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"Nightlife" Harnesses Idle Fedora Nodes For Research

Posted by timothy on from the deserves-an-award-for-the-name-alone dept.

A. B. VerHausen writes "If you've given up on SETI, now you can let your idle computer help with other kinds of scientific research. Red Hat employee Bryan Che started a project called Nightlife. He wants people to 'donate idle capacity from their own computers to an open, general-purpose Fedora-run grid for processing socially beneficial work and scientific research that requires access to large amounts of computing power.'" Che hopes to have more than a million Fedora nodes running as part of this project.

2 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's not the idle capacity I'm worried about by abolitiontheory · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What's the actual difference in energy costs, though? Not saying you're stupid or selfish for not donating, just interested in the real figures, if you've got any. I throw my system into hibernation most nights, and try to turn off the monitor at least when I go away for a couple hours during the day. What have you found your general savings to be?

  2. Re:It's not the idle capacity I'm worried about by abolitiontheory · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... making sure we actually switch stuff off at the socket ... I keep trying to think of a funny and poignant way to point out that we Americans don't have the slightest notion of this concept, because its not built into to our electrical system. I'm sure you could get switches at the sockets if you intentionally looked for them, but I was 21 before I ever knew of this concept, from going over to England to visit family. It's one of those small details that sticks in your head, kind of like slang words or Cadbury chocolate. American chocolate is rubbish.