Be that as it may - let's see if @NotKnown responds to a PM.
Allowing some time for holidays and such, after a couple weeks into the new year - let's say by January 14th - if we haven't heard back from them then we'll award the prize to the account number of the next random integer generated by that seed (285, and so on: 295, 189, 688 ...)
contributed digits, cleansed of confusion and delicately concatenated: 137451177961318842023100001047294214184355997673492008678674734711303942465723956637871312951479051793528258576591076003183098861837906715377675267450341184172451867371867686906412307989908388177848827102865167949679167771021417488428983978626721272105583120243720400358313998904049755363682307706550788498535402989510396285940007396534556364659633739
the resulting sha256 hash: 48fbff2caa11f72e6dcd6ecb1e7d9a2e9202d5c5b0ad1464e155168b0c755207
I want to say this would be somewhere in the vicinity of the first transfinite cardinal, that is: the cardinality of the set of natural numbers.
While one might summon the ghost of Georg Cantor to provide some insight, suffice to say that there is no conveniently derived integer representation for this "number" - and so we must reluctantly omit the infinite component from our hash as per the pre-established guidelines of this exercise.
@AnthonySmith said:
maybe start drawing 3 people with 24 hours to respond each?
Aha, that makes good sense both to favor active users - and not to spend much time chasing after any dormant account.
I'll still let just this one ride until January 14th, to accommodate possible extended afk due to holidays - already sent a PM, and I'll follow up with another in a week.
If no response from @NotKnown by the 14th, will then PM #295 - If no response from them by the 15th, then #285 - likewise if no response after 24 hours #189 would get their chance on the 16th. (These being next 3 results from the random.randint(1,700) seeded by the exquisitely crafted concatenation of crowdsourced digits crushed into the finest sha256 hash ...)
And whenever thenext drawing to celebrate signup #800 happens, will then do similar mechanitaions for randint(1, 800) for great justice.
By the way errybuggy it's time to collect inputs for the next hash to seed the PRNG
I'll start with 256285295189 followed by a secret salt sequence.
The secret salt will be revealed before the next hash/seed is generated, after the 800th signup.
The secret salt hashes to f704239842f4001e8d47210e9b818af1e1ea345c3e4743d2a3a92f722a8ed36b
@AnthonySmith said: maybe start drawing 3 people with 24 hours to respond each?
As a previous (miraculously lucky) winner, I do feel this maybe a little too harsh on the winners. Sometimes a day or two may go by before folks catch up here and I think it is only fair that they be given a little more time to react (and take things seriously enough to realize that they did win something).
Maybe cut a little more slack here (esp. if they are other wise reasonably active folks)?
@uptime - not to inconvenience or make your life harder than it already is, considering that you've to protect that secret sequence with your life and not be swayed by all the dice rollers trying to influence the magic number and play games with compilers, caches, CPU vulnerabilities, Quantum interference, EMI and what not to, land that magic number in their favour.
@debaser - I am sure @cociu will come through in due time, no worries I imagine they may be right now pining for their nekki, and spending their holiday being consoled by sympathetic sisters. In any event, good things and @cociu are generally worth waiting for.
@nullnothere - I would tend to agree that 48 or even 72 hours is a more comfortable timeframe for slackers such as myself who might go a few days before catching up with the old inbox ... I guess the argument for 24 hours would be to tip a bit more of the balance toward daily visitors. (So I could go either way on this one, really.)
Maybe let's just see what happens with the first scheme as already specified in previous post (that is, 24 hour response time after January 14th for the current (1, 700) selection.) Also hereby tagging @kiska (#285), @redalert66 (#295, unconfirmed account), and @freerangecloud (#189, lol hi there!) so they have a heads up here (not sending any PM's though until there is a reason to do so). I hope that's a "fair enough" balance to strike without too much back and forth.
That said - more opinions and suggestions would be welcome for how best to proceed for the next (1, 800) selection.
