance) instead of pastebin. I also have multiple firefox profiles for different tasks (personal usage, shopping, banking etc) VPN: I use Mullvad (guess you can mention it here since it's PTIO's recommended) paid with bitcoin and honestly best service available tbh. I use Mullvad's multihop implementation on Wireguard which I manually set myself as I had the time and patience to learn how. password manager: KeePassXC on desktop and KeePassDX on my smartphone, my password database for my desktop is stored on a USB flash driver I encrypted with VeraCrypt. some other software on desktop: LibreOffice (as a Microsoft Office substitute), GIMP (Photshop substitute), Vim (I use it for multiple purposes, mainly coding IDE and as a text editor), VLC (media player), Bisq (bitcoin exchange), Wasabi (bitcoin wallet), OBS (screen recording), Syncthing (file sync), qBitTorrent (torrent client) and Element (federated real-time communication software). I sadly couldn't find a good open-source substitute to Sony Vegas (tested many, but none was in the same level of Vegas imo, KDENLive is okay tho) so I just use it on a VM if I need it (Windows VM solely for the purpose of video editing, not the same one I use for gaming) Other: router: I have an Asus RT-AC68U with OpenWRT as its firmware. I also set a VPN on it. cryptocurrency hardware wallet: I store all of my cryptocurrency (Bitcoin and Monero) on a Ledger Nano S, about 97% of my money is on crypto so a hardware wallet is a must for me. I have lots of USB flash drivers that I use for Live ISOs and for encrypted backups. I also have a USB Data Blocker from PortaPow that I generally use if I need to charge my cellphone in public or in a hotel while on a trip (rare occasion tbh). I have a Logitech C920e as webcam and a Blue Yeti microphone in which I never let them plugged, I only plug them if it's necessary and after I'm done I just unplug them. I also have a Nintendo Switch Lite as a gaming console that I most of the times just use offline, I just connect to the internet if needed for a software update and then just turn the Wi-Fi off from it. Other Habits/Things I've done: payments: I simply AVOID using credit card, I try to always pay on cash (I live in a third-world country so thank god most of people here still depend on cash only) physically and online I try my best to either by using cryptocurrency or using gift cards/cash by mail if crypto isn't available. I usually buy crypto on Bisq as I just don't trust any KYC exchange (and neither should you) and since there aren't many people here in my area to do face to face bitcoin trade (and I'm skeptical of face to face tbh), I use the Wasabi Wallet (desktop) to coinjoin bitcoin before buying anything as this allows a bit more of privacy, I also coinjoin on Wasabi before sending my bitcoins to my hardware wallet. I also don't have a high consumerism drive so I'm not constantly wanting to buy everything that I see (which helps a lot on this criteria) social media/accounts: as noted, aside from Signal and Element (which I don't even use that often) I just don't REALLY use any social media (tried Mastodon for a while but I was honestly felt it kinda desert there and most of its userbase from what I've seen were some people I'd just... rather don't hang with tbh) and, althoug not something necessary is something that I really advise people to as social media is literally a poison to your mind. I also don't own any streaming service like Netflix/Amazon Prime/Spotify etc, I basically pirate series/movies/songs and that's it. I've also deleted ALL my old accounts from social media (like Twitter etc) and old e-mails. ALL of my important and main accounts have 2FA enabled and are protected by a strong password (I use KeePass to generate a 35 character lenght password with numbers, capital letters, special symbols etc, each account uses a unique password) I also NEVER use my real name on any account and NEVER post any pictures of myself (I rarely take pictures of stuff if anything) iot/smart devices: aside from my smartphone, I don't have any IOT/smart device as I honestly see no need for them (and most of them are WAY too expensive on third-world countries) files: I constatly backup all of my files (each two weeks) on encrypted flash drivers, I also use BleachBit for temporary data cleaning and data/file shredding. I also use Syncthing as a substitute to stuff like Google Drive. Future plans: learn to self-host and self-host an e-mail/NextCloud (and maybe even a VPN) find something like BurneHushed but FOSS (if you know any please let me know) So, how is it? anything that I should do that I'm probably not doing?
Edit: There was prior work by Artemiscult I didn't know about from a month ago! Hi, this is a summary of my findings on 0xMonero, which claims to be "a mineable privacy focused project". The contract was deployed on April 18th of this year, verified on Etherscan the same day, announced on Twitter soon after. It was announced on Bitcoin Talk about ten days later. 0xMonero's contract is an uncredited rip of 0xBitcoin's with only very small changes. The mining software recommended by 0xMonero was written for 0xBitcoin. There are twoother more modern miners written for 0xBitcoin, but up until recently, they have only supported pool mining, not solo. My suspicion for why 0xMonero recommends the older miner is that they don't have anyone competent to run a mining pool. Here's 0xMonero's stats page, and here's 0xBitcoin's. Look familiar? 0x1d00ffff wrote that page for 0xBitcoin about a month after the 0xBitcoin project started in February 2018. Here's the initial commit, and here are the changes 0xMonero made. When 0xMonero ripped it, at least they left the author's Etherscan link at the bottom. Here's 0xMonero's official GitHub. As of now, there are 20 repos, but they are all forks, zero original repos. I've been told that 0xMonero has ten developers. When I asked to see their GitHub accounts, I was told that they were all too concerned with privacy. That doesn't make sense to me, since I've been doing anonymous development under various identities for years. Here's the account associated with my work for 0xBitcoin, and here's another project I work on with other anonymous developers. Why does 0xMonero make reference to Monero? I don't know. As far as I can tell, 0xMonero has nothing to do with Monero. I can say with certainty that since 0xMonero's contract is an almost identical copy of 0xBitcoin's, and 0xBitcoin deliberately did not include privacy features, there are no privacy features in the 0xMonero contract. They would have to be elsewhere. But as far as I know, there is no other code to look at. Here's a piece-by-piece analysis of the claims on 0xMonero's site:
"Mineable + Private" It's mineable because it's a copy of 0xBitcoin. It is not private.
"Works with all Ethereum wallets and DEXs" True, it is an ERC20.
"Built on the Ethereum blockchain" True!
"Only 18.4 million tokens can be mined" True. This is one of the few modifications 0xMonero made to 0xBitcoin's contract.
"zk-SNARKs and 0xMixer" zk-SNARKs is a thing, but I don't know what it has to do with 0xMonero. I cannot find any indication that 0xMixer exists in any form.
"Scalable to 10,000tps" Nonsense, as far as I can tell. It'll be able to do whatever Ethereum is able to do.
"Mining" They instruct how to run mining software that was written for 0xBitcoin, as explained above.
"View Mining Statistics" This is a rip of a statistics page written for 0xBitcoin, as explained above.
"Exchanges" True! 0xMonero is on some exchanges.
"Wallets" True! 0xMonero is an ERC20, so it works with Ethereum wallets.
"Chainhop is an interoperability solution utilizing token bridges to other blockchains" I can't find any original 0xMonero code related to this. They link to Incognito, which is a separate project that AFAIK works with all ERC20s. They mention zk-SNARKs again, but it's not clear what it has to do with 0xMonero.
"0xMixer" I can't find any code. I couldn't find any the last time I was looking a month ago, either.
"0xLock" USB device of questionable utility developed by somebody else. Is it like a Ledger? I don't know.
"0xDEX" Not operational, no code can be found.
"Casino" From what I understand, some third party offers to sell gambling setups to Ethereum projects. I think it might be the case that anybody can buy this and have it set up for them in a few hours.
I’m trying to put a list together of historical, epic, interesting, whatever you want to call it physical objects related to Bitcoin. Some obvious ones to me: -The Times Newspaper -First Issue of Bitcoin Magazine -Casascius coins Anything else people can think of?
IoT attacks increased by 900% in 2019. So, why are hackers increasingly targeting IoT devices? There are several explanations:
Lack of security software on the devices: Opposed to regular computers, IoT devices do not have a firewall or virus scanner.
Less experienced device producers: The businesses usually come from the industry vertical and often are lacking the IT security expertise of servecomputer manufacturers.
Multiple devices with the same security mechanisms: Once an attack works with one device it will work with thousands.
IoT devices are out of reach: device owners deploy their machines remotely. Often an owner won’t realize that the devices have been compromised until it is too late. Once an attacker has control over a device, it could run all day long before being physically shut down by the owner.
Who Are the Attackers and What Motivates Them?
Amateur hackers and script kiddies – usually their objective is fame among their peers, either by targeting a high-profile victim or by demonstrating an ability to infect many devices in a single attack.
Governments/Intelligence organizations – acting in the safety of their citizens, intelligence agencies attempt to secure access to important information.
Political interest groups – they attack organizations that they think are morally corrupt. Examples are groups like anonymous.
Criminal businesses – organizations that take advantage of vulnerabilities within the target to generate revenue for themselves.
The criminal businesses mentioned above are typically set up as ordinary businesses and are especially relevant in the IoT domain. Their objective is to gain control over a large number of IoT devices and make money out of them, often in one of the following ways:
Selling Distributed Denial of Service attacks – like webstresser.org (more information via Forbes)
Using devices for Bitcoin mining (more information via CNBC)
Blocking the device operation until the owner pays a ransom (ransomware)
How Do IoT Attacks Work?
Mirai
The most common IoT attack today is the Mirai malware, which originated in 2016. The malware scans the public internet for IoT devices and tries to establish a remote telnet connection using a list of common factory default usernames and passwords. As soon as one device is infected, the malware begins scanning for more victims. All devices become part of the Mirai botnet which is then steered through the attacker’s command and control center. The attackers then execute a DDoS attack, on behalf of their customers, to a target destination in order to take down the servers of the victims.
Stuxnet
The Stuxnet computer worm was first uncovered in 2010. The malware first injects Microsoft Windows machines exploiting zero-day exploit or outdated OS versions; initially it spread over USB flash drives. On the Windows machine it looks for the Siemens Step7 software that controls the Siemens programmable logic controller (PLC). With the Step7 software it then installs itself on the IoT device and takes over control. Stuxnet once targeted Iranian facilities and reportedly severely harmed the Iranian atomic program.
Silex/Brickerbot
While Brickerbot was discovered in 2017 and Silex appeared in 2019, they have a common attack pattern. Like Mirai, the software scans the public internet and tries to log in to the IoT device with default and weak login and password combinations. After infection, the software overwrites all data and deletes the network configuration, which makes the IoT device unusable, unless someone can physically get a hand on the device.
Countermeasures to Guard Against Attacks
As seen in the Stuxnet attack, IoT devices in the same network as other machines can be impacted by the vulnerabilities of those other machines. To avoid this, using a dedicated network infrastructure is recommended, instead of using shared LAN or Wi-Fi networks. Alternatively, using cellular communication that separates the communication of the different machines is also preferred. The Mirai and Silex / Brickerbot malware show the value of having random and unique log-in credentials for the different devices – this could have prevented the above-mentioned attack. While the devices allowed for remote access by their owners, the access was granted via the unsecured public internet. A more secure way to get remote access to IoT devices is to use IPSec or Intra-Cloud Connect, avoiding the exposure of public Internet. One way to prevent attempts to steal remote access to IoT devices, as well as completely block attacks, is to use a cellular firewall. With a cellular firewall, devices are only permitted to communicate with a defined subset of IP addresses. The firewall itself is not located on the individual devices, rather on the cellular connection – out of the attacker’s control.
