Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 – 8.0

So let’s get this out of the way; I’m a Mac / iOS guy.  None of the Droid OS devices will beat out an Apple device from my point of view.  But I don’t want to debate that, I simply want to talk about my experience with this Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 that I was given.  I received this 16GB/WiFi model for free and free is always great.  Having never used a Droid device I was kind of excited to actually spend some time with hit.  I have two words that come to mind:  Clunky and Disjointed.

The setup and registration process just seemed disjointed.  First I need a Google Account.  Got that done.  Then it started to ask me for a Samsung Account.  Got that done.  Then I started to put things like Twitter or FB on and it defaults to my Google Account but I can really do that because I have my owner personal domain account.  So I’ve just had to add another set of accounts to manage to use this simple device.  From the Apple stand point you need and AppleID.  You can use whatever email account with your AppleID; it doesn’t force you to spawn/fork a whole new set of addresses.

Clunky.  Screen scrolling is jerky.  Interface, especially that displayed KB is just simply clunky looking.  I’m not talking about trying to figure out how to navigate; I assume that’s going to be different.  I’m talking about the overall look and feel.

There were four iPads in our household and my youngest kid’s iPad bit the dust.  I have an iPhone and a MacBook Air so I gave my son my iPad and have been without one for a little bit.  When I first got the G-Tab I was excited because it would allow me to fill in that little gap but it doesn’t.  What it did do was replace my Kindle Touch which was another “free” item that I had.  So not to impressed with the experience overall.  Don’t get it, don’t want to get it, just going to live with it for a bit.

How did I do with my GE Missions – Apollo Sneakers???

My last post back in gives all the details about my sneaker purchase.  In summary, there were 100 pairs of moon boot sneakers sold to commemorate the 45th anniversary of landing on the moon.  Each pair sold for 196.90 (1969) and were delivered in October to the buyers.

There were immediate listing for the shoes on eBay for “presale” but I decided to wait until I had mine in hand.  I received mine about two weeks ago and I put them up for auction.  I reviewed what people were selling listing them for, what they had sold for and all that.  In the end I listed them starting at $999.00 and gave them a buy-it-now price for $1,499.00.  This past weekend I shipped them off to their new owners.  The sold for the one opening bid of $999.00.  Not bad, a 400% profit on my $200.

Interestingly enough, someone else had a size 10 pair of shoes up for auction.  Theirs didn’t sell so they relished them at $299/$799.  That auction closed this morning at $299.  I think I did well.

100 Pairs of Moon Boots!

On 7/20/2014, it was the 45th anniversary of the landing of Apollo 11 on the surface of the moon.  GE, in conjunction with JackThreads and Android Homme, decided to celebrate by developing a Moon Boot sneaker based on the technologies of the moon boot.

GE missions moon sneakers 11

The best part was that they released it at the exact time the Eagle touched down on the moon and committed to only selling 100 of these boots.  The “launch” or sale price of the boots was $196,90 in honor of the 1969 landing.  The boots were available for about 1 minute and then were sold out.  The orders are now in and they are being produced, to be delivered around 10/31/2014.

I was fortunate enough to get a pair and will have a pair of size 10 boots coming around Halloween.  But in the past three days I’ve seen ads for 5 of the 100 show up on eBay ranging in prices from $400 to $3000.  The $400 ones currently have bids fro $455 and the $3000 are hopeful for a buy-it-now sale.

What will I do with mine?  Time will tell.  But come October if I can get $800+ for the shoes I might find myself tempted to part with them for some Xmas shopping funds.  I’m not 100% sure though…  Having something that there are only 100 of them in the world of is pretty cool.

Securing SSH connection to a home server

I have a Mac Mini Server at home and it does a couple of things for me.  Hosts the source code for things I write.  Serves up a website for my code stuff.  And finally it hosts a Minecraft server.  So I’ve been monkeying around with it and now want to be able to access remotely.

Option 1:  Setup SSH connectivity with Two-Factor authentication (password and key code)

Option 2: Setup SSH connectivity with Keys

Option 3: Setup VPN connectivity.

Personally I don’t have the time/need for VPN so I’m looking at SSH.  I hate opening ports on the firewall into my home so I changed the default SSH port to something other than 22.  My thinking is that should cloudy up the access.

