from the doing-what-we-can-to-fight-disease dept.
Our SoylentNews' Folding@Home team shows little sign of slowing down. We've now passed 400th place and barring any surprises, we might pass #300 just before the year's end. UC Berkley (387 at time of writing) is one of the next big names on our overtake list, and by the time this story goes live, we may have already passed them.
In case you aren't familiar with folding@home, it's a distributed computing project that simulates protein folding in an attempt to better understand diseases such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's and thereby help to find a cure. To that end, SoylentNews' team has — as of a query at 2016-10-07 02:10:00 (UTC) — completed just shy of 21,000 work units!
If you'd like to contribute to our team by donating some spare CPU/GPU cycles, you can get started at Stanford's Folding at Home web site. There are clients available for Linux, Windows, and OSX. Once you have installed the software, enter the TeamID 230319 to join us.
Feel free to "/join #folding" on our IRC channel if you need any help, or just want to chat.
Again, thanks to all that have participated, especially our Top 10 folders:
- malloc_free
- cmn32480
- Runaway1956
- Booga1
- AnotherMindbomb
- NCommander
- EricAlbers_ericalbers_com
- NotSanguine
- Frojack
- wArlOrd
Related Links:
http://folding.stanford.edu
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=230319
Related Stories
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
(Score: 3, Interesting) by julian on Friday October 07 2016, @06:03AM
Alright, I'm going to convert my botn^H^H^H^H legally authorized network of computers to run f@h instead of SETI@home. That should be the equivalent of ~12 Intel i3 CPUs running for at least 20 hours a day, 365. It'll take me a couple weeks to get around to all of them.
Just me, alone, (I've never been part of a team) got to the top 5% of SETI@home contributors. I don't know how populated the f@h network is but this should help out a bit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @06:09AM
Insecure IoT 4 the cure!
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Friday October 07 2016, @10:27AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @01:51PM
raspis for servers
raspiss
raspists
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @03:25PM
hmm im in the same situation as you, but I am exceeding 99.9% (with a few trailing decimals) of present users.
I don't want to give up my score/ranking!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday October 07 2016, @04:58PM
Go ahead and switch. Unlike with SETI, you'll actually be doing something good which provides tangible and useful results.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @05:10PM
New SETI code:
with open("/dev/zero") as oracle:
while not int(oracle):
pass
else:
print("ALIENS FOUND!")
(Score: 2) by ls671 on Saturday October 08 2016, @07:07AM
Hehe, I remember running distributed.net (still on-line) back in 2000 which the goal was just showing how supposedly secure keys were.
Long live Soylent folding team!
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: -1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @06:11AM
SUck my cock rockect, soystains! My cum is full of proteens! FOr u to fold!!! niggers
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @08:42AM
Just wondering,
if the folding being done on my hardware helps get to a cure. Will that be a proprietary cure some big farma is then going to make lot's of money from, or some research institue that'll opensource it or ...
While I would like to be benevolent and go all in, in reality, this probably means I'm helping some company skim some $$ of their research bill without them returning on that benevolence part.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by art guerrilla on Friday October 07 2016, @10:49AM
a conundrum indeed...
exactly why i had compunctions about my organ donor indication on my driver's license: not like my organs go to the most needy and deserving who couldn't otherwise afford a new cornea/kidney/penis (like new condition!)/whatever... nope, organ harvesters get a big cut, and -more than likely- some rich puke has gamed the organ donation system such that greedy mcgreedtard gets to jump the line ahead of humble shoeshine boy...
is *everything* gamed to benefit the 1% ? ? ?
(you know the answer: yes)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @05:27PM
Wow! That's the best apples and oranges argument I think I've ever seen. You get the inaugural Fruity - the highly respected and just created award for taking someone's legitimate question that others are curious about... and shitting all over it with a nonsense comparison! We'll even award the T.P. cluster to your Fruity for that one. Now, which orifice would you like me to pin it to?
