[HN Gopher] Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research us...
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Boinc lets you help cutting-edge science research using your
computer
Author : doener
Score : 83 points
Date : 2024-03-17 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (boinc.berkeley.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (boinc.berkeley.edu)
| matteason wrote:
| The SETI@Home screensaver [0] (the predecessor to BOINC) was the
| peak of nerd-cool when I was 11 or 12 years old. I had no idea
| what any of the graphs meant, and still don't, but I knew that I
| could help find _aliens_, and look like a hacker doing it
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI@home?useskin=vector#/medi...
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > 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!
| ianlevesque wrote:
| Just wait until you hear about Bitcoin
| agilob wrote:
| Just wait until you hear about most ecommerce platforms
| doing `SELECT * FROM` just to display 2 columns.
| dylan604 wrote:
| what if your table just has two columns?
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| 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.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| Folding@Home predates the ML approaches to protein folding.
| Just because it has been eclipsed now doesn't mean it
| wasn't worthwhile.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| 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.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| 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 all those cycles.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I suspect the useful things you can do with this model
| are quite limited. You need:
|
| * A problem that can be cut into chunks small enough for
| a low end desktop computer
|
| * One that's solvable without communicating with anything
| else
|
| * The chunk is solvable enough that the user doesn't
| interrupt the process
|
| * And the bandwidth usage is small
|
| * And the solution is easily verifiable
|
| * And the problem is big enough that it needs a vast
| amount of hardware to solve
|
| * But is relatively unimportant, so nobody wants to spend
| any money to solve it faster
|
| Especially the latter parts seem to mostly suggest quirky
| uses like SETI. If it's something important you can
| probably do it faster by just finding funding, than by
| trying to convince millions of people to install a
| screensaver.
| vr46 wrote:
| I have tried Boinc in the past, I didn't find anything that was
| visually interesting for me locally - one cool thing about SETI
| was the screensaver and graphics, if anyone has any suggestions
| for something cool and fun I could exchange my energy money for,
| that'd be appreciated.
| DominoTree wrote:
| It's not based on Boinc, but I think Folding@Home has some
| decent visualizations
| beardicus wrote:
| i miss the days when running this sort of thing was not an
| obvious energy (and fan noise) tradeoff. i was big into the
| distributed.net [1] client in the late 90s, running it on my
| powermac. when i got to college in '98 seti@home had taken over
| everybody's screensavers.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed.net
| huuhee3 wrote:
| Old desktops with Boinc running 24/7 make an useful alternative
| to direct electric heating. Of course a heat pump is more
| efficient, but not everyone has that.
| tombert wrote:
| I have a central heat pump in my house, but it doesn't heat the
| basement very well. My solution for awhile was to run
| Folding@home on my server, since I figure pretty much every
| computer is a 100% efficient heater as well.
|
| I eventually stopped because I work in my basement and the
| server was way too loud when running at full load, but it did a
| reasonably good job keeping my desk area nice and toasty.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| 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?
| junon wrote:
| 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.
| Aachen wrote:
| I think everyone understands it to mean that
| wolverine876 wrote:
| 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?
| NortySpock wrote:
| 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.
| gausswho wrote:
| Before there was the mining of bitcoins, there was BOINC. Where
| your spare computing cycles helped cure cancer, find aliens,
| solve mathematical proofs.
|
| And then self-interest trumped altruism.
| s0rce wrote:
| I've commented this previously but I think the major impact to
| these applications was that CPUs more effectively idle
| themselves and reduce the fan speeds. Previously there was no
| noticeable impact with the PC running 100% all the time. Now
| the fan will go crazy compared to sitting idle. Not to mention
| there are computers that basically can't run 100% without some
| sort of duty cycle to cool back down and they will thermally
| throttle.
| fbhabbed wrote:
| Here's a backstory at https://continuum-
| hypothesis.com/boinc_history.php
|
| It's quite interesting to see how it all began.
|
| The peak of this project is largely behind us, although I was a
| proud member about 10 years ago.
| underlogic wrote:
| 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"
| fbhabbed wrote:
| It depends on the project, of course.
|
| Speaking for Einstein@home, for example, all their research is
| public and you also get a mention in their paper if a result
| was in your workunit.
| huuhee3 wrote:
| Price doesn't matter if you were going to use that electricity
| for heating anyway. Mostly the project are run by universities
| funded by tax payers, and don't exist to make any profit. Ever
| heard of charity?
| beardog wrote:
| You can also recoup some of the cost by attaching your Boinc
| to Gridcoin: https://gridcoin.us/
| adastra22 wrote:
| Heat pumps would be more efficient than resistive heating in
| silicon circuits.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| But they don't find aliens or fold proteins at the same
| time.
| FerretFred wrote:
| Yeah!! My one worthwhile box consumes 300 watts, and I made the
| mistake of folding covid-19 proteins for Boinc in the summer of
| '19. It was like a sauna in my office and the bill was eye-
| watering. Never again...
