Understand how bitcoin mining works can seem like a huge task. They key is to break it down piece by piece. The first step is to understand what SHA256 is. Search on Google and read all you can about it. Then read this document: fips-180-4.pdf. The Federal Information Processing Standards Publication. Spend 2 weeks reading… Read More »
If you have been looking at bitcoins and in particular the SHA256 algorithm, you would have come across this formula: Maj(x,y,z)=(x∧y)⊕(x∧z)⊕(y∧z) Ch(x,y,z)=(x∧y)⊕(¬x∧z) The first thing I said to myself was “What the heck does this mean? Do I need a PhD to understand this?” Well, the good news is that the meaning is pretty simple… Read More »
I’ve done a lot of reading trying to figure out what a bitcoin target really means and after reading over 10 different explainations, over several days, I think I finally understand. Here are some of the basics. 1. You’ll see people talk about the maximum target of: 0x00000000FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. What the heck does this mean and… Read More »
After lots of Googling to try and understand what an exponent bias really means, I came across this video which explains it pretty well. When someone talks about biasing the exponent, it means trying to represent negative numbers with positive numbers so you don’t have to put a negative sign in front. It is just… Read More »
So you’ve Googled bitcoin target, read a whole bunch of stuff but still don’t get it and want to see real examples for comparisons. You’ve come to the right place. I learn best with examples so here goes. From Bitcoin wikipedia “The target is a 256-bit number (extremely large) that all Bitcoin clients share. The… Read More »
If you want to know what files are going to be installed/placed on your computer when you download a package for Ubuntu, you can run this command: apt-file list package_name If you run this and get this error: The program ‘apt-file’ is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install apt-file,… Read More »
If you are running IBM Cast Iron on Windows 8 or 8.1 and you get this error: Error while activating the activity. Exception: Address already in use: bind and you are scratching your head, try this: Run cmd as administrator and type: net stop http. You should get a list like: – SSDP Discovery –… Read More »
It was a challenge dusting off my old C programming book and trying to recompile CPU miner from scratch on bare bones code and keeping just the essentials. It was hard work but it allows you to get a deeper understanding of what is really happening under the hood. Constructing the coinbase was the most… Read More »
A very well written book. More for the technically orientated as there is lots of sample source code and commands to try and run but still recommend for non technical audiences as well.
So chances are you’ve heard about IBM Watson. A super computer that is capable of answering questions posed in natural human language. Check out Wikipedia for the technical details and the Watson video below for an insight. IBM is now bringing IBM Watson to the mainstream in the form of Watson Analytics. This allows common users… Read More »