On another topic, we all (and especially Bitseed?) should be watching this effort to produce a $9 computer.  If this thing can run a Crypti Lite node, we need to make it the cornerstone of our vendor sales terminal hardware development effort.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-worlds-first-9-computer

http://makezine.com/2015/05/07/next-thing-co-releases-worlds-first-9-computer/

I mean, surely there's a way to make a Crypti Lite terminal that doesn't need a 160GB hard drive for vendors to use for a lot less than $149:

https://bitseed.org/product/blockchain-node-developer-version/

Yippee!!  Thanks!!

Meanwhile, six of the stasDelegates slowly drop below 30% uptime.  I urge the Foundation members to remove their votes for these zombie nodes and transfer them to cryptiNeo, starik and btc.

Let me ask a philosophical question.  Currently we have 113 Delegates.  101 of these were Foundation launch delegates, all put online by only 8 of so individuals in the Foundation.  12 more individual Crypti user delegates since have come onboard since 0.2.0 launch.   What is the desirable goal here for the number of individual Crypti user delegates?   Is the ideal situation for 101-8 = 93 individual user delegates to come onboard first as standby delegates and who eventually get voted up to Top Delegate so that 93 of the Foundation launch delegates eventually go on standby?

What is the ideal number of launch delegates that we want to get to standby status as more and more individual Crypti holder nodes come online?

Will launch delegates eventually go offline entirely once we get 101 individuals running Top Delegate nodes with a large number of other individuals running Standby nodes?

Good idea!  I am suggesting that Crypti Foundation Reserve Account remove its 11.2 million votes from the bad, offline Hubtm.VR and all eight bad, offline stasDelegates.

Agreed, but at the moment even if Lin voted his block he could not make things worse than they currently are.  Not that things are all that bad, 93 out of 101 functioning Top Delegates is still a reasonably healthy system....

Well, 92 out of 101.  Looks like Hubtm.VR is offline, too.

stasDelegateX ( where X = 1 to 8 ) continues to drop in the uptime ratings, now below 35% (and down from slightly below 40% the last time I commented on this).  These eight nodes are pretty obviously totally offline and have been for some time.  

The current 17 minute cycles are thus being run with only 101-8=93 Top Delegates.  The Crypti Foundation Reserve Account (15292791051968645847C) is obviously still throwing its 11.21 percentage points towards these offline stasDelegate nodes, since the lowest voted of them (stasDelegate 7 with 24% approval) is within 8.5 percentage points of the highest voted delegate (Altocumulus at 32.4% approval).  

We can have a fully functional 101 Delegate cycle again as soon as the Crypti Foundation reserve account withdraws its votes from all eight stasDelegates and applies them to the Crypti members waiting as Reserve Delegates.  

Lin / Bter seems to have no interest in voting its 19M block of Crypti; perhaps it's time for the Foundation to pull its 11M block out of voting as well?

I still think hardwiring the launch delegate list into the 0.3.0 client and color coding Top Delegates by whether or not they are on this list so launch delegates may be identified is a good idea.

Eight of the Foundation launch Top Delegates "stasDelegateX" ( where X = 1 to 8 ) are below 40% uptime and falling.    Are these even online anymore / right now?  Time to vote them down?

This situation is why I suggested elsewhere that another column showing Current Consecutive Missed Cycles (CCMC) be shown, with the suggested sort for the Top Delegates listing highest CCMC at the top of the list for maximum visibility.  We need the CCMC statistic for all to see so there is some visibility to voters on the CURRENT online situation among Top Delegates.  With the existing sort, the "below 40% uptime" statistics for 8 delegates is somewhat obscured by being scattered among the bottom entries in the delegate list.

The fact that I am one of the Standby Delegates of course has nothing to do with this post....

More Zero Hedge goodness on the topic of silver today...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-01/jp-morgan-cornering-silver-bullion-market

I have put in a suggestion that if there are 11-25+ Standby Delegates, then a future client defaults to "clicking on the 25" by itself to show 11-25.

I have started my first 0.2.0a forging node on Vultr - Atlanta under the Delegate name of MalReynolds01.

