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The Bitcoin Death Star: KnC Plans 10 Megawatt Data Center In Sweden 250
1sockchuck writes "Bitcoin hardware vendor KnC Miner has begun construction on a a 10 megawatt data center in Sweden that it will fill with high-powered computers mining for cryptocurrency. KnC has emerged as a leading vendor in the volatile market for ASIC mining rigs, focusing on underpromising and overdelivering. One goal of its move into cloud mining is to cushion any fallout from delivery delays on new hardware, which have been a sore point for miners in the fast-moving Bitcoin market. "Over the next few months we are bringing online enough hashing power to make sure that any delay in the Neptune timeline will be compensated with a completely free hosted hashing packages to all fully paid customers," KnC says in its newsletter."
Now even bitcoin miners have better planning (Score:5, Insightful)
than whoever planned slashdot beta.
Re:Now even bitcoin miners have better planning (Score:5, Informative)
From Dice's quarterly report:
Corporate & Other segment revenues decreased 9% year-over-year to $4.3 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2013 from the comparable 2012 period, due primarily to the financial results at Slashdot Media.
Message: slashdot is losing money, and something needs to change very fast. Whatever /.'s current user base is, it is not a profitable set of consumers, and Dice appears not to be worried if their non-profitable customers go away.
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I got an idea, fire the staff and leave the site running - especially stop the contracts for the designers.
also, I got news for you - they started the beta in 2013!
(also the new(beta) site will waste more bandwidth).
Slashdot Beta doesn't copy titles? (Score:5, Informative)
If I had to choose between more banner ads on Slashdot and the current beta I'd go with the extra ads hands-down. I've had the option to disable ads for a long time but I left them on.
Why not just keep it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just keep the Bitcoins they mine?
Why not just keep Slashdot Classic? Fuck beta.
Re:Why not just keep it? (Score:5, Funny)
Because mining the Bitcoin miners is more profitable.
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They say that the people who always do the best out of a gold rush are the guys selling the shovels. Even if you're a die-hard bitcoin supporter, you need to accept that there is some risk to it. Selling a computer has no such risk. Kinda like staying with /. with the beta looming has a risk to it, where simply moving to a different site has no such risk.
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Ummm .... I think he was referring to the fact that the people who made the most money during the California gold rush were the people who sold picks/shovels/mules to the prospectors.
The same thing is going on here - it's far more profitable to sell the ASICs to miners than it is to plug them in and use them.
Re:Why not just keep it? (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone these days wants to fuck beta. How about a few of us show some charity, drop trow, and fuck alpha too?
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Good lord. If Beta is this bad, do you have any idea what a steaming pile of shit Alpha is?
Do you have any salsa? (Score:2)
Your sitting in it.
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Who is in charge here? Who is the master-beta?
Expected response (Score:4, Funny)
"If you like your classic slashdot. You can keep your classic slashdot."
Re:Expected response (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, IIRC, when Dice bought Slashdot, that's pretty much exactly what they said. They gave the usual, BS "We promise we won't change anything guys," spill. Of course, 5 minutes after saying that, they started fucking with stuff. Some of the most embarrassing were those paid sponsor videos they started trying to pass off as regular submissions. You would think that they would have known better than to try to bullshit such an intelligent userbase with some retard-obvious shit like that.
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"Some of the most embarrassing were those paid sponsor videos they started trying to pass off as regular submissions. You would think that they would have known better than to try to bullshit such an intelligent userbase with some retard-obvious shit like that."
Exactly! We don't read the article and we sure don't watch the video.
Re:Why not just keep it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Why there are companies selling mining hardware? [stackexchange.com]
Slashdot death rattle (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want a progressive and forward thinking Slashdot you must voice your opinion on the matter now. Dice is moving to what will certainly be a call for exodus.
Why would Dice buy Slashdot only to destroy it?
Re:Slashdot death rattle (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems to me its a simply case of some web devs justifying their jobs. It doesn't matter if its better or worse - its different and that means they can show some pointy haired managers just how much work they've done and get a pat on the back and potentially prevent their jobs being outsourced to a body shop in Bombangalore for another year or 2.
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And if people don't like it, and stubbornly keep choosing the classic interface--no problem. Just FORCE it on them!
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They should post a job ad (Score:2)
They should post a job ad to get someone to fix this place up. Wonder what job ad site they will choose?
Re:Slashdot death rattle (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
I hope these people who are interested in taking up the reigns and perhaps becoming a voice for the science and tech enthusiasts will step forward with URLs and ideas that are being waylaid by Dice.
This is an opportunity that is looking for a taker. The time is now.
Re: (Score:2)
Too bad Taco's new site is even worse than Beta...
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someone please post where we all going to move to.