Key Takeaway: Security First
While the excitement surrounding the brimming potential of IoT connectivity is understandable–and warranted–overlooking IoT device security can prove catastrophic. A robustly secured IoT solution is one that can safely scale globally, enable groundbreaking solutions, and last for years to come. Originally published by EMnify -| August 12, 2020 iot for all
Keep in mind that you guys are in an echo chamber as you read what my thoughts are on bitcoin. I honestly dont see the currency being accepted as a global currency in the near or distant future. if theres only 21 million bitcoin that can possibly exist and that amount is reached in 2140, the amount of bitcoin that will be bricked due to lost passcodes and people dying whilst in ownership of such currency in the next 10 generations will cause circulative supply to drop to such a low that the majority of bitcoin in circulation will be owned by less and less people and thus create a stagnant ecosystem. Its price will be determined by fewer and fewer individuals that have the majority of bitcoin. This goes against the spirit of community and human values that value a certain level of governing control through a majority consensus. If it is to be accepted by the billions of people on earth then it has to have a stable price and value that can be controlled by the communities that use it or it will warp a large % of peoples minds into valuing it as an appreciating commodity and not a currency. The effort to get people to learn fractions and technology that involve phones and usb-like devices is also a major hurdle to accessibility for most people. Our current global infrastructure does not support widespread use of crypto. But when does, which wont be in the near future, Fiat currency will remain the leader in value because through law it can be bound to a physical asset such as gold. So to me, if I bought bitcoin, I personally see that as a move only motivated by distrust in government. People dont realise that they are their government and they have a say in it by either becoming a representative of the people or electing someone as such. When Andrew Yang (the only technologically literate candidate to ever run for office) eventually becomes president and America is systematically reformatted to a modern up to date country, Intelligent use of fiat currency will bounce back and will be a very strong norm. Governing bodies can fund programs that value community and human centered values. Universal basic income and a booming population will require fiat currency as its stable medium of trade. Bitcoin cannot offer a properly run governing body any benefits because it literally represents the human ego in a trade able commodity that is only ever viable in a land of fear and uncertainty with donald trump. (i dont see him being reelected but he did his job throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of a broken system). Lets talk about what the future will look like if crypto currency is actually used as a currency instead of a commodity that is only purchased for the sole reason that it will be sold for more than it was purchased for: Think about hundreds of millions of people using the cryptocurrency trading the 10,000 bitcoins between one another in fractions in the distant future(not literally the exact amount but as an example). Then imagine a legacy owner of the currency dumping their 100,000 bitcoins into the market on a whim because they want to crash its value. Theres no governance that can step in to stop this from happening. Bitcoin isnt backed by any physical asset such as gold and its value cannot be inforced by a governing body. The one action of one individual can negatively affect the majority of other people with no safeguards. That should be more terrifying to people than a fiat currency being printed by a central banking system and then distributing funds in a less disruptive manner that allows for programs such as universal basic income to be viable that will be an inevitability in the future or community run organisations that benefit the spirit of community. Sure, Bitcoin is stable on paper, but its value is all speculation and subject to mass psychology. This bitcoin narrative all over twitter and youtube actually require you to believe them to keep bitcoin viable. without your belief in it, its worthless. of course you can say the same thing about fiat currency, but there are benefits fiat provide that bitcoin cannot. With Bitcoin you have tax avoidance? reduced funding for community run organisations? failure of funding for public services that many use? Bitcoin does nothing for community as a whole. Fiat curreny and a competent government fills this very important role. The fact that the way bitcoin was designed doesnt factor in the fact that the population of the human race will only keep growing; makes it an inferior means of trade on a large scale and merely a commodity to add to the list next to gold. By inferior i mean it isnt widely accepted. most stores wont accept gold nor will they accept bitcoin. If there is any takeaway from this it is or added notes: -Bitcoin represents the ego of the human race as a trade able currency -Bitcoin does nothing to propagate community values by its very nature which is why it will not succeed in the future. -As difficult as it is to mine bitcoin, most people that use money in general dont really care what you did to earn it. People value stability in a currency. not rampant volatility. -Youtube videos on bitcoin value is all speculation no matter how much you want to justify its value. People dismissing the billionaires that publicly state their gut beliefs against crypto by creating conspiracy theories are actually the real insecure people of the crypto community. -Bitcoin is a COMMODITY dont be fooled into thinking that is a currency. It will never be a fully accepted global currency unless it can be controlled by a(competent) centralised governing body. And because it does not possess that capacity, it will never succeed in the distant long term.
Hi there, I'm running esxi on my home server and I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that there are more discrete PCIe devices (low-power GPUs, USB-cards, SATA-controllers) that I'd like to pass through to individual VMs than my mainboard can provide PCIe slots for. How would esxi handle PCIe bifurcation or riser systems like this? Could I pass through all PCIe devices connected to these kinds of systems to individual VMs or could I only pass through the "original" slot on the motherboard? To clarify, I'm not worried about bandwidth here since I'm neither using high-power GPUs nor 10Gbit ethernet adapters nor NVMe-storage, so I'd be fine with having 16 PCIe x1 slots instead of one PCIe x16 slot. Thanks!
06-16 12:55 - 'boss linux' (self.linux) by /u/bossdevelopers removed from /r/linux within 437-447min
''' -BOSS PROJECT: Standing for Blockchain Operative System Series is a new Linux distribution based on ubuntu core with important changes, highly improved security and the default incorporation of blockchain services and support for cryptocurrencies.We have modified the original standards to transform it into a very useful tool for the entire bitcoin community consisting of an interesting combination of security, manageability, speed and performance. It can be used on any x64 X86 machine simply after installation. .-BLOCKCHAIN FULLY DEDICATED: It has been more than a decade since the physical birth of cryptocurrencies, although the idea is over 50 years old. The future will undoubtedly be governed by blockchain systems and governments, banks and corporations are already taking positions in this regard. BOSS is not far behind. Now it is possible to mine even if it has not been done previously. For even more in-depth development of the blockchain applications included in BOSS operating systems, you have your own version of bitcoin PoW PoS mining: BitcoinBOSS. Our own blockchain that is enhanced with BOSS token erc20. -BOSS SECURITY & PRIVACY FEATURES: A weak point of easy access for hacker attacks, such as automatic updates, has been modified so that the user can carry out his updates when he deems necessary and under monitoring. The elevated privileges allow you not only to modify the system, they also allow you to quickly act on files that are prohibited from accessing other operating systems. BOSS has installed active-passive security measures -MAC ADDRESS DEFAULT SPOOFING: MAC address Spoofing privacy + from BOSS. Every time you log in to your BOSS computer, you are doing so with a different MAC address. Privacy thus reaches its highest degrees by making MAC-TRACK impossible -LIGHTWEIGHT RECORD: BOSS has achieved maximum performance in a really small space. BOSS takes up very little space and can be downloaded via torrent or direct download through our mirrors. BOSS has concentrated a large operating system in a super small space of less than 1 GB, which puts us at the forefront among the lightest and safest distributions as leaders in relation to gb-installed applications. -INSTALLATION PROCESS: BOSS installation is simple and guided using the ubiquity installer and depending on the performance of your system it can take between 15-30 minutes in normal circumstances. Download BOSS now and enjoy a high level of performance, security and privacy in an enviable small space. BOSS can be tested after installation, fully or partially installed on your system, together with windows or your favorite operating system. .-POWERFUL RECOVERY TOOL: BOSS is an excellent file recovery tool. The combination of BOSS tools and its elevated privileges allow you to access areas hidden or inaccessible. Simply use BOSS live to freely rescue files from the laptop where the BOSS USB is inserted. Recover Bitcoin paraphrase or .DAT files easier and faster than other recovery programs simply by acceding to the file system where BOSS usb is inserted. -STABLE RELEASES: BOSS V01-LTS Available now for download at sourceforge. [**[link]2 FEATURING -UNITY DESKTOP-BRAVE BROWSER-ATOMIC WALLET-COMMON UTILITIES-ELEVATED PRIVILEGES ENABLED.-MAC ADDRESS SPOOFING-FILE SYSTEM RECOVERY TOOL -WE DELIVER BOSS: Using BOSS as removable OS is recommended if you do not want to install the system. For this our team recommends the use of persistent USB where your session is recorded and ready for the next login, find everything as you left it. BOSS makes available to its users the delivery of these persistent USB devices worldwide via regular mail or messaging. The flat rate of our installation on the USB and shipping to the user is USD 20 to which we must add the shipping costs in the options selected by the user. Please check with our team to process your shipment while this process is automated on our website. Order now your BOSS or a even more customized BOSS with your company requirements, logo etc. We deliver in CD, USB or SD card in your selected size from minimal 4GB, however 16GB and above are recommended. [link]3 [link]4 [link]5 ''' boss linux Go1dfish undelete link unreddit undelete link Author: bossdevelopers 1: *ourcef*r*e.**t/proj*cts/*oss-min*mi*al*ed**ion/ 2: sourceforge.net/pr*j*cts*****-mi*im**al-editio****]^*1 3: pr*vie*.*edd.it/2j0i*g*tk755*.p*g*wid*h*1*00&form*t*png&**uto*w**p*a*p;s=57745a79590667**059****948ab*84e*1*693*7 4: *revi*w.red*.it*9l8yh7ag*7551*png?wi*th=160*&a*p;fo*m**=png*amp;a*to=***p&s=acd*6e9**8d2*a**4d*b*14737cf**72**dcc2*5 5: pr**ie**re*d.it*3*qyxtw*k755*.*ng?wid**=*600*amp**ormat=p*g&am*;au*o=webp&am*;s=02b*905*4cb**f770b77*13a3*6**90fc*6*0d3b Unknown links are censored to prevent spreading illicit content.
My career isn’t always dangerous, but clients can be unpredictable
My name is Amy, and I’m what’s called a Computer Dominatrix. My clients are all long distance, we never interact face-to-face, and I have control over all of them. Some give me absolute control, some give me specific portions with boundaries. Some are married or dating, others are single. They all make use of my talents to give up control of at least part of their lives. When a new client contacts me, we exchange a few messages so I have some background about them, and I lay out what my services usually entail. I tell a few stories of what other clients have asked me to do for them, to help the new client select scenarios they would like to set up. Most of my clients have never had a Digital Dom before. So, giving them a few examples and options helps bolster their confidence. The usual set-up goes like this: my client installs some spyware on their computer that I control. It gives me the power to do things like lock their computer, see their screen, disable the keyboard, take over control of their computer, and get reports of what they’re doing on their computer. With this tool, I can perform my services. Some clients want me to watch their bank statements and shame them if they spend too much money or buy surprise things with their money as if I own the account. Other clients want me to monitor their porn usage and shame them for what they look up. Or, if I log in and catch them using porn, I should direct them to different porn of my choosing and force them to watch that instead. One even wanted me to try and break into his computer and install the spyware secretly. That was a fun client to work with. When it comes down to it, they just want to relinquish a little control over their lives. I understand where their desires come from, and knowing it helps me be a better Dom. Contrasting the fun times of my career, I’ve had a few mishaps and horrible things happen. I had one client sign up for my services. We messaged a few times to get to know one another before I agreed to accept him as a client. He was in his mid thirties, single, and wanted me to watch him look at porn and make random comments on the things he was watching. Really, not that abnormal for my choice of career. I had him sign an agreement that helps me avoid legal trouble if they try to report me for hacking (had this happen before), and we got started. I gave him the url where he could install my personal spyware, and he followed through. He only asked that I give him a little advance notice before I start watching, which I agreed to. Boundaries are important. I would check up on him twice a week, and send him a message before I did saying “I’m coming to check on you in ten minutes, you better be watching something good.” I would log in ten minutes later to the second and start either shaming him for his choice of videos or praise him for making the “right” choice. All of this was predetermined. Things were going fine with this client, and I balanced him with about 10 others. Being a Digital Dom makes it easy to spread your attention across many clients. Bonus if you can get clients from different time zones so they would log in at different times so you don’t have to multitask. I was about to check in with another client, when I mis-clicked in my software. See, my spyware (which I paid to be custom written after wishing for more features in commercial tools) lists my clients by most recently connected in one screen. When I add a new client, it can mess with the order of the page I am so used to mindlessly clicking through. I’ve since paid for that to get fixed and sort clients alphabetically, but this time I made a mistake. I clicked on this new client and connected to his computer. A gasp escaped my lips as I saw what he was looking at. I’ll leave that up to your imagination. It was some of the most fucked up porn I’ve ever seen. Involving victims of questionable age. And blood. If I could have slipped out of there, I would have. But this client requested a popup to appear whenever I connected so he would know I was there. That popup revealed my unexpected presence. Instead of panicking and trying to close the window, he calmly moved his mouse to the task bar and opened a text document. I was frozen while watching him type. I should have logged straight out, but I instead started to open a voice channel to tell him I was dropping him as a client. It was too much for me, and I decided to set that boundary early on in my career.
“Like what you see?”
He had typed into the word document, and the cursor blinked impatiently at me. I thought my voice would crack, so I took over the keyboard and typed back.
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to refund your money and no longer service you. Please uninstall this software and watch for your refund.”
He paused for a while, and I waited for him to respond once before I disconnected. He took too long, so I closed the window and took a deep breath while sitting back. I was feeling really disconcerted from what I’d watched. It wasn’t the first time a client had tried to show me illegal things during a session, but it always makes me sick when they do. I gave the reins over to another Digital Dom I have partnered with. We take over for each other if we feel ill or something. Just temporarily. I went to take a shower to wash out those images.
My computer started acting up more than a month later. So much had gone on since dropping that client that I didn’t connect the two at first. The computer would slow down for a few minutes, then resume its normal speed. I assumed it was because I hadn’t restarted in a while, so I restarted it. That seemed to fix the problem. When I had rebooted, the wifi slowed down considerably, enough for my roommate, Jess, to ask if I was downloading anything big. I had logged into the router to see if that also needed to be restarted when I noticed a device I didn’t recognize was connected to the wifi. I swallowed hard. RASPI was the name of the connected device. It had connected to the network three days ago. Some strangers' device was on our network. And they had to be nearby, at least within range of wifi. I immediately suspected that a neighbor had brute forced our wifi password and was now stealing internet. Before kicking the device off, I looked at the router’s traffic report. The device had a significant size of traffic in the last few days, but my computer used the most out of all of our devices. The device came in 5th place for most data used. It made sense that my computer was using so much bandwidth, but 75+ gigabytes in 3 days was excessive. My throat seized, and I immediately reached around to the back of my computer and unplugged the ethernet cable. Deep, primal panic set in. This was a very specific attack. It’s not the kind of hacking you can do en masse to install some ransomware or adware. Someone was targeting me or both of us. Someone who was willing to spend time brute forcing a wifi password and going after one specific machine on the network.
