10 ms·
I wonder if we could make it even better and make smart heaters that instead of wasting calculations actually do something useful, something like folding protei
by lmilcin 6y ago
I wonder if we could make it even better and make smart heaters that instead of wasting calculations actually do something useful, something like folding proteins or some other computing load that doesn't require huge network load and can be easily distributed (something like SETI@home but actually useful).
In densely populated cities we could bury huge datacenters underground and use that energy for heating directly, and use excess to produce electricity.
- bayindirh 6y agoWelcome to Qarnot. https://qarnot.com/en/the-radiator-computer/ https://qarnot.com/en/the-radiator-computer/
- neilalexander 6y ago> The computing-heater warms buildings ecologically and for free, thanks to the waste heat released by embedded microprocessors. By performing complex IT operations... ... which are what, exactly?
- ryankrage77 6y agoGoing by the vaguness of the site, I wouldn't be suprised if they're mining bitcoin for themselves while you pay for the electricity. Edit: Dug around some more, looks like they're building a BOINC-like service? https://computing.qarnot.com/en/ https://computing.qarnot.com/en/
- bayindirh 6y agoIf I remember correctly, they pay for the network and electricity use of the heater. They rent the platform for computation to other third parties. So you, store and cool the computer for free. They probably sell directly to buildings and municipalities during construction, so it's installed and left there. So you either just rent it for a nominal fee or pay nothing.
- Tijdreiziger 6y agoSounds like what Nerdalize tried to do in the Netherlands, but IIRC they went bankrupt not long ago.
- acomjean 6y agoIm not sure what it’s doing but “folding@home” is doing biology simulations as it’s useful distributed computing, that can probably generate some warmth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home
- bayindirh 6y agoFolding@Home has an unofficial guide for it too [0]. At the end of the day, Qarnot rents this infrastructure to other companies for computation and use the heat energy to heat stuff (air, water, warehouses, etc.). Not a bad idea. [0]: https://greenfoldingathome.com/2020/05/25/how-to-make-a-foldinghome-space-heater-and-why-would-you-want-to/ https://greenfoldingathome.com/2020/05/25/how-to-make-a-fold...
- bryanrasmussen 6y agolooking through their tech stack and the hello world example and stuff I think you can put your own stuff i n it, but probably the most common stuff is 3d rendering. on edit: I got a downvote so someone must think I'm wrong? the basis of my idea was - in the FAQ https://computing.qarnot.com/en/FAQ https://computing.qarnot.com/en/FAQ 3D: Blender, Maya, V-Ray, Guerilla IA / ML / Big data or simulation: Code Saturne FreeFem OpenFOAM PyTorch TensorFlow SickitLearn Spark If there is a Docker image, we support the software! You can either bring your own or choose an existing one on Docker Hub. You can also ask our experts for help! I expected the 3D stuff put up top made it the most used, but could be wrong in that. Obviously also some data crunching, ML tasks, but at any rate if my answer was wrong and so off base as to get a downvote maybe you could also just say why I'm wrong and what it's generally used for? on second edit: developer documentation https://computing.qarnot.com/en/developers/overview/qarnot-computing-home https://computing.qarnot.com/en/developers/overview/qarnot-c... made me think that maybe if you have one you can get your own api token and put your stuff on it, obviously you would have to pay them for that so not sure how it would work.
- cinntaile 6y agoYou have been here for a couple of years, surely you have noticed downvotes don't always make sense.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agosure, but I suppose it makes sense to the person making the downvote. And when it makes especially poor sense to me I start to think - maybe they see something I don't? on edit: I do sometimes also get paranoid and think, man there is just someone who doesn't like me and automatically downvote when they run across my name!
- agurk 6y agoParticularly when there's a case of a single downvote, it's worth remembering that it's easy to click the wrong button here - especially on mobile. I make a habit of checking the command has changed to "unvote" or "undown" correctly to verify I voted how I wanted to. I've also hit voting arrows a lot whilst scrolling (on mobile) and must not have caught that every single time.
- BenoitEssiambre 6y agoI don't know much about this company but I love the name Qarnot which is suggestive of thermodynamically optimal computing. Carnot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_L%C3%A9onard_Sadi_Carnot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_L%C3%A9onard_Sadi_Carn...) was the father of thermodynamic efficiency. He came up with thermodynamics to optimize steam engines, maybe making him the most steampunk of scientists. Thermodynamically optimizing bits is an echo of that for the age of computing.
- agumonkey 6y agohappy to know they're still on
- exdsq 6y ago'Proof of Useful Work', as opposed to proof of work, is a thing! https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/203.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/203.pdf
- monkeydust 6y agoAny coins / tokens that implement this or something similar?
