coated_pill wrote: is it true that the longer you are in "ON" the higher chance you get a hit? Is it like falling in line, and when u suddenly went 'off', you go back at the end of the line waiting for hits ? queing?!
oh dear
that would be terrible if that were the case
No, basically in plain english here's how you get hits and the relation to on and off.
When the extension is OFF it simply signals the extension NOT to poll the server for a work status.
When the extension is ON it then allows the extension to poll the server. It sends your credentials along with a request for work status, if there is work, it will send an URL to your browser and focus the tab, if there is no work in the pool it will keep checking at set interval (if there is no activity for a certain amount of time consecutive seconds it will poll for work less often and after 6 consecutive minutes of no activity (key/mouse) it will shut off.
The way hits are given is not based on a queue - whenever work is available you have equal chance to get it no matter if your extension was off for 8 hours or 1 hour, the moment you poll for work, if something is available you get it, unless someone got it first (then you get oops). Once URL is generated and sent to your new tab it opens and reserves HIT. By the time this happens (during that delay, someone else may have gotten job, hence the oops!) Soon they will change to reservation which will do it differently, it will check work, then reserve hit, then send you the URL, so no more oops ! Also eventually push to web sockets, so polling will be shut off (work will be pushed to you instead of you pulling work by polling). At the current time, it's random distribution - with push to sockets, they will be able to control things better, like for instance, send work to those good workers in priority and those who waited the longest. At the moment this is not done.
Another thing, if your extension is ON but no activity is sensed for x amount of seconds (consecutive) it will fall back, which means it will "ask" the server "is there work?" much less often, so obviously the person who,s extension is polling at default speed will get the jobs first.