hello friends! new(ish)!
Citizen Science
BOINC
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.
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.