Posts by pschoefer

1) Message boards : The Lounge : BOINC Pentathlon 2024 (Message 113878) Posted 8 days ago by pschoefer Post: Dear Pentathletes, the last Pentathlon is already almost eleven months in the past, so it is high time to look ahead. SETI.Germany invites to the 15th BOINC Pentathlon, which will start on 5 May and run for 14 days, as usual. This year, the Marathon is back on the schedule. The obstacles that were introduced two years ago and yield bonus points when being crossed are not on the long track this time, but on one of the shorter tracks: Steeplechase replaces Cross Country and will run for seven days, during which two one-day obstacles yield a bonus between 20% and 50%. City Run, Sprint, and Javelin Throw remain unchanged, the projects are now universally announced 2-3 days prior to the start of each discipline. The teams can sign up using this form until 2 May. Do not hesitate and get your computers ready, because: It will be exciting again at the BOINC Pentathlon!
2) Message boards : The Lounge : BOINC Pentathlon 2023 (Message 111531) Posted 9 Apr 2023 by pschoefer Post: Dear Pentathletes, once again May is approaching rapidly, once again SETI.Germany invites to the BOINC Pentathlon. Starting on 5 May, fourteen days with five disciplines at five projects are on the schedule for the fourteenth time. There are no major rule changes this year, only a slight downward adjustment of the bonus points during the Obstacle Run. Nevertheless, we hope to be a bit more lucky with the stability of the projects and to have one or the other surprise in stock again this year. Of course, even with the best preparation, sometimes things can go wrong, even though we do our best to make the event run as smoothly as possible. It should also be noted that some projects see the Pentathlon as a welcome stress test and may even learn more from any problems than from smooth sailing. The Pentathlon will not be perfect because it cannot be perfect. But don't let that discourage you from taking up the challenge, dusting off your computers, and signing your teams up using this form (possible until 2 May), because: It will be exciting again at the BOINC Pentathlon!
3) Message boards : The Lounge : BOINC Pentathlon 2022 (Message 107964) Posted 26 Apr 2022 by pschoefer Post: Dear Pentathletes, a lot has changed since SETI.Germany invited to the first BOINC Pentathlon in 2010. But even twelve years later we are happy to continue a tradition with you again: The thirteenth BOINC Pentathlon starts in just over one week. From 5 May, the computers and their owners can once again show what they are capable of. For a period of two weeks, they once more have to overcome the various adversities and prove their abilities, but even the Pentathlon is not sheltered from changes: This year, the former Marathon track features three obstacles, where bonus credits are up for the grabs. So, what are you waiting for? Until 2 May, the teams can sign up using this form. We are already looking forward to your strategies and a great time with you, because: It will be exciting again at the BOINC Pentathlon!
4) Message boards : The Lounge : BOINC Pentathlon 2021 (Message 104038) Posted 21 Apr 2021 by pschoefer Post: Dear Pentathletes, the twelfth BOINC Pentathlon is approaching rapidly, and SETI.Germany cordially invites all Volunteer Computing enthusiast teams to participate once again. Just two weeks remain to de-dust the computers and to expand the power lines. It might be a good idea to stock up on food, as well, since we will be stuck in front of the computers for two weeks starting on 5 May, crunching long and short, partly over rough and smooth, partly through the city, and even throwing work units. As in the previous year, the projects for all five disciplines will be chosen by the organizers. Many questions on how things work are answered in the FAQ. The teams can now sign up until 2 May using this form. We're looking forward to welcoming you again, because: It will be exciting again at the BOINC Pentathlon!
5) Message boards : The Lounge : BOINC Pentathlon 2020 (Message 97517) Posted 12 Apr 2020 by pschoefer Post: Dear Pentathletes, 5 May 2020, the starting day of the eleventh BOINC Pentathlon, is only a few weeks away. Even in difficult times, SETI.Germany invites all Volunteer Computing enthusiast teams to participate in the five disciplines over two weeks and to gather in front of their computers - everyone in front of their own computer, of course. Maybe some of us will go through a different illness than the Pentathlon fever or spend much of their time keeping important businesses such as healthcare or food supply running. Let's not forget the former and thank the latter by crunching a work unit for all of them! While the process and rules remain largely unchanged from last year, a maximum of flexibility is needed for choosing the projects, as maybe one project needs the computing power more urgently than others or a project may be unavailable on short notice. To make the Pentathlon nevertheless as exciting and trouble-free as possible, not only the Marathon project, but all five projects are chosen by a small group of the organizers this year. The teams can now sign up until 2 May using this form. We're looking forward to welcoming you again, because: It will be exciting again at the BOINC Pentathlon!
