The fact remains that any assignment that is poached in order to quickly meet a guideline is shortly going to be an assignment that has been handed to the fastest computers and will be finished in 60 days.

Once that happens, a lot of the poaching will disappear. The cases where our own "trusted" users poach will disappear entirely because, for one, it will be well known that progress is expected to be swift, and for two, simple inspection of the progression will reveal that the assignments are well on course to finish.


With that being said, I like the idea of the poached results being held in limbo until the due date is up and then processed. If the poached assignment was handed in normally by its rightful owner, then the poacher is credited as a double or triple check accordingly. If the assignment is NOT handed in on time, the poacher is credited with the first or double check accordingly.

Straight-up denying the result seems like a bit of a waste, too. Honestly, in the case where someone poaches an assignment and it is not handed in by when [B][I]the user promised they would[/I][/B] then I would personally be quite pleased that someone poached it. With the simple rules I stated above, poaching CANNOT harm anyone.

[QUOTE=retina;390220]So it appears that the most impatient one is "For Research" currently clearing all the low exponents.[/QUOTE]

If I may, a few facts:

1. I, personally, do occationally "poach" candidates (as defined by some; read: currently assigned to another).

1.1. I do this very carefully. And only for those candidates which have very little to almost no chance of completing before being recycled, and are very close to being recycled.

2. Because of the "spiders" I have developed over the last two years, I perhaps have better "situational awareness" than most.

2.1. As stated before, I have no privilaged access to Primenet.

3. While the "For Research" account sometimes grabs recycled candidates for TF processing by GPU72 participants, GPU72 will never give out a candidate assigned to someone else to a GPU72 worker.

4. I have advocated (many times) before that "poached" work should be credited to the original assignee rather than simply rejected. I, personally, don't care about "credit".

5. In another few months, this issue will go away.

5.1. Until that time, those of us who understand George's SQL, and have some cycles, may take matters into their own hands.

Deal with it.

[QUOTE=petrw1;390363]Countdown to testing all exponents below M(57885161) once: 4,994[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]First 5000 assignments: Exponents below 58073190[/QUOTE]

The Cat1/Cat2 boundary has leaped past M48, the "WR prime".

[QUOTE=cuBerBruce;390428]The Cat1/Cat2 boundary has leaped past M48, the "WR prime".[/QUOTE]

I think this is sort of exciting. With the new rules kicking in fairly shortly, it means that we will soon have reasonable confidence in stating that M48 is in fact M48 (or M49 if we get lucky before then :razz: maybe two Mersenne Primes generated from two consecutive prime numbers even?)

[QUOTE=chalsall;390398]5. In another few months, this issue will go away.
[/QUOTE]

I think that was pretty much George's stance last time this was discussed recently. There's still a gaggle of grandfathered assignments out there that stick out like a turd in a punchbowl in terms of how long they have left, the current progress, how long past due they are, etc. I'm talking about exponents that were assigned in 2013, haven't even been started yet, but they're being "checked in" regularly with updated times of completion (which can be a year or more away in some cases).

Once those few assignments are out of the way, I think the hunting grounds for poaching will be much smaller and it really shouldn't come up too much.

56M 100
 

Countdown to first time checking all exponents below 56M: 100

[QUOTE=TheMawn;390429]maybe two Mersenne Primes generated from two consecutive prime numbers even?)[/QUOTE]

The currently known chains of consecutive primes that are all Mersenne prime exponents are:

{ 2, 3, 5, 7 }

{ 13, 17, 19 }

All adjacent primes to the 48 known Mersenne prime exponents have had the status of the corresponding Mersenne number proven except for 57,885,143 and 57,885,167. Those two have an LL test completed but have not been double-checked. So if there are any more such adjacent primes to be discovered, the currently known Mersenne exponents are probably not among them.

what would be good for the next milestones?
 

So, we are getting down to the wire (well, in terms of quantity, not so much date) for the "double check below 10M" and "first time below 56M" or whatever.

Any thoughts on future milestones, and bearing in mind that we may not want to encourage poaching (any more than people might already be doing).

Besides just the progression of "we've done exponents up to this amount", are there any other interesting things, like "we've found XX factors" and then we could count down how many until we've factored another 10M or something? Or "we've done xx first time/double-check LL tests"?

That way it'd be more about the total work being done, not so much arbitrary ranges and when those are completed. And then if people wanted to pass some milestone or another, it'd involve just doing more work in general (finding more factors, getting more LL tests checked in) and wouldn't tempt people to poach to get it there faster.

So that's one idea I had... anything else that sounds fun and would be a neat thing to look at to get some sense of things? GHz-hours done in some period of time, or how many (active) accounts are doing work over the past month, etc. etc... Just some neat stats to look at and ooh/ahh over.

[QUOTE=Madpoo;390622]Any thoughts on future milestones, and bearing in mind that we may not want to encourage poaching (any more than people might already be doing).[/QUOTE]Having the number of days since the last prime was found would nice.

Some other ideas.
"All exponents from M48 to xx,xxx,xxx are fully TF'ed to the new standard bit level and to zz,zzz,zzz to the old standard. "
"All exponents from M48 to yy,yyy,yyy have been sufficiently P-1'ed."
"LMH-TF is now working at the bb bit level and going through the ccc,000,000 range."
"Average TF bit level for the exponents waiting for LL in the 50,000,000 range is bb.bb"
"Average TF bit level for the exponents waiting for LL in the 60,000,000 range is bb.bb"
"Average TF bit level for the exponents waiting for LL in the 70,000,000 range is bb.bb"
"ZZ.ZZ% of all potential candidates in the 40,000,000 range have been already been removed by factoring."
"ZZ.ZZ% of all potential candidates in the 50,000,000 range have been already been removed by factoring."
"ZZ.ZZ% of all potential candidates in the 60,000,000 range have been already been removed by factoring."

Using the last 3 months of DC throughput (not reported completion dates) and a fudge factor of 30-50% calculate the "Estimated completion" for proving M45, etc. Make the date vanish if the estimation is less than 1 year off and replace it with "within a year!"

[QUOTE=petrw1;390463]Countdown to first time checking all exponents below 56M: 100[/QUOTE]

Countdown to double-checking all 2[SUP]P[/SUP]-1 smaller than 10M digits: 10

Another suggested milestone:
"Lowest exponent with an incomplete factorization: x,xxx."
and/or
"Lowest exponent requiring more ECM: x,xxx."