{"slug": "folding-home", "name": "Folding@home", "category": "other", "category_name": "Other software", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 9, "warners": 0, "score": 4.662, "rising": -0.31, "first": "2026-01-15", "latest": "2026-08-28", "why": "there's always folding@home if you like contributing idle cycles to projects like this", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 3, "compare": 2, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "there's always folding@home if you like contributing idle cycles to projects like this", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "foldingathome.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://foldingathome.org/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Folding@home", "Folding@Home"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 787956576, "item_id": 49247286, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49247286", "by": "drb493", "date": "2026-08-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This project has been ongoing for about 25 years now", "excerpt": "This project has been ongoing for about 25 years now: https://foldingathome.org/faq/how-it-works", "context": "", "use_case": "Distributed protein folding", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI@Home was the coolest thing"}, {"id": 778552880, "item_id": 48659555, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48659555", "by": "moebrowne", "date": "2026-06-24", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Folding@home is still very much a thing.", "excerpt": "> If you ran SETI@home or Folding@home back when that was a thing SETI@home is gone but Folding@home is still very much a thing. There are currently 133 active projects: https://apps.foldingathome.org/psummary", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hunting Million-Digit Primes from My Loft"}, {"id": 754012433, "item_id": 47125777, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47125777", "by": "drb493", "date": "2026-02-23", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Folding@Home is still immensely useful", "excerpt": "I'd discourage claiming any biological process is \"solved.\" But to your point: No--AlphaFold is an amazing machine learning approach to predicting protein structure but Folding@Home is still immensely useful for simulating how proteins fold up over a timescale. They are/will be complimentary methods. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11892350/", "context": "", "use_case": "Protein folding simulation", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI@home: Data Acquisition and Front-End Processing"}, {"id": 753999265, "item_id": 47124954, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47124954", "by": "drb493", "date": "2026-02-23", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A different domain, but https://foldingathome.org/ is still running.", "excerpt": "The distributed compute part of the project has turned off but data analysis continues. I know what you mean these types of projects inspired me to contribute as a young citizen scientist. A different domain, but https://foldingathome.org/ is still running. Using distributed compute to study protein folding.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI@home: Data Acquisition and Front-End Processing"}, {"id": 747319776, "item_id": 46707486, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46707486", "by": "ratelimitsteve", "date": "2026-01-21", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "there's always folding@home if you like contributing idle cycles to projects like this", "excerpt": "https://foldingathome.org/ there's always folding@home if you like contributing idle cycles to projects like this. it's not quite alien hunting but it's kinda neat to try to brute force protein structures to beat various diseases.", "context": "", "use_case": "contribute idle compute cycles", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI Home Is in Hiberation"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["distributed protein folding", "protein folding simulation", "contribute idle compute cycles", "distributed protein folding research"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46703301", "title": "SETI Home Is in Hiberation", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120201", "title": "SETI@home: Data Acquisition and Front-End Processing", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46642414", "title": "SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49480466", "title": "Just the rumour of a bug is enough to find an exploit these days", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49242835", "title": "SETI@Home was the coolest thing", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48621018", "title": "Hunting Million-Digit Primes from My Loft", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 2}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"compare": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 791724162, "item_id": 49482760, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49482760", "by": "gazarsgo", "date": "2026-08-28", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "the older 'compute donation' projects like SETI or Folding@Home", "excerpt": "http://github.com/buzz/block is quickly becoming a reasonable approach to shared agent compute, though it's still a bit more hands-on than the older 'compute donation' projects like SETI or Folding@Home.