Ash HN: How can I make my idle CPU time useful to others? | Hacker News Reader

Ash HN: How can I make my idle CPU time useful to others?

34 pointsputtycat61 comments

Knowing that my computing resources just sit there unused bothers me.

It would be relaxing to know that my idle CPU/bandwidth helps others.

Previous/older solutions:

- SETI (discontinued, [1])

- Leave BitTorrent open (risky)

Are there any current distributed SETI-like projects that I can trust?

[1] https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

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If you have a modern processor, you don't really have idle CPU cycles. This isn't like the heady days of SETI@Home when your processor idled without really reducing its power usage all that much. Modern processors can have most of their silicon go dark, especially in the deeper C-states.

The excess energy you would use is probably better spent elsewhere.

Let your CPU go into a deeper C-state, thereby reducing your energy footprint. This helps you and everyone else.

By letting your CPU idle you save electricity, improve air quality, and contribute less to carbon emissions.

You're looking at < 100 watts of savings in average consumer cases though; that's the equivalent or 1 incandescent light on at home. This won't meaningfully increase air quality or reduce emissions.

This is like the Eco mode for iphone charging; or my oven that turns off the time display for power save; these are low watt devices that make the consumer feel as if they are doing something.

A 100 W continuous load would represent almost 15% of my electricity usage. An average US household uses ~1215 W averaged across a year[0], so 100 W is ~8%, which I'd say is still pretty significant. A more power hungry CPU like a Ryzen 9 7950X (170 W TDP) would be almost a quarter of my electricity consumption at full power (and if you use more energy for AC than heating, then it'll add additional load to keep your home at the temperature you want).

[0] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3 (10,632 kWh / year ~= 1215 W average)

Oh wow. A bit unrelated but 10 MWh is a lot for me. Even the mentioned 6 MWh for Hawaii.

Here in Germany the average (single household) is at around 1.5 MWh.

My first instinct would be "of course, US households almost all seem to have AC installed" as opposed to Europeans. But then again, we're cooking with electricity (at least the majority) instead of gas.

Is there a good resource for a utility breakdown? I would be interested to see where those high numbers come from.

> This won't meaningfully increase air quality or reduce emissions.

And using this argument inversely, those 100 watts also cannot meaningfully help others, which is what the OP wants to do.

So if you have two options - meaninglessly donate 100 watts or meaninglessly save 100 watts, what’s better?

If someone were in need of significant amounts processing power (which is what the OP is hinting at), obtaining it from idle consumer PCs is an incredibly inefficient method of using that power. Think on the lines of CPU mining - a totally useless waste of energy. Whatever this hypothetical person is trying to do, it would be much more efficiently achieved via specialised hardware, and the OP would be better off supporting that than donating their processing power.

On the scale of phones and ovens sold, this makes a huge difference.

Look at the ATX12V standard coming soon for desktop PCs - just a couple percent increased efficiency at idle will save tons and tons of power when applied across entire office buildings, for example.

If there is some distributed processing project that really seems valuable to you, go for it. But if you feel you need to keep your CPU busy just to keep it busy, think again.

If you have any 100w incandescent bulbs running 24x7 please immediately go replace them with LED (for the world and for your energy bill).

60*2000000000 = big number saved.

You can pick a program that you want to contribute at BOINC[1], which lets you help cutting-edge science research using your computer. The BOINC app, running on your computer, downloads scientific computing jobs and runs them invisibly in the background. It's easy and safe.

If you want to contribute to people working on climate, then ClimatePrediction is a good option (they use BOINC) - https://www.climateprediction.net

1. https://boinc.berkeley.edu

Remember that this is probably only net-positive if you use the heat generated for something useful.

Eg: Using electricity to run a computer that generates heat is more beneficial than generating heat directly from that electricity.

But in eg the summer when you have no use of that heat you have to weigh the calculation output versus the energy input and only when that calculation is positive you can justify running it. (And if you plan to cool it down with an AC then the equation will for sure not pay off)

> electricity to run a computer that generates heat is more beneficial than generating heat directly from that electricity

While remembering electricity to run a heat pump is (usually) more efficient than using that energy to generate heat.

