[ANN][CwC] Corewar Coin (Cancelled ! =D)

[Skybuck]

Thursday 19 july 2018, further investigation and improvements to underlying blockchain technology. It will be necessary to re-structure this underlying blockchain technology to comprehend it better. This will take some time but I think it will be time well spent. Some restructuring was done today.

(Feedback for Delphi IDE/Compiler developers if they happen to read this )

Unfortunately Delphi XE does not have the following to do this faster:

1. "icon button" for "new unit' on main toolbar which is always visible, I don't use the other icons anyway, except build and run.
2. "refactor into new unit" (should auto-detect interface code) and "refactor into new/other unit interface section" (for manually refactoring into interface) or ask where to place if auto detect fails and thus also "refactor into new/other unit implementation section".
3. Furthermore when Delphi creates a new unit it could also include the "type" keyword since it's most likely types will be added, safes typing that line over and over again
4. Also a short cut/key for "find in all units" when a piece of text is selected would be highly usefull, this safes a trip to the menu. (There is a key combination but it does not work when in editor).

Further Delphi IDE improvements possible:

5. When navigating through code, the structure pane should auto-update so that the structure pane and code view are in-sync, this could at least be an option somewhere, perhaps it already exists. I will try to use the structure pane to navigate through code a bit more easy, never really done that before. Also it would be helpfull if Delphi does not auto scroll to the right when clicking in structure pane on a long line of function/routine/procedure text that is kinda annoying.

6. Further interesting ideas which user can do custom:
6.1 Move project manager to the left
6.2 Move structure to the left.
6.3 Close everything else on the right.
6.4 Save it as desktop: "fullscreen editor".

This will allow to see some more text on the right side of the screen for those occassionally long lines of text.

7. Auto-expand structure pane when using it, this might come in handy for view parameters shortly. There should be an icon to collapse this expanditure tough in case both structure and code want to be viewed at the same time.

8. I want more options to generate executables in different folders and with different names based on compiler conditional defines and such.

For example, something like:

{$if defined(WIN32) ExecutableFilename = 'Coin32.exe'}
{$if defined(WIN64) ExecutableFilename = 'Coin64.exe'}

{$if defined(SomethingSpecial) ExecutableFolder = 'Special'}

9. Perhaps I would like it better if "platform" is removed and instead integrated with "configurations" as to make many different configurations for all kinds of builds and platforms. Now the switch between platforms seems to be limiting. There might be more configuration necessary than just specifieing the platform or vice versa, just a switch per configuration which could be re-used for different platforms. Currently this seems somewhat disconnected between "configurations" and "platform". May look into this some more in the future.

10. Want better navigation memory/history. Sometimes Delphi cannot remember where I was... this is kinda annoying... especially when moving between units.
11. It should remember navigation history even after a build/run session. Currently the navigation history seems to be lost... could also be lost when saved, not sure what exactly but something makes it go lost, which is also annoying when you want to continue after a run/build at some specific point in code where you were previously.
12. There is a dangerous bug with "Save As" if clicking on an existing file, it will copy that filename into the textbox, if this filename is adjusted/modified to something new and then clicking save, it will try to overwrite the oldfilename and warn if you want to overwrite, this is clearly a bug, and it should have used the new/non existing filename in the textbox to create a new file.
13. Replace in all files should be added (so that it can match find in all files functionality). I needed this to replace tab character with 4 spaces everywhere.
14. Only activate "smart fill" with "tab character" if file already contains tabs, otherwise disable it, only enable it if user inserts one tab character. The weird thing is wherever I place the cursor in a source file as long as "use tab character" is on and "smart fill" is on, Delphi will immediately replace spaces with tabs, which is kinda funny this will "track" where I was browsing. This could be considered a tiny little minor code browsing privacy violation ! Perhaps it would be better if Delphi first "scans" a file to see if there are any tab characters in the fill, if there are none then it is highly likely that this feature is undesired and should probably not be activated. If the user wants this feature to be activated he/she should first insert a tab character somewhere, from that point forward this "smart fill" feature can be activated. This will allow browsing of "non-tab character files without modifieing it". If there are some modifications and then tabs saved this is not so bad, these tabs can later be replaced (once the correct ammount of spaces is known/set).
15. Minor issue encountered before: "Find declaration" is missing from/at the top of the pop-up menu when debugging, while it's still in the menu, but further below, three find declaration options exist, only one is needed really, basically find declaration in interface, using control arrow down when can then navigate to the implementation. Another nice feature would be "find in all files" at the top of these menus. These menus should be as much as possible consistent when "debugging" vs "not debugging". I believe many Delphi programmers will not known about this new "find declaration" feature that was added in some Delphi XE versions for  debugging, since it appears to be gone, while in reality it is available just hidden/located somewhere else on the pop-up menu when debugging <- inconsistent location. Keep it consistent pls !

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[Skybuck]

20 july 2018 investigating the use of BPLs (special DLLs) to seperate GUI from CORE. It's doable, may lead to DLL hell though. Delphi adds BPL folders to path environment variable which is not cool and dumps BPLs there.

