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SETI@home is in hibernation

setiathome.berkeley.edu

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Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#311

Post by latchkey »

dools wrote: post #303
latchkey wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In comparison to everything else, it is tiny. All of banking could be significantly automated to the point that we don't need to build physical buildings all over the planet and stuff them full of humans who drive their cars to work every day to take your money and write it down on a ledger. Talk about absurd. Remember also, this equipment is being turned off because ethereum has grown to be more efficient. It is now…

The financial system has put a lot of effort into automation obliviously because it means they make more money. So to the extent that they could be automated, they are automated and will continue to increase the level of automation. It’s also not a reasonable comparison because banks do something useful (even if I think they could be much better regulated and are too profitable and shouldn’t be running the payment sy…

> So to the extent that they could be automated, they are automated

It still isn't enough and is a huge waste of energy and resources.

> Crypto does nothing useful, it’s like an online casino, or an online game.

For me, it is extremely useful on a daily basis.

> Do you know any online games that consume anywhere near as much hardware and electricity?

All of them. ETH has switched to PoS and no longer consumes so much energy. It also had the side effect of destroying profitability for the majority of the other GPU mined coins, and thus the hashrate on those networks have dropped off considerably (or been replaced with ASICs).

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#312

Post by latchkey »

yieldcrv wrote: post #310
IshKebab wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> other useful digital services could have run there instead. that's not really true. unless you have a specific example. there are gigawatt hours of energy already being expelled and wasted with no purpose, and this has continued for decades now. other "useful digital services" typically need high bandwidth internet infrastructure, or all energy use gains are lost by the physical movement of the data they are proces…

nailed it

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#313

Post by yieldcrv »

esperent wrote: post #194
yieldcrv wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for a fraction of a percent of the problem that isn't even in use anymore? misdirected angst

[flagged]

“I cant believe you used energy in a way I disagreed with two years ago”

never really seen that in another context

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#314

Post by HyperSane »

dools wrote: post #249
latchkey wrote: post #74

This makes me sad because it reminds me of something similar I just went through. For the last few years, I've been running >120k gpus to mine ETH. Before we turned them off after ETH switched to PoS, I tried really hard to find an alternative workload for them. A large number of the GPUs were based on the PS5 chip, which is an APU (CPU+GPU) and ran as blade computers. It is actually a pretty power efficient chip, bu…

Fucking hell crypto is such a colossal waste of resources

It really is but compared to keeping poorly insulated buildings at 70f in the winter or all the forced, unneeded commuting to work it is trivial.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#316

Post by HankB99 »

maccard wrote: post #273
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

My 3990x is almost 500w. My last dual socket Xeon workstation was closer to 750w. That's before you add on a GPU. My 3080 uses 350w under load.

Are these power figures measured at the wall? If so, both are astonishing. My file server with an old Xeon, 16GB RAM and 5x 7200RPM HDDs uses about 95W when idle and about 150W when I throw something at it that works the drives. My desktop with an I7-4770K, 32GB RAM, some SSDs and a single spinner ids about the same. IIRC if I push something compute intensive at it, it can break 200W.

OTOH a Pi 4B with 2 7200RPM HDDs uses about 25W and another with an SSD uses about 7W.

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#317

Post by fknorangesite »

tokai wrote: post #280
raziel2701 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UC Berkeley library is getting its funding cut. The physics library and some other have been closed.

it doesn't cost much to put some shelf meters of tapes in the closed stacks.

Do you know how I know you're not a librarian?

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#318

Post by yafbum »

sph wrote: post #308
yafbum wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Uhm, allocating money to a budget doesn't create great products anymore than wishing very hard for something before blowing the birthday candles. It's the engineers that actually create the cool things.

> Uhm, allocating money to a budget doesn't create great products anymore than wishing very hard for something before blowing the birthday candles.

I didn't claim that it was sufficient, but it is necessary.

> It's the engineers that actually create the cool things.

Of course. With other people's money (typically).

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#319

Post by yafbum »

LoganDark wrote: post #305
yafbum wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by shitty peripherals?

Low-DPI screens, bad webcams, keyboards with the wrong arrows/numpad layout, off-center trackpads etc. it's different for each person what they consider "shitty", but laptops are always a total package deal (except for Framework) and it can just so happen that nobody makes powerful laptops that also have the exact right permutation of peripherals. You can find all sorts of beautiful 4K ultrabooks with the perfect key…

I haven't really been in the market for a non-Apple laptop for a while (previously had to buy MacBook bc of specific software), so this gives me a great idea of what to watch out for when I get my next laptop. Thanks a lot!

Re: SETI@home is in hibernation

#320

Post by LoganDark »

yafbum wrote: post #319
LoganDark wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low-DPI screens, bad webcams, keyboards with the wrong arrows/numpad layout, off-center trackpads etc. it's different for each person what they consider "shitty", but laptops are always a total package deal (except for Framework) and it can just so happen that nobody makes powerful laptops that also have the exact right permutation of peripherals. You can find all sorts of beautiful 4K ultrabooks with the perfect key…

I haven't really been in the market for a non-Apple laptop for a while (previously had to buy MacBook bc of specific software), so this gives me a great idea of what to watch out for when I get my next laptop. Thanks a lot!

For what it's worth, the ROG Flow X16 (2022)[0] has some good specs (8-core CPU with 3070 Ti), a great keyboard layout (with correct arrow keys!), and other niceties like a mux switch and upgradeable RAM. It is so close to perfection—but doesn't have a 4K screen, ruining the whole package.

Big reason why I dislike the market so much: the existence of that machine with only a single flaw that nonetheless ruins the value of the entire product. There's nothing else like it. It seems to be the absolute best machine the market has to offer... and it just barely misses. :(

However, the screen resolution seems to be the only problem with it, so anyone who doesn't require specifically 4K (most people) would probably find it worth considering.

[0]: https://rog.asus.com/laptops/rog-flow/rog-flow-x16-2022-seri...

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