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SETI@home is in hibernation

setiathome.berkeley.edu

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Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#151

Post by ar9av »

fsckboy wrote: post #25

I don't specifically miss SETI@home as much as I miss the spirit of the internet back then, the "what will they think of next!?" The idea that all of us could together could crack RSA keys wasn't just a thought exercise, people signed up and did it. Now computers are so complex and task heavy and fraught with problems it seems like more hassle than it's worth. I liked when wondering "why is my machine so slow", that…

:'-( I installed SETI@HOME on both my office and home machine back in '98 / 99. I know my contributions were not very much in the sense just how much can one laptop & a desktop do but I watched (and hoped) SETI@HOME as it progressed (:-) and then there's always that wishful thinking that someone somewhere would hit jackpot)...

Hoping you guys come back again.

Best.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#153

Post by ifni »

bunabhucan wrote: post #141
latchkey wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only users of the power in the area are data centers. The power goes directly there. The same data centers you're using to access services on the internet. There is more than enough hydro in the area so they don't have to turn on the gas. Very large river based hydro and the dams were built long ago.

I don't know if you know this but electricity can travel through conductors to other places.

Not everything is connected to the grid, you know.

Here's an example of a single hydro dam a LONG way from the grid which (pre-Cryptocurrency gold rush) had 12 MW of unused power generation capacity plus they were talking up the possibility of adding an additional 20 MW of generation.

https://www.hydroreview.com/business-finance/boralex-acquire...

It's not going to be the only one.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#154

Post by RobotToaster »

kelnos wrote: post #129
Georgelemental wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has actually, in places and times where regulations were reasonable.

You mean the places and times and regulatory environment that brought us Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima? I'm not going to get into a debate over the safety of nuclear over other generation options, but is it conceivable that, if the modern regulatory environment were in place when those three plants were built and operated, they never would have suffered major incidents?

There was less than 100 deaths from chernobyl, and only one person died directly from fukushima[1]. I suspect more people have died from falling off roofs while fitting or cleaning solar panels than that.

You're correct that nobody builds rbmk reactors any more, but others of the design continued to operate safely for many years.

[1]https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher...

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#156

Post by RobotToaster »

fho wrote: post #101
Breza wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. The early web was full of amazing opportunities but had trouble monetizing things. Cryptocurrency is the opposite, it tries to monetize everything but doesn't have practical uses.

Bitcoin was "old internet" tech at some point. Just for reference, I bought my first BTC at 0.20 €/BTC. Back then it looked like the future to a lot of us ... "hey! We/Hackers can make our own money. And it is superior to state issued money!" ... looking back, it honestly it is somewhat to see the state of cryptocurrencies today.

I thought it was a dumb idea at the time, that nobody would be stupid enough to invest in.

I still think it's a dumb idea, but I've learnt not to underestimate human stupidity.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#157

Post by eru »

ETH_start wrote: post #95
porknubbins wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m probably about median age for HN and when I was looking into folding Seti@home I had no idea and didn’t worry about power cost because it was subsidised by my parents or university. Plus energy was cheaper then. Now as an adult seeing a month of a few GPUs running on the utility bill really hurts.

The fact that energy hasn't gotten more affordable really demonstrates a deficiency of planning. We've had access to a source of energy that is cheap, zero-carbon and essentially limitless, since the 1950s: nuclear power.

I agree that nuclear power would have been great.

However it's no deficiency of planning.

It's down to public opinion and misguided regulation.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#158

Post by glass3 »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #131
thfuran wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and has nothing to do with determining the plaintext from a known digest. So why'd you bring it up?

User bitcoinistrash is the one that brought it up, and they're spreading incorrect information about how it works. Cracking sha256 hashes implies trying to reverse a specific hash. There are literally thousands (millions?) of potential inputs that hash to a valid bitcoin mining block output. It's basically a race to find the first one matching the rules of the current block difficulty. The goal isn't to produce any o…

In which context would somebody try to reverse a hash? That would be like arbitrarily enhancing a bad-resolution image to see something that cannot be seen.

Hash collision should always be about finding matching content for a hash.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#159

Post by paganel »

ETH_start wrote: post #95
porknubbins wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m probably about median age for HN and when I was looking into folding Seti@home I had no idea and didn’t worry about power cost because it was subsidised by my parents or university. Plus energy was cheaper then. Now as an adult seeing a month of a few GPUs running on the utility bill really hurts.

The fact that energy hasn't gotten more affordable really demonstrates a deficiency of planning. We've had access to a source of energy that is cheap, zero-carbon and essentially limitless, since the 1950s: nuclear power.

I don't think it's cheap, at least current costs of building new nuclear tell us that.
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