(Example of such a stupid/confusing dll hell folder: C:\Users\Public\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\17.0\Bpl)

This tool can be used to see where DLLs are loaded from in case there is any confusion, this also works for Delphi BPLs (special DLLs)

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/listdlls

"
Usage

listdlls [-r] [-v | -u] [processname|pid]
listdlls [-r] [-v] [-d dllname]
Parameter    Description
processname    Dump DLLs loaded by process (partial name accepted).
pid    Dump DLLs associated with the specified process id.
dllname    Show only processes that have loaded the specified DLL.
-r    Flag DLLs that relocated because they are not loaded at their base address.
-u    Only list unsigned DLLs.
-v    Show DLL version information.
"

Example of usage to detect DLLs loaded by a single application:

0. Download tool above, extract and store in some folder.
1. Start notepad
2. Start ms-dos prompt
3. Go to listdlls.exe folder.
4. Then run this little tool as follows:

listdlls notepad.exe

This will show all DLLs used by notepad.exe same can be done for other "processess". If access denied then run ms-dos prompt in adminstrator mode by choosing "run as administrator" from right click op-up menu on ms-dos prompt icon in start menu.

Pretty cool and neat tool. Nice clean and simple.

Another tool can do this too though it's called "ProcessExplorer" also from sysinternals... it has an entire GUI but can be a bit complex/dounting or might seize functioning because of ?unknown reasons? so far never happened:) though ProcessMonitor another tool from sysinternals does have issues. Currently it's not working, it may depend on wmi or something not sure.

...

Still investigating the benefits and drawbacks of using this seperation of GUI and CORE in EXE and DLL/BPL. So far when BPL is missing EXE fails to start and aborts completely silently without informing user of what is wrong, I dislike this to some degree, this is a bit unfortunate.

When switching from debug to a release version, without altering the test core package/bpl it gives a pretty weird and uninsightfull error message:

"
[dcc32 Fatal Error] TestApplication.dpr(5): E2213 Bad packaged unit format: c:\tools\rad studio\17.0\lib\Win32\release\vcl.dcp.Vcl.Forms - Expected version: 30.0, Windows Unicode(x86) Found version: 116.115, Unk(ARM)"

This is laugably weird... wow ! Still experimenting with what best setup is for project options for exe vs project options for bpl. Not sure if output and package and dcp folders should match from exe mapped onto bpl or if it doesn't matter and works via search path or runtime packages project options, this is confusing at best and ill-documented/unclear. Experimentation will have to uncover if there is a relation between these project settings and if one is input for exe, and one is output for package and then shared in naming which would be a bit weird.

Wow now the error happens vice versa, when switching from release to debug. This bug could be unrelated and just a newly discovered bug... hmm more weirdness from Delphi IDE.

I suspect I have to supply "debug" and "release" versions of dcp and bpl or so, in their respective configurations to make this bug go away, if it doesn't go away I would be surprised

For now I tried to use "all configurations" to specify the dcp, I guess this is what lead to this somewhat bizar error message which was to be expected. I will stop here because it's becoming to much of a dev-experimentation log lol. Though it may help some users of underlying blockchain in future or maybe even my project though that seems somewhat unlikely, might help myself though sometime in future in case I forget how this is supposed to work

It's still a bit weird though debug and release seem to mention "PackageCore" in runtime packages. What am I suppose to do here ? Rename it to "PackageCoreDebug" and "PackageCoreRelease" hmm pretty weird. Not even sure if this is the problem... hmm.

I tried matching application dcp output folder to core dcp output folder, this does not seem to work, kinda expected this, so this solves maybe a little bit of the confusion, though other issues might still be in play, while try different approach and set runtime package per configuration, though I have this feeling that this might not be sufficient which would be a bit weird. Probably gonna have to use a search path which I dislike very much.

All that seems necessary to make it work is this:

1. Add PackageName to runtime packages. (for all configurations, so this can be done once, the rest inherits from it)
2. Checkmark the checkbox "link with runtime packages". (for all configurations, rest inherits from it)
3. Add folder to Package DCP to search path.  (This step I dislike somewhat, would have liked it better if DCPs where visible in project manager, just like pas, txt, inc, dpr, etc.
(Do this for each configuration, win32/debug win32/release, win64/debug, win64/release) (this must be done per configuration)

This should then work. When distributing/running the application, copy the BPL to the EXE folder and then it should work, make sure debug/release and win32/win64 matches. Not sure what would happen if these do not match

There are compiler suffixes and prefixes available to change BPL name and such, may use this in future for now I can manage it without these helpers

Now that I think about it some more it does make some sense to me. Perhaps the project manager is incapable of showing different files based on configuration/platform and such. It kind of assumes that all files on the project manager are "cross" configuration and "cross" platform.

So it's all or nothing, files which would be specific to certain platforms might be a little issue, not yet sure about this though.