Check out AltSlashdot [altslashdot.org].
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Re:Slashdot death rattle (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot is officially being actively destroyed because it doesn't make enough advertising revenue anymore [twst.com]
From the report:
Slashdot Media was acquired to provide content and services that are important to technology professionals in their everyday work lives and to leverage that reach into the global technology community benefiting user engagement on the Dice.com site. The expected benefits have started to be realized at Dice.com. However, advertising revenue has declined over the past year and there is no improvement expected in the future financial performance of Slashdot Media's underlying advertising business. Therefore, $7.2 million of intangible assets and $6.3 million of goodwill related to Slashdot Media were reduced to zero.
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Try to pick advertisers who make products people reading Slashdot actually care about for a change.
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Are you proposing that tampon ads inappropriate? The Ladies of Slashdot might find themselves wanting a new brand, you insensitive clod.
Re:Slashdot death rattle (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, I wouldn't fuss if they removed the disable ads checkbox in my classic mode. I'd live with it.
But the beta site is garbage.
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The disable ads checkbox doesn't cost nearly so much money as the horde of site visitors running adblock... which given that many of us are technically inclined, is most of us.
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I left the ads on to help support ./, even though I can turn it off.
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Unfortunately it will never be enough. They want to make a lot of money, to become the new Gawker or whatever shit it is they are trying to clone. Just having a good, solid site isn't enough.
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Hold on a second, you still have the disable ads checkbox?
My karma is still 'Excellent' but I don't have the checkbox anymore. What am I doing wrong?
Re: (Score:2)
If Dice would stop chasing off users with one stupid fucking move after another, maybe more advertisers would come. Slashdot used to have a userbase where 1,000+ comments on a story was pretty common, and even big sites could be "Slashdotted." When's the last time you saw THAT?
Here's a hint, it was before Taco sold to Dice.
Re: (Score:2)
and even big sites could be "Slashdotted." When's the last time you saw THAT?
Here's a hint, it was before Taco sold to Dice.
To be fair, the state of site hosting has changed a lot in the past few years. Even the reddit front page, which drives a ton more traffic than this site ever did, very rarely brings down a site anymore.
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So, can we have a user's buyout of /. then? I'll pledge $20 for first year operating costs.
Re:Slashdot death rattle (Score:5, Informative)
I have been reading/commenting at /. since 1998.
I have a 5 digit userid (of course the beta won't display that anymore).
I'm gone if the beta is forced on me.
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Ditto
subject line is required in Beta?? (Score:2)
And your name is Robert Paulson.
Re:Slashdot death rattle (Score:5, Insightful)
Beta is taking away my OG userid? This aggression will not stand, man.
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I have a 5 digit userid (of course the beta won't display that anymore).
I didn't even notice that. Geez, it's like they really are just trying to kick all the old users in the teeth with this design.
Re:Slashdot death rattle (Score:5, Informative)
Try using it for a while. You can't link directly to comments, you can't click a username to visit somebody's profile, it seems to delete whole posts (for me at least) whenever that person tries to thoroughly exercise Unicode, instead of just deleting the Unicode characters like Classic. It has really got nothing at all positive over Slashdot Classic in my opinion. It should be clear what the users want, since every single article is crapflooded with comments about "FUCK BETA" and they are actually getting modded up.
Re:Slashdot death rattle (Score:4)
Its not about not displaying the userid its about the craptacular posting and commenting system in the beta.
The lack of displaying the user id is a symptom of the developers paying no attention to how the current system works and operates well.
Another strike against them is that in the beta following your or other users past comments is incredibly cumbersome and unwieldily.
In the interest of cleanness they provide so little information on the users' comments pages as to make tracking and following comments and moving through comment threads extremely clunky.
Re:Slashdot death rattle (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the biggest annoyances I found in the beta is the way it handles comments in the User section. Right now, in classic, I can do a quick check of all my posts and see all the replies and mods to said posts in one nice table. In the beta, I can only see them one comment at a time (and have to click on each one to see if there were any replies or mods). Not to sound like a narcissist, but I do like to keep track of replies to my posts. And the shitty beta makes it almost impossible to do that.
But on the upside, I get to see all my Slashdot "Trophies" on the left!! Woo hoo!!
Seriously, trophies???? Wtf??
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While my user ID isn't terribly low. I would stop reading and contributing to /. if the "beta" goes through. It's terrible.
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It's a real shame. In it's heyday, Slashdot was a pretty fucking amazing place to be.
Ah, but will it Fuck Beta? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to mine Bitcoin is insignificant next to the power of the Fuck Beta.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I find your lack of FUCK BETA disturbing!!!
Re:Ah, but will it Fuck Beta? (Score:5, Informative)
I will be joining in the Slashcott from Feb 10-Feb 17.
