I already upped the check-interval for the wp-hashcash plugin from 2 days to 999999999 seconds (approx. 11574 days) because of the unreliable connection to their site. No connection means that my weblog does not work.
Now the problems seem to be worse, since my weblog was unavailable again. So I disabled the automatic version check. Here’s how. Open WORDPRESS_HOME/wp-content/plugins/wp-hashcash/wp-hashcash.php and make the following change:
//$version = `$cmd`;
$version = '4.0.2';
As you can see, I hardcoded my version number of wp-hashcash. This has two effects: the command in $cmd is not executed and does not receive a timeout, and you are in control of which version you run. Be sure to check for new versions regularly now.