Tried the setup as described above, most of it works, though it does seem to produce this error:

"
[dcc64 Fatal Error] TestApplication.dpr(5): E2213 Bad packaged unit format: c:\tools\rad studio\17.0\lib\Win64\debug\vcl.dcp.Vcl.Forms - Expected version: 30.0, Windows Unicode(x64) Found version: 108.111, Windows Unicode(CIL)
"

This is probably caused by a "configuration switching bug" (for example switching between release/debug or win32/win64) in Delphi IDE when switching configurations as probably reported before. This is a pretty sloppy bug, it doesn't switch properly and screws up the build, might even cause files to end up in the wrong platform/config folders. Probably requires restarting IDE to fix it or make a rebuild of certain files.

Perhaps using prefixes and suffixes is not such a bad idea, this could visualize these IDE fuck-ups better. For example files with suffix win32 may end up in win64 folders where they not belong or vice versa, and also release files in debug folders and vice versa. This assumes the prefixes and suffixes are correctly picked up by the compiler. Though it could simply be a wrong in-memory compiler used, so there is no garantuee that using prefixes and suffixes may catch these mistakes/errors.

To definetly catch these IDE/compiler mistakes probably requires some special coding to be part of EXE and BPL so that they can be queried to see what they really are. Then when a build fails, try and inspect them and interrogate them and perhaps that will shed some light on this situation. For now I will assume a Delphi IDE restart is enough to fix the problem. Restarting did fix the problem which kinda proves my point for now

Ok testing:

TestApplicationWin32Debug can use PackageCoreWin32Debug
TestApplicationWin32Release can also use PackageCoreWin32Debug

which is pretty cool.

TestApplicationWin32Debug can use PackageCoreWin32Release
TestApplicationWin32Release can also use PackageCoreWin32Release

Also pretty cool.

TestApplicationWin64Debug.exe can use PackageCoreWin64Debug
TestApplicationWin64Release.exe can use PackageCoreWin64Debug

(It cannot use the 32 bit version though which is a bit unfortunate but somewhat understandable, though a little bit surprising too, apperently it's all or nothing full/all 32 bit or full/all 64 bit but no bit mixing.)

TestApplicationWin64Debug.exe can use PackageCoreWin64Release
TestApplicationWin64Release.exe can use PackageCoreWin64Release

No other combinations are possible.

So what a little bit of Delphi IDE restart fiddling it can be made to work like it should =D LOL.

[Skybuck]

Time for a little update, feels like a lot of time went by and a lot of topics were researched and especially lots of development done. Can't remember most of it, but will try mention most important stuff.

Friday 20 july 2018 restructured underlying blockchain technology, probably read up on some stuff too. Contacted main developer of underlying blockchain technology for discussing critical technology problem (he on holiday ) via e-mail.
Saturday 21 july 2018 Visitted my family.
Sunday 22 july 2018 more structuring underlying blockchain technology, also made a slightly simplified version of underlying blockchain technology/seperate from restructuring.
Monday 23 july 2018 lots of restructuring of underlying blockchain technology and solve problems. Became very sick late at night (norro-virus infection probably from saturday via family/baby) (Ordered some fans for cooling) Got very interested in OpenSSL and how ecliptic curve keys are generated, want to explore this in more depth. Took me on a whole tour of all kinds of theory. Too much really. Also got slightly interested in writing a new/fun special corewar warrior to demonstrate/test my better understanding of redcode instruction set since 2009. It's been a long time since I wrote a redcode warrior ! =D It will represent/mimic my favorite game (secret for now) if I do continue with it's development.
Tuesday 24 july 2018 spent all day in bed recovering from nasty norro-virus infection, feel much better now. (Most still commit some uncommited solutions, will do so now to underlying blockchain technology just in case )

[Skybuck]

Wednesday 25 july 2018 spent half the day recovering from norro. Did think about and come up with a way to integrate hashing and redcode, kinda already had this idea but now understand better why this is important
Thursday 26 july 2018 feeeeeeeling much better ! =D Riding the heat wave currently, 29.5 degree celcius indoors, expecting 35 degrees to hit this afternoon and evening, fortunately high up in the sky and slightly little breeze is blowing which makes it kinda nice ! =D Ordered 3 fans, 2 were in stock, 1 has to be delivered from manufacturer and this is delaying the whole order (first I ordered 2, then decided to go for 3, me a bit unlucky there but eventually it will hopefully work out =D these very nice standing fans with loads of airflow, must have them for kicks also getting slightly worried about high-rise-buildings and such oh yeah.), fortunately the air is breathyl and not as bad as it was a few days, guess this little wind is quite nice and causing some better/fresh air. I am having a fun day now that I through everything open and discovered to my pleasent surprise this cool breeze of air lol, do have two fans blowing back the shitty air from the front, but maybe not even necessary though it does help... I'll very glad when I am completely back on the horse/saddle and being more productive yeah, though thinking important too. Seems like today will be the day when I climb back on the crypto-dev-saddle ! LOL. To be continued... I wish all of you a nice summer or winter where ever you are !

