We are devs right?
We have cpus and gpus lying around right?
We are still alive... right? 🤔

How about we do our part and utilise our PCs for helping with COVID-19 research.

I've stumbled across this little tool that not only keeps me warm at night but helps researchers with several diseases.

https://foldingathome.org/iamoneina...

It's like a a bitcoin miner but for research purposes, no it's not a dodgy bitcoin miner.

Oh and feel free to keep yourself anonymous as there are stats that will identify your username - when they work.

There are installers for windows, Mac, and linux distros so everyone can get involved.

I've been putting my GTX 1080 to a few hours of work every day for the past few days - hopefully it helps.

I'm doing folding at home for quite some time now, and it seems that with this outbreak, the WU servers are overloaded.

Also yes, my PC currently serves as a heater in my room.

@kescherRant I'm not very familiar with the platform, but is that the reason that I can't start folding right away but sometimes have to wait for up to 10-20 minutes after I click "Fold"?

@kamen my gtx1060 is having a field day at the moment.

@kescherRant haha nice, I should have known I couldn't have been the only one around here.

@kamen I've found the cpu WU's to be ridiculous to connect, but gpu based ones have been fine.

I thought I was doing something wrong originally when it wouldn't connect for ages.

sweet! Now i know what my officelappy will be doing overnight (and during the weekends) at the office [once we're back to offices ofc]!

Oh I wish I could.

Aaaaand I just heard coil whine under full load. Bummer.

Bold of you to assume I'm still alive

@molaram

There's a difference between mapping a genome and understanding protein morphology though. Genetics is like reading an SVG file as text, it's pretty interesting and will give up some clues, but it's damn hard to imagine the end result without rendering it.

The atoms and molecular substructures in proteins behave like a bunch of magnets: They attract and repel each other. Most proteins can "fold" together in multiple ways, some more stable than others. Due to the way probability works, the stable folding patterns will be the forms you'll see most often "in the wild".

Once you understand which proteins are formed and which shape they take, you can start to understand the strengths and weaknesses, because you know how it interacts with other cells.

sounds interesting. i will try to convince my employer to contribute :)

I used to run this on my PS3. Still would if I had my PS3 hooked up, guess I should look into the PC version (or just dig it out of the closet)

If only that wouldn't mean spending all of my disposable income on electricity.. *sigh*

@saucyatom Yeah, I guess I have to stop doing that in my own apartment as well. Well, that is unless the electricity costs are ok.

@molaram this isn't for genome 🧬 mapping.

As @bittersweet said, this is for protein folding which leads to treatments / vaccines in the long run.

https://foldingathome.org/2020/03/...

Quite some communities found that tool lately. Been folding for some hours too.
Feels nice, contributing from home.

I heard it stopped accepting contributions due to an overload. Seems like it's no longer the case :s.

I do have that old laptop of mine that I don't really use for anything anymore...

@saucyatom You'd hardly affect your electricity bill unless you have a mining rig with tens of GPUs. A single top of the line GPU consumes like 250-300 W tops (a mid range GPU is about half of that), which is less than a small heater does.

@xexelias An old laptop running for the whole night and day might actually be less productive than a modern computer with a good GPU running for 2-3 hours per day. I think you could verify that by the forecasted points per day in the bottom left corner of the FAHControl app.

@kamen still more productive than nothing at all

@kamen Alright, at 250W and 0.30€/kWh I could run it for 0.075 €/h (or about 13h per Euro spent). Acceptable for a few hours per day, but in 24/7 operation that would be 54€/month.

I did this for an hour while going thru their site but based on their achievements... They haven't accomplished much?

@billgates

If you read through the examples of application in research (wiki below), they have been useful in many fields but the research is more in regards to helping find suitable drugs rather then cure.

they are not "the solution" by them selves but a part of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

@C0D4 I was looking at this page on desktop and just noted the latest was 2015.... So ended up wondering what they have been doing for 5 years.

Site also looked really old last week... Maybe they revamped after the PR...

@Haxk20, you were a bit slow bud 😉

If you don't want to install anything, but have Docker already on your powerful machine(s):

https://github.com/johnktims/...

Just run the following to donate full CPU power anonymously to FAH (more options on the GitHub repo):

@highlight

docker run --rm -it -p7396:7396 johnktims/folding-at-home:latest

Putting a 16+ core server to 100 percent CPU utilization for this as we speak, awesome!