:: 15-Mar-2005 21:13 GMT (Tuesday) ::

This is just a notice that two of our volunteer servers in the
Netherlands, proxy1.utrecht.nl.proxy.distributed.net and
proxy2.utrecht.nl…, will soon be going offline due to necessary
hardware reclamation. They have already been removed from our DNS
zones, so our clients will no longer automatically select them.

However, if you have manually specified the IP address or hostnames of
them in your configuration files, there will need to be some manual
changes. Although we have no immediate plans for a replacement, we
will continue to monitor user feedback and the redistributed traffic
patterns to evaluate whether we need to reconsider that.

There has also recently been a periodic update of our public source
code at http://www.distributed.net/source/ which includes the assembly
source code for our current AMD64 (x86-64) RC5-72 core. We welcome
the assembly language expertise of others that already have their own
Opteron/Athlon64/EMT64 hardware in achieving further optimizations.

:: 02-Jan-2005 07:47 GMT (Sunday) ::

Happy new year!

Due to increasing instability with our old email support tool, we have
finally had to replace it with a new system. If you have sent us a
message to our “help@distributed.net” or “abuse@distributed.net” email
addresses (in Dec 2004) and have not received closure on your issue,
you may want to re-send your message.

You may either re-send it to the above email addresses, or visit
http://www.distributed.net/sendmail.php for a web-based contact form.

:: 07-Nov-2004 23:36 GMT (Sunday) ::

Sorry for the lack of stats updates. I’m having trouble with some new code; I
should have it fixed tonight or tomorrow.

:: 01-Nov-2004 10:24 GMT (Monday) ::

distributed.net is proud to announce the completion of OGR-24!

Four years ago, distributed.net users undertook the search for the optimal
24 mark Golomb Ruler. This year sees the successful conclusion of that
effort. We have proven conclusively by the exhaustive search of all
possible rulers that the currently best known ruler is indeed the Optimal
one.

More precisely it is:
24/9-24-4-1-59-25-7-11-2-10-39-14-3-44-26-8-40-6-21-15-16-19-22

This shortest ruler was found by two independent computers. The initial
report was received on May 24th, 2004 and a second, matching result was
returned on July 3rd, 2004. However it was not until the final stub was
returned and verified that could we rule out the possibility of a
still-shorter ruler. This final stub was returned October 13th, 2004
drawing to a close the complete search of all possible stubs. Due to the
nature of an exhaustive search, distributed.net users have also proven that
the above solution is unique (the ruler’s mirror notwithstanding).

This project was first announced in 1998, started in February 2000, and is
now concluded in 2004. Although 4 years may seem like a long time, the
search was no trivial task. No fewer than 555,529,785,505,835,800 rulers
were checked during that time. Moreover, a second pass of all rulers was
done to rule out (heh) any errors. Additionally a small oversight in the
beginning of the project caused several rulers to be excluded from the
initial search. These were the subject of the much discussed Phase 2
(rulers with initial marks > 70). Incidentally the optimal ruler was
amongst these. (“9+24+4+1+59 > 70”) The double phase, phase 2 and their
verification each required additional structural changes which also
contributed to the overall 4 year duration.

Note that distributed.net users continue to pursue the solution to the
OGR-25 project which began in parallel with OGR-24. We have currently
completed 10-15% of OGR-25 phase 2 which is about 65% overall.

To celebrate the successful end of yet another distributed.net project all
our contributors are invited for a drink…when we find a place large
enough to host the 41,805 people that participated in this particular
distributed effort. :)

The shortest ruler was first found by Matt Richards (Matt_R in
#distributed). It was then confirmed by Mitsuru Aoki of the SEGA Users
Group Team (#1958). The final stub was returned by Sebastian “Pax”
Schmitz. We’ll be sending them some free distributed.net swag and shirts
for their noteworthy contributions to the project.

Related Links:
– http://www.distributed.net/ogr/
– http://n0cgi.distributed.net/statistics/ogr/ogr24-all-nodes-day.png
– http://n0cgi.distributed.net/statistics/ogr/ogr24p2-percent.png

Thank you all and keep those computers busy!

:: 20-Oct-2004 19:15 GMT (Wednesday) ::

There have been some minor website changes recently. In an effort to
consolidate access to statistical information and graphs, the
http://www.distributed.net/statistics/ pages are now available as a
new “Keyrate History” link at the top menu bar of all stats pages:
http://stats.distributed.net/keyrate.php?project_id=8 Some other
relocation of pages has also been done, see:
http://bugs.distributed.net/show_bug.cgi?id=3391

Additionally the automated help@distributed.net responder has been
revised with more readable instructions in the auto-responder, and a
new web-based contact form exists to simplify sending help requests:
http://www.distributed.net/sendmail.php

There have been reports of a new Trojan horse going around named
“Sims2 Crack.exe”, which secretly deploys dnetc on Win32 machines. As
we investigate the matter further and discover more details, they will
be posted at http://www.distributed.net/trojans.php

Additionally, there are a few new pre-release clients available for
testing on http://www1.distributed.net/download/prerelease.php
including a long-awaited update to the NetWare client. (There will
probably be a movement of many of the current pre-release clients to
the formal release page in the next few days. Another announcement
will be made when that is done.)

:: 20-Sep-2004 17:38 GMT (Monday) ::

Our proxy1.red.wa.us server has been experiencing networking
difficulties for the past 3 days, so it has a small backlog of blocks
that will not be accounted in stats until 22-Sept when its operator
gets back in town. Until then, it has been removed from our DNS
round-robin lists.

Our two proxy*.utrecht.nl servers also experienced an unrelated outage
due to a networking firewall failure. Their connectivity has been
restored and any of their backlogged blocks should be reflected in
today’s stats update.

:: 05-Sep-2004 17:01 GMT (Sunday) ::

A couple of months ago I held a lecture about “Cheating in public
distributed computing” at the 20th Chaos Communication Congress, one of
the biggest annual hacker conferences in Europe. I discussed the impact of
cheating on distributed computing projects and illustrated several
possible ways to handle the problem. The slides are now available under a
CC license. Additionally I have formulated 3 basic “anti-cheat” rules that
anyone should read before starting a public distributed computing project.

You’ll find everything at http://www.feiri.de/cheat/

:: 24-Aug-2004 12:49 GMT (Tuesday) ::

It looks like OGR work for 8/22 may have been credited twice, so I’m backing
that work out and re-running stats.

:: 24-Aug-2004 02:29 GMT (Tuesday) ::

I think I’ve finally got stats straightened out. The problem started when new
teams were being created and marked not to be shown. That was fixed, and the
teams created that way were changed so that they would be shown. Unfortunately,
statsrun didn’t properly handle it.

In any case, it should be caught up in an hour or two. Sorry for the delay.

:: 22-Aug-2004 17:34 GMT (Sunday) ::

I uploaded some new clients to the pre-release page a few days ago and
moved the previous pre-release clients to the formal release page at
the same time. You can see the complete list of formally released
clients here: http://www.distributed.net/download/updates.php

The pre-release clients are available for people who want to help test
clients before they are considered stable enough to be generally
recommended for all new users. There are already a few know x86 CPU
detection and core auto-selection in the current prerelease clients,
so there will likely be another batch up updates to replace them soon.
http://www.distributed.net/download/prerelease.php

There are also currently some known stats-update problems on
http://stats.distributed.net/, but we hope they should be corrected in
the next day or so. Please be patient until the issue is addressed.