I would appreciate your vote - particularly since I am on Page 2 of the Delegate list and you may have to make an extra mouse click to find me!

Thanks!

Speaking of silver...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-28/silver-surging-again

He's gonna be the one to become inflamed and start the DDoS attack himself if he doesn't get voted into the 101 Club soon!    

(Just kidding, starik, I know you'd never do THAT...I hope.)

Unfortunately, I don't think this would be very hard.   Assume a Villain knows the public IP addresses of all 101 Crypti Top Delegate nodes, knows the format of spoofed Crypti data packets (either Lite Wallet packets or 101Club forging packets) to send to these IP addresses,  and has a single Vultr server to launch a DDoS attack.  Vultr says their max data rate is 1 Gigabit per second (see https://discuss.vultr.com/discussion/210/connection-speed-in-vps/p1 ) .  This means a single Villain with a single server can (theoretically / worst case) aim 10 Megabits per second at EACH Delegate SIMULTANEOUSLY.  In a 10 second blocktime, EVERY node would have to process 100 million bits or 10 MBytes of fake Crypti DDoS packets.  Are we scaled to handle such a load successfully?  I bet the answer is no.  This is not a rhetorical question, I would love to hear dev comments....

Currently the 101 Top Delegate servers are performing two functions simultaneously:  (1) communicating with Crypti Lite wallets to accept details of ongoing Crypti transactions, and (2) communicating with other members of the 101 Top delegates to forge a blockchain.  Function 1 REQUIRES a list of public IP address known to all (at least all Crypti Lite wallets) for the 101 Club servers.  These public IP addresses are subject to a DDoS attack.  Currently, such a DDoS attack would not only knock out Crypti Lite comms (Function 1), IT WOULD ALSO HALT THE FORGING OF THE CRYPTI BLOCKCHAIN (Function 2).

This is why I suggest that future versions of Crypti Delegate contain a darknet function, to maintain blockchain forging via a SECRET PRIVATE network of 101 IP addresses even if the PUBLIC network of 101 IP addresses are attacked.   This would mean a new delegate would set up two sets of Crypti code on two separate servers - one block of code on one server with a public IP address to handle Crypti Lite comms, another block of code on another server with a secret IP known only to the 101 Club to handle 101 Club comms and blockchain forging.   A DDoS attack would then halt Crypti Lite comms and stop incorporation of transactions for the duration of the attack...but the FORGING OF THE BLOCKCHAIN WOULD CONTINUE UNINTERRUPTED.

The very act of organizing the Crypti 101 Top Delegates to keep the blockchain forging on a darknet even when under a DDoS attack is a prime deterrent to a DDoS attack being started in the first place.

Something to think about.  
  

Actually, there is a related problem I think is more serious that won't be fixed by going from cloud servers to local PCs, and that is susceptibility to DDoS attack.  NXT got hit with this when they were first setting up their network and it nearly sunk them.  Limiting the active forgers to the 101 Club with a ten-second response time means there's a relatively limited infrastructure with little time to waste on spoof packets.  It would be interesting to see some of the devs comment specifically on how vulnerable Crypti is to DDoS and how they plan to deal with the DDoS attack that IS COMING once Crypti starts gaining wider acceptance...

http://www.prolexic.com/knowledge-center-about-ddos-attacks-faq.html

"...it is possible to rent 80,000 -120,000 hosts capable of launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks of 10 to 100Gbps – more than enough to take out practically any popular site on the Internet for just US$200 per 24 hours."

I would suggest that we start coming up with mods to the code to create a network of "back channel" IP address for members of the 101 Club that ONLY THEY KNOW AMONG THEMSELVES and that they use to communicate as a first line of defense.  DDoS is most effective against publically known IP addresses and Crypti has the luxury of being able to create a darknet for the 101 Club...

LOL, I included the link to identify where the term "hodl" comes from, which I find amusing.  I agree it's no way to trade.  Buying low is a great idea and now is that time for Crypti.  Unfortunately, I am tapped out with no available funds to buy more right now.  I'm happy with my current Crypti holdings and confident in its future.