| jonathrg wrote:
| Summer of '19 is impressively early to be working on COVID-19
| research.
| adastra22 wrote:
| It was bioweapons design research /s
| FerretFred wrote:
| Duh! Brain not working together with fingers... how about
| the summer of 20
| Nonoyesnoyes wrote:
| 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...
| ramon156 wrote:
| "because you are cheap" What a weird take.
| ang_cire wrote:
| Expecting a monetary benefit from a BOINC project is the
| weird take.
| underlogic wrote:
| 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 they laugh at you. You get a gold star if they find
| something with your "contribution". But they get a billion
| dollars for finding the next lucrative drug
| adastra22 wrote:
| This isn't pharmaceutical research.
| underlogic wrote:
| protein folding simulation is to find drug targets
| Rayston wrote:
| not all (or even most) of them are profit ventures, like at
| all. There are some along those lines.
|
| I do Asteroids at home, they need help figuring out the
| shape and size of asteroids. The data is published for
| public use.
| jarjar2_ wrote:
| Link
|
| https://asteroidsathome.net/boinc/
| Nonoyesnoyes wrote:
| 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 ...
| underlogic wrote:
| 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
| Nonoyesnoyes wrote:
| Strong statement without any source or explanation.
|
| I don't buy that.
| Angostura wrote:
| It's a simple any easy way to donate which you can start
| and stop and any time without handing over any financial
| details. You could, for example just decide to crank it up
| when your solar panels are generating an excess and the
| export rate is low.
| mycologos wrote:
| 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?
| Rayston wrote:
| ???
|
| For the majority of boinc projects its just citizen science,
| they results are published for free. No money is involved.
|
| I donate my computer time (and corresponding electricity costs)
| to projects I believe in or find interesting.
| agilob wrote:
| Dude above said "electric bill", compute on older hardware is
| expensive. Modern hardware will be considered expensive in a
| few years too.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| True when they discover aliens and sign exclusive mutual trade
| agreements you'll be kicking yourself for not getting a cut of
| that. But at least they'll be teleporting faster than light
| with alien tech laughing to the bank!
| tomComb wrote:
| 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.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 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.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| World Community Grid uses BOINC, and is back up and running after
| finding a new home.
|
| https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/
|
| I set it to run on a few cores of all my different machines. Keep
| it below 50% of the true core count, and the fan and heat
| increase is negligible, and science still gets done at a good
| rate. I've been a happy participant for years, and am glad
| they're still around, contributing to our mutual net benefit.
| stranded22 wrote:
| Nice - loved a bit of Boinc at one point.
|
| I have Vodafone DreamLab installed on my iPhone and set it each
| night to compute whilst charging. Nice to be able to utilise the
| phone for some good whilst I am asleep.
| Aachen wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DreamLab
|
| TIL. I wonder how they've solved the "don't kill my app"
| problem, to prevent the cpu getting clocked down to 200 MHz
| while the screen is off. And not being available to techies on
| f-droid or website download (needing to find a way to get it
| from Google Play servers) is a bit of a missed opportunity.
|
| Edit: checking it out, it apparently comes with facebook
| analytics and other goodies: https://reports.exodus-
| privacy.eu.org/en/reports/416699/ -- this is why I hate dealing
| with the crap you find on alt stores like this "play" thing.
| Wouldn't have that if it just came in the official f-droid
| store! Anyway, I like its mission and it's a long-running
| project, released back in 2015. Cool stuff. Wonder how much
| compute power they get out of it, the website nor Wikipedia
| disclose that
| gchokov wrote:
| Is there any success stories out of this program?
| Aachen wrote:
| Yes
| Rayston wrote:
| Anyone interested should also look into Gridcoin, you can get
| some crypto back in addition to doing some good science.
|
| https://gridcoin.us/
| monkeydust wrote:
| +1 probably closest thing to a useful crypto you can find.
| Rayston wrote:
| agreed, I am in general not a huge fan of Crypto.
| willquack wrote:
| For a non-crypto alternative, check out Distributive DCP [1].
| You deploy compute workloads which are executed in secure wasm
| sandboxes (even in your browser [2]). People computing get paid
| to compute other people's workloads.
|
| 1. https://distributive.network/ 2. https://dcp.work/
| fudged71 wrote:
| Is there something like this for LLMs? Can I donate an API key
| and set a usage limit?
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| The situation is a bit different today. Back when Bionic and
| Set@home were more common the CPUs used more or less the same
| power whether they were idle or in full use. Nowadays however
| running something like this will run up considerable extra power
| usage and is no longer "free".
| willquack wrote:
| 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
| Rayston wrote:
| Very cool. Link?
| willquack wrote:
| 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 <will@distributive.network> if you
| want to chat about anything
| westurner wrote:
| For at least some of the BOINC (ang GridCoin Proof-of-Research
| coin) projects, IIRC you need to already have virtualbox
| installed.
|
| Virtualbox supports KVM but not sure whether virtualbox+KVM is
| supported by the BOINC projects?
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