Generally I agree, I also contributed to SETI@Home and Folding@Home. The aim is somewhat "strange", but the whole value of all this may actually be not in the aim itself, but in the activity to reach it, particularly algorithms and techniques, which are developed (e.g. see @siraben comment in this thread with YouTube links to PewDiePie Minecraft seed reverse engineering) and in getting young people's interest in computer science (or STEM in general). Then in this regard the aim of this is not less valuable than looking for million-digits prime number or smallest number of moves to do a check-mate from arbitrary game position in chess, etc.

Yes, a lot of kids have learned programming becausw they wanted to develop Minecraft mods and Craftbukkit plugins. I had many colleagues doing enterprise Java that said their start was Minecraft.

If kids have a tangible goal of what they want to accomplish with coding, basically the barrier to entry no longer matters they'll figure it out.

This is why things like Minecraft and Flash were great, there is a part to the experience anyone can enjoy and accomplish but also the potential for huge depth through learning.

Same, almost a decade of programming started from modding Minecraft.

+1, this was exactly how I got my professional programming career kicked off -- learning programming from Minecraft modding and networking from there.

Yep, I was able to get started with Linux and programming in general because of Minecraft. Minecraft led me to look into servers and networking, building servers, colocating physical servers, starting a business, and many more. Minecraft, and multiplayer games in general, have done so much to get people started down the technical computing route.

I don't think many users running Folding@Home will decide to jump ship and switch to Minecraft@Home now. Therefore the harm to science-focused distributed networks should be minimal.

If anything, this project could promote the idea to new crowds, who might end up contributing resources to e.g. Folding@Home.

Its not a zero sum. This will increase interest in other @Home projects. It's really wonderful that thousands of people can work together to solve interesting problems - all over the world.

There seem to be a strong belief that everything what is done for scientific purpose is "useful" automatically, though it is not always the case. Occasionally massive amounts of resources of huge supercomputers and research clusters are wasted for useless tests, mistakes, typos, accidentally executed tasks, wrong input data, wrong configurations, etc, which then run for weeks or months with zero use afterwards. So indeed if this popularizes @Home projects for young people then it is very beneficial.

P.S. By saying that I'm not suggesting we should decrease the amount of resources for research, actually the opposite, since misuse is a fraction of the whole process and some discoveries would not be possible without such mistakes. We should increase the amount of resources and more importantly find people who are eager to utilize them for the sake of science, research and development.

For instance in LIGO gravitational wave detector one of PhD students accidentally misconfigured one of the black hole-neutron star merger simulation runs, so that it took months instead of days, but resulted in very detailed simulation, which then was used to study fine details of the observed signals.

Or that what is done for entertainment purposes is not useful.

There is going to be a finite number of people who are going to dedicate their computing resources (with the security, usability, and power consumption/heat issues that entails). I suspect that number is relatively small. It seems the definition of zero sum.

It's hard to rationalize virtually any notions of conservation (being green, AGW concerned, etc) with this project. Finding the seed of pewdiepie's world is somewhere between absolutely meaningless and completely meaningless.

Then what is the meaning behind the expensive, power-hungry hardware used to host his videos? Fun is a meaning!

Why is it that literally _any_ topic posted on HN has these cynical, elitist comments?

Just don't comment. Keep it to yourself.

I mean....really? What's the point of having an open discussion forum then if people are going to tell you to "keep it to yourself"? Perhaps I am cynical, but like I said - I'm not telling anyone what to do with their computing power. Just saying that using the @Home network for minecraft rubs me the wrong way, perhaps the same way using the LHC for developing makeup would. That doesn't mean that I'm right or even correct - but I do enjoy a good discussion, and indeed, my comment has spawned several good points that have made me reconsider my position. Had I just "kept it to myself" I would have never been exposed to those and still held the same view.

My initial thought was the same, but then I wondered: if this computing is done inside a home, isn't it the same as just heating the home? It would only be wasteful if the home is actually being cooled by air conditioning.

Modern heat pumps can get a coefficient of performance of around 3, meaning that for every watt of electricity going in, you get 3 watts coming out inside your home (the other two watts are being removed from the air outside). For everything that isn't a heat pump, energy in = energy released in your home (coefficient of performance=1). So in the end, you get like a 33% rebate on cpu usage via heating cost savings(very rough number, since the actual coefficient of performance varies wildly on outside air temp)...non-negligible, but it doesn't make it free unfortunately.

Heat pumps certainly sound good, but I've never been in a house that uses one for heating (or cooling).

In thermodynamic terms, an air conditioner is a heat pump hooked up the other way, though in practical terms I realize a heat pump is a device that is used for heating.

While not as mathematically elegant a comparison, you could certainly run the numbers for gas or any other heating method and find a similar cost comparision. They key point is that a computer heats the way a space heater heats, and heating your home with space heaters is expensive even in spite of the 100% efficiency at turning electricity into heat.

In the province of New Brunswick, Canada, many many homes have been (and still are) using electric baseboard heating even in midst of winter, often with less than ideal insulation in the house. Upgrading to a ductless/mini-split heat pump is seen as a pretty good option to reduce the electrical grid's load from heating, so much so that rebates have been offered by the government-owned electrical utility for people to upgrade.

I mean, they literally contributed computing power towards enjoying a video game. That's pretty much the advertised purpose of a consumer GPU.

On the plus side, all these people now have boinc installed and some might start computing for Rosetta@home

Kids who get into this stuff might get into F@H later.