Privacy concerns about Folding@home

[WonderSurgeon]

Hello.

I've been using Folding@home for a while now and am excited at being part of the global effort to help cure the coronavirus. But as I was spreading the word online, some of my friends expressed concerns with the software and project which I believe would be worthwhile to talk about in this community.

Folding@home has the support of several corporate conglomerates around the world like Intel, Nvidia and AMD, right? With their huge computer resources? Why then, would this project require the help of ordinary people like us?

I have no doubt many in the public, individuals and businesses, will have helped make great strides in the ongoing research but I believe answers are in order to help settle our minds and keep our trust, even if this is for the greater good.

[puuteknikko]

The computing power FAH had was already quite substantial before the coronavirus brought it into larger attention. And every bit helps, there is no question about that. It would be different if the same WU was processed by many, but FAH does not work that way.

[iceman1992]

FAH is now running at over 1.5 exaflops, which is more power than the fastest 100 supercomputers ever to exist, combined.
So there's a reason why we're needed, even supercomputers don't come near this compute performance.

[HaloJones]

All they have from you is your IP addresses and your email address. If you believe there is a problem with privacy, simply don't use the software. This project has been running for 15+ years and I have never heard anyone else question privacy.

I suggest you tell the concerned friends to remove their tinfoil hats

[semaphore]

I am a strong supporter of owning your own data, and how the world works today with big companies literally controlling the world by having YOUR data (instead of waging war) is a big concern.

But in a way we lost that war when Intel and AMD included stuff in hardware like "signed code" etc... where these big companies in a way are holding on a "off switch" for all code they do not want us to run.

So yes, we can ask ourselves why these companies take interest, but because they could have shut us down long time ago I personally think their latest interest is only due toe "Why didn't we come up with this?".
With their support they get "media time", and that in turn make people buy that GPU they have been thinking about, if they know that hardware could be put into use. Also seen an increase in talk about "working at home", and there I see an increase in articles about "virtual desktops" like ShadowTech, which in turn is run on hardware in the cloud, where hardware comes from... and cloud gaming where the hardware in the cloud is coming from...

I am not worried, and I am the paranoid kind.
Although I would like to have a more democratic approach on WHO can use this amount of computing power.

In the days I made some science, made a thesis etc... I noticed that a lot of work did not hold a high scientific standard, mostly due to students only wanting to "finish" and get their masters, and so on. Not saying the FAH projects are like that, but just saying that in comparison with privacy of the individual, I am more worried that the protein folding result will be used for other things than good. The knowledge of cure could also be used for making an attack more efficient. Hence you need a lot of openness around WHAT you are searching for with this distributed computer, and if you ask me: Have some way of voting the most accepted approaches.

[ipkh]

All they require is your ip address. Username, passkey and team are all optional. You can fold anonymously all you want.

[Neil-B]

Whilst I have no concerns personally it might (after the great rush of 20 subsides) someone looking at the various relevant pieces of privacy legislation that have been enacted round the world over the last few years … Even something as simple as this can come under the definition of Personal Information and as such under these laws are required to be protected in certain ways … Failure to do can attract significant fines.

[JimboPalmer]

Folding@home has the support of several corporate conglomerates around the world like Intel, Nvidia and AMD, right? With their huge computer resources? Why then, would this project require the help of ordinary people like us?

Nvidia, AMD, and Intel are REALLY knowledgeable about how to write programs to get the most out of their hardware. This is the support they provide, expertise. We do not necessarily provide expertise, we provide unused computer time. (and electricity)

Sometime you will see requests like ' write a client for my Raspberry Pi" or "why is there no graphics support for Intel IGPUs or MacOS?" and one answer is that no company with that expertise has volunteered their resources to write that code. Programmers like to be paid.

"Give everything you do 100%, except giving blood." As others will tell you, no computer in the world comes close to the computing power of all us part time folders. We can give because F@H does all it can to make sure our 'day job' comes first and F@H just uses spare CPU cycles. If we could not do anything else while we folded, there would be a LOT less people folding.

So those "several corporate conglomerates" are paying (in house) programmers with intimate knowledge of their hardware to write code that is as fast as possible on their own hardware. (You can bet Nvidia programmers are not giving hints how to make AMD code faster, or vice versa) This means that when (if ) we donate computer time, it is used as efficiently as possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exascale_computing
Notice that governments around the world have failed to break the exaFLOPS barrier after throwing tons of money at it, only F@H is passed it.

[STR1D3R_2]

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[Rel25917]

They haven't always had support from big corporations. As the name of the project says it is about folding at home, not folding at Intel, Nvidia and AMD.

[toTOW]

Sure. And partners (I think it's better to call them like that) come and leave with the interests they have in the partnership.

For instance, AMD and nVidia have helped a lot in GPGPU developments to port and improve the GPU code to their respective architecture back in the first days of GPGPU computing (Who remember Core_11 using Brook+/Stream or CUDA ?). I think they have also been on and off in the shadows fixing bugs with their respective drivers since.

Sony has also been involved ... they developed the PS3 client for their great Cell CPU ... then they also worked on an Android client for their smartphones ...

Today's partnerships are more in providing servers to improves the network (Microsoft, Oracle, Avast, LinusTechTips, ...) or compute power (although I don't know any official partnerships on this, I guess anyone can guess who this donor is : https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com ... =&u=928671 ) ...

But as you probably know, partnerships have terms and expiration dates ... we don't know all the conditions, and it's normal to see conditions evolve, or partnerships end.

[Neil-B]

… and yes, if you follow that link and look what the figures mean this in one heck of a lot of processing power

[X-Wing]

Point is, they need our help, because there is no way, as others have mentioned, to get the kind of computing power they need on the budget they're given by the government.

[iceman1992]

Sony has also been involved ... they developed the PS3 client for their great Cell CPU ... then they also worked on an Android client for their smartphones ...

Now that you mention it the FAH team should really partner with both Sony and Microsoft for nextgen consoles PS5 and Xbox Series X since they're both basically PCs anyway with powerful CPUs and GPUs

[JimboPalmer]

the FAH team should really partner with both Sony and Microsoft for nextgen consoles PS5 and Xbox Series X since they're both basically PCs anyway with powerful CPUs and GPUs

In my opinion, you can reverse that. We can hope that Sony and/or Microsoft decide to partner with F@H team. It has to start with the partner.