It's possible and even likely the lowered hash rate is caused by cpu/gpu miners giving up.

This is interesting. If no new ASICs are plugged into the ecosystem, difficulty might go down next time:
http://dot-bit.org/tools/nextDifficulty.php

Like that's ever gonna happen...

Great initiative! Hope it doesn't require the "admin" to manually fix anomalies every ten transactions though ;-)

A Jalapeno will probably pay itself pretty fast anyway. Avalons are a bit more expensive and power consuming and will take longer.

But I'm pretty sure BTC will rise again. If my theory is correct it mirrors world economy status and right now things are looking better, but that's not going to last forever. Personally I'm gonna keep my BTC for a long time.

They've probably shipped at least a couple of thousand units according to Jody's shpping blog.
Anyways, it's getting obvious bitcoin mining is killing itself by overfertilization. A couple of song lyrics come to mind:
"Now the party's over, and I'm so tired" (AVALON, Bryan Ferry)
"As sure as God made wine, you can't wrap your arms around a memory" (BUTTERFLY on a wheel, Mission)

Honestly. The reset thingy is just another bug caused by arithmetic overflow. This pool is so full of bugs I'm not sure it can be called a pool any longer. It's something between Satoshi Dice, a daycare center and a mining pool.

Is it a bingo hall?

Yup time to start digging into litecoin shafts instead. Gonna give it a go soon I think

@joolzg: I've got a watt meter connected to one computer with a 7970 and it consumes 300W.
The computer would be running 24-7 anyway but idling at ~80 watts.
That's 220 watts extra = 5.28 kW a day.

I pay about 0.15€/kW = 0.79€ a day
Puter mines ~3€ a day.
Which leaves a 2.2€ profit. Not much but an investment in an independent currency.

I really need to solve the heat problem if I'll be able to mine this summer though. I was hoping for a Jalapeno but once I'd get one if ever, difficulty would be too high so I cancelled my order a few days ago. (I just received the refund and made aboout 1 BTC from it btw. Exchange rates...).

joolzg: I live in .se too. With my 7970 I make at least twice as much as electricity costs. That's not unimportant but my driving force is the anarchist part of it, and a currency that will work even when the world economies go down the drain (yeah I'm a pessimist). Call it an investment or insurance.

I must admit the heat is becoming a serious issue tho. Not to mention the noise. But as long as I get more back than I put in I'll keep going.

Oh well. I'll go back to 50btc and mine my regular 0.04 a day. The 10-50% extra I can make here just aren't worth being on call 24/7. It's a shame though, cause this has always been my first choice.

The bottom line is a business critical system, which this actually is, can not be this unstable. I'm a developer myself and I would be without work if I shipped applications with bugs of this magnitude. I'm not just talking about the last 24 hours, but the last month at least. As far as I know this is totally unprecedented in other pools, and we shouldn't be expected to put up with it.

My advice to you Slush is:
Take the pool offline and fix all problems with disappearing blocks and flucturing rewards. I'm sure you can do it again.

OK so 237573 and 237575 are now confirmed. My reward for 237575 went from 0.002-ish to 0.0003-ish. 237574 which was mined at almost the same time is still not listed ( http://blockchain.info/block-index/385234/00000000000000f595dabc67b09229d6cd93224da85c46415f5c782e09ab576f )

Luck has been with us, no doubt. I just wish technology were too.

Slush:
http://blockchain.info/block-index/385234/00000000000000f595dabc67b09229d6cd93224da85c46415f5c782e09ab576f
It's not registered but I think it showed up for a short while just before 237575 was found. Guess we got too lucky for our own good.

This was mentioned a couple of pages back but with the activity here it's easy to miss it. Time for a separate "chat thread" perhaps?

Is this really correct or a bug?
https://blockchain.info/blocks/ASICMiner

Has AsicMiner found all recent blocks all over the pools? Scary stuff.

api.bitcoin.cz and api2.bitcoin.cz still point to the old compromized servers at OVH and I'm surprised they're still running. Who knows who's controlling them tho (if anyone at all).

There hasn't been any information about this whatsoever so I can't blame you. Oh Slush, where art thou...

There is a HUGE problem with nodes not reporting shares, among other things. Just read the last ~500 posts. And block #236442 which is the last one "found" belongs to BTC Guild. If some of you haven't experienced any problems, fine. Sooner or later you will.

Slush's absence is very unfortunate and I won't return to my old favorite pool until he has confirmed all problems are sorted.

BioMega13:
Both api addresses still point to the old IP from before the intrusion.
api.bitcoin.cz, A, 176.31.157.132
api2.bitcoin.cz, A, 176.31.157.134

I'm not sure there is an api address anymore but for mining you can use stratum.bitcoin.cz

I'm sorry to say this but Slush has lost touch completely. This forum has been flooded with problem reports and hundreds of them could have been avoided if he only posted information or at least replied that nothing can be done.

My guess is moving the servers to the amazon cloud caused a lot of unforseen problems. Synchronization between the mining nodes seems to be the most serious one, which causes reward fluctuation. This is nothing that will heal itself though.

Here we go again. #17939 has at least 3 zeros too many. I really hope there's a good explanation for this. Until then I'll be mining elsewhere. This is starting to feel too much as a lottery.

Trongersoll:
I've done some research about the network propagation map on blockchain.info. As far as I can tell it simply shows the first node in the network which confirms the new block. It has nothing to do with the mining pool or the miner who found the block then.
(Sorry but for some reason I cannot quote anything from this thread. It works in others but not here.)

That would mean be the pool reports the IP of the miner to the network and I cannot think of any reason for that. Besides, there's no exact way to tell the location of an IP.
But I may be wrong. Somebody, please enlighten us.

But blocks listed as relayed by a server in Germany means that's where the pool server or single miner is located, not where the miner pool member who found the block is located? Or am I wrong?

EDIT: I mean, if the miner in Germany is not a pool member it wouldn't affect our rewards.