It will take care of the mysterious SR down time: Adjust the number of introduction points that a hidden service will try to maintain based on how long its introduction points remain in use and how many introductions they handle. Fixes part of bug 3825. and will also reduce the impact of a pretty substantial anonymity vulnerability that is currently effecting SR clients....clients would be suggested to switch to this version of Tor to fully protect themselves from this as well. it may seem better to use only stable versions but I think going to this alpha version is probably the best choice. Or you could wait for these changes to work their way into stable. It will immediately significantly reduce down time if SR server switches to this version though, and it will also offer some protection to SR clients.