Topic: 1GH/s, 20w, $500 — Butterflylabs, is it a scam? - page 41. (Read 123107 times)

Once again, just playing devil's advocate here, but you don't think that she could have just held up a tool and a board to pose for the picture that she's obviously posing for?

You wouldn't even need 3 months. Suppose it was a member of the Bitcoin community and from what I have read there have already been a few. The longer they can keep this going and having people believe they are legit the more money will be made off this. I did read your post on that and its a very valid point. Most good scammers do their research.

Lots of people have equipment and I tried to look up the manual but could only make out "Machine Manual - MY Series Vxxxxxx Series 2.4". Just because you have the manual to something doesnt mean you have the actual item. It could be another part of an elaborate ploy to make them seem legit or maybe she really does work with electronics.

The shadows do not add up no matter how you look at them on what some people called the heatsink covers (unmarked silver casings). They do for the one in the bottom left but not for what she is working on. The one on the bottom left you can see the reflection of the capactiors but this is also possible to do in photoshop. Even if the boards are real other people have stated that they could have ordered some that are mocked up for them for cheap. The shadows on the ones she is working on and the fact she is soldering on a side that doesnt have solder connections is indeed strange.

It is possible to build a bulb into a soldering gun and I assure you I do not use a standard solar panel one as I test and certify them. I build custom electronics to test and verify them however and it does seem a little large. As I said I hear all kinds of claims and always view them with a degree of skepticism. I have been proven in the past and it would be interesting if I was.

Even so they could have raised a lot of capital to further this scam at $500/pop already though.
 

What I find interesting are the big ticket products.  Surely these are not targeted to miners.  I guessed I assumed that their primary customers for this equip are govt agencies that want to break encryption codes.

The developer that wrote the hashkill miner did it for fun.  His real goal was breaking encryption codes.

It could be that the singles are just for fun, with the bigger products going to groups that have a great desire to see what other people encrypt.

I meant the second part about how this could be done by anyone with $1000, a bit of technical knowledge, access to google, and three months to work on it.

You really don't see that halogen light there? Pointing down on the boards at an angle consistent with their shadow?

I read about shadows and the granny thing. I thought the reference to the shadows was about an earlier picture of the board. I also thought it wouldnt hurt to show the picture and reinterate it. It appears you agree with me though so I don't know why you would take offence. I was going to circle the shadows that were questionable but then I would have to host the pictures to display them which is too much effort right now lol.

  I can't disagree with the idea of sending money to a fictional address being unsettling at the least.

  I believe you are mistaken about her equipment though. That gun is slightly more advanced than one that is used for solar panels(I've placed a few). She appears to be holding a pick in her left hand and I would assume that solder gun has the 'bulb' built in, i.e., bead type. Not real up on those but I know its a lot more advanced than your standard, temp controlled gun.  Note the Cute Tape chips there behind her working platform. And, look closely at the edge of the white binder there. It bears the name of some equipment that is not cheap and just wouldn't be thought of to fit 'the scam', imho.  hell, that Dry keeper alone is about a grand.. $300+ magnifying light.

   The shadows from the boards look right to me and the luminescence and sharpness of the photo seems to match enough to be from the same or similar quality camera as their others. Though, I suppose it is possible they hijacked a picture of a lady working at a desk at a lab and imposed the boards into it...  

On their job tab they claim to be looking for people with knowledge in:

•Semiconductor design
•Telecommunications
•Encryption
•Mathematics
•Fiber optics
•PCB design
•ASIC Engineering
•Software
•Routing


I suspect yet another layer to make them sound legit but they do mention ASIC. I never said what they were claiming was impossible, just unlikely given the lack of any real information about the company itself. If anyone has experience with this I encourage you to apply to them and verify for the rest of the community that their claims are legit and that the company is as well.

This is my post damn near verbatim from a few pages back. Bullshit, you read the thread.

The needs for mining are so out of wack with other sha256 engine uses... 1MH/s ~= 1 Gbit/sec of sha256 that the idea of using an engine used for something else seems implausible.

Grey market ("fell off truck") FPGAs? More plausible... but their power figures don't really support FPGAs unless perhaps a batch of 22nm FPGAs "fell off a truck".

SASIC is basically plausable and the upfront costs aren't that crazy. Of course, you'd want to keep it as private as long as possible— because anyone else could go and do it too once you've proven the demand. The work is not trivial but it's not a moat either.

No one is forcing anyone to do anything. I encourage you not to send me money by all means. You will have more of a chance of getting one of these boards from me as this so called company.

As for something that isn't proven I think the evidence speaks for itself. A company without a real address asking for $500 per person for something on good faith when they dont list any names, just the picutre of the lady in this picture who appears to be working on some of the boards. If she is soldering, where is her solder bulb?

Edit:

One more point to this picture. There are no solder points on the side of the board she appears to be working on. Guru my ass.

As per one of my other posts did you look at the shadows on the chips in this picture? Not to mention if that iron is hot (which I use a similar one all the time) I would not be taking my eye off it as they leave one heck of a burn. I deal with testing and certification of solar panels so I know all about ligthing and I do not see any possible objects that would create the shadows in this picture.

You are also soliciting money for informations you can't prove to be true(yet), so you are as much of a scammer as butterfly labs is.

He claims I only want a donation for discrediting a supposedly legitimate scam. Look at my posts. I removed one of the references in good faith as I had said. 100BTC was an arbitrary number and was just to prove a point. I do not want to see people fall victim to a scam. Period.

  Me either, but what's a few BTC amongst forum goers? ;p

That will not happen as I'm not a gambler.

And what he proposed wasn't even a bet, he just said I would give him 100BTC if he was right, he didn't say how much would he give me if he was wrong, and I would not accept his dirty sock diner video for payment...

  Oh, Oh, do I smell another Gentlemens bet brewing? =)

Stopped reading on the part you asked me for 100BTC... really? lol

  Very interesting ideas indeed. There are CPUs in the market now by VIA that atleast partly do some sha. I sent VIA an email to ask about which chips had the capability and more importantly to inquire if they made one that solely did sha-1 or sha-256. Here was their response;
  " Hello,  Thank you for your interest in VIA. C3/C7/Eden/VIA Nano/VIA Nano x2/VIA Eden X2/VIA QuadCore processor have this function, we don’t build chips that could solely perform this function  Thank you for your cooperation and for your interest in VIA Technologies, Inc.; please let me know if you need any further information, Best regards, CPU Platform MarketingVIA Technologies, INC"

  Their chips are ultra cheap. It certainly made me wonder how far a stretch it would be for them to build one that was fully designed to hash. Seems they already have the know how and research done for the architecture. Just need to expand it now. ;p  *dreams*


   P.S.  To the haters; I apologize if I come off mean. But, there is no harm in one dreaming. Especially if that one does not 'pay' for dreams. ;p


     Cheers,
       Derek