After a somewhat long hiatus, Kaktoos is coming back for another round in the ring, and this time at higher and higher heights. Many of us who contribute to the project ([email protected]) got a little busy with school/work after the Pack project concluded, so I apologize on everyone’s behalf for the silence and uncertainty as of late.

As for where we left off, the y=62 search wasn’t as fruitful as we would have liked. No taller cacti had been found at this height than were found at the slightly higher height, y=63.

With the way things usually go, we would need to create an entirely new version of the program in order to run kaktoos for different heights. We started on y=63 for the original version of the program, and then changed this to y=62 for the second run of the program.

This time around, we’ve flipped the script, and different heights can now easily be run at the same time or in series, with 0 program changes. Effectively we’ll be able to get the final answers we’re looking for from the kaktoos project much easier and without as much “red tape” as there usually is with program changes due to security reasons.

What does this mean for you?

This means more kaktoos, more often, and with less breaks between runs for the foreseeable future.

There’s some limits to how many heights we can attempt since there comes a point where you simply will not find any cactus, however, we have a fair range to work with now with these new changes in play.

What now?

We’ll be launching a run of kaktoos very shortly. We’ve been testing this in beta with a height value of 64 for a short period of time to make sure that things are running as smoothly as we would like, but we’re happy to announce that we’re ready to go!

Some have offered far more support than we ever expected during this beta, which definitely surprised us! We’re grateful for everyone’s enthusiasm, even if it’s to our own disadvantage to have this run done so quickly.

For the curious, this new run will encapsulate heights of 65, 66, and 67.

That said, happy crunching! Kaktoos runs will begin soon outside of beta. Thank you all for the support and understanding over the last couple months as we work through things.

As you might have noticed, the 3 heights we chose has already been done. But fear not ! We already generated new tasks for y 68-(nice)-70, we will in a few hours pregenerate all the other heights till at least y100 so everyone can have tasks for the next 2 to 3 weeks (according to the current rate).
Cheers,
Neil

I see the queue of unsent tasks is dwindling. Is that all of this batch? Or does the queue just need to be re-filled?

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Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

No new tasks since a month now. Is this project still alive?