I called Lucas, the guy I hired to write my spyware for me, and filled him in on everything I knew. He knows perfectly well what his software is used for and isn’t weird about it. He agreed to take a look at my computer for a fee. So, trusting him as I have all my career, I installed a commercial remote desktop tool and let him connect. The moment I reconnected the computer to the internet, the router showed a spike in traffic again. I had him on a call while he worked, and I watched what he did carefully, trying my best to learn what he was doing so I could troubleshoot myself if this ever happened again. “Oh shit,” Lucas muttered. He had a traffic analyzer and computer process analyzer open on-screen. “Amy, I think you got hacked. Like, they’re downloading your hard drive!” “They’re what?!” I began to really panic. I had a lot of my clients information on this machine. Keys that let me log into their machines. Bitcoin Cash addresses and keys where I stored my fees. Now someone had them. They could easily start stealing and spending my thousands in accumulated fees and harass my clients. I’d lose a big chunk of my savings and my livelihood. Immediately, I took over the computer and shut Lucas out while I created new crypto addresses and started transferring money. The fees from transferring would make me lose a little money, but it was better than losing it all. I also started backing up the hard drive to several USB drives I had lying around. Just the important stuff like my files, personal photos, and client info. When I let Lucas back in, he got to work finding the process that was exfiltrating my data and shutting it down. He tracked down the executable that was running the show and downloaded it to his own computer before deleting it from mine. He promised to dissect it as best he could to figure out what it was doing. Before he did that, however, he started monitoring my system to make sure the virus had been truly cleared out. While watching my system, he gave me a task. “Walk around your apartment. Search everywhere and look for that rogue device. It’s been continuously connected for days, which means whoever is doing this is probably not camped out on the road. From the name, I’d guess it’s a Raspberry Pi -- a small computer about the size of a phone but two inches tall.” He sent me a picture of the type of device we were looking for. “They probably left it hidden somewhere, either connected to an outlet or with a large battery pack. Go and look for it,” he insisted. I got Jess to help me search the place top to bottom. Nothing. Not even outside in the bushes or on the back porch. We split up and went to our neighbors, asking if they’d seen anyone suspicious hanging around the building in the last week. No one on our floor had. I went upstairs and asked the same questions. Our upstairs neighbor said the only person he’d seen was a guy coming to update their satellite dish on the balcony. My throat seized up as I realized that could be them. I asked hesitantly if I could look at their dish. I didn’t know them, but briefly explained that someone had left a device lying around that was breaking into our wifi and that our next step was to call the police. They panicked at that, and let me check their balcony if I promised to keep them out of it if I called the cops. I agreed, knowing full well that they did drugs and would hate for the police to come around the apartment complex. There, on the balcony, was exactly what Lucas had told me to look for. A black box sat along the wall between the satellite and the wall the cable ran into. A power cord exited the box and connected to an outlet on the balcony. I cracked open the box with my fingers and found a circuit board inside, connected via usb to the outlet. The satellite cable passed straight through the box without connecting to anything. The box was a fake, made to look like it was doing something to the cable as it passed through. The circuit board looked exactly like the picture Lucas had shown me. There was our rogue device. I unplugged the device, fully aware that unplugging it would alert whoever was controlling it. They could assume it was disconnected accidentally, or they would think I had found it. Either way, I couldn’t just leave it. I thanked the neighbors and left with the whole box. Jess met me on the stairs, saying that Lucas had asked her to disconnect the internet on the computer and have me call him back. Jess stared in wide-eyed shock as I showed her what I’d found. The upstairs neighbors were well within range of our wifi for the device to connect. The job was only barely sloppy enough to detect. We were lucky I had found it at all.
On the phone Lucas sounded panicked. “They didn’t just copy your hard drive, they added files to it,” he squeaked. “Bad files. Bad pictures.” My jaw tightened, and I felt sick. I made the connection to the client I’d dropped. “Delete all your shit now,” Lucas was demanding. “You already backed up what you want, you need to destroy that hard drive. Smash it, burn it, bury it. Go get a new hard drive. Start as fresh as you can. I can help you get set back up if you want.” “I think I know what’ll happen,” I muttered. “He’ll call the police on me and tip them off that I have those… pictures. They’ll find it and arrest me for possession. Game over.” “He? You know who it is?” Lucas pressed. I told him about the client I’d dropped. “That’s why you need to torch your hard drives. Now. Both of you. Same with your phones. Who knows where else he’s been,” was Lucas’ advice. I won’t confirm or deny what I did with the hard drive or the device. If I destroyed it, it would technically be destruction of evidence. I ordered a new hard drive and reinstalled everything. I explained to my clients that I had lost internet connection for a couple of days, and didn’t end up losing any clients. I haven’t told the police everything. The last time I got involved with them, there was so much harassment from them about my career that I’d rather not have more negative interactions with them. It just isn’t worth it in this case. I kept my report short and simple: a guy I met online and dumped might try something and come to my house. I gave them the information the client gave me, but I suspect more and more that it was fake. Making a report will help if anything new happens. I’ve written about this before on other anonymous forums, specifically for other Doms. Because of those posts, a few journalists have reached out and are writing features based on me, my career, and these events. They should be published in the next few days. I’m just interested in sharing stories like this as publicly as possible, for awareness. Lucas explained that the Raspberry Pi was a tiny computer that had a cellular connection so the client could connect to it from anywhere in the world and try to break into my wifi. Once he had succeeded, the client had gone to work breaking into my computer and getting their malware installed. We still don’t know 100% how he did it. Lucas worked tirelessly to revise his software and remove vulnerabilities that could be used to trace me. We don’t know which vulnerabilities the client used, if any. We do know that there is one left, however. I know this because every once in a while, a client will show up in my software who I didn’t sign up. A new name and data every time. I don’t dare click it. I just know what will be waiting for me upon connection.
“Like what you see?”
Lucas hasn’t been able to track down how he’s injecting fake clients into the software. Until Lucas can fix it, all I can do is click carefully and not connect again by accident. I’m sure the client is using a modified version of my spyware, ready to do all kinds of damage the moment I connect. The guy is clearly an expert. Who knows how many other people he’s done something like this to. One thing is certain: he was prepared to conduct this attack. My career isn’t always dangerous, but the clients can be unpredictable.
We’ve been working on a new product release for a year and want to hear your opinions on the product. Read on for product information and our vision for hardware wallets.
TL;DR Key features of Cobo Vault 2nd gen we are going to launch:
QR code air-gapped
Totally open source: Including firmware of the Secure Element
PSBT support and compatibility with other wallets
Fingerprint authorization to prevent password leak
Detachable battery to prevent battery corrosion and AAA support
Bitcoin-only firmware option
Hey bitcoin! I'm Lixin, a longtime Bitcoiner and creator of Cobo Vault. I come from a background in the electronic hardware industry, and experienced one of my products being featured in Apple Stores around the world. Although my interest goes back to 2010, my career intersected Bitcoin when Discus Fish (CEO of Cobo) invited me to help build Cobo’s hardware product line. Discus Fish is also the co-founder and CEO of f2pool, one of the largest mining pools currently in the world, and one of the earliest advocates of bitcoin in China. Back in 2018 we built our 1st generation Cobo Vault hardware wallet. As we had strong ties to miners in China, we naturally designed the 1st gen with them in mind. For those who are not familiar with the mining industry in China, mining farms are nearly always built in very isolated places where there is very cheap wind or water electricity. As the miners would take their storage into these isolated regions, we needed to maximize the durability of the device in addition to its security. We used aerospace aluminum rather than plastic and made it completely IP68 waterproof. We also gave it a hardshell metal case you can put it in, which is IK9 drop resistant and passes the American military durability test MIL-STD-810G. As for the electronic components inside the device, in order to maximize security, we made it as air-gapped as possible with QR codes. We see this as an important choice because USB cables and Bluetooth are not transparent and have a bigger attack surface. With QR codes you can see exactly what is going on and do not have to connect to a laptop which could have malware on it. QR code interaction needs a camera and a more complicated system which needs to be supported by high-level chips. All these come with a cost, and the 1st generation isn’t as accessible for average hodlers. For more details on the product, visit here. Things changed last year when I went to Bitcoin 2019 and talked to lots of hodlers in the States. I found that 95% of them don’t care about durability. I asked them if they were afraid of their home being flooded or burned down in a fire. The answer is - yes, they are afraid of these things, but see them as very low possibilities. Even if something were to happen, they said they would just buy another HW wallet for 100 dollars. From these conversations, it became more and more clear that the position for miners and hodlers is totally different. After coming back from that conference, our team began the almost one year journey of designing our 2nd gen product. It compromises on durability but doesn’t compromise on security. We designed the 2nd gen product all around a normal hodler’s needs. Obviously hodlers share some common needs with miners:
Hodlers want a more air-gapped solution so we took the legacy of QR code data transmission between your hardware wallet and the companion app from the 1st gen rather than using USB or Bluetooth.
A Secure Element is the strongest wall of protection from physical attacks. The 2nd gen will also have a Secure Element.
Some hodlers may touch their hardware wallet once every several months. With this time period, the battery could be a significant weak point. * The 2nd gen also continues the legacy of a detachable battery to prevent battery corrosion damage. In case the battery dies someday, 2nd gen will also support AAA batteries.
The 2nd gen also keeps the 4-inch touch screen. A touchscreen significantly increases ease of use - you don’t need to suffer from tiny buttons and little screens anymore. It also significantly lowers the possibility for human error, which is one of the biggest reasons that people lose their assets.
Continued other features like the self-destruct mechanism, which prevents side-channel attacks, and Web Authentication, which prevents supply chain attacks.
If you'd like to read more about these features, check out our blog posts here. Aside from these legacies from the 1st gen, our 2nd gen product will have some other big improvements:
With our 2nd gen we will open source the whole codebase when we launch in late Apr - including the firmware of the Secure Element. We are the first hardware wallet - also maybe the first electronic product with SE - to have open sourced the firmware of the SE. With the open source firmware code, you can see: Random number generation/master private key generation/key derivation/signing process all happens within the SE and your private keys never get out of the SE (maximizing protection against physical attacks).
At the Bitcoin 2019 conference half the hodlers I met told me they own multiple hardware wallets which they use on the go. So we added a fingerprint sensor you can use to authorize your transactions without typing in your password. No need to worry about surveillance cameras when using your hardware wallet in airports.
We will also support PSBT (BIP174) so that the device will be compatible with 3rd party wallets like Electrum or Wasabi Wallet in case people have need for using Cobo Vault with their own node or coinjoin. Also multisig between Cobo Vault and other wallets will be realized to prevent single point failure with a single brand of hardware wallet.
By sacrificing the durability of the device and its aluminum body/protective case and waterproof rating and lowering production costs, we successfully controlled the price under 200 USD. We wanted it to be at a price point most people in the community would see value in.
Personally, I am a bitcoin maximalist and also a big fan of the KISS principle. We will also release a BTC-only firmware version for people who want to minimize the codebase for less of an attack surface. Thank you for reading until here. More details like final price would be released later when we officially release the product in late Apr. Any suggestions or questions are welcome. Also you can find me @CryptoLixin or @CoboVault on Twitter! Ears are widely open!
I have an old laptop running Linux and thought about buying a USB miner and setting it up just hoping I hit the lottery. Probably a waste of time but it’s something I’ve been interested in for awhile. Does anyone have any tips or advice for me? Looking for a mining software that’s gonna be pretty simple and straight forward. Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions.
I earned about 4000% more btc with my android tablet than with a $250 ASIC mini rig setup using GekkoScience Newpac USB miners!
