Topic: 1GH/s, 20w, $500 — Butterflylabs, is it a scam? (Read 123038 times)

Thread reboot at https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/1ghs-20w-700-was-500-butterflylabs-is-it-for-real-part-2-53530

Lets try to keep it civil.

And now the thread is locked.

I made this point in my comments as well. It is not official that it is not a scam until several people recieve fully functioning boards as promised.
+1

Largest circle jerk of bullshit I've ever had the pleasure of wasting my time reading.

There is no way of knowing if this is a con or not until someone does/does not receive the boards that were ordered. Plan and simple

This is just a show off thread for people who think they're just the smartest people alive so far.

Thanks for taking the time to try to clear the air on the product Inaba, I really do appreciate it, but again read second line. Until 10 or 15 of these boards arrive and are hashing away it's sketchy to me. If you think it's real, buy it but you're warned. Think it's a con great I think your point has been made 70 pages ago.

With no disrespect I made a graph to prove my point about the exponential thing. Yes I pulled the numbers out of my ass but in general it follows the same trend. This is what I estimate my CPU is roughly while playing a little fast and loose with the numbers. You can see the Watt per Mhz line gets steeper but the Total Power consumption is exponential. It would follow a trendline closer if I only trended the part after overclock. This is based on my AMD Phenom II x6 1090T.

If anyone wishes to question whether I graph or not for a living I test solar panels to the breaking point and give them their ratings. I also debunk a lot of false claims companies makes (solar and non) at my job. This involves graphing of thermal, electrical and mechanical cycling for tests that can take anywhere from a few minutes to several months. I never once claimed to be an FPGA designer and would never do so.



I added a trendline that follows the whole power curve with an exponential equation. Again people I know I am wrong with the numbers just want to prove my point. That point is that if they cannot achieve the power numbers stated with a lower hash rate with current equipment there is no chance they will achieve it with a higher hashrate.

Relax, nothing to be angered about.  If it is proven to be good, I am sure they will have brisk sales.  If not, it will just slip into oblivion and we can continue heating our houses with GPUs and be extremely phobic about energy bills.

I am done.

So now Im a liar am I? I was merely pointing out that you are being a bit too defensive to be biased and yes I know what that means. Im not stupid althought you keep on implying that. You do know what implying means right (see I can do it too).

If the curve per watt is increasingly steep on a chart of total power consumption it looks exponential. This is a stupid argument and I wish you would just drop it.

I did not assume you lived in an apartment and if you actually read my post I said if you lived in a house thats a different story. So you are telling a lie.

I have yet to see you prove any of my statements as a fallacy and even the exponential part which I was partly wrong on is still correct if you read above. You should try doing some graphs... I do it for a living.

My list was not bogus and I stand by every point. You saying it is bogus doesnt make it so.

None of my evidence is fabricated as there is no evidence, only observations. You continue to lash out with the name calling and implications and I quite frankly am growing tired of it. I am tired of this whole argument and you should step off your high horse and just drop it. You can add as many words as you want trying to generalize on my statements and discrediting them but I did not fabricate anything and did not misinform. What you may consider an irrelevant fact others may so irrelevant fact. When you say this it sounds like something someone who is about tof fall victim to a scam would say. Your post strikes more as a troll than me but I did not start the name calling like you did. Grow up!

This still may be a scam as I said and I also said if it isnt then its very shady business practice (a relevant fact). Now stop trying to insult me and insinuate that I am dumb because I am not.

I already locked one out of control flamefest thread in the past 24 hours, are we going for two?

  *hands out some tasty, dark roast coffee*

  We're all a little on edge for different aspects of the whole thing. We are certainly not gonna change whatever the final outcome will be by stressing each other out over it.


   Cheers

My rule of thumb for forum posts is: if there are more than 2 quotes with a reply underneath in a single post, then it is usually not worth reading because it is a pointless discussion where both sides could be correct (others may call it feeding the trolls ).

Lie #1.



You don't know them, so they must not exist, right?  You might have heard of a little company, started out of an apartment with the employees not getting paid, but getting a portion of the company.  Everyone thought it would fail in the beginning except the people involved directly.  The company is now known as "Facebook."  Have you heard of it?  Just one of hundreds of high profile examples.


Yes, because you assume I live in an apartment or something?  One more thing that has NOTHING to do with the issue, you are just throwing it out there to bolster your argument.


  Perhaps you should before using terms you aren't clear on.


So now it's not exponential but a steepening curve?  You are agreeing to that point?  So what you're saying is that basically what you said before you just pulled out of your ass, right?



I did use it a lot, because you used classic examples of straw men.  What do you want me to call it?  Do you want me to make up definitions of words like you've been doing?  Your logical fallacy is called a straw man, go look that up as well.  I am not making this up.


And I am merely pointing out that what you have "observed" is false, irrelevant to your principal thesis (that it is a scam) or completely fabricated.


WHAT. DOES. THIS. HAVE. TO. DO. WITH. IT. BEING. A. SCAM?


