
The untapped potential of volunteer computing - dodders
https://www.inverse.com/article/6592-the-strongest-supercomputer-on-earth-still-needs-your-laptop-to-cure-cancer
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mrob
The article doesn't mention what I suspect is the biggest reason for the
decline in popularity - improved power management. When these projects were
new they really were using computing power that would otherwise have gone to
waste. Idle power consumption was very similar to power under load, so it made
sense to keep your CPU busy. But now idle power is much less wasteful, and
everybody participating in these projects pays for it in higher electricity
bills. This is unsurprisingly less popular than helping at no additional cost.

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faitswulff
Not to mention the move to portable electronics. Having SETI@home running may
make only a minor difference in performance on a desktop, but that's precious
battery life for a laptop user.

~~~
wolfgke
I mostly run my laptop on the power grid and many other people, too. So your
argument only makes sense for people that run their laptop mostly on battery

The much worse problem is that many laptops have non-decent cooling - so if
you really put them under hard workload for a longer time, you will at least
hear that by the loud annoying fan or the processor will reduce its clock
frequency making the laptop slower.

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sitkack
I am not sure if the current boinc clients do this but to gain more users they
could

* run only while connected to wall power

* run while battery is 80% charged or higher (don't compete with a 0% charged battery)

* don't spin the fan (meaning throttle back and don't make the user's machine sound like a jet engine)

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williamstein
I'm curious about the perceived (or not!) adverse effects of running cpu heavy
computations on a MacBook or phone for years? This article doesn't discuss the
downsides of running something like BOINC if there are any... But that may be
a real issue that shouldn't be ignored...?

~~~
justin2004
That's right. A MacBook user would want to know how this daemon would affect
the longevity of his or her device. My own guess is that heat cycling is more
detrimental than relatively constant (but below thresholds) usage.

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TheWoodsy
The article really should mention
[http://www.gridcoin.us/](http://www.gridcoin.us/) A Crypto currency awarded
for actual BOINC work units.

I was a big fan of Folding@home back in the day, but now that I have the
wonderful responsibility of the electricity bill, I've stopped all work. I
wonder if Gridcoin could become a suitable offset for those bills in the
future?

~~~
sophacles
The article does.

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TheWoodsy
Wow. I completely missed it.

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justin2004
>There may be a time when we think of computer power as money — Bitcoin is
pushing us that way — and we give back by donating a few calculations at a
time.

Actually, can't we think of a low/competitively priced resource as a donation?
Why can't contributors be compensated? Not thoroughly accounting for value
contributed to networks is part of the reason for decreasing employment
prospects. Users are taking risk (by spending their time creating value) and
uploading it without compensation.

~~~
wolfgke
It would already be a step into the right direction if institutes using BOINC
promise to release any research papers they do (not only the ones generated
using BOINC) completely (without exception) under some creative commons
license. If they already do, they should advertize this fact.

In other words: Volunteering computation time just to make
Elsevier/Springer/Wiley rich or volunteering computation time to an institute
which also supports projects that make Elsevier/Springer/Wiley rich is
something that I'm dubious about.

