[~1000 GH/sec] BTC Guild - 0% Fee Pool, LP, SSL, Full Precision, and More

[sirky]

If you think -7.5% and our current difficulty luck is suspicious, I'd recommend you stay quiet if anybody ever asks your opinion on probability and statistics.  Everybody is quick to jump to conclusions when luck is negative.

I don't see anybody saying "I think he's adding fake blocks to make us happy" when Deepbit has had 12% positive luck during this difficulty while being MORE THAN TWICE our size, considering according to your post you think that having 2.0-2.4 Th/s should make such a huge luck (positive or negative)  should be "extremely unlikely.", which would infer having 5.1 TH/s should make it even more "extremely unlikely."

It isn't our current luck that has me concerned, but our luck going back.  I won't go into details because I don't want it to be implemented, but there is one specific way to cheat that would be very easy to pull off.  It would be nearly undetectable and the only symptom would be bad luck.  The problem is, going back 2 months there has been constant bad luck, not some up some down. 

I'm questioning, but not accusing you.  I don't know you, and I have come to realize that a lot of people in bitcoins are inherently dishonest.  Unfortunately, there is really no way for the miners to act as a check on the pool, so we have to make these judgements.

As someone who spends a decent chunk of his workday in the guild's IRC channel, I have to say that I have no worries about Eleuthria being dishonest.

[smackdaddy]

Would be strange behavior to rig the pool and then work so hard on publishing information that would make people suspect him. Why even bother with the luck stat if you're keeping blocks?

[btcbaby]

Not to throw in a conspiracy theory, but I have been questioning btcguild's honestly as of late...

The "luck" of btcguild has been:
Luck this difficulty (1690906)       1937899 shares   (-12.7%) (weighted down 54% since in progress = -6.9%)
Luck at difficulty 1563027       1690231 shares   (-7.5%)
Luck at difficulty 1379223       1384144 shares   (-0.4%)
Luck at difficulty 876954       875473 shares   (+0.2%)

Given the hashrate > 2 Th/s, being consistently low on luck makes me think something is up.  I understand probability, and the fact that there are up days and down days, but this shows a 2 month average of -5.4%.  This should be extremely unlikely, and makes me wonder if BTC Guild isn't holding back a good percent.  Any math majors out there want to calculate the probability?

If you think -7.5% and our current difficulty luck is suspicious, I'd recommend you stay quiet if anybody ever asks your opinion on probability and statistics.  Everybody is quick to jump to conclusions when luck is negative.

I don't see anybody saying "I think he's adding fake blocks to make us happy" when Deepbit has had 12% positive luck during this difficulty while being MORE THAN TWICE our size, considering according to your post you think that having 2.0-2.4 Th/s should make such a huge luck (positive or negative)  should be "extremely unlikely.", which would infer having 5.1 TH/s should make it even more "extremely unlikely."

I think it comes down to average Gh/s per worker.  Deepbit has a lot more pro miners on it with more than 1Gh/s.  It's about more than total Th/s.  Your average worker needs to be running fast.  The pool with the higher worker average should win more and that is what I think is happening with Deepbit right now.  I was on BTC Guild when I first started mining and was pleased overall.  Uptime is really important to me though; I over paid for my 2Gh/s

[jjiimm_64]

I think it comes down to average Gh/s per worker.  Deepbit has a lot more pro miners on it with more than 1Gh/s.  It's about more than total Th/s.  Your average worker needs to be running fast.  The pool with the higher worker average should win more and that is what I think is happening with Deepbit right now.  I was on BTC Guild when I first started mining and was pleased overall.  Uptime is really important to me though; I over paid for my 2Gh/s

I think I probably have you beat in the overpaid dept.  I have mostly MSI gd70's, win64, retail price for most cards, 1200W psu's.  I think the value of btc will go much higher then they are now.  I am kinda glad they are 'resting' at 14.  My best case scenario is the difficulty increasing less then 10% with the price of btc staying at 14 for a few or many months....  my 7th rig just arrived today. I purposly did not get a hard drive for this one.  going to force myself to put linux coin or some flavor of linux on this last one.  that way I can start to put 5 cards on the msi boards if I get the linux thing down.


edit:  wimped out...  stuck an old hard drive in.  will have this one on line in a few

[fcmatt]

Not to throw in a conspiracy theory, but I have been questioning btcguild's honestly as of late...

The "luck" of btcguild has been:
Luck this difficulty (1690906)       1937899 shares   (-12.7%) (weighted down 54% since in progress = -6.9%)
Luck at difficulty 1563027       1690231 shares   (-7.5%)
Luck at difficulty 1379223       1384144 shares   (-0.4%)
Luck at difficulty 876954       875473 shares   (+0.2%)

Given the hashrate > 2 Th/s, being consistently low on luck makes me think something is up.  I understand probability, and the fact that there are up days and down days, but this shows a 2 month average of -5.4%.  This should be extremely unlikely, and makes me wonder if BTC Guild isn't holding back a good percent.  Any math majors out there want to calculate the probability?