But it's just you posting a bogus list, so take what you want from that.  I am not biased nor am I lashing out, beyond calling you on your "list" of "evidence" that is anything but.  YOU are being biased by providing fabricated or irrelevant evidence to support your claims.  That, also, is the definition of bias, another word you should probably look up.


Of course you're not buying it, you're far too biased to accept the evidence that's in front of you, provided multiple times, in several forms.  You want this so badly to be a scam you are unwilling to accept factual evidence that flies in the face of your "evidence."  Once again, you've provided exactly NOTHING to counter even a single argument.  Throw me a bone here, at least make an attempt to at a counter argument.


I am "lashout out" as someone speaking authoritatively on subjects when you clearly have absolutely no authority to speak with regards to them.  I am "lashing out" at complete fabrications of "evidence" for supposed "crimes" that haven't even happened yet.  And the only reason I have engaged thus far is because I get worn out of people who are unable to use even basic logic to pick out reality from fantasy and then try to pass off their rambling as useful discourse as opposed to the troll attempt that it is.  Hell, for all I know you actually believe what you are saying constitutes evidence for a scam... if so, you really need to rexamine a few things with regards to this and examine your motives for repeatedly posting your little "list".  There are reasons this could be a scam, there is evidence that mistakes could have been made, there are many things in this that are unexpected - but none of that is on your list of "evidence" that it is a scam only irrelevant fact, fabrications and misinformation.

Actually you did say a troll and I said you seem to be in love with this company now so I just implied why dont you buy $7k worht of the boards (10 now). I pick points that seem to not add up and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  How am I using any fallacy to illustrate my point? It seems you are just pulling shit out of your ass now.


I have business experience but not a startup. You admit it requires capital and I don't know many people that would work for free or even for a portion of a business this small. People have bills to pay unless you have too much money. Does your landlord know you run a business out of your residence? If so I am sure you are violating your lease and can/will eventually be evicted. If you own thats a different story but clearly they do not. Again it seems you are speaking out your ass.



OK I didnt break out websters but so far they have misled us either deliberately or not. Given that the people with the most experience with FPGAs on this board doubted the claims from the outright for the power consumption and output I would say it sounds deliberate (or that they don't really know what they are talking about). I never claimed to be a PCB design expert and I am going off of what the experts here are saying. Exponential power consumption occurs at some point when overclocking but a steepening curve still gets my point across. I have my CPU well overclocked and it uses a lot more power per watt than at stock settings. Same with my GPU. Either way the more hashing power the more the power consumption which means they have failed on their promise of 19.6W (quite the specific number too btw).



You seem to like using the word straw a lot. I am merely pointing out what I have observed. If thats being a straw man than you got me! I also did some work earlier in the thread trying to track down any signs of legitimacy to this businsess in paper form and was unable to. This could have simply been disproven by them by providing a business license which would then be confirmed? Why the secrecy with the business license? You seem to be quite biased now lashing out with insults to anyone who still questions this company, hence the question by the other user if they are paying you now. Thats more than just me who thinks this.

So how much straw are you selling Inaba? Either way im not buying. I didnt challenge your numbers at all during testing just the company itself so there is no reason for you to take offence the way you did if you were truly unbiased.

I just really dont know what else to add here because you seem to be lashing out at me for merely pointing out observations as an unbiased, uninvested observer. I think you should try and evaluate if you are truly objective anymore because I sure question it.

  Except in this case, those suggesting it is not a scam are still smart enough to not make an investment in this until we have solid proof of exact numbers and product availability(some of them getting shipped from preorders).

I said nothing of the sort.  In fact, I said the opposite.  This is yet ANOTHER straw man you are using to bolster your completely failed arguments.  This is what I'm talking about... you pick and choose small points that either are outright fabrications (such as this instance), out of context or "mistakes" and then use them to demonstrate why your points are correct.  This is a classical fallacy and you are repeatedly falling into it, even after I've pointed it out.  There's only so much hand holding I can do here.


So you've absolutely no experience in operating a business and yet you are somehow qualified to make pronouncements on exactly what is required?  How does that work?  Heck, I guess that makes me a particle physicist, since I've read up on the subject a little bit.  I notice you completely gloss over the fact that I have in the past run several start ups and currently run a full fledged corporation OUT OF MY RESIDENCE, thus disproving your point.  Hiring people most definitely does NOT require office space... and often it does not even require capital - you offer stock options/portions of the company.  You will find many, many people in the tech industry willing to work for "free" to own a part of a company they believe in.  I don't know what BFL has done in this regards, I am simply speaking from a) experience and b) in general.


It's not my definition of the a scam, it's THE definition of a scam (feel free to look it up).  It is the generally agreed on definition by the entire English speaking world; you are of course free to re-define it as you wish, but that doesn't mean people are going to agree with you.  You know nothing of business and I have not seen any evidence you know much technical detail about chip fabrication and/or PCB design or FPGA / ASIC design, yet you are again trying to speak authoritatively.  As a point of fact, power consumption does not rise exponentially - if it did, your board , CPU or GPU would burst into flames and your house wire would melt if you overclocked your CPU even a little bit.  Power consumption typically follows an increasingly steepening curve to failure - eventually you might get into an exponential rise, but your hardware would have failed long before then.