- Nextgrid 6y agoThe proof of work in tokens has to be a net waste of energy; the idea is that the proof of work is costly enough to prevent a 51% attack. Making the proof of work do “useful” things would lower the cost of said work thus lowering the barrier of entry to an attack.
- lupire 6y agoThat's only true if the work is profitable for you and not something lie for folding@home
- cwkoss 6y agoHow can you chain folding@home puzzles? PoW requires that a block's solution proves that the solver had access to the previous block.
- guerrilla 6y agoThe linked paper says the opposite. > This results in PoWs whose completion does not waste energy but instead is useful for the solution of computational problems of practical interest.
- inter_netuser 6y agodo you believe every paper that comes across without critical review? This 31 page paper most definitely has not been fully evaluated by anyone commenting on it in this thread.
- dvdbloc 6y agoFor years in an apartment I generated heat using surplus servers folding proteins. Some servers that are still quite fast and only a few years old are pretty cheap on eBay. Dockerize the whole thing and it’s easy to start and stop. One time I woke up however and it was especially cold, I realized I had a network issue and my servers could not get any more work units...
- medstrom 6y agoProduce electricity? I assume electricity was used to do the computation in the first place, turning into let's say 80% work and 20% heat. The idea was to use that 20% to heat our homes. The original electricity still needs to come from elsewhere.
- lmilcin 6y agoWhen I said Data Center can produce electricity I did not mean that it can produce as much or more than it takes in. I thought this obvious enough that it did not have to be said. But alas, it has to be said. No, you can't create perpetuum mobile ie. build a machine that given a supply of energy produces as much or even more energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetuum_mobile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetuum_mobile
- innocenat 6y agoIt is still not viable. Assume your datacenter runs at 50C (122F) and the temperature outside is -40C (-40F), using the datacenter heat to generate electricity has theoretical maximum efficiency of 27.85%. If your datacenter is at 23C (73F) and room temp is 0C (32F), then the theoretical maximum is 7.77%. Note the word 'theoretical maximum', in reality probably at least 10 times worse than that.
- lmilcin 6y agoYou assume DCs are cooled by the whole volume of air inside when in fact you can put heat pipes on components and get closer to 70-90 degrees heat source. Even years ago when I worked in datacenters the air was circulated from outside to the server rack and then back outside, never crossing from the rack into server room. Newer generations of CPUs are going to be exchange less frequently but will produce more energy as they offer more dense computing. This makes case for investing more in the server hardware. Even then understand, that 7% of a huge amount of energy is still huge amount of energy. Edit: Apparently "Facebook datacenter in Denmark is supplying around 10.000 homes with heating" -- source, another poster. So... you need to rethink your expertise on defining what is and what is not viable.
- celticninja 6y agoI understand your point but it does gloss over the fact that the calculations are useful to the bitcoin network in terms of security.
- ohgodplsno 6y agoSo, absolutely useless for 99.99% of the world.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lmilcin 6y agoThis was discussed before on HN. The issue is building consensus protocol (in this case consensus that a transaction happened or did not happen). There exist no physics law that says that achieving this requires burning extraordinary amounts of energy.
- Graffur 6y ago> This was discussed before on HN. You say that like the conversation is resolved?
- ForHackernews 6y agoIt is resolved. Everyone except bitcoin bagholders can see that the BTC proof-of-work protocol is obscenely wasteful. There are already superior cryptocurrencies that use different consensus algorithms and have similar or better security/anonymity properties.
- afarrell 6y agoI think you might be underestimating the amount of work required to achieve real consensus among humans.
- rypskar 6y agoThere are several useful BOINC-projects, for protein folding you have https://foldingathome.org/ https://foldingathome.org/, the projects mine computers use most time on are the projects at https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org. You can find lists of projects at https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php and https://www.boincstats.com/page/projectPopularity https://www.boincstats.com/page/projectPopularity. Interesting idea to combine it with larger heating than to heat a room or two. Many will probably argue that it is an ineffective way to create heat without also looking at the benefits from the work done
- ryankrage77 6y ago> Many will probably argue that it is an ineffective way to create heat. Electrical heating is as close to 100% efficient as you can get. Every watt your computer uses ends up as heat. Generating those watts from non-renewable sources is much less efficient though. I wonder if it's possible to calculate when the benefit of contributing to BOINC projects outweighs the CO2 generated.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vbezhenar 6y agoHeat pumps have >100% efficiency. It's better to use AC to heat your house as long as outside temperature is not too cold.
- lmilcin 6y agoNo, heat pumps don't have over 100% efficiency the same way hot water pumps that pump from municipal source don't have >100% efficiency in heating home (it uses hot water available from somewhere else). Heat pumps engage some other source of energy so if you want to measure efficiency you now need to include that other source into account. Since you are engaging natural source of energy you can measure how effective (not efficient in thermodynamical terms) your heat pump system is, by calculating how much energy it can transfer for energy put into the pump. But this has nothing to do with efficiency, which in case of devices used to convert one type of energy into another or moving energy from place to place is typically meant in its strict thermodynamical sense.
