WCG Christmas Race 2018

[Howdy]

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

 

[TennesseeTony]

 

[StefanR5R]

Stats of Christmas Race 2018, December 25 (top 20 only, scores are in WCG points):



We are still 2nd in The first1th Christmas Challenge by score and by points-per-day.

TeAm AnandTech's user stats (based on boincstats, scores are in boinc credits):



15 hours to go until the finish of the race on 12/26/18 23:59:59 UTC.
I will be traveling during the next days; the final stats posting will therefore be delayed.

 

[Orange Kid]

Thanks for the stats.

 

[StefanR5R]

The final stats:

We finished as 4th in Christmas Race 2018 with 166 million WCG points (compared to 3rd in Christmas Race 2017 with 105 million points; XtremeSystems didn't register for the 2017 race). The top 20:



Congratulations to HardOCP who once more managed to outscore Team China in this race!

We finished 2nd in The first1th Christmas Challenge in which several but not all teams of the Christmas Race ran too.

Here are TeAm AnandTech's user stats, based on boinctstats, in boinc credits (which is 1/7 of WCG points). Today I found that boinctstats backdated all per-day credits of December 25 and earlier to December 24 and earlier, and hence I took the credits which are now shown as December 25 credits for December 26... %-|
Anyway; boincstats had always been pulling their user stats from WCG several hours before the 24:00 UTC mark during Dec 1...25. Hence what I list below as Dec 1...26 total differs a bit from what actually went into the WCG challenge scores.



Thank you to the TeAm mates for contributing to our excellent score in this race, and for donating your computer capacity to World Community Grid's cause!

 

[emptykoolaidcup]

I was going to join the WCG effort, but then I read somewhere that the results just get sold to big pharma who do whatever they want from there (develop a drug, or not). Not my cup of tea for the processing effort.

 

[TennesseeTony]

"The OpenZika research team is committed to releasing all their data to the public as quickly as possible, so other scientists can help advance the development of some of these active compounds into new drugs. "

"Like all other World Community Grid research partners, the Smash Childhood Cancer research team is committed to releasing all their data to the public as quickly as possible, so other scientists can help advance the development of some of the identified promising compounds into new drugs. "

"The Microbiome Immunity Project .... The research team will make their data publicly available to other scientists, accelerating the advancement of scientific knowledge in this important new area of research."

I should not have had to dig so deep into the individual projects descriptions to find that info, but it has always been my understanding that WCG and most BOINC projects are public data types. We all have our suspicions on occasion though, especially the Russian and Chinese projects (speaking for myself). But if a man comes to me begging for one gallon of gas to get him through to payday, if he scams me, well, he will have to explain that at the pearly gates.

 

[StefanR5R]

Indeed, the data that World Community Grid volunteers generate is not sold to big pharma — it is given for free to big pharma! But also to everyone else.

From the WCG web page "Research"/ "Submit a Proposal":

World Community Grid supports research that is:

• Humanitarian: Focused on solving problems to benefit humanity
• Not for profit: Conducted by public or nonprofit organizations
• Contributed to the public domain: all data generated by World Community Grid volunteers must be made freely available to the scientific community

I suspect big pharma isn't all that much excited about having free access to research data on diseases like malaria, schistosomiasis a.k.a. bilharzia, dengue, tuberculosis, ...

 

[emptykoolaidcup]

I knew some people would sleuth around for info, positive and negative on this. I used to work big pharma and as much as I’d like to see cures, I cannot commit my resources to it. I won’t discourage others from doing so however.

 

[TennesseeTony]

Certainly respect that. Maybe Elon Musk could start a Big (respectable and productive) Pharma. Hmmmmm.

 

[StefanR5R]

WCG had some projects in other fields besides medical ones, and they will be launching more of those some time soon.

But sure enough, there are so many other interesting and worthy causes to donate computer time to.