You can reiterate that I have somehow been "charmed" by these people all you want, but you have yet to produce any evidence or counter arguments to what I have said.  You have produced a few straw men and knocked them down handily.  You've provided some rhetoric.  Produce something tangible by way of countering ANYTHING I've said so far and you can then potentially label me "charmed."  I have reported exactly what I've seen, without bias and within the ground rules that were set forth PRIOR to the test.  How is it that I've been "charmed" again?  

Anyway, I'm done.  I've said what I came to say and unless you have some form of rebutal that doesn't involve straw and rhetoric, there's not much point in continuing this line of discussion.

I started this thread mostly because I thought it was obviously a scam — and I was concerned about my bitcoin friends being ripped off and I thought some discussion would be good.

As more information has become available, I think that it's probably not a scam— and if it were one it would be a truly fantastically epic one.  I'm not sending in money yet either— simply because there are lots of reasons that it could fail or be delayed even excluding scams.

I agree with inaba here, the points raised are red herrings— they're not actually relevant to the questions that matter to people here.

I meant $7k worth of the boards. You seem to have been charmed by whoever they sent that has you absolutely convinced this is not a scam. I am going objectively based on what I have read and heard when basing my comments and am definitely not a troll.

No I have not run a startup but hiring people would require both income and office space. So far their only income is from the preorders and that money is bound to run out sooner or later. If they do fold and disappear, how much did the orchistrator take? They could have taken 50% and technically to me that would be a scam.

By your definition of the scam it seems they have made many attempts to deceive us by their power/performance numbers. Why not produce something that has the numbers they claim? Its simple because it would cost too much. That and they actually had to run a verification which seems to have revealed all kinds of performance issues so they just put out the best that they had. I can overclock my CPU to 4.8Ghz but then it starts calculating everything incorrectly and I get bugs. It sounds to me like they might be overclocking their hardware to get the claimed performance and that is why it is unstable. Power consumption also rises exponentially which again ruins the benefits of FPGA.

As for stretching the bounds of your belief I would like to reinterate that it seems you have been charmed by these people and genuinely want to believe it is legit because you probably like the people you met. Scammers tend to be nice people. They may not be scammers per say but they are dishonest people at the very least. Once they ship a board that meets their specs I will finally believe them but until then they have been too dishonest for me to believe them 100%. If you think that scammers would not go to that length then you have never met a good one.

The arguments against this being a scam sound a lot like the arguments Bernie Madoff's investors would've made against people advising them that it was a scam.

Haha no and I am remaining as neutral as I can be in this, since I have no vested interest in the outcome either way up to this point.  At least no vested interest the rest of you don't already share.  That's another reason I haven't purchased any product, because if I am invested in it, then I will be a) more likely to see what I want to see and b) have a vested interest in promoting the product.  As it stands now, I can report exactly what I see and base my own decisions with a clear head as to what the reality of the situation is and not what I want it to be.  

You have never run a start up if you think just because you are hiring people you somehow require a office space.  

You seem to be mistaken as to what a red herring is... all of your arguments are red herrings and I demonstrated exactly WHY they were all red herrings.  Me pointing out that you can buy stuff from illegitimate companies and legitimate companies can scam you is a direct response to YOUR red herring and therefore can't be considered a red herring.

As to why I don't buy 7k of these boards, do you mean 7000 of the boards or $7000 worth of the boards?  If the former, because I do not have the funds to purchase that many even at half price.  If the latter, then again, it would be a matter of funding (though far more realisitic than 7k boards) - and I have, in fact, been considering my options.  I am already heavily invested in GPUs, coupled with the fact that half my hashing power consumption is "free" (in so far as I already pay for the power at my DC anyway), it's hard to justify the capital outlay.  THAT is MY primary motivator as to why I don't drop $7000 at the drop of a hat.

Now, to address your first paragraph, and believe me, I know that I should not be feeding a troll, but I will anyway; IF they were to fold up shop and take everyones money because they are unable to produce the product they believed they could produce AND they failed to refund it because it all went into development that went nowhere... THAT IS NOT A SCAM.  That is poor business practice.  I believe this may the fundamental flaw in your argument which I should have addressed last post.  The definition of a scam necessarily includes an intentional premeditated act of deceit to gain the confidence of the mark(s).  None - not one single point you made - apply under that definition.  It may be many things, up to and including poor judgement and after the fact thievery, but I find it incredibly dubious that it is a scam.  It would literally stretch the bounds of belief that so much effort, time and money would go into a scam of this sort when there are FAR, FAR better ways to produce the same scam with much less investment.  That is not to say it's impossible, it's just incredibly unlikely and frankly, it would be incredibly stupid of a scammer that is capable of orchestrating a scam like this to not be able to orchestrate a better managed scam that produces better fake product.