Fuck Beta, Fork Alpha.Time to resurrect slashcode? (Score:2, Informative)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/slashcode/ [sourceforge.net]
food for thought: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SlashDot [c2.com]
Nobetanobetanobetanobeta... (Score:5, Interesting)
If the "new site" had been designed by competent programmers, then it would have been a trivial matter to swap between the "new" and "old" interfaces. Apparently it is not. They must have hired the contractors that couldn't get a job working on healthcare.gov.
Continue to turn the comments threads into a trash heap to drive people away. And don't forget to turn on your ad blocker. Do what you can to get their attention until they publicly acknowledge that this is a mistake -- because they're not going to pay attention otherwise.
Re: (Score:2)
Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Fuck Beta!
Boycott (Score:5, Informative)
Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet.
On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design.
Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.
If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this [slashdot.org] in a new tab. After seeing that, click here [slashdot.org] to return to classic Slashdot.
We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott [slashdot.org]
Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta http://slashdot.org/recent [slashdot.org] - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories
Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.
Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=56395415 [slashdot.org]
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=submission&id=3321441 [slashdot.org]
Alternative Slashdot: altslashdot.org [altslashdot.org] (thanks Okian Warrior (537106))
Re: (Score:3)
Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system
Warning: stupid question ahead!
Okay I've seen beta and browsed for about 5 minutes. I seems to me like a fairly trivial redesign from something that is ugly (but feels like home) to something that is just plain ugly. Below the articles are the familiar comments with mod points in a tree structure that most of the time doesn't make a lot of sense, and a way to filter on comment quality (moderation). I don't see how this is so difficult from the current system, so I probably missed something somewhere.
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Hmm, that is kind of stupid, but that should be easy to solve, no?
The 'moderate' link/button is also stupid, but that's quite minor.
One of the lessons I learnt last year is "never change more than one thing at the same time if it can be avoided". Why did they not just change the ui, keeping the system intact, or change the system, keeping the ui intact? Then, if the new system works, they can always change the ui...
subject is required by Beta (Score:3)
Beta needs more whitespace.
(Yes, that was sarcasm)
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I will be joining in the Slashcott from Feb 10-Feb 17. This is ridiculous.
I am Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
I submit stories. I read stories. I add comments. I moderate comments. I am the reason that there is ad revenue.
I am Slashdot.
Re:I am Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
I submit stories. I read stories. I add comments. I moderate comments. I am the reason that there is ad revenue. I am uglier than an ass-hole stabbing. I went full retard, and never recovered.
I am Slashdot beta.
FTFY. :)
Re:I am Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
I submit stories. I read stories. I add comments. I moderate comments. I am the reason that there is ad revenue. I am uglier than an ass-hole stabbing. I went full retard, and never recovered.
I am Slashdot beta.
FTFY. :)
OMG I have a stalker!
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Nah, sorry to bring you down, but you're not worth stalking. But you've been posting the same thing in the last 3 stories, and every time I read can't help but make the association "you're slashdot" -> "you're this monster being imposed on us". Nothing personal though.
Btw, "I am [X]" is too cliché for my taste.
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I'm Slashdot!
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I was slashdot. Homepage for 15+ years. But if this beta shit goes through, no longer. I suggest we register http://colonslash.org/ [colonslash.org] and start over. Maybe I can get a lower UID this time!
Bitcoin + Death Star = awesome? (Score:2)
Beta vs Classic Slashdot... (Score:2)
What about a new website following open source ideals? Or what about a fund to buy Slashdot from Dice? Or bribe the managers and PHBs so that they keep the classic version alive?
There should be a way out.
My First post (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
I hate OT posting, but I'm going to do it anyway this time... I'm sorta with you there, in that I just added a signature to my account for the first time ever, just to decry the state of Beta. I'm disappointed that none of the complaints we've registered over the last few months have been addressed at all.
Here's what's still wrong with Beta that particularly vexes me:
- Contrast is awful. Too much gray everywhere.
- Sidebar takes up way too much space, particularly when it is carried through in the comme
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Like you, I signed up for my account and then was happy to lurk for years... After this beta stuff popped up I decided I should voice my opinion. If Beta is the direction they intend to go then I do not intend to follow.
As another poster has stated, we submit the news, we comment on the news, we moderate the comments. We are the community and we are the product that DICE has been selling to advertisers. DICE should pay attention because without the community they do not have a product. At this point, they c
Interesting Post (Score:2)
About the proposed boycott (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen many calls for a boycott, and such a thing might be in order to get the powers that be to understand that the future of /. is rather bleak without actively participating users.
One thing is missing from these boycott calls: a means of communication before, during and after the proposed boycott. Without such a means of communication nobody will know whether the boycott is successful or not. At the most they'll head for /. - thereby negating the effect of the proposed boycott - to see whether it is as empty as intended.