Also - if someone manages to discover the secret salt (maybe via some next-level rainbow table, I dunno - brute force will cost more than a 1 TB lifetime deal so good luck with that) ... I will be very impressed, and not at all stressed!
(By the way @nullnothere - just curious if you are also waiting - with an exemplary level of requisite patience - to hear back about getting setup for your prize from @cociu?)
@uptime said: @nullnothere - I would tend to agree that 48 or even 72 hours is a more comfortable timeframe for slackers such as myself who might go a few days before catching up with the old inbox ... I guess the argument for 24 hours would be to tip a bit more of the balance toward daily visitors. (So I could go either way on this one, really.)
The only reason I bring up the slightly longer wait is that it is not very clear when we'll hit that magic number and so folks can't really anticipate the draw. I know it can get tricky on balancing between the now-ready vs the lucky-yet-absentees but I hope that the wait will not inconvenience people that much.
@uptime said: (By the way @nullnothere - just curious if you are also waiting - with an exemplary level of requisite patience - to hear back about getting setup for your prize from @cociu?)
I'm waiting but I'm in absolutely NO hurry whatsoever. I know @cociu has had his hands full with multiple offers, DDoSs, support issues and what not. So my guess is that the free loaders are at the end of what I think is a rather longish line (but hopefully not too long).
I hope that the slowness is temporary due to benches or other factors and that things will return to acceptably normal levels for HDD type IO (I hope at least >60MB/s with decent IOPS).
@nullnothere agreed, need to balance with some consideration for the "active but not hyperactive" people who are likely to be a silent majority here. Would a 3-day headsup feel more copacetic to you? It seems like a week may be too long, while a day would be too quick - so 3 days is pretty much splitting that difference.
I'm expecting most likely timeframe for reaching 800, 900, and 999 might be a couple weeks between each milestone at this point (barring unforeseen publicity or whatever) so there is that rhythm to consider as well.
Withnregsrd to the schedule for delivery of the prizes - I am justnguessig but would hope for later in January though wouldn't really be surprised if it stretched out a bit longer. Also we'll still be doing the selections for (most likely) well Into February, so ...
As for the disk speed ... really would be best if it can keep up with the network I think - 20 MB/s seems a bit close to the edge. Sometimes system settings / drivers / kernel parameters / etc can make a big difference, so if @FAT32 might feel inclined to put in a gentle inquiry via a low-priority ticket, maybe it would be a good exercise to see if there is some way to improve that, even if just "for science" ...? Perhaps @MikePT may have already facilitated resolutions for similar (posibly setup / tuning related') situations.
I have a 1 TB (50% off deal from recent offer) still with the Debian 9 template installed - I will take a closer look if I can help compare notes at some point in the next few days ...
@uptime said: @nullnothere agreed, need to balance with some consideration for the "active but not hyperactive" people who are likely to be a silent majority here. Would a 3-day headsup feel more copacetic to you? It seems like a week may be too long, while a day would be too quick - so 3 days is pretty much splitting that difference.
I feel quite comfortable with 3 days and you have my vote (not that it matters!) as I think it is a fair compromise for everyone concerned.
I hope that the slowness is temporary due to benches or other factors and that things will return to acceptably normal levels for HDD type IO (I hope at least >60MB/s with decent IOPS).
Periodic performance drop during begin and the end of a month because of the BW reset.
Comments
199
Erm, @uptime
18435599767349200867867
No one set a limit to number of digits
Somik.org - Server admins cheat codes
Very nice, thank you for those digits!
and why not bring the prime factorization along for the ride:
47 * 347 * 1130394246572395663
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
787
Hope this one Boeings
131
www.4ya.in
Very nice.
2^68+1
Whatever this number turn out to be
The all seeing eye sees everything...
I cannot tell a number because of privacy reasons
6591076
From the first 8 characters in a sha256sum of the link to the latest CommitStrip
Here goes nothing!
