Off topic but important. You can help the fight against CoronaVirus with the raw power of your rig

xWarbrain · March 2020

This is awesome I'm doing this when I get home. Then I can kill reds, blues and cancer at the same time! Magden OP.

stitchesofdooom · March 2020

furiouslog wrote: »

Just to clarify, this project covers protein folding simulations, one application of which is a set of simulations they are running on SARS in order to understand COVID-19 better and identify the potential for certain kinds of cures - it's not devoted to COVID-19 exclusively and it's actually unlikely (but not impossible) that they will contribute to curing COVID-19 anytime soon. Their primary focus is on diseases resultant from protein mis-folding, like cancer, Alzheimer's, and many others.

I'm pretty sure they are capitalizing on the COVID-19 media frenzy to draw attention to their project by applying their methods to the problem, and it's an area that needs to be explored, but they are not working towards a cure, per se. They are making simulated SARS data available to researchers who are investigating a very specific factor that might result in a cure.

It's good that they are doing their part, and their work is important, but if your primary concern is curing COVID-19, donating your GPU to this probably won't do a lot. But it might do a lot more for curing many other diseases - so don't let your cynicism override your desire to help, just make sure that you are informed and devoting your resources in a way that meets your priorities.

On a side note, if they are a registered charity, the additional power consumption costs you incur by running their models ought to be tax deductible AFAIK, but I don't think that they provide a reliable way to measure that in their software, and their tax ID is not on their website from what I can see.

I believe the site is prioritizing coronavirus research tasks so the mountains of data we generate for them will be useful for the global collaboration to fight the disease.

stitchesofdooom · March 2020

ZOS_RogerJ wrote: »

While not ZOS related, as most of you have kept the thread super constructive, for now we have only removed a few of the baiting/non-constructive posts.

Thank you.

Btw everyone, this is the best information on coronavirus I have found so far:

https://youtu.be/BtN-goy9VOY

theyancey · March 2020

Thanks for that. I used to help SETI. I'll get this started tonight. Particularly helpful as I am hitting 4 risk categories: age, male, type A blood, and high blood pressure. Together we can beat the Knahaten Flu, er, I mean Corona!

InaMoonlight · March 2020

Kadoin wrote: »

I pay for electricity, so no. Plus ESO lags enough!

You can just have it run on your computer when you aren't using it, you can even choose how much juice it sucks, and when

Can also choose between categories of diseases if there's a specific one you want to donate it to.

stitchesofdooom · March 2020

furiouslog wrote: »

I'm pretty sure they are capitalizing on the COVID-19 media frenzy to draw attention to their project by applying their methods to the problem, and it's an area that needs to be explored, but they are not working towards a cure, per se. They are making simulated SARS data available to researchers who are investigating a very specific factor that might result in a cure.

This is one of the WU's running on my GPU right now:

"Project 14328

Disease Type: covid

CORONAVIRUS PROJECT

Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease - potential drug target

These projects are part of Folding@home’s efforts to assist researchers around the world taking up the global fight against COVID-19. At the time of release, this is the latest news update: https://foldingathome.org/2020/03/10/covid19-update/

These projects are CPU projects to simulate the main protease of the COVID-19, a possible drug target. These supplement high-priority GPU projects of the main protease as well as the COVID-19 receptor binding domains. We hope to have preliminary drug screening simulations on CPUs released in the next week."

furiouslog · March 2020

You're not really contradicting anything I wrote.

VelimOrthic · March 2020

stitchesofdooom wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

Just to clarify, this project covers protein folding simulations, one application of which is a set of simulations they are running on SARS in order to understand COVID-19 better and identify the potential for certain kinds of cures - it's not devoted to COVID-19 exclusively and it's actually unlikely (but not impossible) that they will contribute to curing COVID-19 anytime soon. Their primary focus is on diseases resultant from protein mis-folding, like cancer, Alzheimer's, and many others.

I'm pretty sure they are capitalizing on the COVID-19 media frenzy to draw attention to their project by applying their methods to the problem, and it's an area that needs to be explored, but they are not working towards a cure, per se. They are making simulated SARS data available to researchers who are investigating a very specific factor that might result in a cure.

It's good that they are doing their part, and their work is important, but if your primary concern is curing COVID-19, donating your GPU to this probably won't do a lot. But it might do a lot more for curing many other diseases - so don't let your cynicism override your desire to help, just make sure that you are informed and devoting your resources in a way that meets your priorities.

On a side note, if they are a registered charity, the additional power consumption costs you incur by running their models ought to be tax deductible AFAIK, but I don't think that they provide a reliable way to measure that in their software, and their tax ID is not on their website from what I can see.