If anyone has a suggestion for a good place to discuss and connect during the boycott, please speak up. Understand that many /.-ers are wary of all the social boondoggery which infests the web so don't come with suggestions like 'facebook' or 'twitter'. A newsgroup would work, as would another discussion forum. That newsgroup should have a web interface, preferably one which does not require you to login using a Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/Facebook/Twitter/other-big-data-vacuum account.
Any suggestions?
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IRC is good for ephemeral communications but it is inferior for more long-term discussions. A web forum is probably best given the target audience.
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What a waste of electricity (Score:3)
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What about the currency is artificial? It is no more artificial than the US Dollar. One is just generated using an algorithm while the other is generated by updating a row in some bank's database or by literal printing of dollars.
Neither has an intrinsic value. The numbers in your bank account right now have no intrinsic value. They only have value because people will accept your numbers in exchange for their goods and services. Things like BitCoin are no different. It has value not because it has an inhere
How much... (Score:2)
What is the model? (Score:2)
I don't understand the business model of renting hashing out to people. Either its profitable so you effectively lose money by renting it out, or its not profitable so noone in their right minds would rent it off you!
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When people offer money for something, someone somewhere will figure out a way to deliver what they want. The guys who are building the data center are smart and are doing so with real money. They need a return in real money, not play money (bitcoin). I'll bet all my bitcoins that they don't accept bitcoin as payment. Like the guy said in Scarface, "never get high on your own supply". They are selling to people who fantasize about getting rich on bitcoins. There are plenty of such people around, many
Why sell mining rigs? (Score:4, Insightful)
This one puzzles me somewhat. If one can make money by mining with ASIC rigs, why would anyone sell or rent them, wouldn't they make more money by mining? If they make more money by selling or renting, then wouldn't that mean that mining is silly?
If datacentres take over, new coins will be made (Score:3)
Re:Pfft (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pfft (Score:5, Insightful)
If money is the tool of the Devil then Bitcoin is even worse. Exponentially wasting electricity and semiconducts to generate a unique numeric key. Great!
Re:Pfft (Score:5, Insightful)
Exponentially wasting electricity and semiconducts to generate a unique numeric key.
It is far better than the damage done by gold mining, which can result in erosion and mercury contamination. But even the environmental damage done by gold mining is better than Slashdot Beta.
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That describes practically every data transaction we do involving money in this world,
No, it does not, in any way.
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How about how much Visa burn as energy to secure its network?
I dunno. Ask the nerds doing security how active they are, and then check their candy bar and Mt.Dew consumption.
How many buildings? Employee who burned fuel every day to go to work? That's energy too... and the result is the same, they both securing their network.
Yes, but the energy costs of printing real money is fairly low, and non-constant.
The energy costs of PRODUCING Bitcoins (which is what the GP you were responding to, wrongly I might add) is incredible.
More comparable to what YOU are talking about are the costs of maintaining a Bitcoin "market". Which is a whole different set of power expenditures.
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How about how much Visa burn as energy to secure its network?
Per transaction handled? Far, far, far less than the Bitcoin network.
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Economies of scale at play.
If visa had 1/100th of the users, they still would have most of the costs and energy expenditure related - since their main energy expenditure is not the computing power.
Bitcoin is still small - just wait until it grows a bit more, since the energy expenditure per transaction expands by the hashing over and nothing else. It will eventually level off.
Besides, this point is moot.
The operational differences in bitcoin as a value totally exceeds the expenditure in energy consumption.
U
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When they're big enough to require their own power plant?
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The NSA has no motive to do so. Despite lofty proclamations about changing the world, every bitcoin in existence has a combined value less than $10B. In the big picture of the global economy, that's negligible.
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every bitcoin in existence has a combined value less than $10B.
Are you sure? It's just gone crashing down again....
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Where are you seeing that? I'm seeing a drop from $820 to $790 over the course of a week. I used 12M bitcoins at $800.
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Keep in mind, bitcoin can't simply be generated all at once - it is released to the network in specific blocks at predefined times that get smaller and smaller over time.
In fact, over half of all bitcoin that will ever be created ever will be, and the rest will take another 100+ years to complete.
The only advantage of having the biggest mining operation in town is to increase your chances of getting those blocks when they're released...
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Only if you believe that they have these almighty processing abilities anyway.
All I've seen is them putting blackboxes into ISP's, large content providers and forcibly inserting what could be bog-standard commercial hardware into transit links.
And yet, when something like decent encryption comes up they spend inordinate efforts to place really weak backdoors into it rather than attacking it (either brute-forcibly or by hiring the right brains).
The more I see, the less I believe the "acres of datacentre" cra
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