Requirements: 1.) Android Device with access to Google Play Store. *I haven't tried yet but you may be able to use tis on Android TV devces as well by sideloading. If anyone has success before I try, let me know! -Note, I did this with a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 so its a newer more powerful device. If your android is older, your profts will most likely be less than what I earned but to give a projected range I also tested on my Raspberry Pi 4 running a custom LineageOS rom that doesn't allow the OS to make full use of the Pi's specs and I still got 500 h/s on that with Cloud boost, so about 60% of what my Tab 6 with MUCH Higher Specs does. **Hey guys. Before I get started i just wanted to be clear about one thing. Yes I have seen those scammy posts sharing "miracle" boosts and fixes. I have a hard time believing stuff online anymore. But this is honestly real. Ill attach photos and explain the whole story and process below. Thanks for taking the time to read and feel free to share any thoughts, concerns, tips, etc* So last week I finally got started with my first mini rig type mining build. I started getting into crypto about a year ago and it has taken me a long time to even grasp half of the projects out there but its been fun thus far! Anyways my rig was 2 GekkoScience Newpac USB miners, a Moonlander USB miner to pair with an FPGA i already had mining, a 10 port 60W 3.0 USB hub and 2 usb fans. The Newpacs actually are hashing at a combined 280 g/s which is actually better than their reported max hash rate when overclocked. Pleasant surpise and they are simple!! I just wanted to get a moonlander because my fpga already mines on Odocrypt for DGB and I just wanted to experience Scrypt mining and help build the DGB project. The Newpacs are mining BTC though. After I got everything up and running i checked my payout daily average after 1 week. I averaged .01 a day TOTAL between all three miners with them all perforing ABOVE SPEC!!! I had done research so i knew I wouldnt earn much. More than anything i just wanted to learn. But still. I was kinda surprised in a negative way. Yesterday I actually earned less than .01 Frustrated I went back to scouring the web for new ideas. About a year ago, when II was starting, I saw an app on my iphone called CryptoBrowser that claimed to mine btc on your phone without actually using phone resources using a method of cloud mining. I tried it for a week and quit because I earned like .03 after a ton of use and seemed scammy. Plus my iphone actually would get very hot when doing this so I quit using it as it seemed like a possible scam with all the cryptonight browser mining hacks and malware out there. Anyways I was on my Galaxy Tab S6 and saw that CryptoBrowser released a "PRO" edition for 3.99 on Google Play. I bought it for Sh*ts and giggles and booted it up. It came with what they called "Cloud Boost" Essentially this is a button you press and it multiplys the estimated hashrate that it gives you device by the number shown on the boost button. (With the purchase of PRO you get one free x10 boost. You can purchase additional boosts to use with other android devices but those are actually pretty pricy. Another x10 boost was like $25 if i remember correctly). I played with it for about an hour to see if it actually worked like it said it would this time. To my surprise, as i was browsing, my device didnt increase in temperature AT ALL!!!!! I checked my tast manager to confirm and it was indeed true, my memory and usage barely went up. it was giving me an estimated range of 80-105 on the hashrate. Once i pushed the x10 boost button, that went to 800-1150 h/s. I switched my screen to not go to sleep, plugged it to the charge and let it run on the browser page, hashing. When you push the boost button, it runs for 3 hours at the boosted speeds. After that it goes back to normal but if you press the button again, it boosts everything again. There is no limit to how many times you use it. After checking what I earned after 24 hours, I HAD MADE .40 in BTC!!!!! I JUST EARNED OVER 4000% MORE THAN MY $280 MINING RIG EARNED ME!!!! I was blown away. Maybe this was a fluke? I did it again next day. Every 3 hours or so I would push the button again but thats all. Sure enough, .35 that day. Also, it realy BTC. I requested a payout and although it took like 12 hours for them to send me an email stating they had just sent it, I actually did recieve the state amount of BTC within 24 hours in my personal wallet. The fees to send are SUPER LOW!. Like .01 Below I will list the steps I took, along with an explanation of thier "Mining" process on Androids. Reminder, this ONLY WORKS ON ANDROIDS. Also DO NOT use cryptobrowser on a physcal laptop or desktop. I ran it on an old laptop for three days last year and it fried it. It does actually use your hardware on those platforms to mine and it is not efficnet at all as I suspect they prob steal over half of your power for themselves using the REAL RandomX protocol via browser mining which is EXTREMELY INEFFICIENT DONT TRY IT!! -----How To Do This Yourself: Cryptotab Browser states the program works on Android devices by estimating what it thinks the hashrate would be for your device specs and siimulates what you would mine in a remote server however you still earn that estimated coin amount. It is not a SHA-256 process or coin that they say is mining, rather it is XMR and they swap that and pay it out to you in BTC Bitcoin. However I know damn well my Tab S6 doesnt hash 80-105 h/s on RandomX because I have done it with a moodified XMRig module i ported to Android. I got 5 h/s a sec if I was getting any hashes at all. But thats besides the point as I still was making money. Now, when you press that cloud boost button it immediately boosts that hash rate it estimates by the number on the cloud boost. As stated above, you can purchase more boosts and gift them or use them on extra android devices that you may have. Again, they are pricey so I'm not doing that plus it would just mean that I have another device that I have to leave on and open. The boosts come in x2, x4, x6, x8 and x10 variants. Again, they have unlimited uses. Here is the link to grab yourself CryptoBrowser Pro from CryptoTab. This IS A REFERRAL LINK! This is where I benefit from doing tis tutorial. Like i said, I want to be transparent as this is not a scam but I'm also not doing this out of the love of my heart. Their referral system works in that people that use the donwload the app using your link are your stage 1 referrals. Anytime they are mining, you earn a 15% bonus. So say they mine $.30 one day. You would get paid out an additional $.045 in your own balance (it does not come out of the referred user balance fyi so no worries). Then lets say that referred miner also gets their own referrals. I would get a 10% bonus on whatever THOSE people mine. This goes on and on for like 8 tiers. Each tier the bonus percntage essential halves. So again, I stand to benefit from this but it also is stupid to not make this visible as its WAY CHEAPER, EASIER AND MORE PROFITABLE TO GET BTC USING THIS METHOD THAN IT IS USING ASICS!! THIS EARNS ALMOST AS MUCH BTC AS AN ANTMINER S7 DOES RUNNING 24/7 ONLY WITHOUT THE HUGE ELLECTRICTY BILL AND COSTS!!!!) Thats it. Again, if you have concerns, let me know or if you have suggestions, other tips, etc... mention those as well!!! https://cryptotabbrowser.com/8557319 Links to Picture Proof http://imgur.com/gallery/P13bEsB
Dear Groestlers, it goes without saying that 2020 has been a difficult time for millions of people worldwide. The groestlcoin team would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone our best to everyone coping with the direct and indirect effects of COVID-19. Let it bring out the best in us all and show that collectively, we can conquer anything. The centralised banks and our national governments are facing unprecedented times with interest rates worldwide dropping to record lows in places. Rest assured that this can only strengthen the fundamentals of all decentralised cryptocurrencies and the vision that was seeded with Satoshi's Bitcoin whitepaper over 10 years ago. Despite everything that has been thrown at us this year, the show must go on and the team will still progress and advance to continue the momentum that we have developed over the past 6 years. In addition to this, we'd like to remind you all that this is Groestlcoin's 6th Birthday release! In terms of price there have been some crazy highs and lows over the years (with highs of around $2.60 and lows of $0.000077!), but in terms of value– Groestlcoin just keeps getting more valuable! In these uncertain times, one thing remains clear – Groestlcoin will keep going and keep innovating regardless. On with what has been worked on and completed over the past few months.
UPDATED - Groestlcoin Core 2.18.2
This is a major release of Groestlcoin Core with many protocol level improvements and code optimizations, featuring the technical equivalent of Bitcoin v0.18.2 but with Groestlcoin-specific patches. On a general level, most of what is new is a new 'Groestlcoin-wallet' tool which is now distributed alongside Groestlcoin Core's other executables. NOTE: The 'Account' API has been removed from this version which was typically used in some tip bots. Please ensure you check the release notes from 2.17.2 for details on replacing this functionality.
Builds are now done through Gitian
Calls to getblocktemplate will fail if the segwit rule is not specified. Calling getblocktemplate without segwit specified is almost certainly a misconfiguration since doing so results in lower rewards for the miner. Failed calls will produce an error message describing how to enable the segwit rule.
A warning is printed if an unrecognized section name is used in the configuration file. Recognized sections are [test], [main], and [regtest].
Four new options are available for configuring the maximum number of messages that ZMQ will queue in memory (the "high water mark") before dropping additional messages. The default value is 1,000, the same as was used for previous releases.
The rpcallowip option can no longer be used to automatically listen on all network interfaces. Instead, the rpcbind parameter must be used to specify the IP addresses to listen on. Listening for RPC commands over a public network connection is insecure and should be disabled, so a warning is now printed if a user selects such a configuration. If you need to expose RPC in order to use a tool like Docker, ensure you only bind RPC to your localhost, e.g. docker run [...] -p 127.0.0.1:1441:1441 (this is an extra :1441 over the normal Docker port specification).
The rpcpassword option now causes a startup error if the password set in the configuration file contains a hash character (#), as it's ambiguous whether the hash character is meant for the password or as a comment.
The whitelistforcerelay option is used to relay transactions from whitelisted peers even when not accepted to the mempool. This option now defaults to being off, so that changes in policy and disconnect/ban behavior will not cause a node that is whitelisting another to be dropped by peers.
A new short about the JSON-RPC interface describes cases where the results of anRPC might contain inconsistencies between data sourced from differentsubsystems, such as wallet state and mempool state.
A new document introduces Groestlcoin Core's BIP174 interface, which is used to allow multiple programs to collaboratively work to create, sign, and broadcast new transactions. This is useful for offline (cold storage) wallets, multisig wallets, coinjoin implementations, and many other cases where two or more programs need to interact to generate a complete transaction.
The output script descriptor (https://github.com/groestlcoin/groestlcoin/blob/mastedoc/descriptors.md) documentation has been updated with information about new features in this still-developing language for describing the output scripts that a wallet or other program wants to receive notifications for, such as which addresses it wants to know received payments. The language is currently used in multiple new and updated RPCs described in these release notes and is expected to be adapted to other RPCs and to the underlying wallet structure.
A new --disable-bip70 option may be passed to ./configure to prevent Groestlcoin-Qt from being built with support for the BIP70 payment protocol or from linking libssl. As the payment protocol has exposed Groestlcoin Core to libssl vulnerabilities in the past, builders who don't need BIP70 support are encouraged to use this option to reduce their exposure to future vulnerabilities.
The minimum required version of Qt (when building the GUI) has been increased from 5.2 to 5.5.1 (the depends system provides 5.9.7)
getnodeaddresses returns peer addresses known to this node. It may be used to find nodes to connect to without using a DNS seeder.
listwalletdir returns a list of wallets in the wallet directory (either the default wallet directory or the directory configured bythe -walletdir parameter).
getrpcinfo returns runtime details of the RPC server. Currently, it returns an array of the currently active commands and how long they've been running.
deriveaddresses returns one or more addresses corresponding to an output descriptor.
getdescriptorinfo accepts a descriptor and returns information aboutit, including its computed checksum.
joinpsbts merges multiple distinct PSBTs into a single PSBT. The multiple PSBTs must have different inputs. The resulting PSBT will contain every input and output from all the PSBTs. Any signatures provided in any of the PSBTs will be dropped.
analyzepsbt examines a PSBT and provides information about what the PSBT contains and the next steps that need to be taken in order to complete the transaction. For each input of a PSBT, analyze psbt provides information about what information is missing for that input, including whether a UTXO needs to be provided, what pubkeys still need to be provided, which scripts need to be provided, and what signatures are still needed. Every input will also list which role is needed to complete that input, and analyzepsbt will also list the next role in general needed to complete the PSBT. analyzepsbt will also provide the estimated fee rate and estimated virtual size of the completed transaction if it has enough information to do so.
utxoupdatepsbt searches the set of Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) to find the outputs being spent by the partial transaction. PSBTs need to have the UTXOs being spent to be provided because the signing algorithm requires information from the UTXO being spent. For segwit inputs, only the UTXO itself is necessary. For non-segwit outputs, the entire previous transaction is needed so that signers can be sure that they are signing the correct thing. Unfortunately, because the UTXO set only contains UTXOs and not full transactions, utxoupdatepsbt will only add the UTXO for segwit inputs.
getpeerinfo now returns an additional minfeefilter field set to the peer's BIP133 fee filter. You can use this to detect that you have peers that are willing to accept transactions below the default minimum relay fee.
The mempool RPCs, such as getrawmempool with verbose=true, now return an additional "bip125-replaceable" value indicating whether thetransaction (or its unconfirmed ancestors) opts-in to asking nodes and miners to replace it with a higher-feerate transaction spending any of the same inputs.
settxfee previously silently ignored attempts to set the fee below the allowed minimums. It now prints a warning. The special value of"0" may still be used to request the minimum value.
getaddressinfo now provides an ischange field indicating whether the wallet used the address in a change output.
importmulti has been updated to support P2WSH, P2WPKH, P2SH-P2WPKH, and P2SH-P2WSH. Requests for P2WSH and P2SH-P2WSH accept an additional witnessscript parameter.
importmulti now returns an additional warnings field for each request with an array of strings explaining when fields are being ignored or are inconsistent, if there are any.
getaddressinfo now returns an additional solvable Boolean field when Groestlcoin Core knows enough about the address's scriptPubKey, optional redeemScript, and optional witnessScript for the wallet to be able to generate an unsigned input spending funds sent to that address.
The getaddressinfo, listunspent, and scantxoutset RPCs now return an additional desc field that contains an output descriptor containing all key paths and signing information for the address (except for the private key). The desc field is only returned for getaddressinfo and listunspent when the address is solvable.
importprivkey will preserve previously-set labels for addresses or public keys corresponding to the private key being imported. For example, if you imported a watch-only address with the label "coldwallet" in earlier releases of Groestlcoin Core, subsequently importing the private key would default to resetting the address's label to the default empty-string label (""). In this release, the previous label of "cold wallet" will be retained. If you optionally specify any label besides the default when calling importprivkey, the new label will be applied to the address.
getmininginfo now omits currentblockweight and currentblocktx when a block was never assembled via RPC on this node.
The getrawtransaction RPC & REST endpoints no longer check the unspent UTXO set for a transaction. The remaining behaviors are as follows:
If a blockhash is provided, check the corresponding block.
If no blockhash is provided, check the mempool.
If no blockhash is provided but txindex is enabled, also check txindex.
unloadwallet is now synchronous, meaning it will not return until the wallet is fully unloaded.
importmulti now supports importing of addresses from descriptors. A desc parameter can be provided instead of the "scriptPubKey" in are quest, as well as an optional range for ranged descriptors to specify the start and end of the range to import. Descriptors with key origin information imported through importmulti will have their key origin information stored in the wallet for use with creating PSBTs.
listunspent has been modified so that it also returns witnessScript, the witness script in the case of a P2WSH orP2SH-P2WSH output.
createwallet now has an optional blank argument that can be used to create a blank wallet. Blank wallets do not have any keys or HDseed. They cannot be opened in software older than 2.18.2. Once a blank wallet has a HD seed set (by using sethdseed) or private keys, scripts, addresses, and other watch only things have been imported, the wallet is no longer blank and can be opened in 2.17.2. Encrypting a blank wallet will also set a HD seed for it.
signrawtransaction is removed after being deprecated and hidden behind a special configuration option in version 2.17.2.
