All the action happens when I am up in the air, and the weekend to boot..

... as usual the blockchain sorted itself out...I think you all sorted the network out without my help - in any case all I can do is direct to the longest blockchain..

And if anyone had my direct connection info, no use when I am 30,000 feet up...
No plans at this stage to change anything in the coin regarding difficulty changes
as for the link at
https://www.hashco.ws/stats/, I think they just stopped mining...
Currently in Detroit airport waiting flight to fly to Washington..
I let HashCows know last night that there was a fork, and they got back to me letting me know they suspended TAG mining. I haven't notified them yet that it's resolved

That's a reason the difficulty is under 150 right now lol.
I still think there needs to be some investigation into the orphans. I'm sitting at about 10% orphans on the pool for the week. All of this mess with possible forks/actual forks and the occurrence of all the orphans this week seem too coincidental. Whether it's a direct relation to the difficulty swings or the increased hashrate, or whatever... it needs to be looked at.
Does anyone have any empirical evidence of other coins having high orphan rates for comparison?
-Fuse
Well one could argue the issue is not resolved. At one point the diff was a touch over 200 after HashCows suspended Tag, and as I type this the diff jumped from approx 150 to 109, so I think at least one other multipool still mines. There are still orphans showing up here and there, and the occasional block find time over 1000% seem strange too. I had some autopayments from Botpool go into into the ether (coins mined before the fork) but as a miner I accept the risk. What happens when withdrawals from an exchange go into thin air?