Join the fight against COVID-19

[Erik]

If you have a gaming-ready PC, you can lend your graphical power to fighting the COVID-19 outbreak.

The project could help researchers better understand coronavirus, and eventually even develop effective therapies against it. If you've been grappling with feelings of helplessness in the face of the worldwide outbreak, this is a small but real way you can lend your aid to the world without any medical experience. It also doesn't hurt that you don't need to leave your house to do it, since we're supposed to avoid that as much as possible anyway.

https://foldingathome.org/2020/03/10/covid19-update/

https://www.gamesradar.com/nvidias-calling-on-gaming-pc-owners-to-put-their-systems-to-work-fighting-covid-19/

https://foldingathome.org/start-folding/

 

[MrLongSlong]

Sounds as legit as @SALV selling plebs mansion 

 

[Kayn]

Sounds as legit as @SALV selling plebs mansion 

Sharing gold after hm*

 

[Erik]

Sounds as legit as @SALV selling plebs mansion 

This is legit, its already been a post back in the days in r/askscience if this is legit. Folding@Home was actually on the ps3 as an application back in the days. 

I do drug discovery. One important part is knowing the molecular target, which requires precise knowledge of structural elements of complex proteins.

Some of these are solved by x-ray crystallography, but Folding@Home has solved several knotty problems for proteins that are not amenable to this approach.

Bottom line is that we are actively designing drugs based on the solutions of that program, and that's only the aspect that pertains to my particular research.

So what are some drugs that have been developed or are being developed, thanks to F@H? Also, what are those drugs treating?

Alzheimer's. Here's the reference. That's from J Med Chem, which is the workhorse journal in my field.

Drug development usually takes at least ten years from idea to clinic, and Folding@Home was only launched 12 years ago.

Edit: If you have questions about Alzheimer's drug discovery, I just did an AMA here.

 

[Butch]

Been using folding for a while now on my old server deffo a legit software tbh more ppl should join in on it especially if they have a 2nd machine that is not used

 

[Erik]

Been using folding for a while now on my old server deffo a legit software tbh more ppl should join in on it especially if they have a 2nd machine that is not used

yeah and even after this has been sold there is other stuff we can help solve as:

Alzheimer

Cancer

Huntington

Parkinson

 

[SALV]

Seems like a scam to me. You heard it first from the biggest scammer known to man

 

[TinyBigJacko]

It's legit, as far as we are aware. Folding@Home has been around a long time, and has offloaded a lot of computations for various protein folding simulations, and drug-research into cancer cures, etc, over the years.

More info on it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home

Just be certain that whatever you download and install is genuine - there should most likely be methods to check this, on the F@H site.

Obviously, any risk you take is your own, and RPUK doesn't accept any liability if you do this and burn your house down trying to fold Covid on a 386 with a power-supply made of tinder and kindling, on an old Voodoo graphics 3D card from the 1990s. 

But that said, if you're just wasting electricity at night with a PC that isn't in sleep mode, or better still, turned off, there are worse things you could be doing than this.