Rise and Fall of the [H] team

Certainly shows the power of the 'coin, that's for sure.
 
No Empire in history has ever stayed as the ruler of the world. They have a rise, and they are eventually conquered. But what they did at the top defines who they were (are) and how they will be remembered in [H]istory. 🖖
 
I want to say it was all because of bigadv but I think there were several factors all happening at that time. DC as a whole has been in decline of new members joining and retention in decline as well. It wasn't just FAH that has seen behaviors. Our FAH team certainly had a mass drop off, but I think a lot of people used bigadv as an excuse for their burnout that had been growing. Certainly some had spent a large amount of money on gear without much warning of the change but that wasn't the largest portion of our team in user numbers. Combine that with the appeal of mining cryptos and possibly earning a quick buck instead of spending it on a hobby that had yet really shown any real results for your efforts outside of papers and it made it easy to exit. We still have members upset over bigadv. Some have helped a bit in other projects, but only a few have stuck around. We have some trickling back in for this cause which is awesome. The real test is whether they will stick around for long. I have hope that they will. This is an expensive hobby when you take it serious. However, people forget that you don't have to take it serious to still help. A single thread is still helpful. There are hundreds of thousands of multi-threaded computers out there going unused. If each one merely contributed a single thread, that would still be an amazing contribution.

I personally think the burn out is what killed things the most. When we took #1 at FAH, we had members hopping from other teams to assist us in that task. They had a goal. An agenda. Something other than the normal daily drudge. Once the goal was met, all that was left was daily drudge. Now again, people have a goal. A challenge. Something that makes all of this seem "worth doing". Our team has worked with TAAT to make a yearly FAH challenge. Hopefully, next year everyone will still be around to help us as our production has been about half of what theirs is. And for those that are still angry, I encourage you to join us in the other projects we also support. We are very active. Our numbers are few. But we still put up a pretty good fight with what we have.
 
That was super interesting. I watched the lines move and kept saying "oh yeah, that was when...."
 
That was super interesting. I watched the lines move and kept saying "oh yeah, that was when...."

ya I remember when evga passed us, then the joy when we passed them and anonymous... the loss of bigadv was a big hit, a lot of people invested a lot of money into those setups
 
I want to say it was all because of bigadv but I think there were several factors all happening at that time. DC as a whole has been in decline of new members joining and retention in decline as well. It wasn't just FAH that has seen behaviors. Our FAH team certainly had a mass drop off, but I think a lot of people used bigadv as an excuse for their burnout that had been growing. Certainly some had spent a large amount of money on gear without much warning of the change but that wasn't the largest portion of our team in user numbers. Combine that with the appeal of mining cryptos and possibly earning a quick buck instead of spending it on a hobby that had yet really shown any real results for your efforts outside of papers and it made it easy to exit. We still have members upset over bigadv. Some have helped a bit in other projects, but only a few have stuck around. We have some trickling back in for this cause which is awesome. The real test is whether they will stick around for long. I have hope that they will. This is an expensive hobby when you take it serious. However, people forget that you don't have to take it serious to still help. A single thread is still helpful. There are hundreds of thousands of multi-threaded computers out there going unused. If each one merely contributed a single thread, that would still be an amazing contribution.

I personally think the burn out is what killed things the most. When we took #1 at FAH, we had members hopping from other teams to assist us in that task. They had a goal. An agenda. Something other than the normal daily drudge. Once the goal was met, all that was left was daily drudge. Now again, people have a goal. A challenge. Something that makes all of this seem "worth doing". Our team has worked with TAAT to make a yearly FAH challenge. Hopefully, next year everyone will still be around to help us as our production has been about half of what theirs is. And for those that are still angry, I encourage you to join us in the other projects we also support. We are very active. Our numbers are few. But we still put up a pretty good fight with what we have.

Well said ... Screw PG though, Far from transparent, their decisions are what killed off interest, they still get the bulk of the good PR around the world of DC and hopefully they eventually get some tangible results ...
 
well pretty sure you don't have to deal with 7im anymore, he died iirc
 
sure, he was the main reason I left F@H back in the day... now I've been reading to see if I get back into the fray and it seems there still isn't a good project for both CPU & GPU so I begrudgingly go back I guess
 
Yeah... most newer projects springing up are really in over their head. The sturdy "good" projects are slowly coming to an end. Even SETI is going into hibernation. WCG has upgraded but hasn't really "grown". Non-mathematical projects that use the GPU are getting slim. Especially if you want medical/bio based. A good number of researchers just run things in-house. Umbrella projects don't do a very good job at advertising their services. WCG requires you to guarantee a certain level of work needing done to be worth their time running it. I believe they require a minimum of 6 months of work or something like that. It would be great if a GPU project would come to their project as users have been asking for one since HCC ended almost 2 years early due to a GPU application 11'ish years ago.
 
