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Folding@home takes up the fight against COVID-19

foldingathome.org

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Re: Folding@home takes up the fight against COVID-19

#21

Post by Xylakant »

ozfive wrote: post #17
nicolaslem wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloud providers do not have much unused resource. Tricks like spot instances make sure that they are as close to 100% utilization as possible while still being able to handle a spike in demand.

Can I spin up instances and write it off for charity as a business?

There should be no need to write it off as charity. If you spin up instances, it's a cost which gets written off as any other cost. If you use those for folding at home, that's your (business') thing. (Obviously, this is generalized and your local tax situation may differ)

Re: Folding@home takes up the fight against COVID-19

#22

Post by hrgiger »

Yesterday I was looking for that, there is also fold.it users create their own proteins [0][1], those proteins passed to researches for validation or maybe they still validate through rosetta, even some users automate protein generation via lua scripts. Yesterday I wanted to check/contribute source code but its closed:( [2]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGvlNo3nMfw

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldit

[2] https://fold.it/portal/node/986352

Re: Folding@home takes up the fight against COVID-19

#24

Post by gchamonlive »

Geezus42 wrote: post #20
sliken wrote: post #7

A friend tried this in the last week and was frustrated that there seemed to be no way to limit CPU/GPU use to only work relaed to Covid. Is there a way to limit work to Covid?

BOINC

there are detailed steps in the arch wiki page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/BOINC

however it seems that folding@home isn't on BOINC. Either that or I am misinterpreting: https://foldingathome.org/faqs/high-performance/fah-on-boinc...

Re: Folding@home takes up the fight against COVID-19

#25

Post by hrgiger »

NohatCoder wrote: post #23

I doubt that this is going to help much, if you could fold your way to a virus cure, surely we would have seen cures for a bunch of other common viruses.

seems like rosetta@home already has candidates:

>"We are happy to report that the Rosetta molecular modeling suite was recently used to accurately predict the atomic-scale structure of an important coronavirus protein weeks before it could be measured in the lab. Knowledge gained from studying this viral protein is now being used to guide the design of novel vaccines and antiviral drugs."

http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Re: Folding@home takes up the fight against COVID-19

#26

Post by viraptor »

OtterGauze wrote: post #13
blackrock wrote: post #4

Why not use smartphones these days? Just plug your iPhone in at night, and the app will run in the background, when it detects user inactivity.

While true and while phones are considerably more powerful now than they used to be, modern ARM SoCs don't come close to their x86 counterparts.

Yes, but we have millions of idle phones at night constantly on and with insignificant power draw. Together they could easily match the idle PCs that people are happy to keep running and pay for that electricity.

Re: Folding@home takes up the fight against COVID-19

#27

Post by willis936 »

Xylakant wrote: post #21
ozfive wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I spin up instances and write it off for charity as a business?

There should be no need to write it off as charity. If you spin up instances, it's a cost which gets written off as any other cost. If you use those for folding at home, that's your (business') thing. (Obviously, this is generalized and your local tax situation may differ)

That’s their point. If you’re billed for instances, but those instances are used for charity and can be written off taxes, then why not? Tax write off donations in the form of product usually help clear out stock/keep things moving. They’re like a guaranteed sale. So it may be best to appeal to the providers of the instances.

Re: Folding@home takes up the fight against COVID-19

#28

Post by shrthnd »

tareqak wrote: post #19
dwardu wrote: post #11

Go to the apple store and set up the mac pro in each store to fold.

Doing that on your own would probably get you in trouble. However, if Apple chose to do it themselves, then it would be a both a good PR move and of possible help to humanity. Same goes for Microsoft and the Microsoft store, and every store that has computers running on idle (Best Buy, Office Depot, etc). Who can we tweet at?

Genius idea!

Re: Folding@home takes up the fight against COVID-19

#29

Post by _trampeltier »

blackrock wrote: post #4

Why not use smartphones these days? Just plug your iPhone in at night, and the app will run in the background, when it detects user inactivity.

In theory you can (on Android). There is an app called boinc. You can load work for some projects to your phone. I tryed it a few years a ago, but phones are really not made for a workload over a long time. Even with work just for the half cores and not 100% processor time the phone got very very hot. What works well is Raspis and co, at least with a heatsink and a fan.
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