How to Use Your Mac to Help the Fight Against Coronavirus

[Somian]

I'd really like to help, but Is there a version that doesn't need admin rights? (that just runs in user space instead of doing whatever the installer requires the admin password for?). I'd be much more comfortable with that rather than essentially installing a botnet daemon and modifying my system.

Technically, this could just be a .app that can be trashed when no longer needed, so I don't know why this needs root access.

 

[macduke]

Cranked it up to the max power setting and letting my i9-9900K and Pro Vega 48 go ham! Question though…I keep trying to add my GPU as a secondary option but it says it can't find it. What do I need to do to get this going on my iMac for the GPU as well?

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I see the Game Centre icon has been infected too (Not that anyone cares)

 

[neoelectronaut]

Perhaps, but as of about 3 or 4 days ago, they were telling people to download it to fight covid19 when it wasn't even available. It just seemed like a dishonest way to get people to download. They should have waited until the work units were ready.

Even if Covid-19 didn't exist Folding@Home is used to fight cancer, alzheimers, parkinsons, and a whole host of other ailments, so it's not like your work is going to waste.
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Cranked it up to the max power setting and letting my i9-9900K and Pro Vega 48 go ham! Question though…I keep trying to add my GPU as a secondary option but it says it can't find it. What do I need to do to get this going on my iMac for the GPU as well?

To my knowledge GPU folding unfortunately isn't supported by the Folding@Home client on macOS.

{macOS} Using GPU? (ANSWERED) - Folding Forum

foldingforum.org

If you have Boot Camp set up for Windows or Linux it should be supported there.

 

[MacCheetah3]

I've installed and uninstalled folding@home and BOINC many times...

Uninstall FAH on Mac - Folding Forum

"You can download the current installer.
When you get to the install pane, click Customize and deselect everything except Uninstaller.
The uninstaller should then be in /Applications/Folding@home/."

Try this?

Additional FYI. I used the latest FAH installer with default options, no customization, and have "Uninstall Folding@home.pkg" in /Applications/Folding@Home/

So, the Customize route may only be necessary if using an earlier FAH installer.

 

[macduke]

To my knowledge GPU folding unfortunately isn't supported by the Folding@Home client on macOS.

{macOS} Using GPU? (ANSWERED) - Folding Forum

foldingforum.org

If you have Boot Camp set up for Windows or Linux it should be supported there.

Yes I have Bootcamp but it's kind of a pain to go in there during the week since I'm doing work. Might run it on weekends. Will it work through VirtualBox?

 

[MacCheetah3]

I'd really like to help, but Is there a version that doesn't need admin rights? (that just runs in user space instead of doing whatever the installer requires the admin password for?). I'd be much more comfortable with that rather than essentially installing a botnet daemon and modifying my system.

Technically, this could just be a .app that can be trashed when no longer needed, so I don't know why this needs root access.

I haven't reviewed all of the macOS permissions, especially as of recent years, but I would assume admin permissions are required because the program places the Unix executables in global system folders, such as FahCore in /Library/Application Support/ and the FAHClient in /usr/local/bin/

 

[Undecided]

How can you tell if it is actually working on Coronavirus and not something else? Does the viewer window have to display Project 14051 for it to be working on Coronavirus?

 

[miniyou64]

At least it’s more useful than mining.

Not necessarily

 

[neoelectronaut]

How can you tell if it is actually working on Coronavirus and not something else? Does the viewer window have to display Project 14051 for it to be working on Coronavirus?

Make sure you set the "I support research finding" field to "Any", and you may get Coronavirus-related work orders.

You can tell if you're working one in the web readout where it says "I'm contributing to"

 

[brentsg]

DON'T INSTALL IT. YOU CANNOT UNINSTALL IT. it keeps running in the background using all your cpus

This is of course not true.

 

[Panda King]

Thought this sounded like a great idea, it made my MBP16 white hot and the fan cranked all the way up endlessly. Would not stop until I uninstalled the software. I don't recommend the current version.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Thought this sounded like a great idea, it made my MBP16 white hot and the fan cranked all the way up endlessly. Would not stop until I uninstalled the software. I don't recommend the current version.

