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Have you ever done something for yourself on your (job) company's infrastructure?
(discuss.tchncs.de)
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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Instead of using a space heater like everyone else, I run Folding@Home on one of my work machines to pump out a few hundred watts of heat. That way at least someone is getting some Alzheimer's research out of burning that electricity.
That's funny and cool! Do you know if it's using roughly the same amount of electricity as a space heater would? Idk if that's possible to know.
Most of the space heaters that I've seen are like 1,500 watts. According to the UPS this computer is plugged into, it consumes around 650 watts. So it's not as powerful as a space heater, but when the exhaust is pointed directly at your legs, it gets plenty warm.
I wonder if one could create a computer that generates the heat while doing that cool computing stuff, but also have it regulate the temperature so that it slows down when it hits, say, 65 degrees in the room. I'm intrigued very much by this idea.
Assuming Folding@Home has some sort of API or if it can be started and stopped from the command line, it should be fairly straightforward with an Arduino a simple script.
It already exists. There is a company that sells a space heater that mines crypto currency. You get like 50% or the profits which sucks, but you at least recoup a bit of the cost of the electricity to run the heater.
I think we should try to heat ourselves with computing as much as we can since the side effect of computing is heat generation (and minor RF losses). How cool would it be to make a large supercomputer out of millions of homes heating up in the winter?
"The winter discovery boost"! I can imagine that. It would be so cool if humans cooperated together for these cool projects. Maybe if society was more like a beehive; meaning the way that everybee does some part to help out the whole hive instead of the widespread me-first individualism that neglects the problems they don't have.
Haha this is actually an awesome idea. My work has a bunch of super cheap servers for sale that could totally be used as a space heater. Actually a super cool concept because there are so many good servers and cpus being thrown out that could legitimately be used as a space heater.