This coin system is mostly being designed to thwart the attempts of asic and maybe even gpu mining, but not so much pool mining and compute cluster mining, might consider implementing something to thwart those too... for now I'll be happy if this system gets down some day in some kind of initial form... but for now back to underlying block chain tech to make it a bit more understandable and better and then back to this project possibly

(Also read a bit about spectre RSB attack, return stack buffer or something like that... interesting to read when I have "free" time in bed or so I like printing out documents like that, it's quite historic in a way stuff of sci-fiction almost =D It's like a thriller for computer programmers =D)

As they would say in USA... "It's a heat, but it's a dry heat" ! LOL. I think I understand now, it's not so moisty/dempth... dry heat is kinda nice though, at least less sweaty. Hmm I have a humidty reader for this totally forgot to watch it lately... humidity is 38%... feels quite nice. Yeah this meter does show a clear drop in humidity, last few 4 days it was between 40 and 60%, now it seems to have dropped below 40%.

Oh yeah, today is going to be a TEST OF HEAT. This will seperate the cows from the cowboys ! LOL.

I feel confident that my more than 10 year old system is up for the task at hand ! =D I am so glad I have antec 1200 case system... it's holding up quite nicely... did have to spin up the motherboard fan manually though (I do that just in case tiny little motherboard fan pretty much no match for antec 1200 cooling power.. it's probably not doing much but still ), it doesn't spin up lately by itself but that's ok.



(What's kinda weird on this picture is it does not show my second hard drive ? a data drive, perhaps it's spindled down/sleep mode... a bit weird.).

I used windows explorer on that drive to see if it would be added seems so... gonna make a screenshot of it... just to get that harddisk information on this screenshot as well, might come in handy some day for boot order determination or other uses) (seems to be a slight bug in hardware monitor does not show HDD name/info, oh well might have to update this tool sometime):

Oh boy oh boy do I have a surprise for you: SURPRISE ! missing HD right there ! LOL... still somewhat in stealth mode cause of missing hd info... *the humor is high with this one*:



(Even more strange is that this missing drive is actually my system drive C: ! LOL oh man this is one weird hardware monitor tool... just windows weirdness I guess... I can handle the weirdness for now... used to it )

(Strangely enough my webhost or web browser firefox can't handle this link: kinda funny... discover someting new every day ! too much complexity for such a thing to not occur ) argh argh haha):

http://www.skybuck.org/Hardware/DreamPC2006/26%20july%202018%20at%2014h04%20ambient%20temp%2030.5%20degrees%20celcius%20exhuast%20fans%20at%20middle%20setting,%20input%20fans%20at%2075%25%20setting.png

Seems webserver can't handle it though... not sure if this is according to the specs... Apperently I am pushing these systems a little bit too much... oh poor little weak systems (can't handle a bit of description in the filename... don't worry... for my and your historic pleasures I have embedded the text into the picture as shown already =D...) argh argh =D

Today I am very glad with my relatively low heat/passively cooled GT 520 lol. Though there are probably better graphics chips out there that run even at lower wattages, but with also 1 GB of ram ? hmm...

Ambient temperature just rose 0.5 degree... to 31 degrees celcius... exciting heat day today ! =D My antec 1200 and system build still has 33% additional cooling capacity from exhaust fans... and 25% cooling capacity from inlet fans... can it handle the rest of the day ?! =D Will be keeping an eye on temperatures ! LOL... only some web tabs open... cryptopanic.com ! Love that site.

As long as temperatures stay below 50 to 55 degree celcius everything will be just fine. If it goes above 55 degrees celcius system will auto-power-down.... very nice overheat protection ! Though ofcourse I'd rather avoid it and thus increase cooling power if necessary ! =D (Forgot exact power off setting, I think it was 55 degrees celcius yeah... 60 is a bit much... so I probably set it to 55 as usual a long time ago.).

Nice to see harddisk temperatures holding up well too... this is ofcourse the most important part of any system (containing important information ! )).

It's also kinda interesting to note how my PC seems to be behaving slightly different because of this massive summer heatwave... it failed to attach a filedisk image properly... usually it's one of the other ones from time to time, this time it was my music file disk image... no problem re-attaching... but sometime must have changed during the booting... slightly different timings... causing different effects !

Hmm airplane passengers may be at risk if planes starting behaving slightly different too then pilots are used too... much interesting insight the risk of dieing in a plane crash is now probably just 0.001% (just based on computers/software no accounting for other heat related factors (!)) (one airport was actually shut down though, runway cracking up/sweating under heat...)  higher but still =D enjoy your flights ! =D

Meanwhile some roads are being covered with salt, to prevent them from melting and same for car tires ! =D too funny.

Tomorrow will be another hot day here in THE NETHERLANDS ! =D

And then some more cool downs ! LOL.

