The pool is dead this morning, with no advance notice at all, the one remaining server seems to have crashed 11 hours ago and no one is awake to re-boot it.
It was only about 24 hours ago that we (developers) realized all miners without BIP16 support would likely suffer to 100% orphanage when it became enforced. Given Ars's lack of maintenance, I can't say I'm surprised by the turn of events. It could be worse, though - the server could be giving out worthless work.
I'd be happy to take on the task of resurrecting ArsBitcoin, but I'm not a developer and would essentially have to train myself in how to administer it, but I'm a sysadmin in my day job and could probably figure it out. If you're serious about helping maintain the pool, I'd like to know if Burning Toad would be interested in handing over the admin stuff and moving on. I thought it was a fine pool, and I really enjoyed mining here and honestly, I'm too lazy (and busy with my day job) to start a new pool from scratch. The pool is already built and relatively stable and functioned headless for months after BT "retired," so I don't think it would be too much of a headache to kickstart, but perhaps I'm an optimist.
FWIW, I run
Eligius, the original SMPPS pool. I'm not sure why people used Ars over Eligius, but maybe with a few people could contribute whatever they felt Eligius was lacking in (Eligius is a community pool; any community member can get an account on the webserver to add new services/etc)?
While I'd help BT out by patching Ars, I don't intend to get involved with running another pool long-term.
