Kickstarter - Genius idea or abusing the ingnorant?

Gilthanis

Gilthanis

[H]ard|DCer of the Year - 2014
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So dean (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=8197) posted his idea for kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1656709543/computing-for-the-advancement-of-science

After reading it, I haven't fully decided if this is a genius way to advance your points and your farm or if this is outright manipulating those ignorant of the BOINC world. Looking over the project I can see a lot of warning flags go up. Many unanswered questions I have. I first noticed this person is taking basically a $12,000 salary for these efforts. (something we all basically do for free) He also doesn't mention what he will do with the equipment after the year is up. He claims to be donating a rig of his own and purchasing another, but nowhere does he state what the actual hardware is. While at the same time he states that transparency is important.

Thoughts and or discussion?
 
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He posted the "specs" already...
4x 680s, asus ROG board, 3770k, g.skill ram...

he is not doing any research... he is just collecting money for a farm.

I would call that outright manipulation of the ignorant.
The question is how much did he "donate" to himself to try and sway others.

BTW.. it failed.
 
Farther down he says the extra $12k is for power (under "Here's how your money will be spent").

I have some issues with the emphasis placed on the number of CUDA cores, namely that he makes it seem like they're equal to a full CPU core and that therefore the price per core is outstandingly amazing. I've never contributed to BOINC, only to FAH, but I'm guessing that a single GPU shader doesn't come close to a full CPU core on any of their projects. That smacks of blinding people with large numbers without any sort of context.

BTW, Patriot, where were the specs actually posted on the page? I saw the link to the Newegg wish list, and was able to match parts to their pictures, but didn't see any model numbers on the main page, and many items on the wish list weren't mentioned on the KS page.

Some of the choices on the wish list seemed like throwing money around unnecessarily. Again, my BOINC knowledge is essentially nonexistent, but 4x 8GB of ram for $350 seems like a major waste unless BOINC can actually use that much; the suggestion on the wish list of DDR3-2800 ram also seems like a case of extremely diminishing returns for the money. Also, is there a reason he wanted a 1500W UPS for each 1200W PSU? That's $500 per computer. I understand wanting to protect these costly investments, but couldn't you go with a good surge protector just to ensure nothing gets damaged in the event of power issues? Do they really need to keep running in the possibly unlikely event of a power outage? And if some of those options, like largish-SSDs or the UPSes, weren't used, then how was the cost supposed to be $5000?

I don't think the core idea is terrible; the thought of Kickstarting a folding farm had crossed my mind. You'd have to have the machines fold under a separate name, though, definitely not your own, or else that really would be having other people fund your contribution (not that science particularly cares whose contribution it is). I know back when I was in college I couldn't remotely fund a top-of-the-line machine, but might have been willing to contribute to a pool of funds to have one built.

I think this was going too big, however. If I were setting it up (not that I've ever started a KS drive, mind you, let alone had one funded), I'd set the original goal for enough to build one high-end machine, with stretch goals funding additional machines if possible (if the excess wasn't enough to make a good enough machine, I'd do as this guy suggested and use it for paying the power bill longer).
 
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Sounds like BS to me. While we're at it though... I'll take your money and build a super farm!

The problem is... There's a sucker born every minute and I've seen kick starters that were a lot worse get money. IMO I'd much rather spend my own money upgrading my farm as time goes on.

Edit: I guess my biggest concern would be accountability with the project... Like previously stated.. Where does the money go after the experiment is done...? Would he be personally gaining in any way shape or form? Etc...
 
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I think this sort of thing would be easier for people to swallow if it were funded pretty much by a single team for their own benefit, and if the person running the drive were a long-time contributor to that team who'd be seen as unlikely to just pocket the money. Though, at that point I'm wondering why KS would even need to be involved.
 
lol, I should do the same for litecoin, I will call it "Computing for the Advancement of Cryptocurrency"

All I would need is $5000
 
Zagen30 said:
Farther down he says the extra $12k is for power (under "Here's how your money will be spent").
Click to expand...

While it does say that, I'm speculative that it actually costs that much per setup.
 
Gilthanis said:
While it does say that, I'm speculative that it actually costs that much per setup.
Click to expand...

If he were down here by me in SoCal and running them in his own home, $200/month per machine is actually not completely implausible.

Currently Southern California Edison bills on a 4-tier system. The first ~275 kWh are billed at $0.13/kWh, the next ~80 at $0.16, the next ~200 at $0.27, and anything above and beyond that at $0.31.

My 4P Intel pulls around 750W from the wall, and if it were to fall entirely in Tier 4 it would cost me around $175 per month. I believe a 4x680 system would draw more power than what I'm running, and if you're running 5 of them, pretty much all of their power is being billed at the top tier.

On that note, someone living in SoCal and running them out of their own home is a terrible idea price-wise, if their goal is to provide the best value for their backers. You'd want someone living in, say, Idaho to host this, where the top tier energy rate is $0.1152/kWh for any usage over 2000 kWh per month during the summer (only $0.09 top-tier in the winter! I wish my rates were even in the same vicinity).
 
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A poor way of asking others to fund his farm....

I am not surprised he did nor succeed.
 
He also posted on AnandTech, to which several people told him petty much what you guys are here. It could almost be considered a scam. Oh well.
 
Unfortunately there is no crime separating the stupid/ignorant from their money.
 
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