SETI@home shuts down after 21 years • Hacker News Board

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#221

Post by dorgo » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:08 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #176

crazygringo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fascinating comment, thank you. I personally suspect the engineering challenges might pale next to the challenges of political organization. Quite simply, the continued human expertise and organization necessary to manage and sustain such a system is far, far beyond anything we have today. We can't even manage to globally reduce CO2, and the recent government responses to coronavirus have led a lot to be des…

> Quite simply, the continued human expertise and organization necessary to manage and sustain such a system is far, far beyond anything we have today. I get your concern but the differences are significant. 1. Habitats are mobile. If you don't like the neighbours you can up and move, something not possible with geography on Earth; 2. Land area is essentially infinite, not so on Earth. > We can't even manage to globa…

> but until we have a good story for fuel and waste processing then this is a nonstarter.

Waste processing in space? Just give it a slight push in the direction of the sun (or whatever the right direction is taking in consideration gravity) and forget about it.

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#222

Post by slavik81 » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:11 AM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #184

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but not for the reasons you outlined. Use Occam's Razor: there are no aliens. (Yes, I know I'm treading on some dearly-held religious beliefs now and will get lynched. Still, somebody had to say it.)

That's a bit too broad of a statement to be plausible. It's likely there are no aliens near us in time, space, technology, and desire to communicate to make such a search fruitful right now. There could very well be aliens on the other side of the galaxy that we can't see. There could have been aliens nearby a million years ago that are now extinct or elsewhere. There could be aliens right now that are pre-industrial…

The universe actually seems surprisingly young to me. If the universe is a mere 14 billion years old, then dinosaurs ruled the Earth for 1/50th of all time! And life has existed on Earth for 1/3rd of all time!

When I was a kid, I figured the Earth itself would be a blip on a universal timescale. It's kind of disappointing that geological and astronomical timescales are so similar.

Of course, it doesn't really change your point. If a billion years is a surprisingly short period of time, then 21 years is an instant.

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#223

Post by Nition » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:14 AM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #219

schoen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect in the very early days of cooperative computing, one could genuinely argue that there were "idle cycles" that were going to waste if a computer was powered on and not computing something. But this became more and more inaccurate throughout the 1990s as new power management technologies became a part of computer designs, and is completely wrong now. Phenomena like Bitcoin mining and feeling your laptop get w…

If you use an electric radiator for heating, might as well use that electricity to compute something worthwhile !

For anyone that isn't aware, yes, they really are equally efficient at heating!

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#224

Post by Geeflow » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:14 AM UTC

Ice_cream_suit wrote: post #55

unixhero wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The duron had a pencil trick which unlocked it somehow. I don't remember the details.

The pencil trick: "Unlocking the Duron and Athlon Using [a] Pencil Hold your CPU in your left hand and look very closely at the CPU, so as to clearly see the L1 bridges. Use a business card to separate the bridges so that you do not connect the L1 bridges to each other. Work your way across the bridges from left to right (using a business card as a separation tool) and connect the bridges by rubbing the pencil back a…

I used this trick, and it did indeed work as intended. It was a little scary ("You want me to draw on my CPU?!?"), though.

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#225

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:30 AM UTC

zelphirkalt wrote: post #204

crazygringo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fascinating comment, thank you. I personally suspect the engineering challenges might pale next to the challenges of political organization. Quite simply, the continued human expertise and organization necessary to manage and sustain such a system is far, far beyond anything we have today. We can't even manage to globally reduce CO2, and the recent government responses to coronavirus have led a lot to be des…

I find this comment actually more insightful than the GP. How often have I talked with people and mentioned, that in terms of social behavior, we make such slow progress, if any. If we could end human greed and other bad things, how easy it woule be for us to go to space. If money did not count and all would work for a great goal of advancing into space, we would be there already. What many call "human nature" (which…

Slow and painful indeed, but considering we are animals the progress is massive. Just take a look at how brutal nature is, social darwinisn is the standard, decisions made on instincts, putting yourself first.

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#226

Post by okonomiyaki3000 » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:31 AM UTC

A lot of nostalgia in this thread but don't be too sad to see it go. It was only ever a waste of energy for everyone involved. If you want to put your extra processor cycles to a good cause, there are much more worthy projects like Folding@home

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#227

Post by BlueTemplar » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:39 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #181

schoen wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if it was, no known or currently theorized material could support this. Which physical limits are most relevant to precluding the solid sphere? Tidal forces?

So if we step back a second, look at a Ringworld. I'm not sure if Larry Niven proposed this idea (in the book by the same name) or just popularized it, but the idea is basically this: If you take the mass of the Earth and turn it into a ring that encircles a star, spin it to create artificial gravity and put walls on the sides (on the inside) to keep an atmosphere in. What do you have? The same mass of Earth will hav…

Wait, isn't the force "that would tear it apart" the same as the gravity you wanted to generate?

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#228

Post by notkaiho » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:40 AM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #8

In case anyone reads the headline and thinks that the SETI research center itself is shutting down, or that the project failed in some way: > "It's a lot of work for us to manage the distributed processing of data. We need to focus on completing the back-end analysis of the results we already have, and writing this up in a scientific journal paper," their news announcement stated. Maybe it's PR speak, but it does mak…

The singular in "journal paper" makes me sad. Surely there'd be more papers in this topic, on distributed computing for one, on the methodology of the analysis for another, and on any results for third.

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#229

Post by wiether » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:40 AM UTC

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #197

wiggler00m wrote: post #161

"For those who wish to donate their CPU resources, SETI@home suggests users select another BOINC project that also supports distributed computing." https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php I loved the concept of SETI@home and ran it on a bunch of computers at my university when I was a student.

I just bought a powerful mac mini, but due to other projects arising, it sits idle. I am curious if anyone has suggestions. I looked through a dozen or so BOINC projects, but they all seem dead. The amicable pairs project had some 2020 results and activity in its forum, but I couldn’t draw a line to any practical goal. That said, maybe the sorts of projects that have practical outcomes don’t need to rely on the compu…

Rosetta@Home seems pretty alive : https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=13533

Re: SETI@home shuts down after 21 years

#230

Post by Yizahi » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:41 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #80

Not to sound like a broken record (I and others have said this or similar on these kinds of threads) but... I, personally, have become convinced that looking for signals this way is actually pointless. The argument is basically this: 1. Within 1000 years (and maybe a lot less) we will have the engineering capability to build space habitats, powered by solar power. This last part is important because this thought expe…

I think you are overestimating ease of building and living in space habitats as opposed to living on planet surfaces. If I were to guess, I'd say that any significant and detectable space habitats will be preceded by extensive colonization to nearby stars. Though now I'm oversimplifying space travel instead. I guess this problem is so complex that we can't even estimate orders of magnitude correctly.