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Ask HN: What are some worthy non-cryto uses of excess home compute nowadays?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some worthy non-cryto uses of excess home compute nowadays?

#3
> When I was a kid, I remember participating in Folding@Home. Unfortunately, the project doesn't appear nearly as active as when I was younger.

Hmm, I don't follow it that closely, but I have given a clock cycle or two to the project. And from taking a quick glance at their website[0] it seems they are still pretty involved. The most recent posting is called "Markov State Models (MSMs) of SARS-CoV-2 proteins" (although it may be from June 2020)

I'm also curious as to why the disinterest in crypto. I am not hugely swayed one way or the other, so its nice to hear peoples reasoning.

[0] https://foldingathome.org/data/?lng=en

Re: Ask HN: What are some worthy non-cryto uses of excess home compute nowadays?

#4
post #2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta@home is popular with over 1 million users (more projects at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_... )

This wiki article is great, and is basically the answer to OPs question.

Re: Ask HN: What are some worthy non-cryto uses of excess home compute nowadays?

#5
I originally built my home server for academic use (computational physics), but after changing in security I've come to use it as a fuzzing playground.

Oftentimes I kick off a fuzzer on some OSS, e.g., GCC, v8, standard *nix binaries, and let it run for days/weeks/months. If I find anything I submit it to the appropriate people or make a PR, if Im motivated enough that week

Re: Ask HN: What are some worthy non-cryto uses of excess home compute nowadays?

#7
post #5

I originally built my home server for academic use (computational physics), but after changing in security I've come to use it as a fuzzing playground. Oftentimes I kick off a fuzzer on some OSS, e.g., GCC, v8, standard *nix binaries, and let it run for days/weeks/months. If I find anything I submit it to the appropriate people or make a PR, if Im motivated enough that week

This sounds very interesting and potentially quite fun. How would one get into this? Is there a specific tool chain you use?

Re: Ask HN: What are some worthy non-cryto uses of excess home compute nowadays?

#8
I run Boinc connected to Science United which allows me to pick/prioritize domain of interest and it handles of the heavy lifting of getting tasks, running and uploading the results. It has been a install and forget experience with currently a small 3300 days of CPU contributed.

Re: Ask HN: What are some worthy non-cryto uses of excess home compute nowadays?

#9
post #8

I run Boinc connected to Science United which allows me to pick/prioritize domain of interest and it handles of the heavy lifting of getting tasks, running and uploading the results. It has been a install and forget experience with currently a small 3300 days of CPU contributed.

This is a great use of extra compute overhead! If you don't know how to get into doing computational research yourself, this is definitely the next best thing

Re: Ask HN: What are some worthy non-cryto uses of excess home compute nowadays?

#10
post #3

> When I was a kid, I remember participating in Folding@Home. Unfortunately, the project doesn't appear nearly as active as when I was younger. Hmm, I don't follow it that closely, but I have given a clock cycle or two to the project. And from taking a quick glance at their website[0] it seems they are still pretty involved. The most recent posting is called "Markov State Models (MSMs) of SARS-CoV-2 proteins" (althou…

The energy use of proof of work crypto is terrible for the environment, that's at least the best argument I hear.

Better to use the energy for research imo

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