3mo ago

How can I contribute processing power to the community?

Hello folks,

I have a mini PC which I use to host my website and some lightweight services. The mini PC idles at ~10% cpu usage. I was wondering if I can contribute 90% of CPU to the community. Thinking that maybe I can host other people's websites for free.

How can I do that? Should I host some fediverse software? What do I do with this much processing power?

Thanks in advance!

37 comments

Good intentions, but I would be wary of anything not official like foldingathome or boinc (both great projects I recommend)
The reason is other people are horrible, and while your intentions are good, it's significant risk. Lemmy had a csam attack a while ago and I immediately moved my instance to the cloud because I learned that if I even accidentally hosted anything it means immediate seizure, self hosting it means they plow through my door and yank the servers.
Tor nodes, peertube, you open yourself up to that risk
- Where are you hosting your instance now? I've been looking into a cheap VPS for the things I'd rather not host on my personal home network.
  
  I landed on digital ocean. Fair prices for a vpc and a reliable name
  
  K&T Host does Lemmy and it works great. Their support is stellar.
- "my instance to the cloud because I learned that if I even accidentally hosted anything it means immediate seizure,"
  That sounds a bit extreme. You are not hosting csam on purpose. And most likely try to moderate as good as possible.
  I actually believe more people should host their own server. And get rid of the cloud. Not moving more to the cloud.
  
  You are not hosting csam on purpose. And most likely try to moderate as good as possible.
  Look up what “strict liability” means in a criminal law context.
You may install BOINC and contribute to scientific computations.
- Is there any way to exclude US projects, or only pick projects that are non-profit or open-source?
  I wouldn't want to waste energy on something that the Christian Taliban will likely destroy, or benefit from; or go to patented corporate research.
  
  Yes, you select projects that you participate in by yourself.
The Tor network relies on volunteers to donate bandwidth. The more people who run relays, the better the Tor network will be. The current Tor network is quite small compared to the number of people who need to use Tor, which means we need more dedicated volunteers like you to run relays.
https://community.torproject.org/relay/
- Pretty sure tor is a honeypot... Not sure the alternatives though
  Edit: maybe honeypot is not the right word, but at the nation-state level this won't keep you anonymous I'm guessing. Good for normal people who want more privacy
  
  That's definitely not what I've heard, please elaborate.
You can check out https://foldingathome.org/ (Folding@Home) projects, where you contribute your spare CPU or GPU power for various science research.
You could install peertube and share other peoples traffic.
I think lower CPU usage is good. CPUs tend to be the most efficient this way and it allows for sudden usage spikes without lag.
You probably don't want your server maxing out all day, your electricity bill will thank you
- don't want your server maxing out all day
  But don't you think about that poor server?
  It is feeling so bored out and it's whole life worthless...
- It's just a mini computer. Most likely pretty efficient processor but also not very powerful.
Use BOINC! Support scientific advancement
A Fedi instance requires a time commitment, there are some good suggestions in here but I recommend some alternative frontends.
You could also use it for running more services at home 😬. Thinks like Wekan, nextcloud, gitlab, matrix server, mbin, mastodon, grafana, mumble..
- ok but there'll still be a lot of idle capacity that can be put to good use. I relatively rarely browse I2P, but I'm happy to contribute bandwidth. It's safe too, because I only see encrypted traffic coming from one relay and going to another one, and it does not run an "exit node"
You could mine crypto on my behalf (I'll keep the profits)
ArchiveTeam Warrior!
No, you cant just „share processing power“
Also you could host something like a Lemmy instance, but then you had to get it federated, and mod it, and what not
If you want to do something good, host a snowflake proxy or something
Mine crypto to donate
- You'd be better off directly donating.
  
  I know, should of added /s

37 comments