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Just the rumour of a bug is enough to find an exploit these days"}, {"id": 787956576, "item_id": 49247286, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49247286", "by": "drb493", "date": "2026-08-10", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "This project has been ongoing for about 25 years now", "excerpt": "This project has been ongoing for about 25 years now: https://foldingathome.org/faq/how-it-works", "context": "", "use_case": "Distributed protein folding", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI@Home was the coolest thing"}, {"id": 778552880, "item_id": 48659555, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48659555", "by": "moebrowne", "date": "2026-06-24", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Folding@home is still very much a thing.", "excerpt": "> If you ran SETI@home or Folding@home back when that was a thing SETI@home is gone but Folding@home is still very much a thing. There are currently 133 active projects: https://apps.foldingathome.org/psummary", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hunting Million-Digit Primes from My Loft"}, {"id": 764646561, "item_id": 47790410, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47790410", "by": "Jn2G3Np8", "date": "2026-04-16", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "with some similarity to folding@home, though more personal gain", "excerpt": "Love the concept, with some similarity to folding@home, though more personal gain. But trying it out it still needs work, I couldn't download a model successfully (and their list of nodes at https://console.darkbloom.dev/providers suggests this is typical). And as a cursory user, it took me some digging to find out that to cash out you need a Solana address (providers > earnings).", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darkbloom \u2013 Private inference on idle Macs"}, {"id": 754012433, "item_id": 47125777, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47125777", "by": "drb493", "date": "2026-02-23", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Folding@Home is still immensely useful", "excerpt": "I'd discourage claiming any biological process is \"solved.\" But to your point: No--AlphaFold is an amazing machine learning approach to predicting protein structure but Folding@Home is still immensely useful for simulating how proteins fold up over a timescale. They are/will be complimentary methods. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11892350/", "context": "", "use_case": "Protein folding simulation", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI@home: Data Acquisition and Front-End Processing"}, {"id": 753999265, "item_id": 47124954, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47124954", "by": "drb493", "date": "2026-02-23", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A different domain, but https://foldingathome.org/ is still running.", "excerpt": "The distributed compute part of the project has turned off but data analysis continues. I know what you mean these types of projects inspired me to contribute as a young citizen scientist. A different domain, but https://foldingathome.org/ is still running. Using distributed compute to study protein folding.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI@home: Data Acquisition and Front-End Processing"}, {"id": 747319776, "item_id": 46707486, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46707486", "by": "ratelimitsteve", "date": "2026-01-21", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "there's always folding@home if you like contributing idle cycles to projects like this", "excerpt": "https://foldingathome.org/ there's always folding@home if you like contributing idle cycles to projects like this. it's not quite alien hunting but it's kinda neat to try to brute force protein structures to beat various diseases.", "context": "", "use_case": "contribute idle compute cycles", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI Home Is in Hiberation"}, {"id": 747290384, "item_id": 46705649, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46705649", "by": "Cthulhu_", "date": "2026-01-21", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "please have a look around before spreading FUD", "excerpt": "It's right there on their website; please have a look around before spreading FUD: https://foldingathome.org/papers-results/", "context": "", "use_case": "Distributed protein folding research", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI Home Is in Hiberation"}, {"id": 747278976, "item_id": 46704936, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46704936", "by": "jomohke", "date": "2026-01-21", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It looks like folding@home is still going", "excerpt": "It looks like folding@home is still going https://foldingathome.org/ I'm quite surprised these are still around as I hadn't seen them mentioned in so long. I always assumed the phase out of screensavers (and introduction of CPU low power modes) were terminal for them.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI Home Is in Hiberation"}, {"id": 746289744, "item_id": 46643109, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46643109", "by": "hkt", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Folding is still going strong", "excerpt": "Folding is still going strong, as is: https://worldcommunitygrid.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others"}, {"id": 746288944, "item_id": 46643059, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46643059", "by": "serf", "date": "2026-01-15", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "folding@home is still going I think?", "excerpt": "folding@home is still going I think? seti@home was definetly a cool screensaver, though.[0] [0]: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eric-Korpela/publication/3422381/figure/fig2/AS:394692438052873@1471113418702/A-screenshot-of-the-SETIhome-client-program-The-bottom-half-of-the-screen-presents-the.png", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "SETI Home Flags 100 Signals After Sorting 12B Others"}]}