Personal Server & Hotspot WIP

This is a personal server/hotspot – Designed to be used with a Pi Zero-W and an SSD to store TV and other files I need on the move. It’s got a 256gb SSD and can switch between being a hotspot (AP mode, *not* Ad-Hoc, so it works with Android devices too).

256gb of mobile wifi goodness which runs off a USB power socket

It only needs a decent USB power socket and you’re good to go. It has a little screen on the front too which tells you which wifi it’s connected to and what it’s IP address is.

It has Samba set up on it too so as well as ssh/sftp access you can also access it from windows devices.

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Crypto radiator mk3 – bring in the asics

So once again we had quite a cold winter and in our extension had to rely on additional electric heating to stay warm. So despite the crypto bear market/nuclear-winter my mind turned back to the crypto radiator idea.

Even though we had to turn the ASICs off when profitability dropped below our power costs, the idea of using mining as a rebate on heating actually still holds some water.

Given that for heating our default option is literally burning electricity and getting only heat from it.,.well, an antminer can still do better than that even if below mining profitability.

Another factor is that the extension gets damp as well as cold, so things like oil radiators aren’t even that useful since they don’t move much air. But nothing moves air like an antminer!

The previously most successful heating method (before crypto rad experiments) was an LCD projector which moved a lot of air and produced good heat, whilst only using ~150w..and it displayed pretty pics or video at the same time..multi-win.

Continue reading Crypto radiator mk3 – bring in the asics

How to remotely start/stop Antminer S9, Antminer L3+ and probably others

PLEASE NOTE: This is probably not the best way of doing the thing but it is ONE way of doing it, which has been working for me. If you have a better way please let me know 🙂

EDIT: pretty sure braiins OS is a better move at this point so this is probably redundant now.

if you log into your miner via ssh and look in /etc/init.d/ you should see the script file which runs the mining dameon/program.

On the s9 it’s called bmminer.sh and on the L3+ it’s cgminer.sh. I guess it’ll be similar on other miners. If you have a different miner and want to find out what script to look for just do “top” at the ssh console and see what processes are hogging the most resources. On the S9 it’s a process called bmminer, and in the /etc/init.d/ folder there’s bmminer.sh to run the service.

Continue reading How to remotely start/stop Antminer S9, Antminer L3+ and probably others

Another crypto-radiator

https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/09/qarnot-qc1-cryptocurrency-heater-rig/

 

Finding bluekai, exelator, adnxs etc on your wordpress site?

I recently noticed rather a lot of tracking urls on one of your sites. I did some digging and they didn’t generally seem to be good things, various references to it possibly being malware or PuP.

Well after way too much digging the problem was being caused by a snippet of code from 33across dot com. They do a thing which tracks when people copy and paste off your site which I’d been testing on a couple of sites, and the same code got inadvertently copied to a couple of sites to other sites through reusing parts of themes.

These were the main domains I which were being called:

idsync.rlcdn.com

loadus.exelator.com

ib.adnxs.com

stags.bluekai.com

Well apparently this code seems to add a bunch of tracking and potentially not so great urls, *maybe* also with the ability to redirect occasional visitors? dunno.  Either way it’s gone now and solved the problem.

When I was looking there was lots of mentions of things being potential malware but the 33across connection was never mentioned and nothing about this *seems* malicious so far but who knows what I’m not seeing.

Although the stuff in the links below seems to be a slightly different thing, namely some sort of installed malware (but also related to bluekai.com), that the domain tracking stuff on my site is even slightly associated with that isn’t what I’m looking for, so it had to go:

Suggestion on How to Remove Tags.bluekai.com

https://www.2-spyware.com/remove-tags-bluekai-com-virus.html

 

Crypto-radiator 2.0

Ok so we’ve made xmr-based heating which pays for itself (and even makes a little profit), so naturally I got to thinking how we could improve this further.  Enter Crypto-radiator 2.0.

Recently price changes in the GPU market have meant that the apparent “sweet spot” for cost vs efficiency for GPUs has moved somewhat, and currently AMD Radeon RX 580s seem to be where it’s at.

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Ha! Ahead of the curve much? Ethereum crypto-radiator

Just in case you were thinking my crypto radiator was a whacky idea…plus mine’s waaaaay cheaper.

https://thenextweb.com/tech/2017/10/13/russian-ethereum-heater-cryptominer/

Crypto-radiator update – the quest for 100% efficiency and beyond

So a few little updates on the crypto-radiator (see previous post HERE) …I’ve had quite a few bits and bobs going on with cryptocurrencies in general recently and partially inspired by Monero’s recent run to over $100 I had some ideas for how to improve the efficiency of the system.

So far it’s been mining on the CPU only, which outputs about ~60Hashes/sec (H/s), clearly not gonna be profitable but the more I’ve thought about this, the more it’s highlighted the importants of the “primary reward” as a factor.

By that I mean – if you’re purely mining crypto to make profit then you have quite a tricky task, and you end up in quite a precarious position since if your system isn’t profitable (which can happen at any moment) you’re shit-outta-luck and potentially thousands of $$ in the hole.

However if your primary reward is *heat*, and you’re only using mining crypto as a way of recouping some of that cost, the situation looks a lot more favourable…since heating is something you’d have to pay for anyway, and if you can get it significantly cheaper then you’re winning, even if it fluctuates a bit.

Continue reading Crypto-radiator update – the quest for 100% efficiency and beyond

Nothing to see here, move along.