The 'account' API is removed after being deprecated in v2.17.2 The 'label' API was introduced in v2.17.2 as a replacement for accounts. See the release notes from v2.17.2 for a full description of the changes from the 'account' API to the 'label' API.
addwitnessaddress is removed after being deprecated in version 2.16.0.
generate is deprecated and will be fully removed in a subsequent major version. This RPC is only used for testing, but its implementation reached across multiple subsystems (wallet and mining), so it is being deprecated to simplify the wallet-node interface. Projects that are using generate for testing purposes should transition to using the generatetoaddress RPC, which does not require or use the wallet component. Calling generatetoaddress with an address returned by the getnewaddress RPC gives the same functionality as the old generate RPC. To continue using generate in this version, restart groestlcoind with the -deprecatedrpc=generate configuration option.
Be reminded that parts of the validateaddress command have been deprecated and moved to getaddressinfo. The following deprecated fields have moved to getaddressinfo: ismine, iswatchonly,script, hex, pubkeys, sigsrequired, pubkey, embedded,iscompressed, label, timestamp, hdkeypath, hdmasterkeyid.
The addresses field has been removed from the validateaddressand getaddressinfo RPC methods. This field was confusing since it referred to public keys using their P2PKH address. Clients should use the embedded.address field for P2SH or P2WSH wrapped addresses, and pubkeys for inspecting multisig participants.
A new /rest/blockhashbyheight/ endpoint is added for fetching the hash of the block in the current best blockchain based on its height (how many blocks it is after the Genesis Block).
A new Window menu is added alongside the existing File, Settings, and Help menus. Several items from the other menus that opened new windows have been moved to this new Window menu.
In the Send tab, the checkbox for "pay only the required fee" has been removed. Instead, the user can simply decrease the value in the Custom Fee rate field all the way down to the node's configured minimumrelay fee.
In the Overview tab, the watch-only balance will be the only balance shown if the wallet was created using the createwallet RPC and thedisable_private_keys parameter was set to true.
The launch-on-startup option is no longer available on macOS if compiled with macosx min version greater than 10.11 (useCXXFLAGS="-mmacosx-version-min=10.11" CFLAGS="-mmacosx-version-min=10.11" for setting the deployment sdkversion)
A new groestlcoin-wallet tool is now distributed alongside Groestlcoin Core's other executables. Without needing to use any RPCs, this tool can currently create a new wallet file or display some basic information about an existing wallet, such as whether the wallet is encrypted, whether it uses an HD seed, how many transactions it contains, and how many address book entries it has.
Since version 2.16.0, Groestlcoin Core's built-in wallet has defaulted to generating P2SH-wrapped segwit addresses when users want to receive payments. These addresses are backwards compatible with all widely used software. Starting with Groestlcoin Core 2.20.1 (expected about a year after 2.18.2), Groestlcoin Core will default to native segwitaddresses (bech32) that provide additional fee savings and other benefits. Currently, many wallets and services already support sending to bech32 addresses, and if the Groestlcoin Core project sees enough additional adoption, it will instead default to bech32 receiving addresses in Groestlcoin Core 2.19.1. P2SH-wrapped segwit addresses will continue to be provided if the user requests them in the GUI or by RPC, and anyone who doesn't want the update will be able to configure their default address type. (Similarly, pioneering users who want to change their default now may set the addresstype=bech32 configuration option in any Groestlcoin Core release from 2.16.0 up.)
BIP 61 reject messages are now deprecated. Reject messages have no use case on the P2P network and are only logged for debugging by most network nodes. Furthermore, they increase bandwidth and can be harmful for privacy and security. It has been possible to disable BIP 61 messages since v2.17.2 with the -enablebip61=0 option. BIP 61 messages will be disabled by default in a future version, before being removed entirely.
The submitblock RPC previously returned the reason a rejected block was invalid the first time it processed that block but returned a generic "duplicate" rejection message on subsequent occasions it processed the same block. It now always returns the fundamental reason for rejecting an invalid block and only returns "duplicate" for valid blocks it has already accepted.
A new submitheader RPC allows submitting block headers independently from their block. This is likely only useful for testing.
The signrawtransactionwithkey and signrawtransactionwithwallet RPCs have been modified so that they also optionally accept a witnessScript, the witness script in the case of a P2WSH orP2SH-P2WSH output. This is compatible with the change to listunspent.
For the walletprocesspsbt and walletcreatefundedpsbt RPCs, if thebip32derivs parameter is set to true but the key metadata for a public key has not been updated yet, then that key will have a derivation path as if it were just an independent key (i.e. no derivation path and its master fingerprint is itself).
The -usehd configuration option was removed in version 2.16.0 From that version onwards, all new wallets created are hierarchical deterministic wallets. This release makes specifying -usehd an invalid configuration option.
This release allows peers that your node automatically disconnected for misbehaviour (e.g. sending invalid data) to reconnect to your node if you have unused incoming connection slots. If your slots fill up, a misbehaving node will be disconnected to make room for nodes without a history of problems (unless the misbehaving node helps your node in some other way, such as by connecting to a part of the Internet from which you don't have many other peers). Previously, Groestlcoin Core banned the IP addresses of misbehaving peers for a period (default of 1 day); this was easily circumvented by attackers with multiple IP addresses. If you manually ban a peer, such as by using the setban RPC, all connections from that peer will still be rejected.
The key metadata will need to be upgraded the first time that the HDseed is available. For unencrypted wallets this will occur on wallet loading. For encrypted wallets this will occur the first time the wallet is unlocked.
Newly encrypted wallets will no longer require restarting the software. Instead such wallets will be completely unloaded and reloaded to achieve the same effect.
A sub-project of Bitcoin Core now provides Hardware Wallet Interaction (HWI) scripts that allow command-line users to use several popular hardware key management devices with Groestlcoin Core. See their project page for details.
This release changes the Random Number Generator (RNG) used from OpenSSL to Groestlcoin Core's own implementation, although entropy gathered by Groestlcoin Core is fed out to OpenSSL and then read back in when the program needs strong randomness. This moves Groestlcoin Core a little closer to no longer needing to depend on OpenSSL, a dependency that has caused security issues in the past. The new implementation gathers entropy from multiple sources, including from hardware supporting the rdseed CPU instruction.
On macOS, Groestlcoin Core now opts out of application CPU throttling ("app nap") during initial blockchain download, when catching up from over 100 blocks behind the current chain tip, or when reindexing chain data. This helps prevent these operations from taking an excessively long time because the operating system is attempting to conserve power.
How to Upgrade?
Windows If you are running an older version, shut it down. Wait until it has completely shut down (which might take a few minutes for older versions), then run the installer. OSX If you are running an older version, shut it down. Wait until it has completely shut down (which might take a few minutes for older versions), run the dmg and drag Groestlcoin Core to Applications. Ubuntu http://groestlcoin.org/forum/index.php?topic=441.0
ALL NEW - Groestlcoin Moonshine iOS/Android Wallet
Built with React Native, Moonshine utilizes Electrum-GRS's JSON-RPC methods to interact with the Groestlcoin network. GRS Moonshine's intended use is as a hot wallet. Meaning, your keys are only as safe as the device you install this wallet on. As with any hot wallet, please ensure that you keep only a small, responsible amount of Groestlcoin on it at any given time.
Features
Groestlcoin Mainnet & Testnet supported
Bech32 support
Multiple wallet support
Electrum - Support for both random and custom peers
Encrypted storage
Biometric + Pin authentication
Custom fee selection
Import mnemonic phrases via manual entry or scanning
RBF functionality
BIP39 Passphrase functionality
Support for Segwit-compatible & legacy addresses in settings
Support individual private key sweeping
UTXO blacklisting - Accessible via the Transaction Detail view, this allows users to blacklist any utxo that they do not wish to include in their list of available utxo's when sending transactions. Blacklisting a utxo excludes its amount from the wallet's total balance.
Ability to Sign & Verify Messages
Support BitID for password-free authentication
Coin Control - This can be accessed from the Send Transaction view and basically allows users to select from a list of available UTXO's to include in their transaction.
HODL GRS connects directly to the Groestlcoin network using SPV mode and doesn't rely on servers that can be hacked or disabled. HODL GRS utilizes AES hardware encryption, app sandboxing, and the latest security features to protect users from malware, browser security holes, and even physical theft. Private keys are stored only in the secure enclave of the user's phone, inaccessible to anyone other than the user. Simplicity and ease-of-use is the core design principle of HODL GRS. A simple recovery phrase (which we call a Backup Recovery Key) is all that is needed to restore the user's wallet if they ever lose or replace their device. HODL GRS is deterministic, which means the user's balance and transaction history can be recovered just from the backup recovery key.
Features
Simplified payment verification for fast mobile performance
Groestlcoin Seed Savior is a tool for recovering BIP39 seed phrases. This tool is meant to help users with recovering a slightly incorrect Groestlcoin mnemonic phrase (AKA backup or seed). You can enter an existing BIP39 mnemonic and get derived addresses in various formats. To find out if one of the suggested addresses is the right one, you can click on the suggested address to check the address' transaction history on a block explorer.
Features
If a word is wrong, the tool will try to suggest the closest option.
If a word is missing or unknown, please type "?" instead and the tool will find all relevant options.
NOTE: NVidia GPU or any CPU only. AMD graphics cards will not work with this address generator. VanitySearch is a command-line Segwit-capable vanity Groestlcoin address generator. Add unique flair when you tell people to send Groestlcoin. Alternatively, VanitySearch can be used to generate random addresses offline. If you're tired of the random, cryptic addresses generated by regular groestlcoin clients, then VanitySearch is the right choice for you to create a more personalized address. VanitySearch is a groestlcoin address prefix finder. If you want to generate safe private keys, use the -s option to enter your passphrase which will be used for generating a base key as for BIP38 standard (VanitySearch.exe -s "My PassPhrase" FXPref). You can also use VanitySearch.exe -ps "My PassPhrase" which will add a crypto secure seed to your passphrase. VanitySearch may not compute a good grid size for your GPU, so try different values using -g option in order to get the best performances. If you want to use GPUs and CPUs together, you may have best performances by keeping one CPU core for handling GPU(s)/CPU exchanges (use -t option to set the number of CPU threads).
Features
Fixed size arithmetic
Fast Modular Inversion (Delayed Right Shift 62 bits)
SecpK1 Fast modular multiplication (2 steps folding 512bits to 256bits using 64 bits digits)
Use some properties of elliptic curve to generate more keys
SSE Secure Hash Algorithm SHA256 and RIPEMD160 (CPU)
Groestlcoin EasyVanity 2020 is a windows app built from the ground-up and makes it easier than ever before to create your very own bespoke bech32 address(es) when whilst not connected to the internet. If you're tired of the random, cryptic bech32 addresses generated by regular Groestlcoin clients, then Groestlcoin EasyVanity2020 is the right choice for you to create a more personalised bech32 address. This 2020 version uses the new VanitySearch to generate not only legacy addresses (F prefix) but also Bech32 addresses (grs1 prefix).
Features
Ability to continue finding keys after first one is found
Includes warning on start-up if connected to the internet
Ability to output keys to a text file (And shows button to open that directory)
Show and hide the private key with a simple toggle switch
Show full output of commands
Ability to choose between Processor (CPU) and Graphics Card (GPU) ( NVidia ONLY! )
Features both a Light and Dark Material Design-Style Themes
Free software - MIT. Anyone can audit the code.
Written in C# - The code is short, and easy to review.
Groestlcoin WPF is an alternative full node client with optional lightweight 'thin-client' mode based on WPF. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is one of Microsoft's latest approaches to a GUI framework, used with the .NET framework. Its main advantages over the original Groestlcoin client include support for exporting blockchain.dat and including a lite wallet mode. This wallet was previously deprecated but has been brought back to life with modern standards.
Features
Works via TOR or SOCKS5 proxy
Can use bootstrap.dat format as blockchain database
Import/Export blockchain to/from bootstrap.dat
Import wallet.dat from Groestlcoin-qt wallet
Export wallet to wallet.dat
Use both groestlcoin-wpf and groestlcoin-qt with the same addresses in parallel. When you send money from one program, the transaction will automatically be visible on the other wallet.
Rescan blockchain with a simple mouse click
Works as a full node and listens to port 1331 (listening port can be changed)
Fast Block verifying, parallel processing on multi-core CPUs
Mine Groestlcoins with your CPU by a simple mouse click
All private keys are kept encrypted on your local machine (or on a USB stick)
Lite - Has a lightweight "thin client" mode which does not require a new user to download the entire Groestlcoin chain and store it
Free and decentralised - Open Source under GNU license
Remastered Improvements
Bech32 support
P2sh support
Fixed Import/Export to wallet.dat
Testnet Support
Rescan wallet option
Change wallet password option
Address type and Change type options through *.conf file
Import from bootstrap.dat - It is a flat, binary file containing Groestlcoin blockchain data, from the genesis block through a recent height. All versions automatically validate and import the file "grs.bootstrap.dat" in the GRS directory. Grs.bootstrap.dat is compatible with Qt wallet. GroestlCoin-Qt can load from it.
