Citizen Science

BOINC

BOINC Manager application running some Primegrid taks

The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Networked Computing is a framework for combining multiple computers together to perform work. A central server divides up the work into small tasks and passes it out to clients in it's network, which then compute the work and send back the results. What kind of work?

• SETI@Home - Find alien signals.
• DistrRTgen - Generate rainbow tables to crack Windows passwords.
• PrimeGrid - Find and factorize prime numbers for encryption.
• LHC@Home - Assist the Large Hadron Collider.
• Einstein@Home - Find neutron stars.
• Rosetta@Home - Fold proteins for disease research.
• GPUGrid - Fold proteins for more disease research.
• ClimatePrediction - Model climate change.
• Collatz Conjecture - Solve mathematical problems.
• World Community Grid - Assist AIDS and cancer research.

BOINC is cross-platform, but each project has it's own platform requirements. Most have at least a Windows and Linux client.

Your GPU can be used instead of your CPU to compute results faster. Some projects support an Nvidia OpenCL client and a few support AMD GPUs.

Once installed and attached to projects, BOINC takes care of itself. It will pause computation if it detects significant cpu/gpu usage so you shouldn't notice any slowdown when you're doing something intensive.

Depending on the project, tasks can take anywhere from a few minutes, to many days. When you complete tasks you are awarded points. You can track these points on several different websites. You can also join teams and share your points with them.

Hentai@Home

E-Hentai Galleries (the guys that give us sadpanda) run a service called Hentai@Home that allows users to distribute the load of hentai porn in their database over P2P, thus reducing the load on their main servers. In return, you get rewards on E-Hentai.

E-Hentai pays out rewards in Hath points, which can be exchanged for Credits or Gallery Points, all of which unlock features or allow you to download full-size archives of individual galleries. The H@H algorithm rewards clients for connection quality instead of total data volume. Static IPs are a plus.

Legality

Since E-Hentai hosts all manner of lolicon, shotacon and bestiality content, running a Hentai@Home node may violate local laws depending on your jurisdiction. As of writing, there is no way to prevent your Hentai@Home client from caching and serving this content, so proceed with caution.

If you live in the UK, the very act of browsing E-Hentai and having their thumbnails cached on your computer may itself be illegal. Do not run a Hentai@Home node if you live in the UK.

GalaxyZoo

Galaxy Zoo is an interactive project where, after a brief tutorial and test, you help identify galaxies and other objects in space through your browser.

Archive Team

ArchiveTeam Warrior user interface

The Archive Team Warrior Virtual Machine downloads web pages to assist Archive Team in keeping a copy of websites which are being taken down.

See Also

• List of BOINC Projects
• List of Citizen Science Projects