- VMG 6y agoCryptocurrency mining doesn't actually require huge network load
- okl 6y agoI would call ~80 TWhpa "huge": https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/
- virgo_eye 6y agoNetwork load here refers to bandwidth on the internet, not power consumption on the electricity grid, I believe.
- lmilcin 6y agoI don't consider cryptocurrency mining as overall beneficial for humanity. You know, humanity has this huge issue of CO2 in atmosphere, maybe you have heard of it? We are building more and more renewable sources, but cryptocurrency mining is countering these benefits to a considerable extent. Additionally, even if we are able to produce 100% energy from renewable sources it still requires energy to scrub carbon from our atmosphere and so any energy put in bitcoin could be used for like saving our planet.
- VMG 6y ago> You know, humanity has this huge issue of CO2 in atmosphere, maybe you have heard of it? yes, it is exhausting
- inter_netuser 6y agoIt is not wasted. This is the most common misunderstanding on this forum. Miners are required to provable expend effort in order to become eligible to produce a block. 2nd law of thermodynamics as core security mechanism, as it cannot be reversed. If you were to improve efficiency by routing excess heat for other purposes, it will gradually spread across the entire mining industry, and eventually you end up right where we started.
- mtsr 6y agoWhich is OPs point. The energy has to be wasted, or else everyone will do it to reduce cost and the difficulty just goes up until the net mining reward is similar to what it is now. And that for something that’s almost exclusively used for speculation, because for anything else transactions costs are too high...
- hsbauauvhabzb 6y agoSure, but if the rebates result in wasted energy instead being used for good, then we’re getting an energy benefit while getting better power. Hell, dont pay people, if I was mining and it was similar costs to donate the wasted energy I’d do it.
- hsbauauvhabzb 6y agoWhat?
- htk 6y agoI don’t think GP misunderstood what miners do. What I believe he means by wasted cycles is that the final product in crypto doesn’t have any practical purpose aside from what was agreed on by convention. For any other purpose it’s a wasted effort. This calculation power could instead be used to try to find new practical knowledge, like protein folding to use on new medicine etc.
- bouncycastle 6y agoIt's a fallacy that high hashrate means high security. What matters is the % of miners that are honest. (See bitcoin.pdf) High hashrate just means higher difficulty. (The difficulty controls the average time between blocks, so it's always targeting to be 10 min on average). Also, for heating your home, mining bitcoin could end you up with a loss. For example, your heater needs an internet connection, and your heater is will become out-of-date very quickly as new more advanced bitcoin mining gear becomes available. You would also need to have your heater on 24/7 to break even, this it will cost you to turn off the mining heater due to warm weather or to cool it. Not to mention the noise.
- stevewillows 6y agoSETI coin should be a thing. It’s nice for people to fold without prompting or compensation, but the added incentive would most likely draw a significantly larger market.
- mrweasel 6y agoCurrently a Facebook datacenter in Denmark is supplying around 10.000 homes with heating. You can argue that Facebook isn't actually doing anything useful, but still, it's better than to waste the generated heat.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoI don’t think any rational person argues that Facebook isn’t doing anything useful at all, lots of people value the connectivity and ability to share photos during lockdown. Facebook has a good and bad side just like humans do. For example, if Facebook got rid of the ability to post news, it would be a much better place.
- pmontra 6y agoOr completely remove posts and keep only Messenger and Whatsapp. I've been using almost only Whatsapp and Telegram to share stuff with friends and groups of friends for a few years. If I want to read news I look for them either on Google News or on the very web sites that publish them, the ones I trust. If Google and Facebook would block news on my country I wouldn't notice much.
- nr2x 6y agoThe questions are twofold: does Facebook do more good than bad? Could the good be accomplished without much of the bad? The answers to both questions are arguably bad for Facebook.
- crote 6y agoThe problem here is that densely populated cities generally aren't in need of heating: keeping them cooled is a bigger issue! From a heating perspective, there is basically zero demand for the kind of year-round low-quality heating a data center can produce. From a computing perspective, rare and uncontrollable bursts of computing power aren't desirable either and is a waste of hardware. The article should be considered an edge case. The author already had hardware lying around for free and required zero usable computation. An in-ground heat buffer wasn't an option. Longevity of the hardware was irrelevant. Heat demand was quite small. Does it work for a single person? Sure, why not! Will it work on a city-wide scale? Highly unlikely.