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Friday October 07 2016, @10:57AM
Most (all?) of F@H's folding is done by academia and research. The about us has a list of who's involved and where they're getting research done by: http://folding.stanford.edu/home/about-us/ [stanford.edu]
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by Booga1 on Friday October 07 2016, @11:18AM
Indeed, that is why I throw my computing resources behind Folding@Home. Solving serious diseases that affect everyone would be a huge boon. Bacteria and viruses are troublesome, but stuff like Alzheimers can strike anywhere. Finding a way to stop that would be huge.
Degradation of the body is one thing, but losing your mind is a fate I wouldn't want to wish on my enemies.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 07 2016, @12:40PM
Congrats, Soylentils.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday October 07 2016, @12:42PM
(And in order to pretend to be vaguely on topic, in the 300-391 band, there seem to be 24 "dead" groups.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday October 07 2016, @01:35PM
I got immense enjoyment out of watching us pass Microsoft.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday October 07 2016, @10:10PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 07 2016, @01:51PM
and we ain't takin no names!
Does anyone know who malloc_free is? I'd kinda like to know what he's running the software on. I suspect that he has one of those newfangled 1080 GPU's. The pattern of his submissions makes me believe he's running just one very fast machine. But, you can't say anything for certain, unless and until he tells us.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by Sir Finkus on Friday October 07 2016, @11:43PM
He's come into #folding a few times, I forgot what hardware he's throwing at it and we don't have logging on the channel.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 1) by malloc_free on Sunday October 09 2016, @09:32PM
GTX 1070 overclocked to 2100MHz GPU and 4050Mhz Ram. Watercooled. I don't even bother with the CPU, which only pulls ~20,000pts per day. The GPU does ~700,000pts and I can run f@h. With just the GPU, I can still do stuff I care about (coding) and other (re: not games) while my machine works for the greater good. With older games (Diablo III for example) I can *almost* get away with running f@h at the same time.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 10 2016, @02:51AM
Sweet, man. That confirms what I thought, except I thought it was the 1080. The 10 series is that much faster than the 9 series, which CMN is running. And, of course, I'm running a 780 TI with water cooling. Your stats, my stats, and CMN's stats are pretty much a direct comparison of three generations of GTX video cards. If anyone should ask us what the difference is between the cards, we can point at our numbers for F@H.
As for CPU's - my server blower has gone out, and it was getting warm. I shut down the CPU client, running 12 cores on 2 CPU's. You don't see much of a difference in my daily average. A little over 20,000 points, sometimes as high as 25,000. The GPU is the workhorse here.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 1) by malloc_free on Tuesday October 11 2016, @04:25AM
Actually I would love to see some AMD vs Nvidia figures. My understanding is that Nvidia devices use Cuda and AMD use OpenCL. I have been told (by someone far more knowledgeable than I) that Cuda is a lot closer to the metal than OpenCL, and *should* yield better performance.
By the way, sounds like a pretty nice server you have there. I am very jealous.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Friday October 07 2016, @03:21PM
In the Northern Hemisphere the temperature is dropping, so running your computer for a few extra cycles does cost money, but it also contributes to heating your home. Or, more importantly you do not need to cool your home actively - in the summer I don't want to pay for electrons entering my home then for more electrons to remove all the heat from the first electrons.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Friday October 07 2016, @06:49PM
The recent moving I've been doing has been hard on my PC lab. I've been running on my laptop 24/7 but it lacks a GPU and that makes it really slow points wise, but I am glad to contribute in the long term and it is good to see more and more people join in. We were a fairly static bunch of folks for a while.
Go Team Soylent...
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by Kymation on Friday October 07 2016, @07:54PM
What I see at the SoylentNews.org team page [stanford.edu] is different from what is quoted in TFA. Is there a different list I'm not aware of?
Whichever is correct, my thanks to everyone who is contributing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Sir Finkus on Tuesday October 11 2016, @01:41AM
I could have sworn I replied to this.
The extreme overclocking page shows the top 10 producers in the last 24 hours, while the stanford site shows the people with the top 10 points. I usually use the stanford site for stats, but I guess I forgot this time.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]