Oh yeah the risk is real, I re-attached the wrong music file disk image haha an old one, instead of the new one, if I were a pilot I might have crashed by now ! LOL. Now the proper file disk image mounted ! LOL.
(Some weird vhdattach bug or windows bug doesn't list the drive letter, so two music disks were attached, only one was visible, but now the correct one is visible... yeah with 100.000 operating system bugs, something is gonna fuck up once in a while hehe). What's even more scary is I only noticed this because I couldn't find something which was more recent haha... fortunately both music disks already fulll... I could have ended up using the wrong one though if it wasn't full... though unlikely... does show how dangerous using file disk images can be if inserting the wrong one, must play more close attention to this and must find a better storage ordering of files, should remove older folders to their own special archive folder or something, but for now gonna let it be... not risking a disk movement bug or fuck up haha... Gotta get a new system first ! =D That will be sometime until amd chipset backdoors and specte processor bugs are fixed, this could become an eternal wait though. Maybe a new company will rise to power and sell "secure" low processing speeds processors instead of current highly unreliable ?! JUNK ?!

My bet is it won't be long before the "bitcoin community/world" starts demanding it... demand will become high for these kinds of more secure more reliable systems !

Kinda funny though to see the evolution of my music download/collection. Ok enough of this stuff, on with the world ! =D

Wow the weather is pretty crazy right now:

1. First of all my bed is being warmed up by the hot air lol.

but what is even more crazy:

2. There is now slowly a storm building as predicted, but this is the first "warm" storm" I have ever witnessed and felt in my life ! =D

A warmy stormy wind... like tropical storm or something ! LOL. This swamp land turning into jungle land ?! maybe paradise land with tropical plants like palm trees ?!

WOW paper starting to fly a bit, lol super cartography/super mario mix playing with mario laughing LOL, today I am happy ! =D most be the after-norro effect and after-sweaty-shitty-days-effect lol. Humidity now 33% but I think this will rise soon if it starts to rain... can feel it already becoming more humidid. Yeah it slightly raining, will take a while for the meter to adept to it, probably a warm rain too haha, reminds me of acid for blood of aliens... warm rain yeah. Neh felt it, it still a little bit col but probably way above normal temperatures for rain !

Meter shut up quite quickly, was kinda enjoying this dry heat... now it s getting sweaty again I think, already 38% humidity... oh it just jumped to %40... arrr... %43

15:42:
This is a nice extra test to perform on hardware.... quickly fluctuating humidity levels... wonder if hardware is tested for that and if it matters at all... hmmmm... probably rare events but still weather may be changing a bit Ambient temperature dropped a degree from 31.5 back down to 30.5 degrees... 30 degrees... wonder if we will still reach 35 here today, otherwise maybe tomorrow

I think I will conclude this posting with a possibly new hypothesis about the norro virus:

1. First of all I am kinda of surprised there is no medicine against the norro-virus, especially since close to 1 million dutch people get infected by it each year.

2. Now having experience it myself, I am starting to believe, this virus does more than just make you diaaarreeeya a lot, it might actually reward you for having been it's host. It might be injecting your brain with pleasent chemicals after it almost leaves your body, as a final attempt to try and influence our behaviour and not hate it so much. I did intensely hate this virus when I had it, but now that it's almost over I am having a blast ?!

Is it just me happy to be alive/get rid of it ? Or is there more to it... you be the judge... consider this an x-file ! Also... the lack of medicine does tell you something about the "secret love affair" that medics have with this tiny little cute virus ! LOLOLOL.

18h27 of Thursday 26 july 2018 finished restructuring underlying blockchain technology for most essential parts, circular unit reference problem is now clearly visible but can be disabled so that code is usuable to examine underlying blockchain technology a bit better, however debugging capabilities would require the fixture of these circular unit reference problems, which would be highly desired to fix these.

[Skybuck]

Friday 27 july 2018, weather update: 32 degree celcius inside/shadow, humidty 22%, talk about a dry heat ! LOL.  Hi Hicks ! =D LOL.

Gonna game a bit see how my PC holds up, kinda new main dev to look at these circular dependencies anyway... underlying blockchain technology might need lots more of restructuring, may have to continue this project without massive restructuring, might cost too much time, though would be nice if at least some modest restructuring was done at least to solve the circular dependencies.

Did set my PC fans to MAX just in case, some max temperatures seem to have briefly gone to 60 degrees or so... that was GPU.

Will upload some screenshots during start and end of my gaming session, if my PC can survive this !

[disbil]

The idea of Corewar Coin does sound interesting, I wish to learn more about this project.
Hopefully there will be more information available in the future.

[Skybuck]

Saturday 28 july 2018 played some world of warships... (I think ? can't remember this day clearly yeah probably half way... watch some youtube videos about how banks catching/cought up to bitcoin by cheap mobile transactions, bit demotivating, though there is still the creation/borrowing of money idea which is interesting alternative to banks ) Probably also tried some more difficult restructuring of underlying blockchain, but this failed... too complex/vague, original developer will have to clean that up I think and some slightly more analysis of how the code works, which is very hard to understand in my honest oppinion Also some of that in 27 july... probably watch some back to the future... yeah that was it, all 3 of em ! LOL.
Sunday 29/ Monday 30 july 2018 did some research and code development in delphi in regards to spectre attacks, great fun and amazing and learned some interesting things about how to do this, still not done with this research and code development, this is an important topic though, have to spend some time on it

[Skybuck]

Tuesday 31 july 2018 Played World of Warships, did get spectre working in visual studio 2010.
Wednesday 1 august 2018 Spent more time on trying to get anything "spectre" related working in Delphi, currently not yet working in Delphi, still fascinated by this.

