Compute for Science
boinc.berkeley.edu
BOINC is an open-source software platform for computing using volunteered resources

Berkeley has this really cool program called BOINC that you can download and donate your computer’s resources to processing scientific data. There are a bunch of projects to pick, from working on climate change, to cancer, to the Large Hadron Collider.

The good folks at linuxserver.io even have a ready to go Docker container for easy setup: https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/boinc

Another possibility is running the Archive Team’s Warrior, which downloads data from at risk web sites and uploads them to the Internet Archive: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/ArchiveTeam_Warrior

Does anyone else have examples of projects like this? My dream is for the Fediverse to have this sort of feature eventually.

  • rah@feddit.ukEnglish
    381·
    1 year ago

    What do you mean by “spare”? Modern CPUs scale their electricity usage according to utilisation.

    • eros@lemmy.worldEnglish
      234·
      1 year ago

      One would assume they mean sitting around, doing nothing. Some would rather use some electricity to support a good cause than have the computing power sit there idle.

      • rah@feddit.ukEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        would rather use some electricity to support a good cause than have the computing power sit there idle.

        That’s not “spare” though. That’s my point.

        • eros@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          1 year ago

          I mean yeah, but no. It is spare capacity, so it’s spare in one way.

          I have hundreds of gigaflops of computing power sitting idle 80% of the time, I just don’t think the taxpayers would appreciate the power bill if I put it all to use like that. But at home I can spare a few cycles on my solar power sipping Proxmox cluster.

          • rah@feddit.ukEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            I have a spare room in my house sat idle 80% of the time. I could easily install a few racks of servers in there and have some gigaflops of computing power to contribute.

            But actually, being “idle” isn’t the same thing as “spare” because it would cost a lot of money to install racks of servers, just as it costs money to run computations on an otherwise idle computer.

            So I mean no, but no. It’s only spare capacity in a stupid, convoluted way that’s disconnected from common sense and common usage of the word.

            But you managed to brag about having hundreds of gigaflops of taxpayer-funded computing at your fingertips so good for you, you go for that validation from strangers on the Internet.

            • eros@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              Idle computing capacity that installed, online, but is not being used all the time is exactly what I thought the OP was talking about and calling spare. They said computing power to spare, not space or equipment. I don’t understand your argument about installing equipment, that to me isn’t what OP was talking about. 🤷‍♀️ Kinda like the spare capacity that CompuServe had from their time sharing service that they used to bring their online service to the masses at night.

              Sorry you didn’t appreciate my reply. I was trying to explain my point with real examples from my experience. I don’t need your validation. I kinda regret trying to make you see both sides now. But whatever, you do you.