6) Message boards : The Lounge : BOINC Pentathlon 2019 (Message 90976) Posted 7 Apr 2019 by pschoefer Post: Dear Volunteer Computing enthusiasts all over the world, here we go again. From 05 May to 19 May, the tenth BOINC Pentathlon will impose the known, but also new challenges, and SETI.Germany warmly invites all enthusiast teams to join. While the basic concept of five disciplines at five projects of course remains untouched, there are again some innovations: Javelin Throw is a fresh and new discipline and requires the teams to cleverly split their resources, as the rankings are not based on the sum of all points, but only on each team's third best day out of five (not necessarily consecutive) days. This year's Marathon will take place at a subproject of the World Community Grid chosen by the project administrators. The preferences of the participating teams are taken into account, with some limitations, for choosing the projects for the other disciplines. Until 27 April, the teams can sign up and vote for their favorite projects. So, don't be shy and join: It will be exciting again at the BOINC Pentathlon!
7) Message boards : News : Web site changes (Message 87984) Posted 8 Sep 2018 by pschoefer Post: I agree with you on the point that many project names do not unambiguously tell what the project is doing. But no, you won't have access to exactly the same community resources, because you can't login to any of your project accounts, as SU creates anonymous accounts.
8) Message boards : News : Web site changes (Message 87979) Posted 8 Sep 2018 by pschoefer Post: Also, the front page now presents the option of participating using Science United. Current volunteers should consider doing this. By making it easier for new projects to get volunteers, SU will encourage the creation of new BOINC projects. I'm a bit disappointed to see this advertisement and not at all surprised to see the negative replies, as everyone who followed the discussion about that new model last year could have seen them coming. Of course, the opinions here are biased towards the more enthusiastic volunteers, but even for your average set-and-forget volunteer, switching to SU is not very attractive. The only direct advantage of SU from a volunteer's perspective is that they don't have to identify projects that fit their field of interest, but the current volunteers already have gone through this process. The vague promise that there may be more projects in the future if SU is successful, is likely not going to change anyone's mind; I wouldn't be surprised if a large majority of the current volunteers is very loyal to just one single project and does not particularly care if there are more projects on the BOINC platform. On the other hand, switching to SU would somehow rip the volunteers out of their existing communities. They can't join their teams anymore, they will lose the opportunity to post in the projects' message boards (even if they use their old accounts for that, they will eventually fall below the RAC threshold some projects are using), they won't have easy access to their personal accomplishments anymore (and I don't just mean credit/points, which are only relevant for some hardcore crunchers; but rather discovered pulsars at Einstein@Home, contribution badges for specific publications at GPUGRID, found primes at PrimeGrid, being Predictor of the Day at Rosetta@home, etc.). To some extent, this will also cause 99.9M of your 100M new volunteers to sooner or later join the army of former volunteers who quit because they can't get things to run properly and can't get help with this, or because "no useful results ever come out of this", or because they simply forget to set it up again after a device change.
9) Message boards : The Lounge : BOINC Pentathlon 2018 (Message 85776) Posted 7 Apr 2018 by pschoefer Post: It's that time again, the BOINC Pentathlon is just a few weeks away. For the ninth time, SETI.Germany invites the passionate crunchers from all over the world to compete in this team competition from 05 May to 19 May in five disciplines at five projects. The teams may sign up and vote for their favorite projects from a pre-selection using this registration form until 27 April. Late registration until 02 May is possible, but without the opportunity to vote for projects. For more information about the BOINC Pentathlon, please visit the Pentathlon pages, where you can also find the full rules and the answers to frequently asked questions. It will be exciting again at the BOINC Pentathlon! 8)
10) Message boards : Projects : Radioactive@Home domain is dead. (Message 84186) Posted 4 Jan 2018 by pschoefer Post: It's not (yet?) dead, their server is still working properly. Only the domain is gone, so you have to access it via IP address (37.59.210.4).
