Quote from: akaman on September 20, 2015, 07:40:01 PM

By the way: Can I change the default port from 9982 to something else, in case I want to run multiple hosts in a network with a shared IP?

Blockchain synchronization, however, is still extremely slow! I'm still just at block height 2033, after nearly 15 hours... Can anyone share a bootstrap chain?

`./siad --help` to see a list of flags. You can change the port from '9982' by running `./siad -H ":1234"` I believe.

Blockchain synchronization is only that slow typically if you deadlocked the program (by unlocking the wallet before synchronization fixed). Sorry for the usability inconvenience, we're working on fixing it (along with the database corruption issues).

Quote from: akaman on September 20, 2015, 08:06:36 PM

Quote from: Malibusparky on September 20, 2015, 05:01:27 PM

The future majority of hosts will likely be technical people. Sia's focus is not imo people to use to keep their photo in cloud for iphone.
It is for youtube or netflix or may youtube's competitor. Business that needs cheap reliable millions of terabytes to store.

This does not make sense. If the Sia network is to be used as cheap storage for businesses' massive storage requirements, where is that storage supposed to come from?

I assumed that Sia was about enabling unused storage on millions of devices around the world to be part of a massive network, which then entities with storage requirements could use.

Clearly, the millions of devices we're talking about belong to Average Joe and Jane. Thus, the client software must be dumb-proofed and simple enough to be used by a 'regular' person.

Actually, we expect the majority of storage to come from dedicated enthusiasts and entrepreneurs, which is the same place that the majority of Bitcoin mining comes from. Many businesses also have millions of dollars of idle hardware (because they need it for scaling over the next year+, but have not hit scale yet), from which we will also draw a lot of our storage. Long term, I don't expect anyone who is not 98%+ uptime to make income or profit. Short term, we are catering to smaller devices because they are still a core part of our network. As things continue to evolve, we'll continue to adapt.

Quote from: Malibusparky on September 20, 2015, 08:32:53 PM

Quote from: akaman on September 20, 2015, 07:58:34 PM

But seriously, do you expect every new user to skim through 111 pages of posts, before downloading and running a couple of binaries of BETA software? When was the last time you did that?

I actually do expect that. But it doesn't bother me if people don't. What does bother me is someone who doesn't skim through what a

I do not expect that. We try to keep all of the important information here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zNpAct53E_5p4KO3_-ZOrg5N9HQw8ACTQ7zAyksSIf8

If anything is missing from this document, let us know what, and we'll add it. While Sia is in beta, I do expect people to read that whole document.

Quote from: akaman on September 20, 2015, 07:58:34 PM

Sure, Sia appears buggy. Sure, its beta. However, it is BETA, and not ALPHA. Remember how long GMail was beta? Quite some time... Beta typically implies working, yet potentially with some trouble spots. Sia's issues are more than minor bugs. The usability bugs in Sia are apparently serious enough to render wallets for non-experts unusable and corrupting the databases, causing loss of money (yes, real money if you'd like) and time.

I've gathered this much that Sia is still a small community of developers and users. There are 33 hosts, a few repeat posters on this thread, and 28 subscribers to the Reddit forum... I can understand people getting upset when people criticize their baby. Yet, projects such as these can only move forward with continuous valuable feedback from new users. As a coder myself, I know the value of testing my software with new users. They have a (sad) tendency to click all the 'wrong' buttons and do everything in the 'wrong' order, hence revealing all the bugs in my software before even getting it to work once! This happened to me yesterday with Sia as I was unaware of the implications of killing the siad process after closing the GUI, hence corrupting my database and forcing me to resync. I *could* have figured this out in advance if I had heeded your advice above and read through this thread first. But seriously, do you expect every new user to skim through 111 pages of posts, before downloading and running a couple of binaries of BETA software? When was the last time you did that?

The Sia community should welcome criticism from newcomers, however harsh and unwarranted they may seem, as they reflect the user experience from a beginners standpoint. After all, if you can't make the newcomers happy, how can you ever expect the user base to grow?

Having said so, I understand your sentiment, and I understand Sia is work-in-progress. Yet, and I stress, the software is BETA and not ALPHA, which implies usability.

Sia seems a really, really cool project, and I've decided to jump into it and support it in these early phases. I will run a node/host, buy some Siacoin and help out new users by sharing my experiences as I learn. This is how you grow a community, not by effectively ostracizing them when their complaints are too harsh to handle.

Most people are able to use the beta without much trouble. The newcomers are having more trouble, and we value your feedback greatly. We can't improve it if we don't know how it's failing for people. 0.4.x has some pretty major problems that we're regretting releasing, we didn't realize how much of a pitfall it would be for people. 0.4.3 will remove the most major stumbling blocks I believe. 0.3.3.x -> 0.4.x eliminated the major sources of coin loss. As far as I can tell, nobody who has used exclusively the 0.4.x series has lost coins (some scares, but people have always been able to use the backup features to recover their coins - including situations where 0.3.3.3 would have definitely destroyed coins.).

Thanks for jumping on board, we appreciate your support and your criticism. It helps us choose the most important things to fix/improve/develop.

Quote from: MinermanNC on September 20, 2015, 08:36:47 PM

Your correct, anyone running a open wallet can also set the amount of hard drive storage they wish to dedicate to SIA, with very little knowledge or effort. And get paid a little SIA for doing so. The issue now however, is opening the 2 required ports. That does require a little geekness" as it has to be done manually. Upcoming versions will have UPnP so opening the ports for hosting will not be an issue then. Taek correct me if I am wrong there.

0.4.x series features UPnP