Folding Forum

My PC is on 24/7, I have installed folding at home and it's idle for most of the time due to "NO WU".

I feel bored. I am ready to donate but my "donation" is not being used.

Dear Researchers, this is a unique oppty for you to give it all to the crowd. I have no clue how hard it is to give out work units, but please do your best.

Both CPU and GPU.

Keep the crowd entertained, thank them, entertain the results (say ok, we checked over 9000 combinations neither worked but we know that those 9000 DO NOT WORK so we check another 1 000 000 and hope for the best!111), explain, make this a bit more than "scientific project only the smart folks understand".

I can't even imagine what computing power you can have if you make this right and entertaining. There is probably at least 500M computers in the world you can utilize, if not more.

Make a phone app. There's like what at least 2B iphones/androids that are on quarantine now?

Crowd is here. SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY!

Crowd is fast to come, but is as fast to go.

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=32743

FAH is a bit different than some other *@home distributed computing project. Every single WU is unique and we try to make sure it's completed once and only once. Many other sites are content to assign "busy work" so you have something to do, even if it's a duplicate of an assignment that was complete by somebody else.

bruce wrote:viewtopic.php?f=24&t=32743

FAH is a bit different than some other *@home distributed computing project. Every single WU is unique and we try to make sure it's completed once and only once. Many other sites are content to assign "busy work" so you have something to do, even if it's a duplicate of an assignment that was complete by somebody else.

This doesn't mean that project founders/administrators/researchers can miss this opportunity. This can be once in a lifetime. We (donors) do our part, please do yours, otherwise people will leave.

Me personally, I will stay, but it makes no sense for me to keep my PC on 24/7 if it has nothing to do.

As I hang out here I understand snippets of what I hear. But none of this is official.
Right now (unlike Saturday) the WUs are out there.
The researchers have them ready to go.
As you know, the volunteers are ready for their computers to fold.
But the servers are seeing 8 times the load they did last Thursday. These servers need to upgraded/replaced. And new,faster server tend to be expensive, and the procurement process tends to be slow. Some (wonderful) volunteers are offering their company's servers. But setting up a new site securely is not an overnight affair either.

I have every faith that all paths are being pursued as rapidly as possible. But i am not holding my breath for Wednesday. (I have 7 CPU slots idle and 2 GPU slots idle, I feel your pain)

If you need help with anything tech-related - don't be shy to reach out to people.

Do press coverage, ask and get help!

It's as prime time for this project as it can be.

You need to fix your press and community relations asap.

eosunknown wrote:You need to fix your press and community relations asap.

You may have noticed that F@H is run by Biochemists, their press and community relations skills are poor, or they would have majored in Marketing. There is a lot more money in Marketing,

JimboPalmer wrote:

eosunknown wrote:You need to fix your press and community relations asap.

You may have noticed that F@H is run by Biochemists, their press and community relations skills are poor, or they would have majored in Marketing.

ASK FOR HELP!

You probably have no idea how many people are here. I can help, I am from marketing related industry, I'm not even English native speaker btw.

Ask, get your head out of your a** and ACT!

Heck, if you need I can help you to write the cry for help to post somewhere (reddit, other sources).

I want no credit, I just urge you to do something and seize the opportunity guys.

Make press, continue to make it, be more transparent, share results and involve more bored people around the world, make them feel more important during quarantine.

This is a volunteer-driven forum and project. There has been overwhelming demand for workunits and the research groups are scrambling to get more servers online to keep up with demand. That has been the #1 priority. Until that happens, they won't have capacity for more users. Once there's enough workunits in the queue, then the people running the blog and social media can reach out for more users and know that the servers can keep up. Until then, just keep the software online and it should pick up more work soon once there's more projects available, which again, they are scrambling to keep up. The growth has been completely unprecedented and due to recent events and tweets by Nvidia and Intel about this project. That's driving so many newcomers to Folding@home and everyone is eager to help out as we fight against this virus.

So, while I agree with the fear of the "crowd" getting bored and moving on, there's also a "cost" in onboarding any person to a team (even if it's volunteering or pro-bono work); i.e. it's not clear that anyone would be able to effectively work as any form of PR/community manager before the crowd is already gone.

That said, I have a friend that has a specific interest in science communication, holds a phd in neuroscience and has managed public science events with volunteers and dabbled in the marketing side. If there's interest from F@H I'll connect you (quite sure there's a decent chance she'd be interested in helping out).

alxbelu wrote:That said, I have a friend that has a specific interest in science communication, holds a phd in neuroscience and has managed public science events with volunteers and dabbled in the marketing side. If there's interest from F@H I'll connect you (quite sure there's a decent chance she'd be interested in helping out).

I can't speak for F@h or anyone officially here, but personally, one thing that needs to be done is updating the Folding@home article on Wikipedia. A couple of us worked it up to Featured Article status, but there hasn't been a serious push recently to review recent papers and recent projects and it got tagged as needing to be updated. I'd like to summarize what F@h has been doing over the past several years so that we can remove that tag at the top. I can help out with this now that I'm stuck inside all day, but my background is not in neuroscience so much of the technical information is foreign to me. If she wants to help out, we could work on it together. Just an idea.

Delegate, make docs available to create work units, not just for Covid-19 but for other projects.

Most importantly - keep engagement high, explain results, even if they are little.

I'm just fine with the F@H team not rushing themselves into chaos. They have my email address and can simply send a email out when volunteers are needed. I don't see the need for a panic moment or the sense of taking a political opportunity while the irons are hot so to speak. The number of computers in the world only keeps increasing. In fact I have three times as many computers in my house as I have people.

Be chill, the work will come when it is ready.

You know this attitude just makes me, as a newcomer, and many others I believe to just think "f* it" and never come back.

There's no time for being a snob.

Realize that you got a lot of hot heads in the game that are curious and it's your job to keep them engaged.

USE IT!

There are people here who are in it for the long haul (just look at the join dates), I've long known about folding but like many others realized that it was time to step up. Now that I'm here I'll be around for the rest of my life. Again, they have my email address. When they need to they can reach me and others like me.

This is a long-haul volunteer project. The university and research groups are doing everything they can to get more workunits in the queue and keep up with this unprecedented demand. The progress on COVID-19 is on the blog and is being distributed through social media by Intel and Nvidia, which led to a massive number of newcomers. The results and progress will be open and publicized, as they always have been over the past 10 years.