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SETI@home is in hibernation

setiathome.berkeley.edu

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Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#261

Post by zitsarethecure »

kelnos wrote: post #126
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…

The last time I ran SETI@home (and Folding@home), I had a fixed desktop machine that I always left on, and I think it was old enough that the fan speeds weren't variable, so it was just constant background white noise. In that context, running those apps in the background all day and all night was fine, and if they ever noticeably interfered with performance while I was using the machine, pausing them for a bit was e…

Personally I no longer use laptops, and instead do 99% of my computing on a fast desktop with a great keyboard, great monitors, etc. If something breaks or needs to be upgraded, I can pop it open and get it done, usually on the same day. On the rare occasion I need to travel I'll take my smart phone and a note pad if there is some need to take notes.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#262

Post by pclmulqdq »

flangola7 wrote: post #253
seanp2k2 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when power wasn’t 51c/kWh and a powerful PC didn’t suck down >1000w. I know we get way more perf/watt these days, but I don’t feel as a user like that translates into a notably better experience. For most things for $work, Slack, Spotify, GMail, Google Docs, and VSCode feel a lot less responsive than irssi, Winamp, Sylpheed, OpenOffice, and $ide_of_choice did a decade or two ago. What Dr. Lisa Su giveth, S…

Powers is around $0.10/kWh for residential, even lower for industrial

Big cities in the US tend to have very expensive power ($0.50/kWh or higher), while rural areas can have nearly free power, particularly if you are near a dam or a nuclear power plant. The price you're quoting is definitely not a big city price.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#264

Post by astronads »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #127
nprateem wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The psyops around UFOs must rank as one the most effective ever launched for prejudicing people against the subject.

Are people really prejudiced against aliens and UFO’s though? Aside from the fringe conspiracy theorists fretting about lizard people, and the few claiming to have been abducted, most people seem ambivalent. Largely because whatever the UFOs/UAPs are, they’ve been around for almost a century now, and for all that time almost entirely benign. No invasion, no conquering, no stripping the Earth of resources, no enslavin…

There was a large thread on HN with almost 1000 comments a month ago on this topic and a ton of comments are hugely dismissive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34665738

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#265

Post by yafbum »

LoganDark wrote: post #221
sph wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a great desktop, and every day I curse Apple and Tim Cook because I cannot get an iPad Pro that runs full macOS. That would be the ideal device for me when I'm on the go, that I can still use to watch Youtube videos in the bathroom. I do not need a full laptop when I work at home with a $5,000 desktop PC, nor I want to buy a crappy $300 laptop that always feels slow and underpowered. It is really sad to have t…

> nor I want to buy a crappy $300 laptop that always feels slow and underpowered. Meanwhile, the expensive laptops with actual desktop-class components have unacceptably shitty peripherals, so you can't even pay more money for what you want; it simply doesn't exist. This is what upsets me the most about laptops.

What do you mean by shitty peripherals?

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#266

Post by yafbum »

sph wrote: post #209
kalleboo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My MacBook Pro with M1 Pro is the first laptop I've had that hasn't had that slight hesitation that laptops have always had. I think this is why people praise Apple Silicon so much even though the benchmark numbers may not always back it up - so many other people are also coming from similarly-hobbled laptops.

I have a great desktop, and every day I curse Apple and Tim Cook because I cannot get an iPad Pro that runs full macOS. That would be the ideal device for me when I'm on the go, that I can still use to watch Youtube videos in the bathroom. I do not need a full laptop when I work at home with a $5,000 desktop PC, nor I want to buy a crappy $300 laptop that always feels slow and underpowered. It is really sad to have t…

On the other hand, there's a lot of great tech (including, I think, the iPad pro and Apple silicon) that just wouldn't exist if the bean counters hadn't said yes, it's a good idea to invest a few billions of dollars into this...

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#267

Post by latchkey »

IshKebab wrote: post #190
ifni wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Almost everything is connected to the grid. And even if it isn't... Even if it is an isolated hydro plant only connected to a data centre, other useful digital services could have run there instead. There's really no getting away from the fact that cryptocurrencies waste huge amounts of energy, significantly contributing to climate change just to move money from idiots to arseholes. Not just energy too - think how ma…

I am very happy that ETH switched to PoS. Now it just runs in the other data centers that are already in the same location and uses a fraction of the power.

The GPUs were already made and older models. The PS5 chips were seconds that never made it into PS5's. They would have gone to waste regardless.

If is really interesting to me how people have some sort of moral obligation to tell others how to spend energy. I find gaming a total waste of time/energy, but I don't tell people to stop playing games or that they should feel guilty about it.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#268

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #192
kelnos wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I ran SETI@home (and Folding@home), I had a fixed desktop machine that I always left on, and I think it was old enough that the fan speeds weren't variable, so it was just constant background white noise. In that context, running those apps in the background all day and all night was fine, and if they ever noticeably interfered with performance while I was using the machine, pausing them for a bit was e…

I remember when power wasn’t 51c/kWh and a powerful PC didn’t suck down >1000w. I know we get way more perf/watt these days, but I don’t feel as a user like that translates into a notably better experience. For most things for $work, Slack, Spotify, GMail, Google Docs, and VSCode feel a lot less responsive than irssi, Winamp, Sylpheed, OpenOffice, and $ide_of_choice did a decade or two ago. What Dr. Lisa Su giveth, S…

> a powerful PC didn’t suck down >1000w

My Ryzen Threadripper 2950X, which isn't a top-of-the-line system at this point, but is still a 16 core beast-ish machine, sucks down (much) less than 400W

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#269

Post by credit_guy »

This is good. The idea that an astrophysicist would ever think seriously one could find ET by just scanning the sky and finding ET signals is baffling. If anyone learned how to do a Fermi problem, they could quickly do a back of the envelope estimation and realize there's zero chance to detect such a signal. The space is simply too large, stupendously large, and signals decay with the square of the distance (at least). This SETI at home experiment was a waste of compute from the beginning. It was a good distributed compute framework, too bad to use it on such a pointless task.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#270

Post by latchkey »

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.

While true, it isn't an easy task. You have to build and maintain infrastructure to transmit it and that is super expensive, with a lot of loss.

This is a remote location, that is sparsely populated, with a big river and many dams. There is a lot more power generated in the area, than there are users for it.

It would be going to waste otherwise.

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