[doge_shit666]

Corewar is the coin of the gamers. The way you give the community access to information about the project is also a special way for those who are interested in Corewar to continuously monitor the project. But this is not the way the project competes with other platforms with the same goal. What's more special about Corewar?

[Skybuck]

Thursday 2 august 2018 more restructuring of underlying blockchain technology. Circular references solved, References to References to References Reduced, constructors with TComponent removed, some problems remain in "GetNewBank" and such (Also brought pants for repair LOL) Another hot day in The Netherlanddzzz. 30.5 degrees celcius indoors, a dry day though, humidity 33%... "market in the city".. lots of people enjoying themselfes in the city ! =D

Friday 3 august 2018, another hot day in The Netherlands, didn't really sleep much, did rest a lot, found a new version of Delphi Tokyo 10.2.3 (and some "interesting" code =D LOL), will install it soon =D Did try a minimal version of spectre, though didn't work yet.
Bicycle sport outside, again people had a nice day in the city ! LOL.

Saturday 4 august 2018, tried to install No Man's Sky on laptop, the experience was laughable, msvrt100.dll missing 140.dll missing etc, install msv distribuables game says need 8 GB ram lol. Anyway... proceeded to install RAD Studio/Delphi/CPP Builder Tokyo 10.2   (it still fails to compile inc(int64,uint64)) however it looks nice this new tool. Investigated spectre and clflush some more, came across some nice cppbuilder code example in spectre github comments, tested it it worked, then translated it to delphi. Spectre attack now working in Delphi as well, even in Delphi Seatle... pretty cool. Installing Delphi took a long time though, even ended up installing in wrong folder (maybe cause I ate an icecream with 5% alcohol in it lol), but moved it and fixed it with migration tool... pretty cool, except uninstaller/repair tool might now get confused though, but that's ok.. help files working, tools working, so all seems good for now. (Last two days still hot in The Netherlands seen 31.5 to 32 degrees celcius on temp meter in-doors ! fortunately my system holding up well =D) Ethernet/Internet again completely failed between laptop and DreamPC... why I really don't know tried to use UTP cross over cable too this time... think it's a software issue on one side... really annoying, had to reset cable modems constantly to switch between PCs and upload/download files from the internet, wanted to move 1 music file to other computer was a pain in the ass. Anyway I know now my download is 24 megabyte/sec since the laptop is faster than my DreamPC when it comes to Torrenting haha... probably hash calculation speed/cpu bottle neck on DreamPC from 2006 had a disk cache of 1 GB it goes full fast though... kinda funny.. nice to have though to catch some disk activity well doing other stuff at least this allows it to continue downloading until harddisk available again for writing did end up deleting it from hd again to make room for Delphi, can't play that game anyway on any pc right now but it was a nice download test )

Sunday/Monday 5/6 august 2018 read spectra paper again to understand it a bit better, experimented some more with source codes, also tried a cycle accurate thread slice visualizer by using rdtsc and such, little bit interesting. Measuring cache hits/timings across an entire byte range from 0 to 255 is very hard to do correctly/accurate, in this sense the spectre paper may be a bit misleading since it only examines alphabet values. I cannot get it working accurately all of time also developing special functions also seems nearly impossible, so it's practical use is somewhat limited in a way of trying to implement new attacks, trying to develop my own from scratch is hard and kinda failed so far, may have to take a different approach and go from example down to more elaborate schemes/algorithms, but I am starting to believe it's not really very generic, I could be wrong about that though It may also be Delphis somewhat limited code generation optimization that plays a small part in it, but probably not, the technique itself is somewhat questionable, though meltdown claims to be able to suck down a byte ranges from memory, now me a bit skeptical about that, though it does seem to use a different technique, an out of order race condition, may have to try that too sometime just to see if this produces more reliable and generic results.

[Skybuck]

Monday 6 august 2018 TEvolutionTree data structure version 0.03 created, if everything goes well this data structured will be used to evolve warriors in a "origin of spieces" / darwin kinda way ! =D It's design is basic for now and may have to be adepted in future, might make a virtual tree of it, not yet sure how to proceed with it, but it's creation and destruction is implemented and working correctly for now ! =D

And now time for a weather report lol. The heatwave in Europe/The Netherlands continues... today is 32 degree celcius in doors, pretty much a record, cannot remember or very vaguely when I last saw such a high temperature, windows/doors open nice cool little breeze blowing =D Tomorrow will probably be the hottest day, 36 degree is expected, very curious if this record will be achieved ! Using this nice oppertunity to
de-frost my refridgerator, god knows it was necessary ! LOL. Then in with the pizza and fries/chicken lol which were ordered today LOL. =D
It's fascinating how the ice almost completely evaporated, very little water was spilled Humidity is 24 to 25% right now.
I just had an idea, I put a ventilator on the fridge, to blow away the hard to reach spots of ice !  funny ! =D the cheese inside of it might not like it, but that's ok =D
Yeah it worked, some hard ice out of there, strangely enough I could swear I smelled some of my own aftershave/parfum in that ice ! LOL. Strong parfume LOL, Identified ! =D