I don't know if I'd recommend this on a low profile MBP. A desktop, Mac mini, iMac? Sure. But personally, I wouldn't run this on a MBA or MBP. It was doing what it was designed to do - utilize idle CPU processes.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

My 16" can't handle intermediate tasks without trying to take off from the desk, let alone folding. I don't want a molten puddle of aluminum and silicon on my desk.

 

[Undecided]

Make sure you set the "I support research finding" field to "Any", and you may get Coronavirus-related work orders.

You can tell if you're working one in the web readout where it says "I'm contributing to"

How do you get that page though? When I go to https://stats.foldingathome.org/donor/[my_id] it looks nothing like that. It's a very bland page instead, with no project info, and that's when it loads at all (!).

Or is that the client? 'cuz the FAH client I downloaded doesn't look anything like that either.

 

[0924487]

Who owns the research outcome? Are they public domain work? If private entities patent the result of the research, it would violate the goodwill of the public. You also wouldn’t be able claim the ownership of the result without the public explicitly waiving the rights. I have searched around for this type of contract or public disclosure but I didn’t find any.

If the result were to be commercialized and enrich a pharmaceutical company behind walls of proprietary technologies and patents, then they shouldn’t ask for donation or public funding. Computing resources for commercial use are wildly available, just run the worker nodes on Amazon AWS for example, and you can compute as hardcore as you want.
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An admirable idea and considering the graphical performance built into Apple's chips these days it'd probably do fairly well, but a major concern for me would be cooling. Folding@Home is generally decided to use 100% of your CPU & GPU unless you purposely scale it back. Would the Apple TV's lifespan be affected in any way by being under 100% load for long stretches of time?

Obviously it will.

food for thought

If the result were to be commercialized and enrich a pharmaceutical company behind walls of proprietary technologies and patents...

 

[neoelectronaut]

Who owns the research outcome? Are they public domain work? If private entities patent the result of the research, it would violate the goodwill of the public. You also wouldn’t be able claim the ownership of the result without the public explicitly waiving the rights. I have searched around for this type of contract or public disclosure but I didn’t find any.

If the result were to be commercialized and enrich a pharmaceutical company behind walls of proprietary technologies and patents, then they shouldn’t ask for donation or public funding. Computing resources for commercial use are wildly available, just run the worker nodes on Amazon AWS for example, and you can compute as hardcore as you want.

Dunno if this answers your question or not, but it's direct from the Folding@Home FAQ:

Who “owns” the results? What will happen to them?
Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University’s Chemistry Department), which is a nonprofit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money from it. Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication.
Following the publications of these scientific articles, we will make the raw data of the folding runs available to other researchers upon request. The data sets from some of our most prominent simulations are already publicly available. We’ve also striven to share our key technologies with other scientists, to assist their research as well.

How do you get that page though? When I go to https://stats.foldingathome.org/donor/[my_id] it looks nothing like that. It's a very bland page instead, with no project info, and that's when it loads at all (!).

Or is that the client? 'cuz the FAH client I downloaded doesn't look anything like that either.

I'm running clients on Windows, but there's an option that says "Web Control" that appears in a contextual menu when I click on the system tray icon.

 

[0924487]

This is computationally equivalent to allowing someone to do bitcoin mining on your machines without paying you a dime. All the electricity bills and device aging costs, etc.

 

[sakagura]

I wonder how useful this actually is (serious question)

It's not going to do much. The spare computing power of each participant will be paltry. Home computers almost entirely run on electricity from coal. Dirty big carbon footprint and maybe no results. Just like SETI.

If these people were smart they would rent CPU time at Amazon running on renewable energy or they would ask Amazon or Microsoft to do all the folding on their massive datacenters that run cleaner.