11) Message boards : Projects : For the betterment of BOINC (Message 79838) Posted 29 Jul 2017 by pschoefer Post: Better late than never: My main point on how to make BOINC better would be the big field of improving communication. If bug reports and feature requests are submitted at the wrong place or not at all, nothing will change, so we users should be more verbous. On the other hand, it might be a good idea if BOINC would do more to encourage feedback. The bug report instructions are a bit hidden and it might be better to discuss feature requests only on one platform, not on three platforms in parallel. There was a survey long time ago, maybe it's time for another one. So, thanks for creating this thread here and on various project message boards. An additional news item pointing to this thread would have been great, but it's better than discussing with just a few invited participants in some backroom. Another point: While finding new ways to attract more participants is definitely important, the existing user base should also be kept happy. In another thread, I mentioned a few points how BOINC could be improved in order to prepare it for one of the proposed new ways while also adding something useful for the existing user base. If a new idea, however, requires notable changes without improving something for the existing users, it might not be a good idea, especially if it touches polarizing topics: Imagine a political party promised that they would run BOINC on all government computers and create a foundation specifically to support BOINC projects, if they had the power. They might beg that BOINC officially endorses them and adds a checkbox to the user preferences so that a user can show that he supports the party, which might later be used to identify users who are entitled to decide which projects the government computers should run. The set&forget users would probably not notice anything because they never visit the project websites, let alone the message boards, but such a move would severely alienate those enthusiasts who loathe the party because of other platform points or believe that BOINC should always remain non-partisan. This could well lead to civil-war-like discussions on the message boards of the projects and various related communities and cause the enthusiasts to lose their enthusiasm or quit BOINC altogether. In the end, the party might not be able to keep its promise, either, and only the set&forget users who tend to forget to install BOINC after buying a new computer are left. So the much better solution would be that BOINC remains neutral, while the party can still deliver on their promise even without an endorsement (and they can certainly find other formats for their campaign than relying on BOINC doing their job). For the group, I've pointed out http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Publications_by_BOINC_projects which is understated and outdated. But would something like that, perhaps with a paragraph from the abstract of each paper, count as a return? That would be great. And if the projects had standardized publication lists on their websites, a global list of BOINC-based publications could be generated without someone having to keep track of all project announcements.
12) Message boards : News : NSF funds new model for BOINC (Message 79280) Posted 25 Jun 2017 by pschoefer Post: Thanks for the clarifications, the idea looks much better to me now. Another point that crossed my mind is that those volunteers who are attracted by the "TBD" approach will likely also be interested in seeing actual results of the research they support: While I understand that not every single task of every project is meaningful considered by itself, but the project may need many years of computation until a paper can be written, published results often slipped under the radar in the past and volunteers complained that all their effort would lead to nothing. I can imagine that the new HPC center projects will contribute to papers quite regularly, because they can also host short-term projects, and I think that they should definitely communicate their successes to the volunteers (a news item propagated to the BOINC Manager might not be enough; I myself would be happy with an email notification, GPUGRID's approach of awarding badges based on the contribution to particular papers might also be quite attractive). And, of course, that information would need to be propagated to "TBD" if you don't want that the volunteers have to deal with the individual projects. Having a list of papers the volunteer has made possible with his resources would likely be much more popular than just being able to say "hey, I'm contributing to biomed research". And just a few words on cryptocurrencies: While I agree that it is a shame to see all that wasted computing power, I predict (based on psychology and a bit of history) that it would be trading short-term benefit for another can of worms and the beginning of the end of BOINC as a Volunteer Computing platform if it was built into BOINC, so it's good that this is not going to happen.