0.31830988618379067153776752674503
Inverse pi. (Also the probability that @cociu ever returns to this thread)
root@notty
Try to factorize this then :
41184172451867371867686906412307989908388177848827102865167949679167771021417488428983978626721272105583120243720400358313998904049755363682307706550788498535402989510396285940007396534556364659633739
Somik.org - Server admins cheat codes
hmmm ... smells like a prime, that one does
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
Haha, yep! I heard large primes tend to make a hash algo produce better results, so ya.
Somik.org - Server admins cheat codes
@somik - indeed (depending on the hashing algorithm) ... choosing a prime number for hashtable size makes intuitive sense for reducing collisions
As for "large" primes ... https://primes.utm.edu/notes/by_year.html
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
Ooop that's 700, time to crunch some hashes again ...
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
okey dokey folks ... it appears that the winner of this round is @NotKnown
lol ... ffs, but seriously - that's a funny one
Apparently they have not visited since registering on November 22nd https://talk.lowendspirit.com/profile/256/winner700
Be that as it may - let's see if @NotKnown responds to a PM.
Allowing some time for holidays and such, after a couple weeks into the new year - let's say by January 14th - if we haven't heard back from them then we'll award the prize to the account number of the next random integer generated by that seed (285, and so on: 295, 189, 688 ...)
notes:
contributed digits, cleansed of confusion and delicately concatenated: 137451177961318842023100001047294214184355997673492008678674734711303942465723956637871312951479051793528258576591076003183098861837906715377675267450341184172451867371867686906412307989908388177848827102865167949679167771021417488428983978626721272105583120243720400358313998904049755363682307706550788498535402989510396285940007396534556364659633739
the resulting sha256 hash: 48fbff2caa11f72e6dcd6ecb1e7d9a2e9202d5c5b0ad1464e155168b0c755207
hmmm ... well, 42*∞ = ∞ ... an infinity of the aleph-null (ℵ0) persuasion.
I want to say this would be somewhere in the vicinity of the first transfinite cardinal, that is: the cardinality of the set of natural numbers.
While one might summon the ghost of Georg Cantor to provide some insight, suffice to say that there is no conveniently derived integer representation for this "number" - and so we must reluctantly omit the infinite component from our hash as per the pre-established guidelines of this exercise.
But obviously, I must allow the 42.
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
maybe start drawing 3 people with 24 hours to respond each?
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
Aha, that makes good sense both to favor active users - and not to spend much time chasing after any dormant account.
I'll still let just this one ride until January 14th, to accommodate possible extended afk due to holidays - already sent a PM, and I'll follow up with another in a week.
If no response from @NotKnown by the 14th, will then PM #295 - If no response from them by the 15th, then #285 - likewise if no response after 24 hours #189 would get their chance on the 16th. (These being next 3 results from the
random.randint(1,700)seeded by the exquisitely crafted concatenation of crowdsourced digits crushed into the finest sha256 hash ...)And whenever thenext drawing to celebrate signup #800 happens, will then do similar mechanitaions for
randint(1, 800)for great justice.By the way errybuggy it's time to collect inputs for the next hash to seed the PRNG
I'll start with
256285295189followed by a secret salt sequence.The secret salt will be revealed before the next hash/seed is generated, after the 800th signup.
The secret salt hashes to
f704239842f4001e8d47210e9b818af1e1ea345c3e4743d2a3a92f722a8ed36bHS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
I'm wondering if any of the winners got their free VM delivered. Seems that @cociu is not active here.
I can confirm I got my free VM
"Humanity is f*cked up" - Jay
As a previous (miraculously lucky) winner, I do feel this maybe a little too harsh on the winners. Sometimes a day or two may go by before folks catch up here and I think it is only fair that they be given a little more time to react (and take things seriously enough to realize that they did win something).
Maybe cut a little more slack here (esp. if they are other wise reasonably active folks)?
