I am having some success with these peers, but not sure at this point, what happened to the hard-coded seeds, and which of these belong to whom:

--add-peer 178.63.62.93:24080 --add-peer 195.154.181.121:8280 --add-peer 148.251.51.113:8280 --add-peer 144.76.72.6:24080 --add-peer 176.9.147.178:8280 --add-peer 188.0.42.57:24080 --add-peer 176.9.47.243:8280 --add-peer 187.0.232.77:24080

curious comment, since this has become one of the de-facto coin forums for alt-coins as well, and the cryptonote forum has never let me log in either. My guess is that you have never tried what you advised.