Remember SETI@home (https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/) or Folding@home (http://folding.stanford.edu/)? Where the idea was, there's millions and millions of computers out there which are currently using 1% of their capacity?
I feel like I'm one of the millions and millions who is just bored right now, and I'm eager to help anyone with pretty much anything that can be done over the internet. But there's no framework for donating my "spare cycles".
Okay I just did a few MTurk tasks, and good god they are hard. For five cents? I have no idea what kind of dress that is or if that restaurant is wheelchair accessible, sorry, no thank you.
@audiodude Interesting thought. The closest thing I can think of would be doing small open source tasks, like on GitHub. There would be stuff from translating to coding but I'd bet there's stuff regarding audio too. In the end all of them require some work to even understand what they want, so it's not just like giving cycles.
@0x11de784a I think the percentage of projects on GitHub that are actually capable of accepting and merging PRs is quite low. How do you find the smaller percentage that would accept a "drive by" contribution? I would be up for it though if I knew where to look.
@audiodude Okay that might be a problem. I only once did a random PR and luckily they merged it.
Technically I'd think searching for labels could work. Like 'need help' or 'good first issue' but there's no standard.
Other possible resources are:
https://www.firsttimersonly.com/
Where they mention http://up-for-grabs.net/
Ah and here is a list with per-project standard label for smaller issues https://github.com/MunGell/awesome-for-beginners/blob/master/README.md
@audiodude
I do a lot of random PRs mostly correcting readme docs. Just little things like spelling mistakes, especially on newly trending repos. It's kind of relaxing
@0x11de784a
@athetizer like crypto? Do you mean calculate hashes by hand? Otherwise I'm not sure how overheating my CPU gets me un bored.
@athetizer oh sorry. Yeah I wasn't talking about actual spare cycles, just as a metaphor.
panic quells boredom?
@audiodude In a more commercial context there is MTurk (https://www.mturk.com/), but I never used it and cannot say if it’s a good thing.
If you are into Open Knowledge, I recommend the WikiData Games (https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-game/distributed/) which let you playfully enhance the WikiData project (https://wikidata.org/). Of course, you can also contribute directly.
@abrain Yes I replied to the original toot: https://tiny.tilde.website/@audiodude/99776641093670561
I tried a coupe MTurk tasks and they were extremely difficult compared to the monetary payout.
I had heard of wikidata games, but never checked it out. I was actually trying to use Wikidata for an Amazon Alexa skill involving celebrities.
@audiodude Actually there IS a framework - it is called BOINC. Here are the instructions for Ubuntu: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Installing_BOINC_on_Ubuntu
@mistergibson Actually I wasn't asking for a framework for donating spare computing cycles, but rather trying to make an analogy to "spare cycles" as a person. I guess it was confusing. But cool link!
I mean, I guess I could sign up for MTurk?