In Full mode file %APPDATA%\Groestlcoin-WPF\GRS\GRS.bootstrap.dat is full blockchain in standard bootstrap.dat format and can be used with other clients.
Groestlcoin BIP39 Key Tool is a GUI interface for generating Groestlcoin public and private keys. It is a standalone tool which can be used offline.
Features
Selection options for 3-24 words (simply putting the space separated words in the first word box will also work) along with a bip39 passphrase
User input for total number of addresses desired
Creation of P2PKH, P2SH, P2WPKH and P2WSH addresses along with xpriv and xpub as per BIP32 spec, using a word list as the starting point following the BIP39 standard.
Pre-sets for BIP44, BIP49, BIP84 and BIP141 standards, along with custom user input for derivation path
Option for Hardened or non-hardened addresses
Option for Testnet private and public keys
Output containing derivation path, private key in WIF, integer and hex format, public key address, public point on curve and scriptpubkey
Results are output in a file titled 'wallet.txt' with the time addresses were generated, along with all information presented onscreen
Groestlcoin Electrum Personal Server aims to make using Electrum Groestlcoin wallet more secure and more private. It makes it easy to connect your Electrum-GRS wallet to your own full node. It is an implementation of the Electrum-grs server protocol which fulfils the specific need of using the Electrum-grs wallet backed by a full node, but without the heavyweight server backend, for a single user. It allows the user to benefit from all Groestlcoin Core's resource-saving features like pruning, blocks only and disabled txindex. All Electrum-GRS's feature-richness like hardware wallet integration, multi-signature wallets, offline signing, seed recovery phrases, coin control and so on can still be used, but connected only to the user's own full node. Full node wallets are important in Groestlcoin because they are a big part of what makes the system be trust-less. No longer do people have to trust a financial institution like a bank or PayPal, they can run software on their own computers. If Groestlcoin is digital gold, then a full node wallet is your own personal goldsmith who checks for you that received payments are genuine. Full node wallets are also important for privacy. Using Electrum-GRS under default configuration requires it to send (hashes of) all your Groestlcoin addresses to some server. That server can then easily spy on your transactions. Full node wallets like Groestlcoin Electrum Personal Server would download the entire blockchain and scan it for the user's own addresses, and therefore don't reveal to anyone else which Groestlcoin addresses they are interested in. Groestlcoin Electrum Personal Server can also broadcast transactions through Tor which improves privacy by resisting traffic analysis for broadcasted transactions which can link the IP address of the user to the transaction. If enabled this would happen transparently whenever the user simply clicks "Send" on a transaction in Electrum-grs wallet. Note: Currently Groestlcoin Electrum Personal Server can only accept one connection at a time.
Features
Use your own node
Tor support
Uses less CPU and RAM than ElectrumX
Used intermittently rather than needing to be always-on
Doesn't require an index of every Groestlcoin address ever used like on ElectrumX
UPDATED – Android Wallet 7.38.1 - Main Net + Test Net
The app allows you to send and receive Groestlcoin on your device using QR codes and URI links. When using this app, please back up your wallet and email them to yourself! This will save your wallet in a password protected file. Then your coins can be retrieved even if you lose your phone.
Changes
Add confidence messages, helping users to understand the confidence state of their payments.
Handle edge case when restoring via an external app.
Count devices with a memory class of 128 MB as low ram.
Introduce dark mode on Android 10 devices.
Reduce memory usage of PIN-protected wallets.
Tapping on the app's version will reveal a checksum of the APK that was installed.
Fix issue with confirmation of transactions that empty your wallet.
Groestlcoin Sentinel is a great solution for anyone who wants the convenience and utility of a hot wallet for receiving payments directly into their cold storage (or hardware wallets). Sentinel accepts XPUB's, YPUB'S, ZPUB's and individual Groestlcoin address. Once added you will be able to view balances, view transactions, and (in the case of XPUB's, YPUB's and ZPUB's) deterministically generate addresses for that wallet. Groestlcoin Sentinel is a fork of Groestlcoin Samourai Wallet with all spending and transaction building code removed.
Let me start this off with this is NOT a comprehensive, end-all-be-all guide to 'how to setup a livestream.' This is simply the workflow/setup I've come to use over 4 years of on and off streaming on Twitch. Hopefully it can help some of yall out that are (finally XD) joining the livestream world. *I only stream on Twitch using OBS, so this will be specific to Twitch and OBS; I have not tried YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or any other platform or streaming software, but the basic outline is kind of there. Hardware: 2x 1200's, Rane TTM57sl mixer with Serato Scratch Live, Samsung laptop, Behringer Xenyx 802 USB mixer, Shure SM57 mic, Pansonic GH2 or Logitech webcam (depends on if I'm using green screen or not), and then my gaming PC is my streaming PC. For speakers, I have a Yahama receiver running a 5.1 system that I use with my gaming/streaming PC. It's not the best setup for DJ'ing necessarily, as the receiver can add quite a bit of latency, but if there is any now, I barely notice it. I run the receiver in 5 channel stereo, and turn off any signal processing that I can. Audio setup: I run 1/4" out of the booth outputs on the TTM57 into the Behringer mixer (this is for the stream audio). Then I have RCA -> 1/8" from the aux out on the TTM57 into the aux input on my receiver for my 'monitors.' I run the mic (XLR) into the Behringer mixer as well. The Behringer connects via USB to my stream PC. Camera setup: I either use an HDMI to USB3.0 capture card with my GH2 or a Logitech USB webcam. All it takes is plugging it into the stream PC. Easy enough. OBS setup: There are a TON of YouTube and written tutorials to setup OBS, but they generally focus on gaming and not so much DJ'ing. I won't go into too much detail, but will point out stuff more particular for DJ'ing. This is my main OBS screen. Have everything plugged in and turned on before you open OBS to make sure it picks up your USB devices (USB mixer and camera). Should go without saying, but also make sure you have your drivers installed for the devices. [Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/b2zJazj.png) The only audio I want outputting to the stream is from the Behringer mixer, so the desktop audio and camera audio are muted. Aside from the camera and mixer, all of the other sources in my source window are optional. (If you're curious as to why Winamp is in there, I can add details on that in a later post) Output settings: [Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/p2mIfvC.png) Video bitrate will depend on your ISP, your upload speed, and your streaming PC hardware. I've had to drop mine down to 2500kbps from my usual 3500kbps recently. I guess with everyone at home using the interwebs, my connection seems a lot more unstable than even a month ago. I set the audio bitrate to 320kbps, but I think Twitch ends up compressing it to 192kbps for viewers. Recording settings are optional, I only recommend streaming and recording at the same time if you have a decently powerful streaming computer. Better to record just the audio in your DJ software to upload the mix later. Twitch will mute any replays with copywritten material, so I upload to Mixcloud for archiving. I run the mic through the Behringer mixer versus the mic input on my Rane mixer because I talk to chat, and it's annoying listening back to mixes with me yammering through parts. My GPU recently kicked the bucket (still works on default Windows drivers...which has caused some bottlenecks when it comes to streaming, but I can still do it) so for now I'm using software encoding, but if you have the option for hardware encoding, use it. Video Settings [Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/2AjjHnL.png) Leave your base canvas at 1920x1080, but you want your output at 1280x720. I haven't really noticed a difference in the various downscale filters, but bicubic is what I use. 30fps is best for your viewers, as it's less demanding than running 60fps, but that's really up to you. Twitch: Twitch takes some getting used to; whether it's the website itself or the community/culture. The music community is very welcoming (especially now), and I encounter far less trolls there than in gaming channels. There's a lot of people there now trying to figure everything out, so don't feel like you're late to the party. If you want to try to make some money, you'll want to setup a donation site. Can be a simple PayPal link, Bitcoin link, or you can use something like streamelements or streamlabs. Those two extensions add other things like chatbots, commands (ie: a viewer can type !mixcloud in my chat will send a message in chat with my Mixcloud link), followesubscribedonator notifications. All of those are customizable, but I'd recommend just using the default stuff before making custom notifications and such. It can be a bit of a time sink..but then again I guess we got nothing but time right now. After you get up and going with a few streams, set your sights on reaching affilate. It's not that difficult to get, nor do you lose it if you don't keep up with the requirements to get it. You can then make custom channel emotes (again, another time sink, or there are a ton of artists out there that can make them for you) and accept subscriptions and bits. Twitch is owned by Amazon, so if you're a Prime member, link your Amazon account and you get a free subscription you can give to one streamer per month. It doesn't auto renew, so you can change it every month, but it is a nice 'gift' to give to streamers to help support them. Dark Sith Lord Bezos does take 50% of the $5/month cost of a base subscription (whether a Prime sub or paid for), so if you really want to help a streamer, use donations. But if you already have Prime, may as well throw the free sub around to someone. At the end of your stream, you can 'raid' another streamer. All it is is taking your viewers and dumping them into the channel of another streamer. I generally try to find other DJ's that are playing the same/similar genre that I think my viewers would stick around for; or just other DJ's I like. Then there's 'hosting.' That is when you are offline, but your channel is playing another stream. There are auto-host settings so that you don't have to manually host channels while you're offline. Between being raided (it's pretty much random and up to other streamers; don't beg) and raiding others, it's kind of the best way to get your channel out and exposed. But, don't make it about view counts or followers. Do it because you want to mix, no other reason. The music section has all of a sudden been saturated by DJ's/record labels due to the pandemic; there's a lot of people new to Twitch who don't know there's a bunch of other DJ's in the music category, so just keep going and you'll find an audience. Other thoughts: I love streaming on Twitch. I've done several 6+ hour streams in my time there. If you come from only playing out live, it's a big adjustment. There's no crowd energy to work off of; sometimes chat can give that to you, but it can be hard when you're just in your room by yourself. I personally find it hard to mix heavieharder stuff for more than 30-45 minutes at a time, so a lot of my mixes have been more chill and kind of downtempo as I can stay in that vibe for longer periods. I've met a lot of really awesome DJ's in my time there, and it's great seeing so many more looking for a creative outlet now that we're on global quarantine. Hopefully after some semblance of normality is restored, people will continue to livestream and the viewers keep coming back. I know this has been a giant wall of text, so apologies, but hopefully it gives someone something to go off of. Let me know if anyone has any specific questions or needs clarification on anything. Happy streaming!
Venezuela’s largest department store will install blockchain-enabled cash registers in its 49 retail outlets. The megastore operator Traki announced August 22, it will integrate Singapore-based Pundi X’s point-of-sale device, XPOS, to offer a cryptocurrency payment rail for shoppers. Already available in 30 countries, Pundi aims to sell 100,000 XPOS devices by 2021. This is part of the firm’s plan to introduce cryptocurrencies for everyday use, through an ecosystem of financial products like its XPASS crypto debit cards and Xwallet. The XPOS payments system supports payments in a range of cryptocurrencies including BTC, ETH, Binance’s BNB stablecoin, as well as Pundi X’s own NPXS and NPXSXEM tokens.
Top cryptocurrency exchange Binance is launching an open blockchain project “Venus” focused on developing localized stablecoins worldwide. In an announcement published on Aug. 19, the exchange argues it is well-positioned to launch such a currency ecosystem in light of its existing public chain technology, Binance Chain, wide user base and already established global compliance measures. The exchange says it is seeking partnerships with governments, corporations, technology firms, and other cryptocurrency and blockchain projects in order to develop a new currency ecosystem that will empower both developed and developing countries. Binance’s ambitious new venture appears to compete directly with plans from social media titan Facebook to launch a fiat-pegged stablecoin, Libra, that would power a global crypto payments network embedded into the company’s three wholly-owned apps: WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.
One of the largest mobile providers in Austria is planning to accept cryptocurrency for payment at certain store locations. A1, which services some 5.1 million mobile and 2.1 million fixed lines across Austria, is testing cryptocurrency payments at store locations across Austria. Dash, ethereum, litecoin, stellar and XRP will be available for payment, according to a report by Austrian tech news site Futurezone. The pilot program will also host payments for Alipay and WeChat Pay by the end of August. As of now, Futurezone listed seven initial locations accepting cryptocurrency payments across Austria. Moreover, A1 told Futurezone that the payment option is not only for local Austrians but increasingly geared toward tourists.
Ukraine’s top law-enforcement and counterintelligence agency uncovered crypto mining equipment on site at a nuclear power plant. According to local media reports, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) confiscated six Radeon RX 470 GPU video cards, a motherboard, power supplies and extension cords, a USB and hard drive, and cooling units installed in the South Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant on July 10. All of the equipment was located in a single office, No. 104, in the administrative wing separate from the power facility, from the state-owned Energoatom enterprise. The power plant is registered as a state secret and outside computer equipment is not authorized to enter the property. The same day, a National Guard of Ukraine branch uncovered additional crypto mining equipment at same nuclear plant. In this search and seizure, 16 GPU video cards, 7 hard drives, 2 solid-state drives and router were uncovered.
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Rakuten Wallet has launched trading a year after acquiring Everybody’s Bitcoin. Confirmed in a press release on Aug. 19, Rakuten Wallet, which is a subsidiary of Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, said spot trading of three cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) — was now live. In future, developers plan to release an app for iOS and Android, use of which will be mandatory for deposits and withdrawals. The exchange joins a rapidly expanding ecosystem on the Japanese market, with multiple competitors vying for a slice of the domestic cryptocurrency trade.
