Do_good.js • Hacker News Board

Re: Do_good.js

#31

Post by paprikawuerzung » Sun, Jul 14, 2013, 10:48 PM UTC

https://github.com/ben-eysenbach/do_good/blob/master/do_good...

jQuery is an unneeded dependency.

There are only 2 things done with jquery: - a domready handler - ajax request

Could be done with 2 smaller functions and not with an full-blown framework.

Re: Do_good.js

#32

Post by Trufa » Sun, Jul 14, 2013, 10:53 PM UTC

What is it with HN and the negativity in the comments, it's an interesting topic to have a civilized discussion, no to dismiss altogether.

Re: Do_good.js

#33

Post by ramigb » Sun, Jul 14, 2013, 10:58 PM UTC

It's a wonderful idea but i have some concerns i would if someone could challenge them:

1. Some people are on limited bandwidth plans, this adds to the plan since i am downloading and uploading data, and if the data that has to be processed -coming from the server- is big then this is going to kill my bandwidth.

2. This could slow down a lot of mobile devices that are JS capable, or old/moderate hardware.

3. Memory leaks?

4. If a startup is based around this idea, and me as a published i'll use their JS code to run tasks, then i'm basically giving them a key to my site :).

Other than that, the idea it self is awesome, if it could be implemented through :

1. Asking user permission. 2. work on idle browser tabs only. 3. used for non-profit organizations to solve real problems, maybe to fight cancer or to analyze data coming from space.

Re: Do_good.js

#34

Post by btown » Sun, Jul 14, 2013, 11:02 PM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #9

Why nobody's built a startup around this already: (a) There's no money to be had. A company that offered to solve your distributed problems using distributed JavaScript could only charge as much as the spot price of buying EC2 instances. Otherwise, you'd just buy the EC2 instances and solve it there. A problem not amenable to solving with temporary machines wouldn't be amenable to solving with times slices of JavaScr…

A startup around this actually won the Princeton TigerLaunch pitch/business-plan competition this past year, but I'm having trouble finding any press releases or details online at the moment.

Re: Do_good.js

#35

Post by Finbarr » Sun, Jul 14, 2013, 11:09 PM UTC

I think this is an interesting concept. There are certainly concerns around electricity and bandwidth usage, but these costs are surely increased by the advertising that is already prevalent on the web. I could picture this as a "pay as you go" means of rewarding content creators that doesn't involve traditional ads.

Re: Do_good.js

#36

Post by miket » Sun, Jul 14, 2013, 11:12 PM UTC

Before embarking on this project, you should check out the company that was founded 6 years ago that does the thing you described: http://www.pluraprocessing.com/

Re: Do_good.js

#37

Post by ashray » Sun, Jul 14, 2013, 11:12 PM UTC

I find the idea really interesting. And the portuguese startup called crowdprocess seems to be down with this stuff.

I just think that charity would be a great angle to it. How about you donate your CPU cycles for charity ? Companies that need to use large scale parallel processing use the service, your browser does the client side processing and the money that the gets paid by companies goes to charity minus running costs.

Now that would be beautiful. CPU cycles for charity!

Re: Do_good.js

#38

Post by ricardobeat » Sun, Jul 14, 2013, 11:18 PM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #9

Why nobody's built a startup around this already: (a) There's no money to be had. A company that offered to solve your distributed problems using distributed JavaScript could only charge as much as the spot price of buying EC2 instances. Otherwise, you'd just buy the EC2 instances and solve it there. A problem not amenable to solving with temporary machines wouldn't be amenable to solving with times slices of JavaScr…

You mean nobody like http://crowdprocess.com?

Or the (dead) http://pluraprocessing.com from 2009?

Re: Do_good.js

#39

Post by bsimpson » Sun, Jul 14, 2013, 11:22 PM UTC

Reminds me of http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/06/43651/

Re: Do_good.js

#40

Post by Neepy » Sun, Jul 14, 2013, 11:24 PM UTC

ashray wrote: post #37

I find the idea really interesting. And the portuguese startup called crowdprocess seems to be down with this stuff. I just think that charity would be a great angle to it. How about you donate your CPU cycles for charity ? Companies that need to use large scale parallel processing use the service, your browser does the client side processing and the money that the gets paid by companies goes to charity minus running…

http://folding.stanford.edu/home/ I believe has a screensaver that will run simulations and has the results fired back to be collated. It also has a cool visualization :)