@uptime - not to inconvenience or make your life harder than it already is, considering that you've to protect that secret sequence with your life and not be swayed by all the dice rollers trying to influence the magic number and play games with compilers, caches, CPU vulnerabilities, Quantum interference, EMI and what not to, land that magic number in their favour.
@debaser - I am sure @cociu will come through in due time, no worries
I imagine they may be right now pining for their nekki, and spending their holiday being consoled by sympathetic sisters. In any event, good things and @cociu are generally worth waiting for.
@nullnothere - I would tend to agree that 48 or even 72 hours is a more comfortable timeframe for slackers such as myself who might go a few days before catching up with the old inbox ... I guess the argument for 24 hours would be to tip a bit more of the balance toward daily visitors. (So I could go either way on this one, really.)
Maybe let's just see what happens with the first scheme as already specified in previous post (that is, 24 hour response time after January 14th for the current
(1, 700)selection.) Also hereby tagging @kiska (#285), @redalert66 (#295, unconfirmed account), and @freerangecloud (#189, lol hi there!) so they have a heads up here (not sending any PM's though until there is a reason to do so). I hope that's a "fair enough" balance to strike without too much back and forth.That said - more opinions and suggestions would be welcome for how best to proceed for the next
(1, 800)selection.Also - if someone manages to discover the secret salt (maybe via some next-level rainbow table, I dunno - brute force will cost more than a 1 TB lifetime deal so good luck with that) ... I will be very impressed, and not at all stressed!
(By the way @nullnothere - just curious if you are also waiting - with an exemplary level of requisite patience - to hear back about getting setup for your prize from @cociu?)
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
Benchmark time! A bit slow imo but what more can I ask for given that it is free
Thanks @cociu!
"Humanity is f*cked up" - Jay
The only reason I bring up the slightly longer wait is that it is not very clear when we'll hit that magic number and so folks can't really anticipate the draw. I know it can get tricky on balancing between the now-ready vs the lucky-yet-absentees but I hope that the wait will not inconvenience people that much.
I'm waiting but I'm in absolutely NO hurry whatsoever. I know @cociu has had his hands full with multiple offers, DDoSs, support issues and what not. So my guess is that the free loaders are at the end of what I think is a rather longish line (but hopefully not too long).
I hope that the slowness is temporary due to benches or other factors and that things will return to acceptably normal levels for HDD type IO (I hope at least >60MB/s with decent IOPS).
@nullnothere agreed, need to balance with some consideration for the "active but not hyperactive" people who are likely to be a silent majority here. Would a 3-day headsup feel more copacetic to you? It seems like a week may be too long, while a day would be too quick - so 3 days is pretty much splitting that difference.
I'm expecting most likely timeframe for reaching 800, 900, and 999 might be a couple weeks between each milestone at this point (barring unforeseen publicity or whatever) so there is that rhythm to consider as well.
Withnregsrd to the schedule for delivery of the prizes - I am justnguessig but would hope for later in January though wouldn't really be surprised if it stretched out a bit longer. Also we'll still be doing the selections for (most likely) well Into February, so ...
As for the disk speed ... really would be best if it can keep up with the network I think - 20 MB/s seems a bit close to the edge. Sometimes system settings / drivers / kernel parameters / etc can make a big difference, so if @FAT32 might feel inclined to put in a gentle inquiry via a low-priority ticket, maybe it would be a good exercise to see if there is some way to improve that, even if just "for science" ...? Perhaps @MikePT may have already facilitated resolutions for similar (posibly setup / tuning related') situations.
I have a 1 TB (50% off deal from recent offer) still with the Debian 9 template installed - I will take a closer look if I can help compare notes at some point in the next few days ...
HS4LIFE (+ (* 3 4) (* 5 6))
I feel quite comfortable with 3 days and you have my vote (not that it matters!) as I think it is a fair compromise for everyone concerned.
Periodic performance drop during begin and the end of a month because of the BW reset.
Action and Reaction in history
They are listening!
"Humanity is f*cked up" - Jay