[Skybuck]

Tuesday 7 august 2018. Tried to solve some crypto riddle, not solved yet. Filtered my pyramid scheme idea text for valuables ideas, basically took over it's ideas tought about it some more and worked it out, I am not pretty sure I will want this design eventually, might implement it directly, or might first try a simpler design, though a simpler one might not work too well, but will be less computationally intensive. I am kinda intrigued by by currently more complex design and thus will probably try and implement that tomorrow with hopefully a fresh and energetic start of the day ! =D Though maybe I even try it now, not yet sure... usually I want to sleep on new ideas, though this is not exactly a new idea, just to be sure I don't wake up in the morning with an even better idea/design and then wasted effort/energy the night/day before it! Also one should have plenty of energy when implementing new designs, otherwise when low on energy, corners may be cut, and that may be regretted later on with weaker/messy "cut designs/implementations"

Also wanna do some WoWs right now and yeah one more thing now temperature records were broken today, at least not indoors, still 32 degree celcius or so, it was a bit cloudy so that might have prevented extreme heat from developing cause some percentage of the sunlight probably reflected back into space. There is another kind of record though, right now 0:03 at night it's still 30 degree celcius, never seen such a high temperature at night, at least not that I can recall, so I will enjoy this blog, assuming it still exists then, in the future ! =D

Renamed this thread from Corewar Coin to CoreWarCoin... I think that will be better for the future.

[Skybuck]

Wednesday 8 august 2018. Completed the data structure for TWarriorTree based on TEvolutionTree. It's now ready to implement all other functionalities. Today was nice cool day, 26 degree celcius mostly.
I will have to do some more thinking first how to properly use these new data structures. Found another way to create the same data structure with just a fraction of the lines of code, will have to evaluatate which one I find more pleasent to work with... hmmm... and there is possibly a third, and even a fourth way of writing the same code. Can't really say that all these new languages features make my life more easy on the contrary, now I have to choose what kind of implementation to use, ahhh, all have their adventages and disadventages, but this is the fun of programming ! =D

Anyway wanna add a little funny note: today, this night 2:22 am or so 9 august 2018 street lights went out, and traffic lights, only for a few minutes, maybe some kind of bug, or automated reset, should try and see if this happens next year as well ! LOL. It's a very rare event that's for sure. Only one street seemed to go offline, kinda weird. (This could also have been a sign of hacking).

[Skybuck]

Thursday 9 august 2018 went shopping/seeing around for new glasses, found a nice one, first wanna show it to somebody else lol.
Friday 10 august 2018 went to meeting, did watch some blackhat presentation slides about hidden instructions in via c3 processor, interesting, method of detection also interesting.

Saturday 11 august 2018 just heavily modified/seperated corewars executor so that it can now run redcode programs individually, very nice... feels like alien technology ! LOL X-Com music playing ! =D This gonna be awesome I hope/I can feel it ! =D YEAH ! =D (This will be used to evolve evolvers ! =D a new experimental idea that has nice been tried before as far as I know ! =D)

[Nggedebus]

For me, this is a unique project, this has some kind of codes that act as a warrior that will fight for honor ( in this case "point").
This sounds like playing a video game that you have a cheat code to play the main character all by itself to gain some points from every winning war.

[Skybuck]

Sunday 12 august 2018 played Dead Cells ! Whicked game ! =D LOL.

Monday 13 august 2018 thought some more how to implement my much desired evolution tree evolver instead of battlefield evolver . Probably going to have to base it on battlefield evolver and replace battlefield with "treefield" or something like that, to safe lots of programming effort, though some of the new programming effort can be re-used to implement some more advanced features.

Tuesday 14 august 2018 significant progress has been made with implementing trees. I decided to keep it simple (already thought of that on monday) and implement the most easy version possible, by copy & pasting code  from other files, to put together source code exactly like I want it or at least something that is easy to use, complete and just well tested and easy programmed sort of using this new design implementing new features will be very easy and very fast, also it will even safe some processing since this new structure is more efficient/smaller and does exactly what I kinda wanted ! Today is a remarkable day. In 2009 I designed the 2009 specification and today for the first time I have seen random "generated" warriors using it. I never did that before, so this is pretty cool ! It may turn out that the new warriors might be using this specification a bit too much or not at all, and it can't use too much, thus using it much might be a good thing... at least for evolvers =D. I am now entering totally uncharted territory/waters ! =D I have no idea if these evolvers are going to work, but I am confident and full of hope ! =D (I already know older/statistics code worked, this new idea is like the old idea on steroids, sort of ! as long as the evolvers can make some sense of it... it's a bit different though, it does not analyze warriors yet, but perhaps I may build in that functionality later on if it turns out evolvers are not good at evolving warriors without further input/data from existing warrior code bases.)
(Loading/Saving and generating evolvers was easy to implement. Now the more interesting part is to be done. Making the evolvers evolve themselfes and generating warriors, by executing it in a redcode executor, this is again new stuff, never tried before... this is the part where it's about to get interesting ! =D... then they still have to be battled these "clones"/"generated warriors"... since the few first batches/species will probably suck, so there is no fast way of telling if this is going to work, for this a simulation/evolution session will need to be run, so that is the next step... implementing this and then doing some small evolution runs ! This will allow to evaluate if the general idea is working somewhat or not at all ! And this should give some sense of what fast warriors improve or not at all, and if perhaps something needs to be done to increase good evolving speed, for now all bets are off and just gonna let it be in it's first initial concept ! )