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php

Has a unified management experience with the ability to subscribe to various projects, and set priorities/schedules for work units.

I do folding@home. It simulates protein folding, which is one of the fundamental building blocks of all biology.

https://foldingathome.org/

CTO of Edge here.

You could contribute it to our green network, and get paid for your idle time.

https://edge.network/

https://wiki.edge.network/contributing-to-the-network/settin...

"x64/arm64 devices"? "CPU: 2x quad-core+ @ 2.80GHz+"?

Was this written by AI, perhaps? x64 means Alpha (I know - EVERYONE does it - that doesn't make it correct) and absolutely nobody has dual processor quad core after the 2008 Mac Pro.

> (I know - EVERYONE does it - that doesn't make it correct)

Maybe it does.

Or maybe it doesn't. Replace "x" in x64 and show me how that ends up somehow indicating x86. x64 refers to Alpha 21064, 21164, 21264, 21364, so the "x" in x64 could refer to any of these.

It's like when people call Trojans viruses. Sure, it's common usage, but you just look stupid if you're someone who should know better. In technical contexts, the distinction matters.

I dunno man. I think this is just kind of a bias you have towards those processors being prevalent. It’s the first time I’ve heard of them.

x64 is generic enough to mean anything, and from popularity I have only seen it to mean x86_64.

I wasn’t nearly alive when any of those Alpha processors came out, so I am sure I am biased towards the more modern definition.

Business idea free for the taking:

Build home or industrial heating furnaces out of slightly out of date computer hardware. Give them away for next to nothing and make the money back by renting the cpu time out.

Electrical home heating is such a waste of energy when you think about it.

Electrical resistance heating is considered one of the most wasteful and least efficient forms of heating.

Heat pumps are four times as efficient and that’s why they’re used…

Isn't this just less efficient electrical heating? Or am I missing something.

If you want to actually make a difference, offer shell accounts to people you can have a personal* relationship with, e.g. kids for whom the nearest thing to a general purpose computing device they have at their disposal is a Chromebook and who don't otherwise have the resources to pay for hardware (or a VPS account) of their own.

* should help the "even if you find a way to, please don't hack me" requests go further

Don't. Let it go into a deeper C-State/Sleep/Hibernate, whatever. Turn off the computer. Don't burn the energy in the first place.

You could look into running a Tor bridge (not a normal relay). It generally uses little CPU so there's little concern about carbon emissions. You can also limit the amount of bandwidth the bridge uses.

https://support.torproject.org/censorship/censorship-7/

Run a snowflake-proxy instance to help censored users access the Tor network (To be clear: no traffic exits from your IP, you're just relaying that traffic to a bridge that then connects to the Tor network): https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/snowflake/stand...

For more information on Snowflake check: https://snowflake.torproject.org/

> Knowing that my computing resources just sit there unused bothers me.

Why? Does it bother you also that your car isn't driving when parked? Nothing bad about an idling CPU. Less power consumed, less CO2 produced.

>Does it bother you also that your car isn't driving when parked?

Yes, absolutely. I hate that my car sits all night, unused. then it sits in a work parking lot all day, again unused. I hate that 90% of the time, my car is just a waste of space, costing me money while depreciating right in front of my eyes, and that is if it don't have some sort of expensive problem that needs to be fixed.

My take is that it's not about creating new workloads, but about letting the natural increase in other people's workloads run on existing processors instead of driving demand to create new processors. The same logic would apply to cars.

The problem is, those workloads should be performed in a data center, not in a distributed residential fashion, for power efficiency that would likely be green enough to overshadow the extra manufacturing. The same logic would apply to cars: manufacture trains instead.

This is a major problem, actually. Cars sit parked more often than they drive, usually. Parking a car requires kind of a lot of space, like a parking lot or a garage. Car users also expect to have a parking space at their destination, which is another parking space. Added up, the land devoted to parking is a lot. That land isn't serving any other purpose either, it can't even be nature (no plants can grown and rainwater can't permeate into the soil). That land also costs money, so that makes housing and commercial rent more expensive.

