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folding@home has been doing this for 20+ years. They already did all the smart research and tech development. Just use that until somebody comes up with a workable DrugDiscoveryAtHome or CureCancerAtHome.


This is a very dismissive answer which seems odd coming from someone with a lot of karma. Running GPUs at scale isn't easy or cheap.

There is no incentive to run this other than good feelings. Unfortunately, that isn't enough in the business world to spend millions on cap/opx.

What I'm looking for is incentivized options. Even better if they come from a web3 situation where a business can operate without having actual customers.

"Mining", but with not such "wasteful" work.


It's ironic to be declaring the GP as dismissive while you're flippantly dismissing the work of everyone involved with F@H. You're conveniently ignoring the incentive of expanding our understanding of biology, which has very real applications and results[1] that benefit the entire world for the rest of human existence, instead of benefiting a single participant in the short term.

[1] https://www.hpcwire.com/2020/10/14/how-foldinghome-identifie...


What? I'm not dismissing their work.

I'm just saying there is no direct financial incentive for 32 million GPUs to move over to it. If there was, they'd be on that instead of ETH.


You literally said "no incentive [...] other than good feelings." Regardless, even adding the words "direct financial" is still incorrect. For one of many examples, insurance companies investing in F@H infrastructure would be beneficiaries, albeit via savings and not revenue.


I literally clarified my statement since you came to an incorrect conclusion.

"direct financial" is correct when you're giving examples that are not direct.


You're moving the goal posts, on top of changing the definition of "direct" to fit your false narrative. First you claim there was no incentive at all, then there was no "direct" incentive, and now direct apparently means "immediate" instead of linear.

If a company invests in research specifically because the fruits of that research will reduce expenses, that is direct financial benefit.


[flagged]


> Reducing expenses is not direct financial benefit.

You've created a seven word sentence which contradicts itself in every conceivable way. Expenses are financial. Reducing them is beneficial.


>Expenses are financial. Reducing them is beneficial.

You're missing the word 'direct'.


Expenses are the "loss" portion of "profit and loss." That is 50% of the concept of accounting, making it as direct as it gets. Please stop this prolonged line of trolling.


The dark side is you need a ponzi scheme to fund it. When that ponzi collapses the work stops. Good feelings are better IMO!


It is odd that you think of crypto as a ponzi while promoting a referral network in your HN profile.


Yes Digital Ocean. They are not a ponzi/pyramid because

1. They sell a useful product

2. They do not charge people to be affiliates.

3. They do not sell a token/security that you buy with the intent of making future gains, funded only by other people buying the token expecting more people will do the same.

If anyone uses the link ... I haven't checked ... I get some DO credit, not even money, which I will use for hobby projects. If I get $5 in credit in a year, I would be pretty suprised.


I'm not saying it is a pyramid/ponzi. It is an affiliate marketing scheme, and those are never slimy. /s


So any job in sales is slimey.


yeah, everybody knows crypto is a pyramid scheme, ponzi schemes are specifically about a type of coupon fraud.


It is structurally more like a ponzi than a pyramid.

By large crypto has no MLM style referral system where the product is the business opportunity to sell the product.

However it does have a feature where crypto gains are only funded by newer people coming in and buying at a higher price. But no cashflows are produced other than selling the investment tokens. This is almost identical to a ponzi except it has decentralisation that makes it probably legally not a ponzi.

Imagine I did an IPO of a company I incorporated last night but hid behind a panama shell. That’s crypto.


> However it does have a feature where crypto gains are only funded by newer people coming in and buying at a higher price.

"only" is inaccurate. This was true early on before there were markets and contracts. Now we have DeFi which allows for gains on trades by anyone who wants to provide liquidity. Similar to any sort of commodity market where people buy and sell what they own (or even don't own with margin and options).


> This is a very dismissive answer which seems odd coming from someone with a lot of karma

Are you kidding? Shallow dismissals masquerading as insight are easily the most popular genre of comment on Hacker News.


only good feelings? f@H has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of biophysics of folding proteins!


I am aware of domain applications from F@H, but not core science work. What are those fundamental contributions?


We conclusively demonstrated that kinetic models of folding are critical to do better drug discovery against GPCRs and other target classes.

Or did you mean something more fundamental, like "the biophysics of protein folding is primarily determined by entropic-driven hydrophobic collapse, not enthalpic contributions from hydrogen bonding?"


>We conclusively demonstrated that kinetic models of folding are critical to do better drug discovery against GPCRs and other target classes.

How was this demonstration done? Or are you referring to building a better high throughput screening mechanism? I'm by no means a protein expert, but I am trying to learn more about them.

>Or did you mean something more fundamental, like "the biophysics of protein folding is primarily determined by entropic-driven hydrophobic collapse, not enthalpic contributions from hydrogen bonding?"

I don't want to minimize anything or anyones work. But conformation of experimental observations via molecular dynamics simulation isn't what I was thinking of - but maybe I am misunderstanding your claim. Its my own ignorance.


Sorry, it was just a way to say "not financially incentivized".




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