If you think -7.5% and our current difficulty luck is suspicious, I'd recommend you stay quiet if anybody ever asks your opinion on probability and statistics.  Everybody is quick to jump to conclusions when luck is negative.

I don't see anybody saying "I think he's adding fake blocks to make us happy" when Deepbit has had 12% positive luck during this difficulty while being MORE THAN TWICE our size, considering according to your post you think that having 2.0-2.4 Th/s should make such a huge luck (positive or negative)  should be "extremely unlikely.", which would infer having 5.1 TH/s should make it even more "extremely unlikely."

I think it comes down to average Gh/s per worker.  Deepbit has a lot more pro miners on it with more than 1Gh/s.  It's about more than total Th/s.  Your average worker needs to be running fast.  The pool with the higher worker average should win more and that is what I think is happening with Deepbit right now.  I was on BTC Guild when I first started mining and was pleased overall.  Uptime is really important to me though; I over paid for my 2Gh/s

i do not think that is the case. speed is speed. a card running at 100 mh/s has just as good a chance of finding a block
as the 400 mh/s card. It is just that the 400 mh/s card is 4 times more likely due to the speed and speed alone.

i often think like this when comparing deepbit to here.

at deepbit.. if they solve 60 blocks in 24 hours i get paid this approx
60 x .022 = 1.32

at btcguild.. if they solve 26 blocks in 24 hours i get paid this approx
26 x .051 = 1.32600

so all i normally need is for btcguild to solve a block every 55 minutes and i am happy. seems very possible except
when a 4 hour block just ruins things for the day.

so that helps keep things in perspective for me.

[secularflesh]

I was getting about 0.52BTC/day but the past few days it's been 0.30~0.40BTC even though I increased my hashrate with an extra card. It isn't logical but I have this weird feeling it's more than just luck; perhaps there's something wrong with the new server setup?

I'm going to try some different pools for the next couple of days but knowing my luck BTCGuild will now proceed to go on a tear.

[jasonstx]

That is what we are hoping for.

[jjiimm_64]

another 3 hour block,  with the network at
Blocks/hour   7.91 / 455 s

it is becoming painful......

[farfiman]

another 3 hour block,  with the network at
Blocks/hour   7.91 / 455 s

it is becoming painful......

yesterday there was 24hour -52% bad luck... so its an improvement 

[eleuthria]

I just want to make sure we're all clear here.  When the luck bounces back and we're at +14% like DeepBit right now, and DeepBit is at -14% like we are right now, you guys better come in here shouting:

"I'm questioning if he's giving us free blocks to make us feel safe."  "I'm not accusing..."

While making the exact opposite accusations in DeepBit's thread.  Otherwise you're just hypocrites.

[Dargo]

eleuthria,

I'm sticking with the theory that this is just an unusual run of bad luck, and will hopefully be balanced by a nice run of good luck at some point. But I'm wondering, if the bad luck continues, at what point do you look into the possibility that there is some kind of subtle issue with the servers? I wasn't paying very close attention, but I think I actually had one of the highest 24 hour payouts shortly after you upgraded/moved the uscentral server, which is what I've been connected to. So that is maybe a little evidence against a server issue. Still, the longer this run of bad luck continues, the more improbable it becomes, and at some point I think alternative explanations have to be explored.

[eleuthria]

eleuthria,

I'm sticking with the theory that this is just an unusual run of bad luck, and will hopefully be balanced by a nice run of good luck at some point. But I'm wondering, if the bad luck continues, at what point do you look into the possibility that there is some kind of subtle issue with the servers? I wasn't paying very close attention, but I think I actually had one of the highest 24 hour payouts shortly after you upgraded/moved the uscentral server, which is what I've been connected to. So that is maybe a little evidence against a server issue. Still, the longer this run of bad luck continues, the more improbable it becomes, and at some point I think alternative explanations have to be explored.

The servers are running as usual.  Its pushpool, bitcoind, and MySQL is sync'ing up without issue, I've had the most relaxing 2 weeks in a long time actually, other than our luck taking a dive which means all the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork to "question" things.  Like I said in my last post, everybody "questions" the bad, and ignores the good.  Anybody making the claim that our -14% this difficulty is unusual and not raising the same questions about DeepBit's positive 13.6% during this difficulty is a hypocrite.  If you want to believe that pool speed will eliminate the chance of variance "that high", then it's more than twice as unlikely for DeepBit to be pushing that luck as it is for us.