13) Message boards : News : NSF funds new model for BOINC (Message 78891) Posted 10 Jun 2017 by pschoefer Post: Well, one of the reasons I have been crunching for many years now is that I also became member of an active team, which can be much more motivating than crunching alone all the time. I suspect this is true for many others, as well, but if we all started quoting our team descriptions here as part of the reason we are crunching, it would be just like the team recruitment forum. As the funding is already granted, we should rather try to give constructive feedback to David's ideas: Partner with existing HTC computing providers such as supercomputing centers and science portals to add BOINC-based back ends. These projects would be operated by the provider's staff. Tens of thousands of scientists use such computing providers. These scientists would benefit from lower queueing delays, higher throughput and lower cost. But they wouldn't need to do anything; they wouldn't even need to know that VC is being used. If the HTC providers don't offer the BOINC-based service for free, they are basically selling the resources donated by the volunteers. They will have to be very transparent on that, as there will certainly be volunteers who don't like that their donations are sold and are angry if they learn about that too late. IMHO, also the 'TBD' account manager should have an opt-in checkbox to allow this kind of projects only if it's really the user's choice. If the HTC providers were paying the volunteers for their 'donation' (I remember that long time ago there was a project that wanted to do exactly that, but it never really came to life), this would open another can of worms and likely also lead to decreased enthusiasm in the long term. In addition, I don't think that the vbox mechanism, which would be used heavily by those projects, is working well enough yet. For example, the tasks are running with normal priority instead of idle priority and you won't be able to use your computer, if you are running more than one task per physical core on a very common i7 CPU with hyperthreading (with default settings, BOINC would run one task per thread, i.e. two tasks per physical core). This is far away from the basic idea that BOINC is using the spare cycles while the users may continue using their computers as usual. It is also not trivial to set everything up correctly, even long-time enthusiasts sometimes have trouble to get a vbox project to run. If newcomers get attached to such problematic projects first, they might just uninstall BOINC and never come back. If the problems with vbox are going to be fixed now, it'll be great also for the traditional projects and the current volunteers. But if just more and more vbox projects were created, that would be taking the second step before the first. Create an account manager (let's called it "TBD" for now) acting as the primary volunteer interface. TBD lets volunteers express their preferences in terms of keywords (scientific areas and locations) rather than selecting specific projects. Based on these preferences, and corresponding keywords of projects and applications, TBD dynamically assigns computers to a set of vetted projects, which would include both existing (single-group) projects, as well as the new computing-center projects. I agree that likely very few current volunteers will be interested in such a platform, but it could in fact make things a bit easier for newcomers. I also see a few ways to improve BOINC in order to make "TBD" a success which would also be appreciated by many current volunteers. For example, I can imagine that there might be "TBD" users who want to give two cores of their quadcore CPU to biomed and the other two cores to astrophysics. Over the years, I frequently read newcomers asking why they can't (easily) set that x cores should be used for project A and y cores for project B. Of course, there is already the resource share mechanism, but it works only in the long run and newcomers tend to be a bit impatient. Credits are another point; a fair system that depends on the actual project-specific work done would be easier to explain to newcomers than some kind of lottery trying to square the circle. Overall, however, I would be surprised if there were millions of new volunteers just waiting for new platforms like the new account manager. The main problems are that 'new' devices like smartphones or tablets can be used for VC, but are not particularly well-suited for it (battery life, cooling) and that the power-saving mechanisms have advanced quite a lot in the last ten years, so we lost the important selling point that while the volunteer is using the computer as usual, it could do something useful with all the spare cycles in parallel without significantly increasing the power consumption. Unfortunately, there's no plausible way that the environment improves again in favor of VC, so all we can do is to keep the fire of enthusiasm alive.
