Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2017 July 19

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July 19

How are my bitcoin mining rewards calculated?

I saw some videos where a single home laptop can theoretically run a mining software and collect fractions of Bitcoins every now and then. However, a mining reward is a full 25 BTC. My questions:

1. Does that mean that the mining software joins my laptop to a pool?
2. If yes, then if I get fractions of a BTC over time, does that mean that my pool succeeded in resolving a block and collected 25 BTC?
3. If yes, how is the reward distributed?

Gil_mo (talk) 06:49, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

There's some explanation in this video:[1] 92.8.217.19 (talk) 14:13, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

This Mining pool reward FAQ gives better answers about reward distributions. The block reward started at 50 BTC in block #1 and halves every 210,000 blocks, on average every four years. On November 28, 2012 it dropped from 50 bitcoins per block to 25 per block and it has dropped again to 12 BTC. Blooteuth (talk) 16:26, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Note that if your goal is to make money by mining Bitcoin with your laptop, well, you're almost certainly not going to. Bitcoin is designed to get harder to mine over time, and has long since passed the point where mining with a regular CPU is economical, considering costs such as electricity and wear-and-tear. Most Bitcoin mining today is done with custom hardware based on ASICs designed for Bitcoin mining. If you just want to donate idle computing power, you might want to choose from our List of distributed computing projects. --47.138.161.183 (talk) 05:36, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Bitcoin is not "designed to get harder to mine over time", its network is designed to adjust the difficulty of finding blocks to maintain an average rate of 1 block every 10 minutes. Historically the hashing power deployed by miners has increased so the difficulty has mostly increased (graph) but it also occasionally decreases. There were small decreases on 2016/03/06, 2016/03/08, 2016/08/03, 2016/10/22 and 2017/07/02. There are speculations that a future halving of the block reward can lead to disenchanted miners departing, to which the network could only respond by decreasing the difficulty. "I’m sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume." - Satoshi Nakamoto. Blooteuth (talk) 21:58, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Trafalgar Street, Brighton - two-way-one-way?

Someone recently told me that Trafalgar Street in Brighton is the only road in the UK where you can drive in from either end, but drive out from neither. It strikes me that this is extremely unlikely, but I have no way of finding out: searching for "road that you can drive in from either end but drive out from neither" doesn't answer my question, and I'm not versed enough in the intricacies of the British one way system. Can anyone help? Here's a google map of the street in question - at the west end of the road it's covered by a tunnel/bridge, and a one-way system also kicks in on the east end as well. [2] Thanks! One armed octopus (talk) 17:52, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't understand the problem. Just because a car cannot exit the either end of Trafalgar street doesn't mean they can't exit onto a side street. The whole road isn't one-way either. From looking at street view, the eastern section from Surrey St/Terminus Rd is one-way until the junction with Frederick Place. Then it is two-lane traffic until Sydney Street. Here is where the western section begins, which is one-way westbound from St Georges Place. Nanonic (talk) 18:25, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure that there's actually a problem; the OP is asking if any other street also has the (rather trivial) distinction of having the ability to "drive in from either end, but drive out from neither". I'm not sure that there is any way of ascertaining this, unless anyone here actually knows another example. Alansplodge (talk) 21:05, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

• It's not an uncommon layout, just the naming is unusual.

It's in an old part of Brighton, so the streets are too narrow for two-way traffic. The easiest way to organise traffic here is to have it enter from either end of one long street and leave from the roads at right angles. You can't go all the way along it because the centre is pedestrianised (during the day at least). It just happens that for this location, the road is so long and has the same name all along it. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:03, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Ah, a road I know very well mainly because of the good pubs. This situation, or the opposite, are fairly common in Brighton, although I can't speak for other urban areas; for another example, see Prestonville Road between Seven Dials and Old Shoreham Road. From memory, Park Hill to the south of Queen's Park would be the opposite (no way "in" from the ends, but drive out either end). As Andy and Nanonic say, Trafalgar Street is effectively split in two at certain times because the section between Whitecross and Sydney Streets is pedestrianised and the traffic flow changes. Effectively, the intention is to funnel northbound traffic from both east and west along Whitecross Street so it can get out on to the A270, and to funnel southbound traffic on to either Frederick Place or Sydney Street, which are slightly more suitable for traffic than the other north–south streets.

Context: this area of Brighton is the North Laine, one of the five ancient "laines" of Brighton. The first paragraph of Carlton Hill, Brighton#History talks about laines, their particular subdivisions and how these influenced the eventual pattern of urban and road development. The pattern of wide roads with many narrower roads connecting them makes it possible to develop a complex one-way system, which Brighton certainly "enjoys". Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 13:12, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

I once had the dubious pleasure of being in Atlanta, Georgia one evening, when the city street authorities chose to place signs on the three streets connected to an intersection which made two streets one way into the intersection, with the one street leaving the intersection closed by a barricade. There was some horn honking, then drivers managed to back out of the trap. Edison (talk) 02:01, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, if the barricade was only for construction or something, at least this was a temporary situation. In what was then the Borough of York and is now part of Toronto, there was a street that was like this for part of every weekday. This was Everden Rd., whose north end you see here. You can't go straight ahead because the street ends and Eglinton West subway station is in the way; you're not allowed to turn left; and for part of every weekday you're not allowed to turn left either. Well, at one time all of this was true and Everden was one-way northbound! Sorry, I can't provide a cite for that statement; I read about it in a newspaper long ago, probably not long after that subway station opened. (And the first time I went there to see for myself, the no-turn sign was a changing one and you couldn't tell if it ever still showed neither left nor right turns prohibited unless it was showing it at that time. The one-way street was still in effect then.)

But, anyway, the question was about the UK, not other countries. --69.159.60.147 (talk) 06:56, 22 July 2017 (UTC)