[4+ EH] Slush Pool (slushpool.com); Overt AsicBoost; World First Mining Pool

[Thralen]

I was just wondering if anyone else had noticed the same pattern I have. It seems to me that every time the difficulty level drops we get a whole mess of multi-hour blocks immediately after. I'm sure of it on the last three difficulty drops, wasn't paying enough attention previously. Is this just my imagination or have others noticed it as well?

Thralen

[1642988817]

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[1642988817]

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[1642988817]

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[1642988817]

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[eleuthria]

I was just wondering if anyone else had noticed the same pattern I have. It seems to me that every time the difficulty level drops we get a whole mess of multi-hour blocks immediately after. I'm sure of it on the last three difficulty drops, wasn't paying enough attention previously. Is this just my imagination or have others noticed it as well?

Thralen

Not directly answering your question, but I think this might be relevant to a lot of similar question.  Additionally, please do not take this post as an attack on your question/you as a person, it's just something I've wanted to get off my chest as I lurk the threads for the past month.

<Rant>
Your brain lies to you.  All day.  Every day.  It makes you see/notice things that aren't there because of "patterns" that may or may not exist.  The human brain is determined to create order out of chaos in order to line independent events up.  There's some great lectures out there, including one by Richard Dawkins, that talk about the brain's predisposition to applying 'models' to information and sensory inputs.  In the same way an optical illusion can make you see things that aren't there, you can see patterns in a few points of data, often times overlooking contradictory data simply to help the model fit in your head.

Now somebody could come in the very next post and demonstrate a trend of the pattern you recognized, pointing out it has been been consistent for the past 10, 20, 50, or 100 iterations.  It may actually be a problem and your post brings it to somebody's attention.  But hopefully somebody reads this and the next time they think they notice a pattern, they take some extra time to think about it and do some research on their own for a significant data sample before talking out patterns.
</Rant>

[slush]

eleuthria - lol :-)

Thralen - No, there's no reason to have "bad luck" when new difficulty come. Your observation is done from very small data sample. I remember that few months ago it looked that exactly the oposite is happening - pool has been finding many blocks after many difficulty changes with the luck like difficulty didn't changed :-).

Yes, having a lot of multi hours blocks in the line and in the time of difficulty change looks "fishy", but there's nothing wrong with the pool. Pool algorithm even dont care about difficulty change, so there's no space for some bugs in the code.

I was just wondering if anyone else had noticed the same pattern I have. It seems to me that every time the difficulty level drops we get a whole mess of multi-hour blocks immediately after. I'm sure of it on the last three difficulty drops, wasn't paying enough attention previously. Is this just my imagination or have others noticed it as well?

[Thralen]

I am familiar with the brain trying to quantify and compartmentalize things, thereby looking for patterns to do so. That is why I asked, in my previous post, if I was imagining it or if it was an ongoing pattern.

If anyone knows where I can locate a list of all of Slush's pools blocks going back a ways, I'll even be happy to do the simple math and run off a list of blocks solved in the 24-48 hours after a difficulty drop going back for say: 10, 25, 50, and 100 instances to see if it is simply luck or if there might be an issue. I simply commented to myself about it a few difficulty drops back where I noticed the number of total solved blocks taking off but those on Slush's pool going slower than I imagined the recent average to have been.

Sorry to trigger a rant, you'll note I didn't post after noting it happen once but waited for three instances. Once can be chance, twice can be coincidence, but I begin to wonder with three in a row.

Note: Not implying anything here Slush, you'll note that even after the observations I'm still mining on the pool. Caught your reply also, but if the data sample is available (block list that includes time solved and block #) I'll still take a look out of curiosity.

Thralen

[slush]

Thralen: You can pick block stats in XLS from there: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48889.0 It cointains around 8000 rounds from my pool. Its not up to date, but enough to do the stats.

But I can save your time telling you there's no reason to have a bad luck on diff change. But it's your time and thus your choice .

[Thralen]

Slush: I may well do that, still trying to find out if I am imagining it or if it is occurring. Alternatively I may take the lazy route and simply jot down the 24 hour luck percentage 24 hours after this difficulty drop and any future ones. *shrug* Like I said, I am more worried about whether my imagination is getting the better of me than I am as to if it is occurring or not.

Thralen

[majamalu]

Hi, my average hashrate is usually around 2200 Mhash/s, but the screen says 596 Mhash/s. Could it have something to do with that problem?

Average hashrate is calculated from submitted shares in last 10 rounds. It can be explained by some connection issues or if your miner was offline for some time. Did you have some connection issues today?

What struck me is that the hash rate in my account screen went up and down without relation to the actual performance of my miner. Anyway, now it's catching up. Thanks for your kind help. (It must have been that I've been offline for some time.)

[tinman951]

How is luck calculated? Wat is the standard it is compared against? Because it is a very unlucky day.

[Eveofwar]

How is luck calculated? Wat is the standard it is compared against? Because it is a very unlucky day.

Luck is determined by how many shares over or under the current difficulty it took to solve a block.  The difficulty should be the average number of shares needed to solve a block.

More shares than difficulty = bad luck
Less shares than difficulty = good luck

[slush]

Eveofwar is right, it's calculated from block shares and difficulty from the time of the block.

Yes, current block rate is pretty weird, I hope it gets better soon :-).

[tinman951]

How is luck calculated? Wat is the standard it is compared against? Because it is a very unlucky day.

Luck is determined by how many shares over or under the current difficulty it took to solve a block.  The difficulty should be the average number of shares needed to solve a block.

More shares than difficulty = bad luck
Less shares than difficulty = good luck

Thanks for answering.
So does that mean 100% is actually 50% of the difficulty (in shares)?
If I have the exact amount of shares as difficulty what would the % be?

[slush]

100% of round luck is when shares == difficulty.

[dietwice]

Caught a strange: in yesterday stats 9 BTC blocks in a row show "none" as NMC reward.
At the same time NMC stats page shows a lot of found blocks.
Are they all invalids or something like this?

[tinman951]

Caught a strange: in yesterday stats 9 BTC blocks in a row show "none" as NMC reward.
At the same time NMC stats page shows a lot of found blocks.
Are they all invalids or something like this?

I noticed that too.  I didn't mine all of yesterday, but I can still see blocks 9087-9089 with BTC and no NMC.  I have also noticed that NMC shows none for a little while after the BTC is calculated, but then about 5 minutes later it usually shows it.  People are more interested as to how many BTC they earned, so BTC would be calculated first then NMC second.

[slush]

Yep, calculating rewards for NMC stucked up, I'll fix it soon.

Edit: NMC rewards fixed and paid out. Also those "None" in NMC rewards should not happen in the future.

[dietwice]

I have "none"s at blocks 9106 to 9111.

[slush]

I have "none"s at blocks 9106 to 9111.

Yep, it was the rest of yesterday's issue. I finally found a time to calculate those blocks and it should not happen next time.

[dietwice]

Thanks

[dietwice]

NMC reward "none" at block 9184

[slush]

NMC reward "none" at block 9184

Now it's ok, there wasn't a NMC block at this time. It can happen when two namecoin blocks are found at almost the same time, so our submit lose the race.