folding@home for COVID 19

[Adolf Hamster]

well i've had an interesting day, overnight announcement that i'm going to be working from home for the forseeable future and i think it's made this whole business a bit more real to me.

i'm not wanting to make any kind of political thread/statement about this whole business, one of the things i like about this forum is it seems to be mostly free from the endless political threads that you see elsewhere on the internet.

but i figured i'd put it out there see if it gets any bites, one of the other forums i'm on mentioned that Folding@home is running research to try and fight this covid thing and it feels like a small but tangible thing to do to make a contribution.

the tl:dr for those who haven't heard of it is basically it's an app that runs in the background on your pc and adds some cpu horsepower to the distributed network they've got setup. the idea being a thousand home pc's can make for a pretty potent supercomputer for research.

so is anyone else doing this on here? after tonight i figured i'd chuck my rig's power to the cause, never know it might help out.

edit: just realise i done derped, meant to put this in the off topic discussion......

 

[EDcase]

I didn't know about this. I'm in...

 

[Tackle]

Being a cynical old git, that & not having heard if it elsewhere, how genuine is this ?

Worst case, your letting scanners in to your virtual vault, & all the treasures within, or maybe a cynical attempt by legitimate business to harness your I.T  power, & keep you in their reach via malware, for their own future benefits ?.

Obviously not implying you'd be naive enough to fall for fake crap, just that these desperate times are seen as an opportunity by some ?

 

[Adolf Hamster]

Its pretty legit, being run by stanford university. They've been around a long time (there was even an FAH app for the ps3 back in the day) but kinda fell out of the limelight until this whole covid thing rocked up.

Nowt wrong with a bit of healthy cynicism though.

 

[Tackle]

Its pretty legit, being run by stanford university. They've been around a long time (there was even an FAH app for the ps3 back in the day) but kinda fell out of the limelight until this whole covid thing rocked up.

Nowt wrong with a bit of healthy cynicism though.

You mentioned PS3, don't suppose they could put all that pc brainpower together together and figure out why my PS4 keeps crashing out if the latest cod/mw, it's driving me crazy & the makers etc aren't addressing it ?

(Only kidding, let's sort out the new apocalypse first)

 

[EDcase]

When in doubt about any information or recommended program etc. check internet for reference.

Regarding the folding@home, there's plenty of info and references to prove its legit.

 

[Tackle]

Yeah I based my first comment on the fact I hadn't heard of "them", but then I haven't gone looking for them either.

Out of interest, have they used this principle previously to solve any particular world issues etc ?

 

[Nunfa1]

Yeah I based my first comment on the fact I hadn't heard of "them", but then I haven't gone looking for them either.

Out of interest, have they used this principle previously to solve any particular world issues etc ?

I believe it started out a few years ago to help NASA map the stars and then linked in with SETI.

 

[Tommikka]

I believe it started out a few years ago to help NASA map the stars and then linked in with SETI.

A few years is an understatement 

SETI kicked off at the end of the 90s, and was the best publicised distributed network running research, but there were other projects running across public machines from the mid 90s

SETI gained from the expansion of private computers and evolved from the obsession with screensavers - part of the publicity was to use spare procession to number crunch research instead of flying toasters and witty 3D text quotes

Folding has been running since 2000 and is based on medical research into proteins, particularly in cancer and is includes Covid 19 research 
 

https://foldingathome.org/2020/03/15/coronavirus-what-were-doing-and-how-you-can-help-in-simple-terms/

 

[Rogerborg]

just realise i done derped, meant to put this in the off topic discussion.

I figured you were feverish...

how genuine is this

Legit, there are quite a few crowd-computing projects out there.  I started with SETI@home back in the day - altruism was all the rage until bitcoin came along and you could get paid to crunch numbers.  Now there's an ideological concern that it's not really "spare" CPU/GPU cycles, since it's all consuming power.