 

[0924487]

Dunno if this answers your question or not, but it's direct from the Folding@Home FAQ:

Who “owns” the results? What will happen to them?
Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University’s Chemistry Department), which is a nonprofit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money from it. Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication.
Following the publications of these scientific articles, we will make the raw data of the folding runs available to other researchers upon request. The data sets from some of our most prominent simulations are already publicly available. We’ve also striven to share our key technologies with other scientists, to assist their research as well.



I'm running clients on Windows, but there's an option that says "Web Control" that appears in a contextual menu when I click on the system tray icon.

Just like I thought. They own the research result, the intellectual properties, and reserves the right to patent derivative technologies for commercial use.

Making the result publicly available doesn’t mean anything. All patented technologies are publicly available, you just can’t use them without licensing the patent. Microsoft Windows is “Source Available”, any enterprise and government clients can access the source and build repositories. But you still can’t use the technology without acquiring a license from MS.

Many drug companies are born out of a research lab taking public funding, grants and public donations, when they make it, they turn around and patent the technology and sell the drug to the public like your typical big pharmaceutical monopolies. It’s pointless.
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Not necessarily

Mining at least powers the distributed bitcoin backbone network, and safe guards it from attacks.

 

[sakagura]

Mining at least powers the distributed bitcoin backbone network, and safe guards it from attacks.

Up to 60% of mining is controlled by China. The rest of the miners are buying their wasteful machines from China.

China can attack these blockchains at will with the power they already have and can scale up even higher. This is another wasteful endeavour that has mostly just benefited the Chinese regime, criminals and money laundering. Like Warren Buffett said, criminals used to use suitcases before for this stuff.

 

[msp3]

As with all academic research, work is wholly owned by the Principle Investigator (PI) and any co-investigators. The value to them is scientific journal publications, with will bolster their name and research ability and allow them to win future government research funds. Any patents that come out of it is typically owned by the university, and licensed out to some commercial business (e.g. drug company). If the drug company paid for the research by funding the PI's efforts they may get in line earlier and avoid royalties. If federal funds are used in the research, PIs may be required to disclose some of their findings to the public.

You are essentially signing up to be someone else's Microsoft Azure/Amazon AWS without compensation, plus wear and tear on your equipment, electrical costs, causing carbon emissions/global warming, etc.

 

[0924487]

Up to 60% of mining is controlled by China. The rest of the miners are buying their wasteful machines from China.

China can attack these blockchains at will with the power they already have and can scale up even higher. This is another wasteful endeavour that has mostly just benefited the Chinese regime, criminals and money laundering. Like Warren Buffett said, criminals used to use suitcases before for this stuff.

The Chinese own the most powerful supercomputers anyway... They are also the only ones who deployed quantum communication satellites. The US is far off on those fronts. There is very little we can do if the entire China turns against us all-out, with no regard to its responsibilities. They can trash the dollar too if they wanted. China is our biggest creditor. If they trash the dollar by dumping the US treasury bills all together, it will make US dollar worth little more than Indian Rubi. All other creditors will run and dump their holdings, then the FEDs will have a run of the banks, which will bankrupt the US government overnight. The armed forces may fall apart soon after without funding from the congress. Ignoring operating costs, how many US soldiers would serve the military for free?

 

[MacCheetah3]

How do you get that page though? When I go to https://stats.foldingathome.org/donor/[my_id] it looks nothing like that. It's a very bland page instead, with no project info, and that's when it loads at all (!).

Or is that the client? 'cuz the FAH client I downloaded doesn't look anything like that either.

Try going to the Web Control (https://client.foldingathome.org) from the machine running the FAH client https://foldingathome.org/faqs/fah-v7/v7-introduction/web-control/

How can you tell if it is actually working on Coronavirus and not something else? Does the viewer window have to display Project 14051 for it to be working on Coronavirus?

You can view the project description by entering the (5-digit) Project ID number at https://apps.foldingathome.org/project

 

[PabloSRT8]

Google Quantum computer can do it in less than ten minutes. If it is true that they achieved quantum supremacy like they said they did.