I believe the site is prioritizing coronavirus research tasks so the mountains of data we generate for them will be useful for the global collaboration to fight the disease.

Yes and it helps to understand that these databases like all science have the potential to be generally useful, especially at the most critical times. Even if protein mis-folding is what they usually investigate, you'd only need a basic molecular bio course to see the applications they're going for atm. Alpha helices, beta sheets, tertiary structures that pull on each atom in a seemingly infinite number of directions to get a final structure which indicates function. But they can be figured out if enough permutations are analyzed. This can only help in the development of a vaccine.

Lysette · March 2020

VelimOrthic wrote: »

stitchesofdooom wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

Just to clarify, this project covers protein folding simulations, one application of which is a set of simulations they are running on SARS in order to understand COVID-19 better and identify the potential for certain kinds of cures - it's not devoted to COVID-19 exclusively and it's actually unlikely (but not impossible) that they will contribute to curing COVID-19 anytime soon. Their primary focus is on diseases resultant from protein mis-folding, like cancer, Alzheimer's, and many others.

I'm pretty sure they are capitalizing on the COVID-19 media frenzy to draw attention to their project by applying their methods to the problem, and it's an area that needs to be explored, but they are not working towards a cure, per se. They are making simulated SARS data available to researchers who are investigating a very specific factor that might result in a cure.

It's good that they are doing their part, and their work is important, but if your primary concern is curing COVID-19, donating your GPU to this probably won't do a lot. But it might do a lot more for curing many other diseases - so don't let your cynicism override your desire to help, just make sure that you are informed and devoting your resources in a way that meets your priorities.

On a side note, if they are a registered charity, the additional power consumption costs you incur by running their models ought to be tax deductible AFAIK, but I don't think that they provide a reliable way to measure that in their software, and their tax ID is not on their website from what I can see.

I believe the site is prioritizing coronavirus research tasks so the mountains of data we generate for them will be useful for the global collaboration to fight the disease.

Yes and it helps to understand that these databases like all science have the potential to be generally useful, especially at the most critical times. Even if protein mis-folding is what they usually investigate, you'd only need a basic molecular bio course to see the applications they're going for atm. Alpha helices, beta sheets, tertiary structures that pull on each atom in a seemingly infinite number of directions to get a final structure which indicates function. But they can be figured out if enough permutations are analyzed. This can only help in the development of a vaccine.

Yeah and what makes these computations that extensive is that a protein isn't isolated but embedded in some other structure or fluid, which has chemical but as well physical impact on it as well - like water molecules around it - parts of the protein which are hydrophobic will turn away from water and create momentum by it, whilst those with hydrophilic properties will tend towards water molecules - on top of it the whole system is vibrating and you can imagine what an amount of computation is necessary to figure out all configurations in which a certain protein might end up - there are often several 3d structures for the same sequence of amino-acids. This is a very dynamic process which is simulated during those computations.

stitchesofdooom · April 2020

furiouslog wrote: »

You're not really contradicting anything I wrote.

Sorry, did you say something that needed to be answered? I've been busy.

stitchesofdooom · April 2020

A little over a week ago, f@h hit 470 petaflops of processing power, which is more power than the world's 7 most powerful supercomputers combined.

A few days ago they hit 1.5 exaflops which is now over triple. I wonder how many of the best supercomputers in the world we are beating the hell out of now?

Tigertron · April 2020

Kadoin wrote: »

I pay for electricity, so no. Plus ESO lags enough!

Fortunately selfish self centered people are a minority.

vamp_emily · April 2020

My initial thought was that Folding@home was using everyone's processing power to mine cryptocurrency.

This is what I read on .tomsguide.com

Fake Folding@home client doesn't help fight coronavirus at all

The long-running Folding@home project, which has used the CPU and GPU cycles of millions of volunteers' home and work computers to solve biomedical problems since 2000, recently took on another worthy cause: finding a cure for the coronavirus.

Sadly, the publicity surrounding this noble endeavor has attracted the worst kind of attention. Online criminals are using the Folding@home coronavirus campaign to dupe victims into installing information-stealing malware, according to researchers at security firm Proofpoint.

https://tomsguide.com/news/coronavirus-password-stealer

I did read NVidia and Oracle are helping giving away free licenses to top scientists. This allows processing to be completed in hours instead of days.

NVidia is also working with cloud and super computer centers to help.

Folding@home seems legit but you can't trust everyone with your computer processing. I think the bigger tech companies have the processing power they need.