this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023

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I miss SETI@home (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by nlm@beehaw.org to c/space@beehaw.org

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Do we have any other former SETI@home users here?

I'm still bummed that the project stopped and for that matter that nothing really came of their analyzation phase. Nothing seems to have happened since they moth balled it..

I wasn't the most active user by by far but I had tens of thousands of classic cpu hours and some millions od current score after close to 20 years of on and off participation.

Sure, there are other projects I could join but.. there was something magical about SETI to me.

For those who never heard of the project:

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

You could donate spare cpu cycles to help analyze data from the Arecibo radio telescope to look for signs of artificial signals. You had it running in the background and as a screensaver if you wanted to see what you were analyzing.

I'm sure most of you have heard of it or similar distributed computing projects. There are plenty to choose from using BOINC (that S@h used) over at https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

https://foldingathome.org/ is one if the most known similar ones.

I just wanted to vent a bit.

I'm still struck now and then by the fact that they stopped the project and I get bummed out..

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[–] Davel23@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

I used to run it. Once, while I was running the screensaver I looked over and the FFT was completely flat, with a repeating "blip" running across it. I'm sure it was just some local signal interference not an extraterrestrial message, but it was very weird and cool to see.

[–] PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I ran BOINC on all my old androids during the pandemic. It was really cool to see that individual tasks running on them were different COVID variations. Felt like I was doing my part haha.

[–] nlm@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Haha nice! :D

[–] makeasnek@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Been BOINCing for over a decade, and been earning Gridcoin for it the past few years as well. A great way to get something good out of my equipment and heat my house in winter! There's still tons of great projects to contribute to. Come join us !boinc@sopuli.xyz

[–] negativenull@negativenull.com 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Did they stop due to the Arecibo radio telescope collapsing and not being replaced?

[–] interolivary@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

At least reading the wiki article like the problem was more about funding, and that while losing Arecibo was unfortunate, they could have used data from any other telescope:

However, in the overall long-term views held by many involved with the SETI project, any usable radio telescope could take over from Arecibo (which completely collapsed in December 2020), as all the SETI systems are portable and relocatable.

[–] nlm@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

No, they basically realized that they needed to actually do something with all the results people sent in. They had too much material for them to be able to handle any more so they figured they had to pull the breaks on it all.

[–] baggins@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Same here. Sad.

[–] freeman@lemmy.pub 1 points 1 year ago

I used to run it on my desktops back in the day, when my rent included utilities and I had Pentium 3 and Pentium 4's just chugging along while idle.

[–] HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I used to run that screensaver. I totally forgot about it.

[–] nlm@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Nostalgic isn't it?

[–] Frederic@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I ran seti@home for yyeeeaaarrrssss and some others projet in BOINC, I stopped maybe 10 years ago... It was cool.

[–] nlm@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was, wasn't it?

I always felt like Jodie Foster in Contact when I was running it :)

[–] interolivary@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ha, exactly the same mental image here. Love the book and the movie

[–] nlm@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Same here! Though I actually prefer the movie over the book and that's not something I say often.

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