If we shifted our transportation styles to be less reliant on car ownership (public transit, bicycles, walking, or even car rental/rideshares), that land could be put to much better use, such as building housing, parks, or wildlife preservation areas.

More discussion on this happening right now over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36758355

Another reason not to own a car...

I think this is one of the main benefits of the cloud. Chips are expensive and chips at cloud providers will achieve the highest utilisation rates.

So if you want to use resources in the best possible way and have a stable and quick internet connection, then switch to the smallest CPU that can run your system and use a cloud instance for heavy compute tasks. If you are able to scale compute up and down quickly and assume that chips continue advancing (e.g., miniaturisation and advanced packaging), then it might be even cheaper than owning a chip.

If you're doing anything AI related, this might interest you.

https://aihorde.net/

> [1] https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

That link says " We encourage you to keep crunching for science." with a link to https://scienceunited.org/

> Knowing that my computing resources just sit there unused bothers me.

If you use them it will consume more energy.

Now if you are using your computer for resistive heating, fine -- although I'd encourage you to use a heatpump instead as it will be more efficent.

If you are somewhere where you are

1) Fully renewable

2) Can't export energy

Then fine, go nuts. How are things in Paraguay/Iceland/Norway?

As a Swede: Norway can for sure export their electricity and it’s quite useful to us

As a Finn: Then we import it from Sweden and export it to Estonia

Host a Fishnet analysis server for Lichess.[0]

It’ll run Stockfish analyses for Lichess.org users who click on Analyse Game.

[0] https://github.com/lichess-org/fishnet

Try contributing to a decentralized computing network like https://www.gensyn.ai/

Folding@home

I was doing it a lot in pandemic. There were even some projects there that supported covid research.

Heard about vast.ai last night. You can rent out your GPUs on it. Haven't tried it personally.

Vast.ai essentially requires you to dedicate an entire computer to it.

It's not something you can just throw idle cycles at.

You could reduce your idle CPU time by turning off the computer when you're not using it.

By not trying to find way to use it. Electricity isn't free or clean.

I think there's still cryptocurrency mining that pays better than breakeven. if people are willing to pay for it, doesn't that count as helping them?

Cryptocurrency mining doesn't have to pay better than breakeven today if you don't mind holding for the next bull run.

I don't have the GPUs and I don't want to heat up the planet more than needed.

If you're concerned with heating the planet up, shouldn't you be figuring out how to use your CPU less instead of more?

My question was about CPUs. I am pretty certain my M2 CPU doesn't produce the heat that a GPU does.

Letting it idle is going to produce less heat than giving it work.

Turning off the computer might be the best choice, but it is at least worth looking at doing something useful with it.

I feel like crypto mining is the computer equivalent of rolling coal.

Turn your computer off and refuse to use electron apps

Run a Archiveteam warrior.

This feels like a question people asked around the year 2003 when they started getting broadband.

salad.com is great, but it only really makes sense if you have a GPU

ecotards alert

Holochain & Holo (https://holo.host)

Some significant features:

- Compensation (if desired)

- Community vetting of “hApps”

- Control of which hApps use your resources

- Distributed validation of all results, triggering “Warrants” against abusers

Letting random projects use your local resources has serious risks, which are mitigated via the novel agent-centric detection algorithms of Holochain and the Holo project.

Of course, you can just write a Holochain-based app and distribute it “by hand” to your own group of users’ resources - no Holo required.

In Beta now.

If you don't really understand what you're reading -- I'd recommend not downvoting. Instead, do a bit of research!

Just today, an article was published noting that, if AI becomes a significant proportion of modern productivity, then “When compute becomes the basic unit of labor, a currency to represent future potential compute is needed.”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36761430

I personally modelled just such a thing early in the evolution of the Holo project, to see how value-stabilization algorithms might affect a currency denominated in compute, bandwidth and storage:

https://github.com/Holo-Host/holofuel-model

Attempting to account for fraud, attacks, etc. is a significant concern in any system, but especially those involving running arbitrary attacker-controlled code on systems managing valuable resources.

So, by downvoting in ignorance, you are diminishing the value of this platform for those seeking the distilled wisdom it (formerly?) contained.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com