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posted by martyb on Monday March 16 2020, @05:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the know-when-to-hold-'em-know-when-to-fold-'em dept.

Don't worry; they'll make more.

[Editor's preface: SoylentNews has a Folding@Home team (#230319) As of this writing, SoylentNews.org is ranked at number 210 in the entire world! My current Core 2 Duo laptop would do little to support the effort compute-wise, so I assist as best I can by cheerleading, communicating our team's progress, and similar activities. We have a channel on our IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server "#folding" where there is sporadic discussion about progress. Check out the list of previous stories at the bottom of this story... to get involved, just mention it in the comments and come join our team!

If you are wondering what in the world F@H is, Wikipedia has a nice summary of Folding@Home . And, of course, there is F@H's "About" page, too. --martyb]

Intro:
If you are a Folding@Home (F@H) contributor, you may have noticed that you aren't getting your normal allotment of work units. It appears to have started some time Friday, March 13. The root cause? Schools shutting down around the United States.

Looking for Work [Units]:
Kids are scared (some more, some less) of the Coronavirus, they read something somewhere about efforts such as F@H that are working on curing various diseases. Those kid's gaming rigs are exactly what F@H and other similar research groups need. And, some of these kids have machines that most of us would envy! A well-built gaming machine is simply awesome!

https://foldingforum.org/viewforum.php?f=61

That forum is filled with "newbs" trying to figure out how to set up F@H on their machines, and then complaining that they can't get a work unit.

This post, specifically, explains that the huge influx of volunteers has depleted the available work units. https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=32424 Apparently, on Friday, the staff filled the WU servers' caches with the normal weekend's amount of WU's and they were gone by early Saturday morning. Someone volunteered to work on Saturday to refill the caches, which were promptly emptied out again.

One of the posts on the F@H forum suggests that F@H has about 4 times the number of folders that it had a week ago.

What to do?
If you find yourself unable to download a WU, take a look at the log. You will probably find complaints,
"No WUs available for this configuration" and/or "Port 8080 unreachable, trying port 80" and/or "no http service available".

Those and more are all related to the fact that the servers are being hammered by half a zillion school kids who are looking for something useful to do with their time, and their computers.

Be patient, and just let your client work through it. It will eventually download a work unit, crunch it, and return it.

Official Statement:
Straight from the F@H project: Coronavirus – What we're doing and how you can help in simple terms – Folding@home

Previously (Newest at the top):
Happy Holidays!
SoylentNews' Anniversary, Site Statistics, and What to do about Journal Spam
Systems Status -- Certs, Developers, and Community, Oh My!
Nearly End-Of-The-Year Summary
SoylentNews Site Update Story Followup -- WOW!
SoylentNews Update 17.05; Backend Changes; Folding@Home News; Accounts Milestone; Funding Shortfall
Three Years In - What Has Happened and How we Got Here
SoylentNews Folders Rocket Past 400
SoylentNews' Folding@Home Team is Now in the Top 500 in the World
Folding@Home - Team SoylentNews About to Reach a Milestone!
Soylent News has a Top 1000 Folding@Home Team!
Official Soylent News Folding@Home Team


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:32AM

    by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:32AM (#972565)

    You're a master of the obvious! Wow! Yes, of course they do, it's part of the US Govt. I'm a US citizen. That's how it works if you want to vote in US elections.

    What I do NOT want is some random website having that info, to do whatever they feel like doing with it. And I think we've all read enough about how "private" our data and identities are.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2