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How to get $100 million in VC funding to build an industry that makes $300 million profit without spending a dime
Yesterday I received an unexpected gift: a link to a copy of the slides of the presentation that 21inc gave to investors, apparently between October and December 2014, when they were still calling themselves "21E6". (The sender asked to remain anonymous, and I am not sure about the copyright status of the file; so I would rather not repost it here yet. But it seems that several other people, including some of the 21inc competitors, have got a copy too; so anyone who is really interested can probably get it too.) The slides don't have much new factual information, and basically confirm what we already guessed about the 21inc business plans. But they show that we severely underestimated their chutzpah and hype. Here are some random highlights (as far as I can decipher from the slides):
Mining operations:
They had three relevant mining rig designs in the plans, that would require funding:
The "TH/s", "Cost", and "kW" columns are per "system", i.e. a mining unit containing many chips. The last column is the expected profit to be made from each set of mining hardware over its expected lifetime. (The slides have some other details that do not seem to be important.) The first line is the hardware that they were mining with at the time of the presentation; that must be why the "Cost" (as far as investors are concerned) is given as zero. The second line seems to be an upgrade of their previous mining hardware from v1 chips (which gave 2.7 PH/s total at the time) to v3 chips (which would give 17 PH/s) . In reality, we have seen that their share of hashpower dwindled through all of 2015, and (AFAIK) they haven't mined a single block in the last six months. Were they still mining with CyrusOne on extra-life, or were they using the upgraded IO which was turned off prematurely? What happened to Brownfield?
BitSplit chip:
However, their mining operations were secondary; the meat of their plan was the embedded chip, called BitSplit at the time. The BitSPlit chip (as we suspected) was hard-wired to send 75% of the block reward to the 21inc wallet, whose address was burned in the silicon, and 25% to the user's wallet. By my calculations, assuming 50 GH/s and no increase in the difficulty, the BitSplit would mine one block in 570 years, on average, and collect less than 2 BTC of reward in that time. So, of course, the chip was hard-wired to mine into a pool run by 21inc, that would spread the user's 25% of those 2 BTC (expected) into a daily regular trickle of a couple thousand satoshis. Their own mining operations would provide the BTC needed for the pool payouts of all the millions of chips that they expected to be running out there. They projected to release 3 versions:
Model Qty GH/s W Cost Deploy Profit($) --------------- ---------- ---- -- ---- ------------ ------------ USB hub-charger 250,000 38 15 $35 Mar 2015 ~8,000,000 Embedded chip 1,000,000 63 15 $8 Aug 2015 ~103,000,000 BitSplit Inside 10,000,000 20 5 $0 Oct 2015 ~292,000,000
The "Qty" is the expected number of units sold. The last column, IIUC, is the profit that 21inc expected to make from the 75% cut of the BTC produced by all the chips, over their expected lifetime. In the above "USB hub-charger" model was a USB charging unit, roughly 3 x 2 x 1 inches, with 2 USB outputs and a mining chip inside, produced by 21inc themselves "to seed the market". The second line, which I called "Embedded chip", seems to refer to discrete BitSplit chips provided by 21inc and included in consumer devices (like routers etc.) by OEM manufacturers. The "BitSplit Inside" model would be the BitSplit integrated into the chipsets of other manufacturers, and manufactured by them. Its cost is listed as "$0" (for 21inc) because they expected those manufacturers to shoulder the cost of manufacturing and integrating the mining chip. Apparently the market-seeding "USB hub-charger" was later replaced by the "Bitcoin Computer" (aka the PiTato). In one slide it is called "multifunctional BitSplit device", and depicted as a sleek shiny black box, the size of a cigarette pack, with a power cable and 2-3 USB or similar outputs. If that is supposed to be the PiTato, presumably they had not yet realized that a 15 w computer would need a cooling fan with a miniature wind tunnel on top. In the last two entries, the manufacturers (not the device owners!) would be rewarded with the 25% slice of the BTC mined by those embedded chips. As an example, the slides say that a manufacturer who produced one quarter of the embedded BitSplits would get the 25% cut on the BTC yield of those chips, that was estimated to be between 2 and 4 million dollars per year of revenue in 2015--2018. Those numbers are based on the following predicted mean BTC prices: $350 for 2015, $1000 for 2016, $2200 for 2017, and $5500 for 2018.
My POS motherboard only has ONE usb controller, which means I'm unable to pass it through to my Windows gaming VM. I need to do this as my Xbox wireless adapter is really wonky with just USB passthrough, and the only way to get around this is to passthrough an entire USB controller. Pretty sure this is a KVM issue as I've never had any issues passing through USB devices on ESXi. I have an mATX build with a huge graphics card, so my PCIe x2 slots are blocked off, but I managed to use one of those bitcoin mining rig extender cables to "breakout" the slot. My inelegant plan is to just get a PCIE to USB card and mount it externally. Anyone have any suggestions for a good card that works with unRAID? I see a lot of cheap options on eBay/Amazon. Used server grade cards would be ideal. I'm even open to alternate suggestions. Things I've thought about:
VirtuaHere running on another box. Pretty sure this introduces latency.
New motherboard.
Something I'm missing to get USB passthrough working properly for bluetooth/xbox adapters.
I literally have tens of thousands of dollars in top-shelf hardware, looking to repurpose some before selling on eBay to build a NAS system, possibly a dedicated firewall device as well. o_O
Q1) What will you be doing with this PC? Be as specific as possible, and include specific games or programs you will be using.** A1) This will be a dedicated NAS system for my home network. As such, I'm looking to have it: - Host ##TB's of 720, 1080 & up resolution Movies and TV Shows I'm about to begin ripping from a MASSIVE DVD & Blueray collection I have. - My kids are big on Minecraft. I understand it's possible to host your own "worlds" (or whatever they call the maps you can build) on your own "server". I think it would be pretty neat to offer them (& their friends - if can be done 'safely/securely') their own partition on one of my NAS HDD's. - I also have accounts with a couple diff VPN companies... I understand it's possible (?) to sync said VPN's with a NAS, this might be a more relative topic on the next point/purpose... - I'd like to be able to remotely link to this NAS for when I travel overseas and want to stream at my temp location from my house/this NAS. ______________________ Q2) What is your maximum budget before rebates/shipping/taxes?** * A2) Here's where I make matters more complicated than most others would... I've been an advocate for Bitcoin and crypto-currencies in general since 2013. I invested in a small mining outfit back in 2014 (strictly Bitcoin/ASIC's). One of my buddies is the President of a large-scale mining operation (foreign and domestic) and he convinced me to dabble in the GPU mining-space. I made my first hardware purchase in Q4, 2017 and launched a small-scale GPU-Farm in my house since then. I had the rigs mining up until Q3 of 2018 (not cost-efficient to keep on, especially living in SoFlo) and since then, the hardware's been collecting dust (& pissing off my family members since they lost access to 3X rooms in the house - I won't let anyone go near my gear). One of my New Years Resolutions for 2019 was to clear out the house of all my mining equipment so that's all about to go up on eBay. So "budget" is relative to whatever I "MUST" spend if I can't repurpose any of the parts I already have on hand for this build... (Anyone having something I "need" and is looking to barter for one of the items I'll list later on in here, LMK). ______________________ Q3) When do you plan on building/buying the PC? Note: beyond a week or two from today means any build you receive will be out of date when you want to buy.** A3) IMMEDIATELY! :) ______________________ Q4) What, exactly, do you need included in the budget? (ToweOS/monitokeyboard/mouse/etc\)** A4) Well I had a half-assed idea approximately 1 year ago that it might be wise to build a bunch of 'gaming rigs' to sell on eBay with my intended repurposed mining hardware so I went on a shopping spree for like 6 months. That said; I've got a plethora of various other components that aren't even unboxed yet. 90% of the items I've purchased for this additional project were items that were marked down via MIR (mail-in-rebates) & what-not...
AFAIK, there are only 3X items I absolutely do not have which I 'MUST' find. Those would be - 1) Motherboard which accepts "ECC RAM". 2) CPU for said MOBO. 3) Said "ECC RAM".\*
______________________ Q5) Which country (and state/province) will you be purchasing the parts in? If you're in US, do you have access to a Microcenter location?** A5) I'm located in Southwest Florida. No Microcenter's here. Best Buy is pretty much my only option although I am a member of Newegg, Amazon & Costco if that makes any difference? ______________________ Q6) If reusing any parts (including monitor(s)/keyboard/mouse/etc), what parts will you be reusing? Brands and models are appreciated.** A6) In an attempt to better clean up this Q&A, I'm going to list the items I have on-hand at the end of this questionnaire in-case passers-by feel like this might be a TLDR.* (Scroll to the bottom & you'll see what I mean). ______________________ Q7) Will you be overclocking? If yes, are you interested in overclocking right away, or down the line? CPU and/or GPU?** A7) I don't think that's necessary for my intended purpose although - I'm not against it if that helps & FWIW, I'm pretty skilled @ this task already (it's not rocket science). ______________________ Q8) Are there any specific features or items you want/need in the build? (ex: SSD, large amount of storage or a RAID setup, CUDA or OpenCL support, etc)** A8) As stated in A4; ECC RAM is non-negotiable... RAID seems like a logical application here as well. - This will predominantly be receiving commands from MacOS computers. I don't think that matters really but figured it couldn't hurt to let you guys know.\* - I'd also be quite fond of implementing "PFSENSE" (or something of that caliber) applied to this system so I could give my Netgear Nighthawks less stress in that arena, plus my limited understanding of PFSENSE is that it's ability to act as a firewall runs circles around anything that comes with consumer-grade Wi-Fi routers (like my Nighthawks). Just the same, I'm open to building a second rig just for the firewall.\* - Another desirable feature would be that it draws as little electricity from the wall as possible. (I'm EXTREMELY skilled in this arena. I have "Kill-A-Watts" to test/gauge on, as well as an intimate understanding of the differences between Silver, Gold, Platinum and Titanium rated PSU's. As well as having already measured each of the PSU's I have on-hand and taken note of the 'target TDP draw' ("Peak Power Efficiency Draw") each one offers when primed with X amount of GPU's when I used them for their original purpose.\* - Last, but not least, sound (as in noise created from the rig). I'd like to prop this device up on my entertainment center in the living room. I've (almost) all of the top-shelf consumer grade products one could dream of regarding fans and other thermal-related artifacts. - Almost forgot; this will be hosting to devices on the KODI platform (unless you guys have better alternative suggestions?) ______________________ Q9) Do you have any specific case preferences (Size like ITX/microATX/mid-towefull-tower, styles, colors, window or not, LED lighting, etc), or a particular color theme preference for the components?** A9) Definitely! Desired theme would be WHITE. If that doesn't work for whatever reason, black or gray would suffice. Regarding "Case Size". Nah, that's not too important although I don't foresee a mini-ITX build making sense if I'm going to be cramming double digit amounts of TB in the system, Internal HDD's sounds better than a bunch of externals plugged in all the USB ports. ______________________ Q10) Do you need a copy of Windows included in the budget? If you do need one included, do you have a preference?** A10) I don't know. If I do need a copy of Windows, I don't have one so that's something I'll have to consider I guess. I doubt that's a necessity though. ______________________ ______________________ ______________________ **Extra info or particulars:*\* AND NOW TO THE FUN-STUFF... Here's a list of everything (PARTS PARTS PARTS) I have on-hand and ready to deploy into the wild &/or negotiate a trade/barter with: CASES - Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 Arctic White (Model# Crypto-Currency-9011048-WW) - (Probably my top pick for this build). Cooler Master HAF XB EVO (This is probably my top 1st or 2nd pick for this build, the thing is a monster!). Cooler Master Elite 130 - Mini ITX - Black Cooler Master MasterBox 5 MID-Tower - Black & White Raidmax Sigma-TWS - ATX - White MasterBox Lite 5 - ATX - Black w/ diff. Colored accent attachments (included with purchase) NZXT S340 Elite Matte White Steel/Tempered Glass Edition EVGA DG-76 Alpine White - Mid Tower w/ window EVGA DG-73 Black - Mid Tower w/ window (I have like 3 of these) ______________________ CPU's - ***7TH GEN OR BELOW INTEL's ("Code Name Class mentioned next to each one)**\* Pentium G4400 (Skylake @54W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "ECC CAPABLE" Celeron G3930 (Kaby Lake @ 51W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "ECC CAPABLE" :) i5 6402P (Skylake @65W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "NOT ECC CAPABLE" :( i5 6600k (Skylake @ 91W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "NOT ECC CAPABLE" :( i7 6700 (Skylake @ 65W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "NOT ECC CAPABLE" :( i7 7700k (Kaby Lake @ 95W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "NOT ECC CAPABLE" :( ***8TH GEN INTEL's **\* i3-8350K (Coffee Lake @91W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "ECC FRIENDLY" :) I5-8600K (Coffee Lake @95W TDP) - Intel ARK states is "NOT ECC CAPABLE" :( ***AMD RYZEN's **\* Ryzen 3 2200G Ryzen 5 1600 Ryzen 7 1700X ______________________ MOTHERBOARDS - ***7TH GEN AND BELOW INTEL BASED MOBO'S - **\* MSI Z170A-SLI ASUS PRIME Z270-A ASUS PRIME Z270-P ASUS PRIME Z270-K EVGA Z270 Stinger GIGABYTE GA-Z270XP-SLI MSI B150M ARCTIC MSI B250M MICRO ATX (PRO OPT. BOOST EDITION) ***8TH GEN INTEL BASED MOBO'S - **\* EVGA Z370 FTW GIGABYTE Z370XP SLI (Rev. 1.0) MSI Z370 SLI PLUS ***AMD RYZEN BASED MOBO'S - **\* ASUS ROG STRIX B350-F GAMING MSI B350 TOMAHAWK MSI X370 GAMING PRO ASROCK AB350M PRO4 ______________________ RAM - Way too many to list, nothing but 4 & 8GB DDR4 sticks and unfortunately, none are ECC so it's not even worth mentioning/listing these unless someone reading this is willing to barter. At which time I'd be obliged to send an itemized list or see if I have what they're/you're specifically looking for.