What is kinda funny though is I can already run these warriors in my own corewar simulator which is available on the internet, so for the fun of it I am going to try that, another premiere/first ! =D yeaaaahh.

Running the evolvers works. Copieing warriors from them works, these are saved/loaded too for now (just in case... just to be consistent/persistent).

Now all that is needed is "simulator" to be modified so it uses these slighty new/changed TRedcodePrograms and then battle the warriors... and finally swap the best one up with worst one, and generate a new one for the very worst one for battling probably requires a "gathering" of warriors into a list or so... to be able to battle them for a certain "group". These implementations will be done after some good night sleep !

[Skybuck]

Wednesday 15 august 2018 Decided to implement this evolving of evolvers in BattlefieldEvolver first since it already has all the code/plumbing in place. version 0.48 and version 0.49 leave the processess existing for the evolvers. Tested warrior sizes of 100 and 20.... so far it does not seem to be evolving the way I would like to. Also it's been since 2009 since I last tried evolving some warriors... kinda forgot how much time it takes =D
This could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. This project might be in a bit of trouble =D

One possible solution is to focus on coin system/protocol first and let external parties try and develop evolvers or plug in their warriors. Though I would kinda like a warrior evolution system in place. One idea which comes to mind is a distributed warrior evolution system where multiple parties work together and the one that finds a better warrior might be rewarded... bit like a lotto... not sure if this is a good idea... looking at a battlefield like that might be some fun though. First I have to figure out why it's not evolving though...

[disbil]

So the site of corewar isn't ready yet.
Where should we seek for more information about corewar, if he site isn't ready to be access yet?

[Skybuck]

Google corewars and redcode and maybe koth, you should be able to find a lot of information !

Thursday 16 august 2018 Last two days I did some investigation into why the warriors are not evolving. First I thought it might be because there is no evolver process running or maybe it needs more processes running at the same time, but now I am starting to believe that the idea that software could evolve itself out of the blue might be wrong, or the chance of this occuring is really really low. Thus for this project I will probably have to fall back on more "god-like" code, or "radiation" code where instructions are slightly modified by an external process. I could still keep current design and simply apply radiation to both evolver and evolvee That could be fun to see if maybe eventually some self-evolving occurs or not... this is a bit of a bummer though.

17 august 2018 Hmmm I just had an idea how to improve the self-evolving, so I am not yet giving up on this idea ! Secret idea for now, but the hint will be: "stop playing for god at the initial state"
Implement this idea, made the necessary changes... little bit more interesting now, still not self-evolving though =D May have to re-focus on blockchain itself instead of evolving, but for now having too much fun and interest in evolving, project won't be as much fun for me at least if it doesn't have a good "default-evolver" so for now will probably continue into this pursuit of a good default evolver for a while

18 august 2018 worked some more on more corewars simulator, didn't really get very far yet at implementing the rest for the GUI, restructured GUI to allow floating windows, not sure yet if I liked it but with certain positions for the forms it might still be nice, also perhaps some docking and undocking support, and/or use of frames the restructured/form code can be continued to be used. I think it will be usefull to get a slightly better corewar simulator working that has all features implemented, like coresize settings and also more visualization of processes. Shouldn't be a lot of work to do... but does require some effort... I may also try and spent some time on a better gui design, though once I start using it I do notice, it's kind of a new gui design from certain point of view.

[Skybuck]

Sunday 19 august 2018 I worked some more on Skybuck's Corewars Simulator, it's now up to version 0.40 and I am starting to like this version ! =D Simulator Settings can now be set and will have an effect.
Some more work will need to be done on visualizing process queue, and visualizing private space, and I also want a private space view, and then maybe also handling visualizing bigger cores. Once these major facilities have been built in I may decide to release this version onto the world ! Then later additional features may be: 1. saving simulator settings 2. setting breakpoints in core view/simulator and finally in the futher future 3. selecting instruction set between 88, 94, and my spec2009. Though I don't really set any motivation right now for feature 3, that is more out of curiosity and completeness sake, so that's on the "backburner" for now =D
Another feature which comes to mind is 4. saving form positions and 5. a reset to default form positions. Oh yeah and also 6. A working/updated execution status of different internals of the simulator would also be nice, like a "debug view of the cpu" (only then will it make sense to 7. bring manual execution controls online/in working state to see how instructions are executed part by part (called actions for now).)