I’ve already got keys setup on my other machines so putting in option 1 was the easiest.  Just had to go in an force SSHD to not accept password, only keys.  I figured that keys were more secure and prevented brute force attacks.

Google authenticator

I was looking at Google’s two-factor authenticator and it got my gears a spinning.  I would love to have it where authentication is first via the SSH Keys and then supplemented with Google’s Authenticator.  Got to find a way to enable both.  But if I can’t I wonder which would be better???

So I found the following link to someone who has setup Google-Authenticator for a Mac 10.9 system and he did it one step further then I wanted.  The setup first requires you to have a correct SSH key pair.  If you pass that then you need to provide your account password and the proper authentication code from Google Authenticator.  SWEET!  I figured that’s about as tight as I can make it.

http://blog.techorganic.com/2014/05/09/multi-factor-authentication-with-ssh-on-os-x/

Now they’ve done it!

 For a long time, 10+ years, I’ve always said that the day will come where you will become more intimate with your computer.  It wasn’t a wish or anything like that, it was just an observation.

I use to make fun of this eventuality saying that someone was going to create a “di#k drive” and we would laugh about it.  I said I should patent it because it will happen and it would be the next multi-million dollar invention.  Well, they’ve gone and done it.

http://kotaku.com/the-latest-advancement-in-penis-peripherals-1601045733

I saw this today and my mouth dropped.  Everyone who knows me, knows that I’m a pretty laid back guy and stuff like this would never bother me.  But this one does.  I have this thing about monogamy and being respectful of the one you love and have committed yourself to.

So when is it really being unfaithful to the one you love?  When do you betray that trust and oath you have entered into?  How would this conversation go with this device?  “No honey, I’m not cheating on you with someone.  I’m just letting someone I don’t know manipulate this device that so happens to be locked on to my…”.

I’m all for adults being able to do what they want.  It used to be magazines and now it’s videos and images.  But this really does cross that line.  I know, it’s marketed as a peripheral for a game but you know the next step will be making it interactive.

Oh the courts will be in a tangled mess with this.  What happens when the first suits are filed?  What happens if someone underage gets ahold of this (no pun intended).  This is going to be interesting.

I’m not advocating this nor do I support it.  I think its wrong.

BTC welcomed at NewEgg!

I just posted about being able to make purchases at Overstock.com with my precious bitcoins.  Thirty minus later I see a post on FB that NewEgg is now excepting bitcoins!  Freaking awesome!  Tech dream come true!

140701085221 newegg bitcoin 620xa png

Thank you Overstock.com

My Bitcoin mining venture is chugging along.  The biggest mystery was going to be how to convert my BTCs into cash.  Back in March or so I discovered that Overstock.com now accepts payment in the form of BTC.  They use an external service and essentially receive and then immediately sell the BTC you send them.

I decided to give it a try.  All my machines are Macs and I wanted a PC to tool around with for games and what not.  I found one on Overstock and put it in my shopping cart.  At checkout I chose to pay with Bitcoin.  It was at that point where it popped up a window stating I have 10 minutes to send my payment to a specific address.  I went to my Bitcoin client (Bitcoin-Qt) and sent the payment.  It took about a minute but the pop window went away and I received a notice that my payment was received.  One week later a new PC was at my doorstep.

My son’s 5th birthday was last week and we decided that he was going to be one of those power-wheel cars.  We wanted one the Mercedes SUVs but they were $400+ dollars.  Found the car on Overstock and with a coupon we got it for $320 and were able to pay with it from my Bitcoin fund.

622ad2277eb149b7976344bdea7d3685 400x400

So I have already made back my investment of cash for BTC mining in gifts and products.  Very cool…..

Wait, I’m now in the Namecoin business too?

So my little mining setup has been running for almost a week now and I just found out I’m mining Namecoins in addition to Bitcoins.  It appears that BTC Guild, the mining pool that I’m in, has Merged Mining.  Since Namecoin is built on the same protocol as Bitcoin, mining hashes would be applicable to the Namecoin blocks.  So when my miner generates a hash it gets applied to both a BTC block and an NMC block at the same time.  Cool!