14) Message boards : The Lounge : BOINC Pentathlon 2017 (Message 77236) Posted 8 Apr 2017 by pschoefer Post: Less than ten months have passed since the seventh BOINC Pentathlon came to an end. Now the Pentathlon is back to its usual date from May 5 to May 19 and SETI.Germany invites all BOINC teams to compete in five disciplines at five projects for the eighth time. This year, the stable and popular project World Community Grid is set for the City Run discipline, with only one subproject being considered for the Pentathlon. The teams may enter their favorite WCG subproject and three additional project suggestions while signing up using the registration form at https://www.seti-germany.de/boinc_pentathlon/anmeldung.php until April 27. The suggestions will be taken into account in the project selection as described here. Late registration without project suggestions is possible until May 2. All information about the BOINC Pentathlon is available at Pentathlon pages, while you can find the answers to many questions in the FAQ. Looking forward to seeing you at the Pentathlon! :)
15) Message boards : Questions and problems : [Discussion] 4th Generation BOINC credit system (Message 69684) Posted 21 May 2016 by pschoefer Post: I think that there is a way to introduce benchmark jobs that use real data and real applications but first I need to find a way to untangle all of the CreditNew code so it can be replaced at all. That's how Rectilinear Crossing Number fixed their problem with benchmark cheating some years ago. Not perfect, but about the best thing that can be done for variable-length tasks with no good (known) metric for the work done. But still, it should be made as easy as possible for project administrators to use their own system instead (which might be as simple as n credits per task for fixed-length tasks).
16) Message boards : Questions and problems : [Discussion] 4th Generation BOINC credit system (Message 69564) Posted 11 May 2016 by pschoefer Post: That means we start with a BOINC-wide "standard number" of (just for show) 1 point per hour on an i5-6500 @3,5Ghz and projects (in alpha) test their available computers to that result. This allows to make a table with a few processors and their efficiency for this project. Then in closed beta you send out the same WUs to computers having those CPUs (GPUs) and to new processors (set to standard) to get their relative efficiency until you have a table with (nearly) all processors. Now you have a quite accurate comparision table and can reward based on that numbers. From time to time (or rolling average) you control those numbers. That's basically the old first generation credit system with centralized benchmarking instead of local benchmarks on every single host. So benchmark manipulation is not possible, but the system still relies on easy-to-fake reported runtimes. You would not only run into trouble with rare CPUs not in your table, but also you would rely on the reported CPU type (can be faked very easily right now). You would also have to accurately measure CPU clock, otherwise overclocked CPUs are doing more work but get same credit per time. And that's just one of a gazillion parameters possibly affecting the actual computation speed. Moreover, the 'benchmark phase' would have to be repeated everytime a new application version is released, creating even more work for project administrators than my project-specific credit approach. Any average-comparative credit system will also break long-term credit stability on project level, while you still would not really have cross-project parity as different hosts just behave too differently on different applications. So in the end, you would have a complicated system and people not only complain about cheating and project A granting more credit per time than project B on their hosts, but also about broken credit stability on project level. A discussion about the 5th generation BOINC credit system would likely come up in no time.
17) Message boards : Questions and problems : [Discussion] 4th Generation BOINC credit system (Message 69560) Posted 10 May 2016 by pschoefer Post: SekeRob2 wrote: It may very well be that each project can do as they please with the credit system, and cross project comparing is a waste of time [at this time it is], but why then is there a BOINC credit system, a CPID and the many project comparing statistics websites for host/OS/team/member and more, to include the not unique: http://boinc.netsoft-online.com/e107_plugins/boinc/get_cpcs.php, which highlights the differentials in a matrix of how one second of computing compares on hosts that share the same projects. You have to keep in mind that the basic idea of one credit system for many projects is a relic of a time when there was not a big diversity of projects doing very different types of calculations and the differences between CPUs were comparable across the projects. If project A granted twice as much credit as project B on one host, the ratio was about the same on every other host. Nobody thought of developments like x64 and AVX, let alone GPUs, which may be a hundred times faster than a CPU on project A, but slower than the CPU or even unusable on project B. And that's not because of bad optimization, but just because the projects are calculating different things. Those cross-project comparison sheets were useful in ancient times, but now we have seen all those developments and should learn our lesson, even if that requires dropping some old thinking, cross-project comparison sheets and 'combined' stats. wolfbert wrote: The original idea of distributed computing was that volunteers donate (unused) computing resources to an endeavor (project) they find worthwhile. Therefore, the most meaningful measure of progress, contribution and success comes from this endeavor - number of climate model iterations computed, prime numbers found, proteins folded, encryption keys tried, core hours - you name it. This is fairly easy to determine by the project, it's meaningful for participants, and it can be put in stats tables. Competitions are also still possible (and the organizers can make their own rules how to compare projects). Cheating is rather pointless, as project validation will accept only valid/confirmed work units. I completely agree and a number of projects is already doing that. Unfortunately, it's not always as simple as one might think (e.g., counting primes would not be a very good measure for work done at PrimeGrid and they in fact needed many years to find a good credit system). And it cannot be done by the BOINC developers. The BOINC server code should only include a very easy standard credit system (i.e. fixed number of points per task, which is sufficient for test projects and projects with fixed-length tasks... and, to be honest, is already more fair than a lottery for variable-length tasks as long as their runtime is really not predictable) and make it as easy as possible to replace with a more accurate system as soon as the project administrators have an idea.