[Jine]

I've had the most relaxing 2 weeks in a long time actually-

I second that.

[gnaget]

eleuthria,

I'm sticking with the theory that this is just an unusual run of bad luck, and will hopefully be balanced by a nice run of good luck at some point. But I'm wondering, if the bad luck continues, at what point do you look into the possibility that there is some kind of subtle issue with the servers? I wasn't paying very close attention, but I think I actually had one of the highest 24 hour payouts shortly after you upgraded/moved the uscentral server, which is what I've been connected to. So that is maybe a little evidence against a server issue. Still, the longer this run of bad luck continues, the more improbable it becomes, and at some point I think alternative explanations have to be explored.

The servers are running as usual.  Its pushpool, bitcoind, and MySQL is sync'ing up without issue, I've had the most relaxing 2 weeks in a long time actually, other than our luck taking a dive which means all the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork to "question" things.  Like I said in my last post, everybody "questions" the bad, and ignores the good.  Anybody making the claim that our -14% this difficulty is unusual and not raising the same questions about DeepBit's positive 13.6% during this difficulty is a hypocrite.  If you want to believe that pool speed will eliminate the chance of variance "that high", then it's more than twice as unlikely for DeepBit to be pushing that luck as it is for us.

For the third time, I did not bring it up due to the -14% luck this difficulty, in fact I weighted down the luck this difficulty because it isn't over.  I brought it up due to the longer term always being negative.  Given the high hash rate of the pool, having so much bad luck is unusual, and can be indicative of a problem.  Do miners not have the right to keep a skeptical eye on those we entrust?  What if we had another 2 months of negative luck, would it be ok to question then?  It's not like I can go look through your code to make sure everything is on the up and up, so I can only look at these statistics. 

Question: did you run pushpool without looking first, or did you simply trust it?  Being skeptical is good business sense.  A lot of people out there are more than willing to screw you over

[cyberlync]

Perhaps it's on my end, but Im not sure.

My miners have been getting a lot of idles over 8 secs in duration and my setting makes them restart, after it occurs 2 times within 2 minutes they go to backup pool for 8 minutes. Is there anything wrong with the servers? Im using win7 32bit, AOCLBF with Phoenix 1.5, and the 7-17-11 PhatK Kernel, my gfx's seem to run stable, but yeah a lot of restarts and idles.. and I think 8 secs idle before restarting is a long time already, am I wrong? Should I use other settings?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

[eleuthria]

Perhaps it's on my end, but Im not sure.

My miners have been getting a lot of idles over 8 secs in duration and my setting makes them restart, after it occurs 2 times within 2 minutes they go to backup pool for 8 minutes. Is there anything wrong with the servers? Im using win7 32bit, AOCLBF with Phoenix 1.5, and the 7-17-11 PhatK Kernel, my gfx's seem to run stable, but yeah a lot of restarts and idles.. and I think 8 secs idle before restarting is a long time already, am I wrong? Should I use other settings?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

It looks like US Central had a few minutes of connectivity issues for some people.  Nothing hardware/software related, and seems to have already ended.

[dyngnosis]

uswest.btcguild.com:8332 27/07/2011 14:31:29, long poll: new block 0000062ecebd55d7
uswest.btcguild.com:8332 27/07/2011 14:31:35, long poll: IO error

I started seeing IO errors for the first time today... me or you?

[farfiman]

  Like I said in my last post, everybody "questions" the bad, and ignores the good.  Anybody making the claim that our -14% this difficulty is unusual and not raising the same questions about DeepBit's positive 13.6% during this difficulty is a hypocrite.  If you want to believe that pool speed will eliminate the chance of variance "that high", then it's more than twice as unlikely for DeepBit to be pushing that luck as it is for us.

If the guild has -14%  someone has the +14...   just so happens most is at deepbit

[sirky]

  Like I said in my last post, everybody "questions" the bad, and ignores the good.  Anybody making the claim that our -14% this difficulty is unusual and not raising the same questions about DeepBit's positive 13.6% during this difficulty is a hypocrite.  If you want to believe that pool speed will eliminate the chance of variance "that high", then it's more than twice as unlikely for DeepBit to be pushing that luck as it is for us.

If the guild has -14%  someone has the +14...   just so happens most is at deepbit

That isn't true at all.

[hugolp]

  Like I said in my last post, everybody "questions" the bad, and ignores the good.  Anybody making the claim that our -14% this difficulty is unusual and not raising the same questions about DeepBit's positive 13.6% during this difficulty is a hypocrite.  If you want to believe that pool speed will eliminate the chance of variance "that high", then it's more than twice as unlikely for DeepBit to be pushing that luck as it is for us.

If the guild has -14%  someone has the +14...   just so happens most is at deepbit

Not true. The network as a whole can have good or bad luck.