{"slug": "boinc", "name": "BOINC", "category": "other", "category_name": "Other software", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 6, "warners": 0, "score": 3.464, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2026-01-16", "latest": "2026-10-09", "why": "If you are looking for a good list of these types of projects", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 2, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "If you are looking for a good list of these types of projects", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": "berkeley.edu", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://boinc.berkeley.edu/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["BOINC"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 784802800, "item_id": 49050175, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49050175", "by": "aleph_minus_one", "date": "2026-07-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "BOINC was particularly famous for SETI@home", "excerpt": "> - Unlike OSS where a single volunteer can keep a project going, training costs run into the $billions. Just some thought: Wouldn't it make sense to build some kind of volunteer computing project to train the next-generation LLM by volunteers, similar to the BOINC [1] projects or Folding@home [2]? N.B.: BOINC was particularly famous for SETI@home (completed), Einstein@Home, Rosetta@home and PrimeGrid. I still rememb", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment. Let's not ruin it"}, {"id": 782759872, "item_id": 48922492, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48922492", "by": "toomuchtodo", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Consider scaling up by distributing this work more broadly.", "excerpt": "Exceptional work. Reminds me of https://www.distributed.net/Main_Page | https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFF_DES_cracker. Consider scaling up by distributing this work more broadly. \"Many hands make light work.\" Lots of problems remaining to solve.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Solving 20 Erd\u0151s Problems with 20 Codex Accounts Running in Parallel"}, {"id": 754006160, "item_id": 47125385, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47125385", "by": "washedDeveloper", "date": "2026-02-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If you are looking for a good list of these types of projects", "excerpt": "If you are looking for a good list of these types of projects: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php", "context": "", "use_case": "Volunteer distributed computing", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI@home: Data Acquisition and Front-End Processing"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["volunteer distributed computing"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50011999", "title": "AI-ready biological data: $1.8B global commitment", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49297708", "title": "Show HN: Rdio \u2013 an open-source internet radio control suite", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49048034", "title": "Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment. Let's not ruin it", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48914646", "title": "Solving 20 Erd\u0151s Problems with 20 Codex Accounts Running in Parallel", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120201", "title": "SETI@home: Data Acquisition and Front-End Processing", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46577105", "title": "Primecoin and Cunningham Prime Chains", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-08": {"compare": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 800253072, "item_id": 50015817, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50015817", "by": "randomdrake", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "it looks like BOINC[0] and AI Horde[1] are along the lines of what I was building", "excerpt": "After a bit of research, it looks like BOINC[0] and AI Horde[1] are along the lines of what I was building. It appears NVIDIA PAIR[2] has been working on distributed inference for local networks as well. [0] - https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ [1] - https://aihorde.net/ [2] - https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/ai-on-rtx/personal-ai-router/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI-ready biological data: $1.8B global commitment"}, {"id": 788859617, "item_id": 49303726, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49303726", "by": "saaaaaam", "date": "2026-08-14", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I see your rdio and raise you BOINC", "excerpt": "I see your rdio and raise you BOINC https://www.hypebot.com/digital-music-startup-beyond-oblivian-burns-through-87m-crashes-before-launch/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Rdio \u2013 an open-source internet radio control suite"}, {"id": 784802800, "item_id": 49050175, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49050175", "by": "aleph_minus_one", "date": "2026-07-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "BOINC was particularly famous for SETI@home", "excerpt": "> - Unlike OSS where a single volunteer can keep a project going, training costs run into the $billions. Just some thought: Wouldn't it make sense to build some kind of volunteer computing project to train the next-generation LLM by volunteers, similar to the BOINC [1] projects or Folding@home [2]? N.B.: BOINC was particularly famous for SETI@home (completed), Einstein@Home, Rosetta@home and PrimeGrid. I still rememb", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment. Let's not ruin it"}, {"id": 782759872, "item_id": 48922492, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48922492", "by": "toomuchtodo", "date": "2026-07-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Consider scaling up by distributing this work more broadly.", "excerpt": "Exceptional work. Reminds me of https://www.distributed.net/Main_Page | https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFF_DES_cracker. Consider scaling up by distributing this work more broadly. \"Many hands make light work.\" Lots of problems remaining to solve.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Solving 20 Erd\u0151s Problems with 20 Codex Accounts Running in Parallel"}, {"id": 754006160, "item_id": 47125385, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47125385", "by": "washedDeveloper", "date": "2026-02-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If you are looking for a good list of these types of projects", "excerpt": "If you are looking for a good list of these types of projects: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php", "context": "", "use_case": "Volunteer distributed computing", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI@home: Data Acquisition and Front-End Processing"}, {"id": 746320020, "item_id": 46645001, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46645001", "by": "beeflet", "date": "2026-01-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "hands out GRC to BOINC contributors", "excerpt": "Monero's RandomX is an interesting PoW scheme one designed to be optimized for CPUs. Here is an interesting read about its design https://github.com/tevador/RandomX/blob/master/doc/design.md Chia uses a very memory-hard PoW system and is usually mined on SSDs. I've seen a lot of \"useful PoW\" cryptocurrencies, but they tend to not pan out. For example Gridcoin is just a Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrency with a program tha", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Primecoin and Cunningham Prime Chains"}]}