\* ______________________ THERMAL APPLICATIONS/FANS - JUST FANS - BeQuiet - Pure Wings 2 (80mm) Pure Wings 2 (120mm) Pure Wings 2 (140mm) Silent Wings 3 PWM (120mm) NOCTUA - PoopBrown - NF-A20 PWM (200mm) Specifically for the BIG "CoolerMaster HAF XB EVO" Case GREY - NF-P12 Redux - 1700RPM (120mm) PWM Corsair - Air Series AF120LED (120mm) CPU COOLING SYSTEMS - NOCTUA - NT-HH 1.4ml Thermal Compound NH-D15 6 Heatpipe system (this thing is the tits) EVGA (Extremely crappy coding in the software here, I'm like 99.99% these will be problematic if I were to try and use in any OS outside of Windows, because they barely ever work in the intended Windows as it is). CLC 240 (240mm Water-cooled system CRYORIG - Cryorig C7 Cu (Low-Profile Copper Edition*) A few other oversized CPU cooling systems I forget off the top of my head but a CPU cooler is a CPU cooler after comparing to the previous 3 models I mentioned. I almost exclusively am using these amazing "Innovation Cooling Graphite Thermal Pads" as an alternative to thermal paste for my CPU's. They're not cheap but they literally last forever. NZXT - Sentry Mesh Fan Controller ______________________ POWER SUPPLIES (PSU's) - BeQuiet 550W Straight Power 11 (GOLD) EVGA - 750P2 (750W, Platinum) 850P2 (850W, Platinum) 750T2 (750W, TITANIUM - yeah baby, yeah) ROSEWILL - Quark 750W Platinum Quark 650W Platinum SEASONIC - Focus 750W Platinum ______________________ STORAGE - HGST Ultrastar 3TB - 64mb Cache - 7200RPM Sata III (3.5) 4X Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD's 2X Team Group L5 LITE 3D 2.5" SSD's 480GB 2X WD 10TB Essential EXT (I'm cool with shucking) + 6X various other external HDD's (from 4-8TB) - (Seagate, WD & G-Drives) ______________________ Other accessories worth mentioning - PCI-E to 4X USB hub-adapter (I have a dozen or so of these - might not be sufficient enough &/or needed but again, 'worth mentioning' in case I somehow ever run out of SATA & USB ports and have extra external USB HDD's. Although, I'm sure there would be better suited components if I get to that point that probably won't cost all that much). ______________________ ______________________ ______________________ Needless to say, I have at least 1X of everything mentioned above. In most all cases, I have multiples of these items but obviously won't be needing 2X CPU's, Cases, etc... Naturally, I have GPU's. Specifically; At least 1X of every. Single. NVIDIA GTX 1070 TI (Yes, I have every variation of the 1070 ti made by MSI, EVGA and Zotac. The only brand I don't have is the Gigabyte line. My partners have terrible experience with those so I didn't even bother. I'm clearly not going to be needing a GPU for this build but again, I'm cool with discussing the idea of a barter if anyone reading this is in the market for one. I also have some GTX 1080 TI's but those are already spoken for, sorry. It's my understanding that select CPU's I have on this list are ECC Friendly and AFAIK, only 1 of my MOBO's claims to be ECC Friendly (The ASROCK AB350M PRO4), but for the life of me, I can't find any corresponding forums that confirm this and/or direct me to a listing where I can buy compatible RAM. Just the same, if I go w/ the ASROCK MOBO, that means I'd be using one of the Ryzens. Those are DEF. power hungry little buggers. Not a deal-breaker, just hoping to find something a little more conservative in terms of TDP. In closing, I don't really need someone to hold my hand with the build part as much as figuring out which motherboard, CPU and RAM to get. Then I'm DEFINITELY going to need some guidance on what OS is best for my desired purpose. If building 2X Rigs makes sense, I'm totally open to that as well... Rig 1 = EPIC NAS SYSTEM Rig 2 = EPIC PFSENSE (or the like) DEDICATED FIREWALL Oh, I almost forgot... The current routers I'm using are... 1X Netgear Nighthawk 6900P (Modem + Router) 1X Netgear Nighthawk X6S (AC 4000 I believe - Router dedicated towards my personal devices - no IoT &/or Guests allowed on this one) 1X TP-Link Archer C5 (Router). Total overkill after implementing the Nighthawks but this old beast somehow has the best range, plus it has 2X USB ports so for now, it's dedicated towards my IoT devices. ---- I also have a few other Wi-Fi routers (Apple Airport Extreme & some inferior Netgear's but I can only allocate so many WiFi Routers to so many WiFi channels w/out pissing off my neighbors) On that note, I have managed to convince my neighbors to let me in their house/WiFi configuration so we all have our hardware locked on specific, non-competing frequencies/channels so everyone's happy. :) Please spare me the insults as I insulted myself throughout this entire venture. Part of why I did this was because when I was a kid, I used to fantasize about building a 'DREAM PC' but could never afford such. To compensate for this deficiency, I would actually print out the latest and greatest hardware components on a word document, print the lists up & tape to wall (for motivation). I was C++ certified at the age of 14 and built my first PC when I was 7. At the age of 15 I abandoned all hope in the sector and moved on to other aspirations. This entire ordeal was largely based off me finally fulfilling a childhood fantasy. On that note = mission accomplished. Now if I'm actually able to fulfill my desires on this post, I'm definitely going to feel less shitty about blowing so much money on all this stuff over the last couple years. TIA for assisting in any way possible. Gotta love the internets! THE END. :) EDIT/UPDATE (5 hours after OP) - My inbox is being inundated with various people asking for prices and other reasonable questions about my hardware being up for sale. Not to be redundant but rather to expound on my previous remarks about 'being interested in a bartetrade' with any of you here... I did say I was going to sell my gear on eBay in the near future, I also said I wanted to trade/barter for anything relative to helping me accomplish my OP's mission(s). I'm not desperate for the $$$ but I'm also not one of those people that likes to rip other people off. That said; I value my time and money invested in this hardware and I'm only willing to unload it all once I've established I have ZERO need for any of it here in my home first. Hence my writing this lengthy thread in an attempt to repurpose at least a grand or two I've already spent. One of the most commonly asked questions I anticipate receiving from interested bodies is going to be "How hard were you on your hardware?" Contrary to what anyone else would have probably done in my scenario which is say they were light on it whether they were or weren't, I documented my handling of the hardware, and have no problem sharing such documentation with verified, interested buyers (WHEN THE TIME COMES) to offer you guys peace of mind. I have photo's and video's of the venture from A-Z. I am also obliged to provide (redacted) electricity bill statements where you can correlate my photo's (power draw on each rig), and also accurately deduct the excess power my house consumed with our other household appliances. Even taking into consideration how much (more) I spent in electricity from keeping my house at a constant, cool 70-72F year-round (via my Nest thermostat). Even without the rigs, I keep my AC @ 70 when I'm home and for the last 1.5-2 years, I just so happened to spend 85% of my time here at my house. When I would travel, I'd keep it at 72 for my wife & kids. Additionally; I had each GPU 'custom' oveunderclocke'd (MSI Afterburner for all GPU's but the EVGA's).* I doubt everyone reading this is aware so this is for those that don't.... EVGA had the brilliant idea of implementing what they call "ICX technology" in their latest NVIDIA GTX GPU's. The short(est) explanation of this "feature" goes as follows: EVGA GPU's w/ "ICX 9 & above" have EXTRA HEAT/THERMAL SENSORS. Unlike every other GTX 1070 ti on the market, the one's with this feature actually have each of 2/2 on-board fans connected to individual thermal sensors. Which means - if you were to use the MSI Afterburner program on one of these EVGA's and create a custom fan curve for it, you'd only be able to get 1/2 of the fans to function the way intended. The other fan simply would not engage as the MSI Afterburner software wasn't designed/coded to recognize/ communicate with an added sensor (let alone sensor'S). This, in-turn, would likely result in whoever's using it the unintended way having a GPU defect on them within the first few months I'd imagine... Perhaps if they had the TDP power settings dumbed down as much as I did (60-63%), they might get a year or two out of it since it wouldn't run as near as hot, but I doubt any longer than that since cutting off 50% of the cooling system on one of these can't be ignored too long, surely capacitors would start to blow and who knows what else... (Warning = RANT) Another interesting side-note about the EVGA's and their "Precision-X" OveUnderclocking software is that it's designed to only recognize 4X GPU's on a single system. For miners, that's just not cool. My favorite builds had 8X and for the motherboards that weren't capable of maintaining stable sessions on 8, I set up with 6X. Only my EVGA Rigs had 3 or 4X GPU's dedicated to a single motherboard. Furthermore, and as stated in an earlier paragraph, (& this is just my opinion) = EVGA SOFTWARE SUCKS! Precision X wasn't friendly with every motherboard/CPU I threw at it and their extension software for the CLC Close-Loop-Cooling/ CPU water-coolers simply didn't work on anything, even integrating into their own Precision-X software. The amount of time it took me to finally find compatible matches with that stuff was beyond maddening. (END RANT). Which leads me to my other comments on the matter. That's what I had every single 1070 ti set at for TDP = 60-63%. Dropping the power load that much allowed me to bring down (on average) each 1070 ti to a constant 110-115W (mind you, this is only possible w/ "Titanium" rated PSU's, Platinum comes pretty damn close to the Titanium though) while mining Ethereum and was still able to maintain a bottom of 30 MH/s and a ceiling of 32 MH/s. Increasing the TDP to 80, 90, 100% or more only increased my hashrates (yields) negligibly, like 35-36 MH/s TOPS, which also meant each one was not only pulling 160-180W+ (Vs. the aforementioned 115'ish range), it also meant my rigs were creating a significantly greater amount of heat! Fortunately for the GPU's and my own personal habits, I live in South Florida where it's hot as balls typically, last winter was nothing like this one. Increasing my yields by 10-15% didn't justify increasing the heat production in my house by >30%, nor the added electricity costs from subjecting my AC handlers to that much of an extra work-load. For anyone reading this that doesn't know/understand what I'm talking about - after spending no less than 2-3 hours with each. and. every. one. I didn't play with the settings on just one and universally apply the settings to the rest. I found the 'prime' settings and documented them with a label-maker and notepad. Here's the math in a more transparent manner: *** I NEVER LET MY GPU's BREACH 61C, EVER. Only my 8X GPU rigs saw 60-61 & it was the ones I had in the center of the build (naturally). I have REALLY high power fans (used on BTC ASIC MINERS) that were sucking air from those GPU's which was the only way I was able to obtain such stellar results while mining with them. **\* Mining at "acceptable" heat temps (not acceptable to me, but most of the internet would disagree = 70C) and overclocking accordingly brings in X amount of yields per unit. = 'Tweaking' (underclocking) the GPU's to my parameters reduced my yield per unit from -10-15%, but it SAVED me well over 30-35% in direct electricity consumption, and an unknown amount of passive electricity consumption via creating approximately 20%+ less heat for my AC handler to combat. I say all this extra stuff not just for anyone interested in mining with their GPU's, but really to answer (in-depth) the apparent questions you people are asking me in PM's. Something else that should help justify my claims of being so conservative should be the fact I only have/used "Platinum and Titanium" rated PSU's. Heat production, power efficiency and longevity of the hardware were ALWAYS my top priority.* . I truly thought Crypto would continue to gain and/or recover and bounce back faster than it did. If this project had maintained positive income for 12 months+, I'd have expanded one of our sites to also cater to GPU mining on a gnarly scale. Once I have my NAS (& possibly 2nd rig for the firewall) successfully built, I'll be willing/able to entertain selling you guys some/all of the remaining hardware prior to launching on eBay. If there's something you're specifically looking for that I listed having, feel free to PM me with that/those specific item(s). Don't count on an immediate response but what you can count on is me honoring my word in offering whoever asks first right of refusal when the time comes for me to sell this stuff. Fortunately for me, PM's are time-stamped so that's how I'll gauge everyone's place in line. I hope this extra edit answers most of the questions you guys wanted to have answered and if not, sorry I guess. I'll do my best to bring light to anything I've missed out on after I realize whatever that error was/is. The only way anyone is getting first dibs on my hardware otherwise is if they either offer compelling insight into my original questions, or have something I need to trade w/. THE END (Round#2)
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