Ahh, I remember the day we passed default and you can certainly see both the drop off in bigadv and the rise of the gpu's and the eventual rise of the coins.

To the old timers that have left, PG and VJ in particular are no longer associated with the project.
 
LTT currently has about 55- 60K active crunchers. Likely due to the challenge currently in progress.

EC2 (Amazon) is blowing away all folders and at the rate they are going will overtake us sometime in Jun/Jul.
 
Ahh, I remember the day we passed default and you can certainly see both the drop off in bigadv and the rise of the gpu's and the eventual rise of the coins.

To the old timers that have left, PG and VJ in particular are no longer associated with the project.

Good to know, but do they still falsely claim Parkinson's research when in fact they do not and have not (to my knowledge) have any projects on the subject?
 
Very interesting video. I remember folding when we were competing with EVGA and the idea of overtaking default was crazy... impossible... never going to happen.

But we overtook both EVGA and Default.

p.s. hey Coin... can you spare some change?
 
I remember going to the other forums and recruiting members from other teams. BillR (RIP Bill) and I were relentless with recruiting, back in the day.
There were a lot of very active members, and it took quite a bit of effort to keep the team focused.
We also had plenty of support from Kyle, and he gave me a lot of leeway in the DC forum. Gotta give him credit for supporting the team.

It was a massive effort, and took a huge amount of time and dedication.
Could we do it again? Maybe...if there was a project to capture the imagination.
Who wants to be the next [H]ard Bard?
 
I remember going to the other forums and recruiting members from other teams. BillR (RIP Bill) and I were relentless with recruiting, back in the day.
There were a lot of very active members, and it took quite a bit of effort to keep the team focused.
We also had plenty of support from Kyle, and he gave me a lot of leeway in the DC forum. Gotta give him credit for supporting the team.

It was a massive effort, and took a huge amount of time and dedication.
Could we do it again? Maybe...if there was a project to capture the imagination.
Who wants to be the next [H]ard Bard?

I think Gilthanis should be the Bard...Though he is a bit out of tune at times.
 
My cards are already maxed out. Now that I have two young ones to chase, I am very limited. So, all my efforts are tapped.
 
My cards are already maxed out. Now that I have two young ones to chase, I am very limited. So, all my efforts are tapped.
Honestly, that's the reason I'm getting into it. Well, I'm not expanding for the sake of f@h. I am just tired of having decent rigs going un used 99% of the time because I just don't have time to play. At least it gives me a reason to tinker a little still. IE, f@h all night had my i3 rig at 90c, well now I gotta get that cooling problem under control...haha.
 
Oh...I still run my rigs. I just don't have as much time as I used to. I still recruit wherever I am when I can. I just cannot invest the amount of time he is implying as it is a continuation of a discussion we had in Slack. We nominated WFeather as the new CRO (Chief Recruiting Officer) and therefore he now had expectations to produce. He didn't like his new position and title...lol.
 
I remember going to the other forums and recruiting members from other teams. BillR (RIP Bill) and I were relentless with recruiting, back in the day.
There were a lot of very active members, and it took quite a bit of effort to keep the team focused.
We also had plenty of support from Kyle, and he gave me a lot of leeway in the DC forum. Gotta give him credit for supporting the team.

It was a massive effort, and took a huge amount of time and dedication.
Could we do it again? Maybe...if there was a project to capture the imagination.
Who wants to be the next [H]ard Bard?

Heh, herding cats would be a dream job compared to keeping everyone in line and pointed in the right direction back then. Even with a team of people it was almost hopeless and yet it still happened.

You're not kidding about the extra leeway Kyle gave us in the Disturbed Computing subforum. For quite a while we basically had our own min-Genmay in here until it got a bit too out of control and off-topic.

BillR was definitely a big part of the keeping the team together. Personally, I think he wore himself out too much trying to rein in some of our more enthusiastic and crazy impulses. He sure did get plenty of good laughs from us, though.

