Thanks, Jacob - I've been doing linux for a long time and have come to trust code developers (like kano).  I'll check out the thread.  I'm also trying to understand the inns and outs of going solo.  You depend on someone else to feed your ASIC work and blocks - I guess there's no simple way to filter blocks before they're sent to your ASIC - but the code level action of this is confusing to me.  I guess I just don't understand how the "block hit" process happens since I don't think a single ASIC can do a whole block calculation (can it?).

I guess ck gives you a direct connection to the stratum.  So it's like you're running your own Btc node.  But if so, how can ck siphon off his 0.5% upon success?  So I know there's some aspect I'm not understanding here.  (If I understood C I guess I could read the kano code.)  For instance, who handles block difficulty if you're "directly connected to stratum" as ck says?  I thought difficulty was the number of zeros at the beginning of the hash, and was set by Btc current difficulty.  (see? noob.)

Read that thread, patti!  :-)