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Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

boinc.berkeley.edu

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Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#61

Post by wolverine876 »

junon wrote: post #36
wolverine876 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How efficient is Boinc as a heating application? It's an important part of calcuating its climate impact. Also, why old desktops only? Won't a brand new desktop running at 100% generate plenty of heat? Isn't the difference merely calculations per W?

Electronics do not move the needle at all when it comes to climate impact (in terms of heat dissipation). It's where the electricity is sourced that's the problem.

I understand that; I didn't express my question clearly:

Given the electricity used, how efficient are (Boinc + my desktop) at generating heat? For example, is it equally efficient to use Boinc + Desktop to warm my office as it is to use a space heater, or electrical radiated heat?

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#62

Post by Rayston »

monkeydust wrote: post #46
Rayston wrote: post #32

Anyone interested should also look into Gridcoin, you can get some crypto back in addition to doing some good science. https://gridcoin.us/

+1 probably closest thing to a useful crypto you can find.

agreed, I am in general not a huge fan of Crypto.

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#63

Post by willquack »

Rayston wrote: post #60
willquack wrote: post #59

Distributive DCP lets you compute other people's distributed research/workloads and get paid for it (no crypto involved). Compute workloads get run in secure js/wasm compute nodes (which could be your browser, or a screensaver, etc). For instance, my friend built a Blender cycles renderer using it It's cool tech continuing the awesome legacy of BOINC! I work at Distributive, AMA if you're curious

Very cool. Link?

Here's a link to our browser worker: https://dcp.work/

And other workers can be downloaded here: https://distributive.network/workers

Dev API for submitting jobs here: https://docs.dcp.dev/

:D feel free to email me if you want to chat about anything

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#64

Post by KennyBlanken »

tomComb wrote: post #49
underlogic wrote: post #11

Boinc on old hardware will win you quite the electric bill. Are they sharing the profits from these discoveries with the contributors? No of course not, that's their IP. You let them use your hardware, pay for the power and bandwidth and they run laughing to the bank. "Boinc - Free supercomputing from the stupid"

In my province electricity is $0.024 / kWh overnight (that's about $0.17 USD) so almost free and comes from almost entirely renewable sources. So, I would be happy to run it every night (excepting July & August), but the BOINC Manager just didn't seem to work for me: created an account but then the account was not recognized.

If 8/10ths of your grid's energy is renewable with renewables maxxed out and the remainder coming from non-renewables, your energy use was 100% non-renewable because that non-renewable capacity would not have been necessary.

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#65

Post by mycologos »

underlogic wrote: post #26
Nonoyesnoyes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't talk it down just because you don't like it and you are cheap I did Rosetta for years and I was fully aware what and why I was supporting it...

Look if they want funding for their for profit venture they should just ask for your credit card number then go spend on AWS where the hardware is modern and the energy is efficiently used. But if they were upfront and asked directly for peoples hard earned money in exchange for nothing every sane human would say no, so there's this racket called boinc where they trick you into giving them your money indirectly and t…

The insistence in both of your comments that the people at Boinc are not only taking advantage of people but "laugh[ing] at them" is odd. Why must your boogeyman be as unlikeable as possible?

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#66

Post by Nonoyesnoyes »

underlogic wrote: post #48
Nonoyesnoyes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's research. I benefit from it, you do too. It's the responsibility of the society to do research and just because some capitalism based entities also do this and also benefit from this doesn't matter. Start being less 'sane' if this holds you back formulating your own opinion or actions making society better ...

not all research benefits society and what does usually benefits the wealthy, which boinc users almost certainly aren't. The wealthy expect a return on an investment

Strong statement without any source or explanation.

I don't buy that.

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#67

Post by NortySpock »

wolverine876 wrote: post #61
junon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronics do not move the needle at all when it comes to climate impact (in terms of heat dissipation). It's where the electricity is sourced that's the problem.

I understand that; I didn't express my question clearly: Given the electricity used, how efficient are (Boinc + my desktop) at generating heat? For example, is it equally efficient to use Boinc + Desktop to warm my office as it is to use a space heater, or electrical radiated heat?

A computer consuming 500 watts of power and an electric heater consuming 500 watts of power are equivalent.

Therefore, I think it's perfectly reasonable to run BOINC to warm your office.

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#69

Post by ianlevesque »

KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #24
unsupp0rted wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since its launch on May 17, 1999, the project has logged over two million years of aggregate computing time What a waste of computing time!

SETI wasn't a waste of time don't have any good alternatives to it. Folding@home on the other hand probably could have been a lot more useful if they were training transformers on their results instead of just doing pure protein dynamics simulations.

Folding@Home predates the ML approaches to protein folding. Just because it has been eclipsed now doesn’t mean it wasn’t worthwhile.

Re: Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer

#70

Post by renewiltord »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #52
_trampeltier wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seti@home started a long long time ago, when computer used the same amount of power, if they worked hard or if the computer was idle. That's why they started as screensaver, it did just not matter.

Yes, I remember. But even then we knew full well the chance of identifying anything via SETI was minute. We were looking at a sliver of a sliver of a sliver of what's out there. A tiny office full of grad students could have come up with a dozen more useful ways to use that many distributed computing cycles, say for medical research. Not only folding@home: imagine what a Wolfram or a Knuth would have achieved with al…

Well, we know what they could have done. Nothing. Because both were around and active then and they didn't do anything. Folding@Home followed SETI@Home so we know offering a different thing would have participants.

It's actually fascinating. People back then would be eager to find ways to do things. So many people now are lamenters, not doers. Perhaps that's just mean reversion and the original population was more agentic because it was a new tech.

After the geeks and mops, perhaps the ones who follow are the lamenters.

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