Folding Forum

Are we getting somewhere?

I live in Texas so I try to the run the client as much as I can; much longer than normal, but still mostly at night. Even then my room becomes uncomfortably warm. I'm not a scientist, but are we making progress?

Everything is set to 100% cause I want to do my bit, but it's warm in here.

I would say that a significant progress has been made. For a quick overview, scroll past this COVID-19 F@H timeline: https://foldingathome.org/diseases/infe ... /covid-19/

For Moonshot WUs, there's now a dashboard for Sprint 4: https://fah-ws3.s3.amazonaws.com/covid- ... index.html
I am aware that a blog post is in the making which will elaborate on some of the technical material displayed on that page.

I know. I've been folding since 2002. This is different, so maybe I'm a bit fatigued. Sorry. I'm going to keep folding away.

It's understandable to be fatigued. This pandemic has impacted virtually everyone on the planet in various ways. From my preservative, I am satisfied that my contribution is allowing researchers and SMEs to gain better understanding of this disease, to develop new simulation techniques, to optimize various algorithms to help humanity out. All this research is freely available to anyone who knows how to use it. It might take some time to develop a vaccine but during this journey, a lot has been discovered and understood that might help out in other diseases and potentially, prepare for another future pandemic. As much as I wish I can see that we are 70% close to creating a vaccine and only 30% is left, alas, it is real-life and it takes time... this XKCD comic pops into my mind: https://xkcd.com/612/

momus_98 wrote:Even then my room becomes uncomfortably warm.

Please don't sacrifice your own heatlh and comfort to fold. I moved my folding computer next to an open window when I wasn't using it, but if you can't do that just finish the work units and start again when it gets colder.

A folder from 2002! Is there anyone that has been folding for longer than you?

No, but my ATI card was getting 250 PPD when I joined.

I joined in 2005. Then a CPU WU might take most of a week to complete on my system and was maybe a couple hundred points.

I remember getting my first 9PPD, for completing WUs on my Athlon XP 2600+ CPU.
It ran for days.
That was between 2002 and 2005.

Somewhere in 2009 I had a nice i7 920 build.
I started around that time, running bigadv units. Iirc it had to work for around 24 hours (or even more) to finish a unit, but returned some good points.
Now my CPU runs almost 2 units every hour, and one GPU makes more points in a day than a half year of work back in 2009 (not counting the units).

I'm way more interested in the science nowadays though, and trying to help out where I can.

momus_98 wrote:I know. I've been folding since 2002. This is different, so maybe I'm a bit fatigued. Sorry. I'm going to keep folding away.

Hi momus 98 understand the heat issues, maybe wind down a bit if the heat making things difficult, the long run is what counts as you know. Cooler weather soon enough and you can wind back up then. I have reduced my output by maybe 20% at present due to heat issues over the past month, am in NYC and the summer has been long and hot for here. This virus isn't going away anytime soon even with an effective vaccine it will take ages to roll that out what we need is a variety of strategies, treatments and vaccines for this and what comes next. This is why I think what we are doing generally is important and specifically for COVID-19 is really important. This will be a long fight so pace yourself.

kiore wrote:This virus isn't going away anytime soon even with an effective vaccine it will take ages to roll that out what we need is a variety of strategies, treatments and vaccines for this and what comes next.

I trotted this one out on WCG, but no one said a word.
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/2020091 ... th-century
But on my next visit to Florence (long overdue), I will check it out.

Jonazz wrote:A folder from 2002! Is there anyone that has been folding for longer than you?

I don't know. I was able to afford my own computer (AMD K6-2) with my own money in 1998. I was doing SETI when I discovered F@H somewhere along the way. I joined and never looked back. I figured folding was more important.

For the record I'm using a Ryzen 7 now, although (last I checked) that old box still boots up.

P.S. My user ID here is not the same as the ID under which I fold.

Perhaps the answer wasn't obvious before the slight tangent took over from the grey beards among us...

Are the results of our collective folding efforts going to be a part of this first wave of vaccines now going thru final approvals (at least here in the U.S.)?

kwthom wrote:Perhaps the answer wasn't obvious before the slight tangent took over from the grey beards among us...

Are the results of our collective folding efforts going to be a part of this first wave of vaccines now going thru final approvals (at least here in the U.S.)?

I think the answer is no. I don't think any of the companies that came up with a vaccine used any results from F@H, but I'd be glad to be proven wrong.

F@H mostly provided base research and project moonshot aims at therapeutics, but not vaccines.

I think F@H is still a viable and very useful effort, but we shouldn't take credit where it isn't due.

HG.