Edit: so it turns out that every hobby can be expensive if you do it long enough.

Also I love how you talk about your hobby as some addicts.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I also run BOINC and Folding@Home on the excess computing power in the winter, essentially “donating” it to science, which is perfect because my house only has electric baseboard heating anyway so I’m consuming the same amount of electricity for heating either way, and the electricity sources are mostly renewables where I live! The home office is toasty all winter, if kind of loud.

    If this was a standard home feature in cold climates that would be awesome. There’s schemes where they have farms that pipe their heat into homes, but that’s a lot of extra infrastructure for something that’s fundamentally easy to decentralise.

    • HiddenLayer5
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I’ve heard people proposing a “computational electric heater” in the past where it’s just a really powerful computer that can do citizen science processing (or presumably whatever you want on it). I suppose the only issue is cost of sufficiently powerful processors that generate enough heat to actually work as a heater, as well as the thermal regulation system since semiconductors are way more temperature sensitive than a coil of resistive wire, shorter lifespan too I imagine. Though if we can overcome these issues that would be a massive technological milestone.

      It would be a really good use of old computers instead of throwing them out though, could use them as space heaters in a place where you don’t mind the noise and/or find a way to dampen the noise while allowing the heat to come through.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Come to think of it, I actually don’t know what the compute footprint of an average first-world person is. If we moved all the racks into people’s houses (in a sound-proof enclosure or something) would that be enough?