18) Message boards : The Lounge : BOINC Pentathlon 2016 (Message 69359) Posted 1 May 2016 by pschoefer Post: Dear fellow crunchers, after a hacker had caused havoc on the server and the Pentathlon pages had been offline for one week, the BOINC Pentathlon 2016 has now been rescheduled to start one month later, i.e. on 05 June 2016 (see also this announcement). Registration for teams that wanted to participate but could not sign up in time is open again until 28 May.
19) Message boards : Questions and problems : [Discussion] 4th Generation BOINC credit system (Message 69238) Posted 28 Apr 2016 by pschoefer Post: Any publicity is good publicity. If a BOINC cheating expose article hit the front page of reddit, there would likely be an influx of new users joining the BOINC platform. Our community hit the front page of reddit for a couple hours and we managed to recruit approx 1000 users in a single day to our team. Well, I know that kind of short-term influx of new users. It's not very sustainable and doesn't work forever. But that's another point for a 'clash of cultures' type of thread. There's no point worrying about BOINC projects shutting down - more projects will likely be created in the future to fill their place, and the benefits of free computing power from volunteers likely exceeds inconveniences caused by cheaters especially as we iron out how to make cheating less effective in this thread. We'll see. There are less active projects nowadays than there used to be a couple of years ago and less new projects are established. There's no such thing as infinite growth. Gridcoin has not imposed new problems/issues onto the BOINC platform - the problems rising to the surface have existed for years now (with 0 discussion by the BOINC community nevermind the Gridcoin community). If it had not been Gridcoin, then CharityEngine or inter-team competitions would have exposed the same cheaters. There is one major difference. Yes, the cheaters that claimed high rankings in the long-term statistics had their 15 minutes of fame. Punch in the faces of all honest crunchers who care about the stats. But most cases, their credit was zeroed some time after the cheating was revealed, so that fame is not sustainable. In short-term competitions, the cheaters lose their credibility; no one will take them serious in future competitions, if they are allowed to take part at all. Just like with doping in sports. On the contrary, according to one of your earlier posts, those who cheated in order to get more Gridcoins do retain their benefit (the same might apply for that CharityEngine thing, I don't know anything about that). --- Just found this thread on cosmology@home that's relevant to this topic: http://www.cosmologyathome.org/forum_thread.php?id=7341#20601 As implied by an ATLAS@Home admin, the LHC-related projects may also have a new credit system soon, which is another step toward 'project-defined credit'.
20) Message boards : The Lounge : BOINC Pentathlon 2016 (Message 69162) Posted 26 Apr 2016 by pschoefer Post: Dear fellow crunchers, bad news today. As you may already have noticed, seti-germany.de and the Pentathlon pages have been down since Saturday. The server was hacked and we do not know yet when everything will be back online. Of course, we do not want to bring it back up just to see it being hacked again during the Pentathlon. Additional security measures are being implemented right now. I really feel bad to have to say this, but we will have to postpone this year's Pentathlon to make sure that we can provide the usual service (stats, daily bulletin, project announcements) and all teams have the opportunity to sign up. We can not give a new date right now, but we hope that we can run it still in May or early June, as we definitely want to avoid the hot summer months. We will post a proper announcement as soon as we have a new date. Really sorry for the chaos this year.

Next 20

Copyright © 2024 University of California.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.