- lmilcin 6y agoSo where do you live exactly? I live in Europe and I would say that heating IS life or death problem whereas cooling isn't. See, there is this thing that is called hypothermia and if you take a look at the map and find where it is possible to die of hypothermia vs where it is possible to die of overheating, the number of people that live in places that require heating is much more than number of people that live in places that require cooling. That may change in the future.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoWth is this "low-quality heating from datacenters"?
- dudul 6y agoWhere does this claim that densely populated cities don't need heating come from?
- m463 6y agoI've wondered the same thing every time I hear of "bitcoin will change the climate". I think we could even design processors differently if heat was not part of the equation. Right now it's all about perf-per-watt, which gives up absolute speed. Also it would be fun to say "It was so cold that night, <x>" like "I could raytrace in realtime" or "I mined 1 bitcoin" or "crysis ran 10,000fps"
- vladvasiliu 6y agoI think that could be interesting. As others have said, whatever the computations are, if they are being done anyway, might as well use the generated heat for something useful instead of letting it go to waste. But I wonder what would happen with such a system in the summer? For example in most on France it gets pretty cold for long enough every year that having a proper heating system and good insulation makes financial sense. But during the summer it's pretty hot, especially in cities. While the heating can be turned off between March and October (give or take), Facebook & co would probably like their DC to keep on working, so to keep on heating, year round.
- tuukkah 6y agoDistrict heating is used year round to get warm water.
- galangalalgol 6y agoHow hot is hot? A few days ago it was -18 here and now its 27. In a few months we will hit 38. I'm sure I dont want to be doing computations then.
- brightball 6y agoPart of me wonders if we aren’t getting there now. The crypto craze is driving more heavy compute setups around the globe than anything else. When it finally slows down (if ever) what will all of that hardware be used for?
- zirkonit 6y agoAnother one: Yandex (disclosure: the company I work for) is using one of its datacenters to heat the entire town it is in. Proof: https://helsinkismart.fi/case/waste-not-want-not-data-centers-leftover-heat-warms-a-town/ https://helsinkismart.fi/case/waste-not-want-not-data-center...
- 420codebro 6y agoInteresting. Never ran across someone who worked for Yandex. Overall are you happy with your employer?
- zirkonit 6y agoAbsolutely! By any definition, the pinnacle place to work for in Russia.
- 420codebro 6y agoNice. I use you guys for reverse image search constantly because google image search is heavily curated.
- jgtrosh 6y agoApparently nobody here has mentioned Gridcoin yet: https://gridcoin.us/ https://gridcoin.us/
- mustyoshi 6y agoThe key here is that mining pays enough to offset electricity used for mining. SETI@home doesn't pay.
- amelius 6y agoSo we need a cryptocurrency based on useful calculations instead of useless hashing.
- ehnto 6y agoNot quite what you mean, but a city in Australia is trialing "Smart Appliance Response Automation". The gist is that some appliances can utilize excess green power during the day in order to not need that energy later at night when it would need to be provided by gas turbines. The current trial is actually residential water heaters, by heating the water using excess green power during the day you effectively store that energy as heat and that water then gets used later that night or early morning for showers/baths/washing etc. Another example is a more obvious one, which is electric cars and other large battery appliances. The ultimate goal is to get these appliances talking to the grid directly, so that they know when to draw power and when to idle. https://www.energyrating.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-01/smart_appliance_decision_ris.pdf https://www.energyrating.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-01/...
- bluGill 6y agoMy parents have had a smart water heater since 1988. It was interesting a few years back hearing a politician talk about how bad smart meters were - he had to make it clear that the smart meter 80% of the room had for 20 years were nothing like the smart meters he was talking about. (which is to say the ones he was against gave minute by minute reports with the privacy concerns, the ones everyone had just turned the water heater and AC units off/on - I'll let you decide if the issue was real or not)
- ehnto 6y agoI think the likelyhood of it being done in the "New Tech" fashion of bi-directional real-time data flows with high level languages is high, and the security of that will be low. So I'm not super pumped about the inevitable grid software exploits. Privacy aside, it's got other potential risks that are more important to address I think.
- rini17 6y agoOn one side, you want to recoup the miner investment and run it as much as possible, ideally 24/7. But on the other side, you want the heater to regulate temperature (not overheat the room) by switching itself off as needed. You can have both only if you either waste energy (vent it to outside) or have a thermal storage. It is already existing technology i.e. for electric heaters that accumulate heat using cheap night electricity and slowly release it during the day. Or water boilers. But they are bulky and can only store several hours worth of heat.
- Forbo 6y agoWhat you're looking for is called the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). The work units for BOINC can be crunched to earn GridCoin.
- Scoundreller 6y agoI was thinking we could build something like this for refining aluminum. Every week you pick up your 10kg block of bauxite and exchange it for aluminum. Not sure how much byproduct heat is actually involved though...