[ANN] profit switching auto-exchanging pool - www.middlecoin.com

[The Fat Miner]

I guess you will get some flame from this ... but you deserve it a bit.
The pool is still an one man army and it does seem like it was designed that way. For somebody like you, who is worried for some meaningless stats, this might be important. For the other part of us, who looks at the transactions to out wallets, this means nothing. After all, we are here to GET PAID and having every minute stats is just an extra.

If you are saying h2o should skip sleep because you want your stats... think again and move on. I think he should get as much sleep as he needs so he can be with a fresh mind and work on bottom line improvements.

And he is earning the amount because there are results from his work. Soon it might be £3000/hour and this again will be because of the bottom line results and not because of the every minute stats.

Now stop being stats-addict and find something meaningful to do during your day instead of hitting that F5 button.

All this also applies to all you other stats-addicts.

I'm not a stat addict. Neither am I'm naive, The point I was making with the amount he is earning, Is that he can more than afford to employ extra staff to help with the running of the site and the pool, If that isn't a valid point then i don't know what is.

You can all say how great the pool is and be as defensive as you like , Fact is things could be improved drastically and with the finance flowing the way it is, It could be fixed as we speak.

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[codon]

Sure I can understand its a fair amount of data, And that it might be sketchy software/ Poor server hardware.

This.  It's unlikely to be a software issue because a) it works most of the time and b) he has said the database needs "catching up".  This is a classic indicator of database I/O starvation.  H20 is using AWS and for a database of this nature, you need high I/O.  Amazon offers EBS storage blocks, but these have terribly variable performance and low IOPS.  They did create two new SSD instances types (HI1, I2) but those are all sold out.  So he's probably struggling with dropped database connections, long running queries, dropping and re-adding EBS volumes to his software raid 10, etc.

The coin trading algo is most likely database driven as well, and very time-sensitive, so my concern is that coin trading efficiency suffers when this happens as well.

[sykal]

the only problem i have with the stats flatlining, is that it lead to one of the lowest payouts last time it happened. and no, this was not followed by a large payout either.

see for yourself
http://middlecoin2.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/reports/12nDW2yYFeiLMyZB2kqNY82wEU4D5cMRxf.html

[The Fat Miner]

Err.. But that's not what the man was saying, not at all.

Oh, and what a great "shut the f**k up or get the f** out" comeback to a reasonable observation (slow applause). After 20 pages or so, it was long overdue

Damn miners, coming here and questioning the operation of a pool they share 3% with!

Next thing you know they'll be questioning the rock as well! Heresy I tells ya, pure heresy!!

But seriously, I think the man raised a valid point. An operation this big shouldn't depend on one man.

"it's just a display issue, will be fixed soon"?

True, but anything could be happening to the pool when stats are down and no one would ever know about it. It's not like they are ever corrected afterwards (or even could be corrected, since coingeek simply captures the real-time values).

So for all we know the pool could go caca-cuckoo while the stats are down and/or the operator's asleep.

Exactly! Somebody with some sense.

[ButterBread]

For somebody like you, who is worried for some meaningless stats, this might be important. For the other part of us, who looks at the transactions to out wallets, this means nothing. After all, we are here to GET PAID and having every minute stats is just an extra.

Since absence of stats causes a blind spot, it could very well be that payouts turn out lower than they could've been because of something that happened during the blackout. For someone who's here only for the bottom line, I would think making sure he gets the best possible deal would be interesting. No?

Me, on the other hand, I just come here for the ambiance and free drinks of course

If you are saying h2o should skip sleep because you want your stats... think again and move on. I think he should get as much sleep as he needs so he can be with a fresh mind and work on bottom line improvements.

I didn't see him saying that, he was suggesting getting some help to make sure things go well 24/7. How can you argue with that?

[ButterBread]

Wonder if H2o is/has considered bringing on a SQL programmer, even on a limited basis, to help him out with the DB issues?  Seems like we are averaging one or two issues a week now.

Why do you think he's having problems with the SQL programming?

[ButterBread]

Sure I can understand its a fair amount of data, And that it might be sketchy software/ Poor server hardware.

This.  It's unlikely to be a software issue because a) it works most of the time and b) he has said the database needs "catching up".  This is a classic indicator of database I/O starvation.  H20 is using AWS and for a database of this nature, you need high I/O.  Amazon offers EBS storage blocks, but these have terribly variable performance and low IOPS.  They did create two new SSD instances types (HI1, I2) but those are all sold out.  So he's probably struggling with dropped database connections, long running queries, dropping and re-adding EBS volumes to his software raid 10, etc.

The coin trading algo is most likely database driven as well, and very time-sensitive, so my concern is that coin trading efficiency suffers when this happens as well.

How does he avoid these issues affecting the mining itself then (i.e. registering shares) ? I mean, that in itself sounds like a lot of DB-traffic as well.

[jedimstr]

Looking back at the Twitter posts, it looks like some people have been helping him privately with his MySQL issues, but it would be nice if he took on a good SQL developer to optimize his setup further.  

With all the easy access to the money involved, I wouldn't blame him if he was wary of taking on more direct help.  Whomever has access to the SQL db essentially would have the keys to the kingdom so...  I know a lot of pool admins are paranoid about that and rightly so.

With hacks like what happened to Hashco.ws recently, I'd be wary too.  Eleuthria from BTCGuild has expressed similar wariness on bringing on any direct help for the same reasons, and he runs the second biggest BTC Pool out there.

[willittobe]

Gee, I wish I wasn't the only person having the issue where I can only stay connected for 20 minutes at a time before stratum starts dumping shares into the void.