I've been watching precious metal stocks and agree they could be ready for liftoff.  They certainly have been savaged for the past few years on the Toronto Venture exchange where they are traded.  I've read quite a few of Jay Taylor's free reports and learned a lot, tho probably only enough to be dangerous....

http://miningstocks.com/

Two companies I've been watching are Gainey Capital for gold ( http://www.gaineycapital.com/ ) which Jay Taylor thinks very highly of and also EMC Metals for....wait for it....scandium in Australia.  ( http://www.emcmetals.com/s/home.asp )  Scandium is a very interesting story.  It is a rare earth element with little current use, but that could change.  A pinch of carbon in liquid iron makes an alloy called steel, which is the backbone of 20th Century civilization.  A pinch of scandium in liquid aluminum makes an alloy with no common name yet that may become the backbone of 21st Century civilization.   It could revolutionize both the aircraft industry by making super light, super strong aircraft and also the fuel cell industry by making a revolutionary new fuel cell chemistry / electrode possible.  

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of money to invest in either Gainey or EMC.  At least, not for a few more months, until Crypti goes to da moon.

I Am Hodling.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375643.0

Suggestions:

1. Implement a system to replace poor performing Top Delegates with top-voted Standby Delegates if Top Delegate performance falls below pre-set minimum performance limits.

2. The list of the original 101 Foundation delegates needs to be hard-coded in 0.2.1 client code.  Anytime there is a click on the "Delegates" link in the Client, the resulting list of Top Delegates and Standby Delegates can be color coded by reference to this list on whether or not they are Original Foundation Delegates.

3. Another column needs to be added with a "Current Consecutive Missed Cycles" (CCMC) statistic for each Delegate to go along with their "uptime".   A 101 Club Delegate could leave the system permanently without notice and his uptime would degrade only very slowly.  It might take weeks or even months for his uptime statistic getting bad enough to alert users of the need to downvote him.  However, such a vanished Forging Delegate would have a sky-high CCMC score of 85 after only 24 hours.

4. The current Top Delegate sort is by popularity, not performance.  This is backwards.  The Top Delegate sort needs to be by uptime or preferably CCMC, not votes.  Poor-performing delegates should be in the position of highest visibility at the top of the list, perhaps color coded red if their uptime / CCMC scores fall below a minimum desirable threshold.  A Lite Wallet user should not have to search all 101 delegates looking for poor uptimes scattered occasionally among mostly high uptime figures.

5. I still think we should rebrand the "Crypti Lite" software as "Crypti Wallet", and the current "Crypti" software as "Crypti Delegate" or "Crypti Node".

I'm gonna cross-post these suggestions over in the Suggestion Box on the other forum.

As noted above, you need to be on 0.2.0a no matter what.  

If you want to forge as a Delegate, so far the evidence has been you need to be on a cloud server like Amazon Web Service (AWS), Digital Ocean or Vultr.  Check the Original Post on Page 1 of this thread for guides on how to do this.  AWS is free for a year, you can get $5 per month service on DO and V.  Apparently home internet service has too much lag and delay to cooperate correctly in the 10 second blocktime.

I asked Cryptsy about Crypti withdrawal, they said they were working on it.  Obviously not at a very high priority level.

Epic dramas take their time to believably drag their main character down into his own personal hell, and it takes a while to truly destroy everything you love and hold dear with your own pride and greed and hubris.

They named one of the final episodes Ozymandias for a reason.  And then it got worse.

http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/672/

BB is so powerful that Netflix went to the trouble to reformat it for 4K resolution streaming as their premier offering and a Spanish TV network translated the scripts verbatim into Spanish and reshot the whole series with new actors in Columbia.

It's a pretty amazing story / fictional universe when even Saul the court jester (pun intended) has enough 3D substance to carry his own show as a superior product to pretty much anything else on TV.  Creator Vince Gilligan is a once-in-a-lifetime creative genius right up there with Hemingway and Faulkner.

I have absolutely no problem if they make Jonathan Banks an equal co-star and change the name to Better Call Mike.  If he doesn't get Best Supporting Dramatic Actor Emmy for his cameo episode, then then the voting is rigged.