There was definitely a small but strong nucleus of members who kept things going and pushing everyone to do more and do better. We did have one advantage back then. There weren't anywhere near as many projects to flip around on so concentrating our folding power was much easier. For the most part it started with Stanford projects only as they were about the only place doing anything medical. The first F@H project, then Genome@Home and later F@H ver2. One of the requirements back then was that the project had to be medical based. No looking for new prime numbers or trying to crack encryption or searching for aliens here. We don't have that singular focus anymore so we aren't the powerhouse we used to be. That's far from the only reason but it is a big one. I'm not against anyone having left Stanford projects by any means. There was way too much BS going on with that project over the years and I ended up fed up with it along with many others.

Personally, I'm glad to see so many who have stood up to take over and keep pushing. I'm glad there's a [H] team I can still join from time to time to toss some spare cycles to. I was completely out of the game for a long time, part of it being because of having only ancient hardware but other reasons as well. I'm definitely not any sort of powerhouse and for the summer I'll probably cut back or stop entirely but it's nice to see people who are still doing this and making sure there's a home for new people and old folders alike.
 
Heh, herding cats would be a dream job compared to keeping everyone in line and pointed in the right direction back then. Even with a team of people it was almost hopeless and yet it still happened.

You're not kidding about the extra leeway Kyle gave us in the Disturbed Computing subforum. For quite a while we basically had our own min-Genmay in here until it got a bit too out of control and off-topic.

BillR was definitely a big part of the keeping the team together. Personally, I think he wore himself out too much trying to rein in some of our more enthusiastic and crazy impulses. He sure did get plenty of good laughs from us, though.

There was definitely a small but strong nucleus of members who kept things going and pushing everyone to do more and do better. We did have one advantage back then. There weren't anywhere near as many projects to flip around on so concentrating our folding power was much easier. For the most part it started with Stanford projects only as they were about the only place doing anything medical. The first F@H project, then Genome@Home and later F@H ver2. One of the requirements back then was that the project had to be medical based. No looking for new prime numbers or trying to crack encryption or searching for aliens here. We don't have that singular focus anymore so we aren't the powerhouse we used to be. That's far from the only reason but it is a big one. I'm not against anyone having left Stanford projects by any means. There was way too much BS going on with that project over the years and I ended up fed up with it along with many others.

Personally, I'm glad to see so many who have stood up to take over and keep pushing. I'm glad there's a [H] team I can still join from time to time to toss some spare cycles to. I was completely out of the game for a long time, part of it being because of having only ancient hardware but other reasons as well. I'm definitely not any sort of powerhouse and for the summer I'll probably cut back or stop entirely but it's nice to see people who are still doing this and making sure there's a home for new people and old folders alike.


Well said, my friend.
IIRC, you're in the desert, and DCing in the summer wasn't viable.
Hope all is well with you and yours.

Stay [H]ard.
 
A screenshot of the sticky post from Kyle when he got OCP behind the Folding project in 2001.

kylefolding.jpg
 
A screenshot of the sticky post from Kyle when he got OCP behind the Folding project in 2001.

View attachment 235153

I lost my first account and started this current one, two weeks after this post.
The rest is [H]ardforum history.
Kyle and CIWS were instrumental in starting this, then they were trusting enough to hand me the reigns.
It was an amazing journey, with incredible support from Mr. Bennett.

There have been hundreds of [H]ard DCers that I count as heroes and friends.
But the top of that list belongs to Kyle, who allowed [H]ard DC to have our own style. It was rude, it was crude, and it was 100% balls to the wall. We took no prisoners and made no excuses.
If you weren't [H]ard as nails, you weren't shit.
Fuck yeah, we were elitist DC geeks. We didn't care if you brought 1 CPU or 1000, you just had to walk the [H]ard walk and talk the [H]ard talk, and tell the rest of the DC world to "suck our [H]ard"

...and we fucked 'em all up...[H]ard.
 
Would you happen to know whom has access to updating our Folding Team's details on the Stanford website? It still points to Hardfolding.com which is now non-existent.
 
I don't know, Giilthanis. Sorry.
Not sure who set up/took over the team in F@H.
 
well pretty sure you don't have to deal with 7im anymore, he died iirc
You're right, he did pass away.

https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=98&t=30310
https://obituaries.ottumwacourier.com/obituary/timothy-braun-960544111

While he was... not nice on their forum, he did do a lot to help improve F@H, and hopefully he can RIP.
I'm glad things are picking back up, and I'm helping out with a few systems where possible.

It's good to see everyone returning, and it's starting to feel like the way things were at the beginning of the last decade! (y)
 
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