Bitcoin_&_Namecoin_Accepted_Here_Sign

How much can I make Mining Bitcoins???

I’ve got my 13.2Gh/sec mining setup churning away.  I’ve pulled down some stats from BTC Guild, my mining pool, and did some calculating.  Here are the interesting numbers:

If you have a 1Gh/sec setup, you can earn:

  • 0.000292 BTC or  0.25 USD per Day
  • 0.002043 BTC or 1.75 USD per Week
  • 0.008616 BTC or 7.39 USD per Month
  • 0.103394 BTC or 88.71 USD per Year

Note: You can purchase three 333Mh/sec USB stick miners for roughly $90.00.  That means you would’t see anything over your investment for at least  a year.  You probably will need to buy a USB Hub and a cooling fan and that will be $30-$40.  This setup would have to up and mining 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year.  And you will need a computer always running to drive it.  I personally would invest/use a RaspberryPi setup but that would be about $130 to purchase so your break even point would be more like three years.  This is not profitable.  This is a hobby setup.

Now if you invested in a 1.6Gh/sec USB AntMiner it would only be $75.00, plus the $130 for the RaspberryPi and you could skip the USB Hub stuff.  The yearly return in USD would be about $142.  That means your be about one year and 5 months.  That cuts the cost in half.  Even though you break even, you will never be rolling in dough.

I purchased a used Butterfly Labs 10Gh/sec miner plus two 1.6Gh/sec AntMiners for about $550.00.  Add to that the USB Hub setup for $40 and a RaspberryPi setup for $150 and I’m in it for almost $750.  So what do my return numbers look like for this?

  • 0.003851 BTC or  3.30 USD per Day
  • 0.026960 BTC or 23.13 USD per Week
  • 0.113734 BTC or 97.58 USD per Month
  • 1.364810 BTC or 1170.91 USD per Year

So my break even point is around eight month mark and my profit for the year would be $400.  That’s nothing to sneeze at and my hobby has paid for itself.  Rather than taking the money in year one, I would re-invest that $400 profit and purchase five more 1.6Gh/sec AntMiners so my break so come the end of the year I will have spent ZERO dollars and now have a mining rig with an additional 8Gh/sec power.  This would bring my total processing power up to 21.2Gh/sec and in year two, mind you with no money out of my pocket, I would make the following:

  • 0.006186 BTC or  5.31 USD per Day
  • 0.043400 BTC or 37.15 USD per Week
  • 0.182664 BTC or 156.71 USD per Month
  • 2.191968 BTC or 1880.55 USD per Year

Since I cleared my costs in year one, all of these numbers reflect my year two profits.  That means at the end of the 2nd year I will have $1880.55 in profit in my hands.  That’s a pretty good return on a fun little hobby.  Mind you, all of this is predicated on the current value of the Bitcoin.  Today it’s average value is $857.93 USD.  If it goes up, my profit will go up.  If it goes down well my profit goes down.  If it goes down after eight months I don’t even care because I would have re-cooped my investment.

I’m off to the mine!

Well I spent a lot of time last night working on things and I’ve got some success to report.

1) I got my BFL 10Gh/sec miner working on a PC with EasyMiner and now on my Mac Mini Server with BFGMiner.  It took me a while to get the BFL recognized on the Mac but in the end I got the drivers installed, fetched (brewed) BFGMiner from Homebrew, and figured out I needed an ‘-S bfl:all’ added to the startup command.

photo

2) I got my two AntMiners running at 1.6Gh/sec each running on the Mac.  They were much easier to setup with just the installation of the drivers.  They are plugged into an Anker 7-port USB hub with an Arctic USB Fan blowing down on them.

IMG_1322

3) I’ve got Pool accounts on Slush’s and BTC Guild created and right now I’m mining for BTC using PPLNS.  I’m averaging about 12.6Gh/sec with all of the devices combined.

4) I just ordered three more 1.6Gh/sec AntMiner and that will bring my total speed up to about 16Gh/sec.

5) I’m still waiting for my five 333Mh/sec Erupters to come in along with my RaspberryPi/Adafruit equipment.  I’m going to get that up and running and once it’s done I will see if I can move my other Miners to it and use it as a low cost controller.

WooHoo!!!