Meanwhile other pools still work just fine, and my configuration never changed.

Extremely odd and frustrating.

[ButterBread]

Eric Maxey (H2O) picture:

That's not as athletic as I imagined him to be, juggling huge amounts of coins all day

Oh well, Bruce Dickinson puts on his pants just like the rest of us -- one leg at a time. Except, once his pants are on, he makes gold records!

[RickJamesBTC]

Maiden forever!

Oh look, it's tealover back to whine some more when everyone else is happy. Now it's bordering on stalking, I can't figure it out. Are you really still mining your two cards on this pool tea? With all your shit talking ?

[sykal]

Maiden forever!

Oh look, it's tealover back to whine some more when everyone else is happy. Now it's bordering on stalking, I can't figure it out. Are you really still mining your two cards on this pool tea? With all your shit talking ?

As far was what he says, it's valid in the sense that when we do flatline, it IS followed by a shit payout. This does not get corrected over the next days either.
Weather he is "stealing" or not is not, and cannot be proven.

Regardless, he needs to fix the issues...and when it effects payouts, they ARE issues.

[Acrobat]

Maiden forever!

Oh look, it's tealover back to whine some more when everyone else is happy. Now it's bordering on stalking, I can't figure it out. Are you really still mining your two cards on this pool tea? With all your shit talking ?

As far was what he says, it's valid in the sense that when we do flatline, it IS followed by a shit payout. This does not get corrected over the next days either.
Weather he is "stealing" or not is not, and cannot be proven.

Regardless, he needs to fix the issues...and when it effects payouts, they ARE issues.

+1

[codon]

How does he avoid these issues affecting the mining itself then (i.e. registering shares) ? I mean, that in itself sounds like a lot of DB-traffic as well.

Last time this happened, he posted his issue here: http://pastebin.com/TQ206qQj

His share table inserts one row for EVERY share submitted by EVERY miner.  This table has 4 indexes on it.  This makes every insert or update expensive on the I/O.  His stats query then does a select count(shares.*) from ALL THOSE shares, further hammering his I/O while shares are still being submitted.  This is a classic database paradigm with many ways to solve it.  Some very easy!

H20, please reply to my PM.  Database optimization is my day job.  I can help.

[CaptainBeck]

Yah......tealeaf is back to carry on trolling, for a moment there was me thinking he was happy with middlecoin, turns out he was outside going thru H20 bins.

[SimonG]

Please PM if you want H2O's (Eric Maxey) address (Grass Valley, california), where he went to college, his facebook account, his dating website profile link, phone #, and more details.

Tired of this man taking $5,000 per day and not being able to run a server. He claims it is his FULL TIME JOB and he has 2 EMPLOYEES.

LIES.

Every time the stats flat line is a bad payout day because that is when he is STEALING FROM YOU.

Look at his bitcointalk profile. He logs in here EVERY DAY but NEVER POSTS. And no more twitter either

Eric Maxey (H2O) picture: ** REMOVED PICTURE **
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Good job with investigation tealover!

As long as he manages to run a server and answer questions on this forum I have no problem with him taking 3.5% but this is not the case...

I'm actually glad people stay on this pool wasting their hashpower into a big black hole. This helps increase profits for other more "secret" pools with proffesional users.

[ButterBread]

Maiden forever!

True, but I meant the other Bruce Dickinson

[bitter_miner]

take this level of communication and apply it to, say, your isp, your bank, or your mobile provider.. how long would you stick around if they decided to tweet customer service??
 
no email provided.. no phone number to contact.. just a forum profile link, a faq and the most basic of html sites known to mankind..
there's little to no business transparency at middlecoin, so we're all reduced to speculation.. waiting for a lovely tweet..

now, before everyone goes flying off to venus, let me get to the point.. i accept the downsides because it's working and there's no other pool that works as well as this one with my current setup..

regardless of these poor business practices (which they most certainly are), i'm making, outside of the running costs, free money for essentially putting a pc together and running software on it.. and, more free money with middlecoin.. just sitting on my lazy ass, tweaking some settings every now and again.. this cheese is easy.. really, f'n easy..
 
i'll jump ship if there's compelling evidence, but i always get my payouts.. it's working for me and most everyone still on middlecoin..

maybe he's hard at work, fixing all the issues.. maybe he's not..

[ButterBread]

How does he avoid these issues affecting the mining itself then (i.e. registering shares) ? I mean, that in itself sounds like a lot of DB-traffic as well.

Last time this happened, he posted his issue here: http://pastebin.com/TQ206qQj

Thanks for the glimpse. Is there another, more technical, thread about middlecoin where these things are discussed?

[sykal]

Please PM if you want H2O's (Eric Maxey) address (Grass Valley, california), where he went to college, his facebook account, his dating website profile link, phone #, and more details.

Tired of this man taking $5,000 per day and not being able to run a server. He claims it is his FULL TIME JOB and he has 2 EMPLOYEES.

LIES.

Every time the stats flat line is a bad payout day because that is when he is STEALING FROM YOU.

Look at his bitcointalk profile. He logs in here EVERY DAY but NEVER POSTS. And no more twitter either

Eric Maxey (H2O) picture: ** REMOVED PICTURE **
[

Good job with investigation tealover!

As long as he manages to run a server and answer questions on this forum I have no problem with him taking 3.5% but this is not the case...

I'm actually glad people stay on this pool wasting their hashpower into a big black hole. This helps increase profits for other more "secret" pools with proffesional users.

Someone ban this dipshit scammer. Nobody is going to give you any $ for your BS nigerian mining pool secret. GFY.