https://folding.stanford....ber-meet-jingcheng-wu/

Ms. Jingcheng Wu is a new team member, whose work is to help improve communications between FAH and its donors, especially explaining (in a non-technical way) what FAH has been able to do.   Ms. Wu was born and raised in China. She moved to the US as an exchange student at age 16 and has been living in numerous parts across the US. She is a past medical student with experience in a wide range of fields such as scientific research, healthcare, education, international business, media, journalism, retail, investment banking, and performing arts with proven success. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BS in chemistry from the George Washington University. Her multi-cultural background, interest in medicine and passion to make a positive influence drove her to serve as an intern in the Pande group and contribute to their mission. She is currently living on Stanford University campus.

Obviously just more of the same BS rapped up in a new sh$t package. Still stinks. I'm not impressed with this new persons resume. How does any of that translate into being good at what she is appointed to do?

Good Move - Has to have better bedside manner than what we're used too.

When I was having email discussions with Vijay back in January, he mentioned having found a lady he was "trying out" for that role.  He did say that she was not up-to-speed and just starting out.  If that is the same person that he has announced, Folders will need to give her some room to grow IMO.  If she can be a good facilitator between PG and Donors, that is a good start.  I'd say at least give her a chance and see what she can do.  I think the Folding community can help her or make it more difficult and I would hope for the former.  I don't have rose-colored glasses on either and that is because awareness and change won't be made by this new lady.  I see her as a conduit who may bring information to PG, but any real change still has to come from Vijay. 

Kerry, the FF and some of the Mods/Regulars behavior was an area that I never felt like I could get Vijay to understand or be willing to adjust.  He basically counts upon it to run just as it is currently running.  While acknowledging that there are occasional issues, he felt that they were not representative enough to warrant changing anything.  I would not expect this new "Donor relations" person to have any impact or control in that regard.  But, if it can bring more actual answers to Donors that are not filtered or spawned by non-PG people, it might help some (not all) of that situation over at the FF.

I can't speak to the stats but in general The University Of Stanford is recognized as a leader in this type of research (not only Pande's group).  To suggest this is some rogue operation with hidden agendas is a bit of a reach IMHO.
 
Here is a recent article on how our computers are being used to develop new drugs to combat cancer.
http://news.stanford.edu/...er-protein-030614.html
 
For me personally, I am trying to look past the little stuff and focus on the big picture - YMMV.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

mdk7777777
several years ago I would have said the exact same thing.
Repeated incidents resulting in total denial of responsibility and refusal to provide any accountability or open disclosure have changed my mind.
The big picture is exactly this:
Any information that is given is at their discretion.
Not actually taking donation dollars frees them from even the limited oversight of being a Federal charity.
 
blind trust is great...but it is just that...BLIND.
 

^sums it up real well.
 
The fact that PG won't disclose just where they are getting all those new GPU donations from is really really strange. Come on now, what corporation would donate all that hardware and not shout to the world what they are doing just for the PR aspect of it? Not a one from my experience. All big Corporations love good PR with a passion.
 
The "its a secret" aspect just makes me believe its all pie in the sky numbers to make PG look good to who ever Pande has to report to at the University level. The fact he found a PR person after years of supposedly looking is just another level of "nothing to see here, move along" aspect of FAH. Give me some real factual GPU and CPU numbers to look at and you might change my mind about FAH. But they won't do that because those numbers are going down and have been for a long while. It's easier to fuddle peoples minds with this flops nonsense PG is pushing now.
 
I want facts and updates on what's being accomplished, what is hoped to be accomplished, along with what's being done to get to those accomplishments. I get all that from Boinc and a vast majority of the projects that use Boinc. WCG is the leader on passing along the facts and news. Their latest greatest was news about 7 new possible drug treatments for childhood cancer.

Grey_Beard
Secrecy is never good. Not quite sure I understand why there's not the transparency that there should be. Why would you need to hire a relationship person if you are being open and honest. Interesting that we have yet to hear from this person. I would think that if you are in charge of donor relations then you communicate to the donors, but then again I am a simple person which is not interested in spin.

Ms. Wu's position was created because VJ felt that he doesn't have enough time to adequately interact with donors.  Given that he works 70-80 hour weeks as is, I don't think that's unreasonable.
 
Keep in mind the announcement was posted Saturday, which suggests she was probably officially hired on Friday.  How much were you expecting her to post over the first weekend?  She did post today on the blog a two-part overview of FAH's recent c-src research.

Xavier Zepherious

mdk7777777
 
Not actually taking donation dollars frees them from even the limited oversight of being a Federal charity.
 

Isn't all educational institutions considered charitable by FEDERAL LAW
that's why alummi and donors are free to give $$ to any institution and get a write off

Ever heard of ITT Tech, Devry or University of Phoenix.  All for profile educational institutions.  Yes the lion share of them out there are non profit, but even the ones that are for profit just set up an non profit arm for tax reasons. 
 
Even state run schools do it.  I went to Cal Poly Pomona, which is a state school.  Just about any non-accademic building on campus was owned and paid for by the "Cal Poly Foundation".  That includes half the "appartment type" housing, the student center, all the food service buildings on campus, even the farm store that is stocked with produce grown on campus by the Agriculture department. They get so entertwined that who knows what is non profit and what may be classified otherwise.

Zagen30

Grey_Beard
Secrecy is never good. Not quite sure I understand why there's not the transparency that there should be. Why would you need to hire a relationship person if you are being open and honest. Interesting that we have yet to hear from this person. I would think that if you are in charge of donor relations then you communicate to the donors, but then again I am a simple person which is not interested in spin.

Ms. Wu's position was created because VJ felt that he doesn't have enough time to adequately interact with donors.  Given that he works 70-80 hour weeks as is, I don't think that's unreasonable.
 
Keep in mind the announcement was posted Saturday, which suggests she was probably officially hired on Friday.  How much were you expecting her to post over the first weekend?  She did post today on the blog a two-part overview of FAH's recent c-src research.

No doubt I am new to this stuff, as your donation and investment exceeds mine by a great amount in both time and resources.  The part that gets me, as I am also not trying to beat a dead horse and wish to be patient, is that as a relationship manager direct communication is best.  I would not post on the blog, but present an open letter to all who have donated, as there is already our e-mail addresses available.  I will wait before I give another opinion to give it time.

So far I think JC is doing OK in the forum interaction with donors.  If someone over there could better throttle the self-imposed "pot stirrer's", it would be a welcome move in the mind of many donors.  It will take Vijay to decide what to do about the people at the FF that consistently operate on the negative edge with donors.  Until they do deal with that problem, it will remain a place that is basically as offensive as it is helpful.  If JC hangs out there enough, maybe she will be a new set of eyes to help convince Vijay that the FF isn't as donor-friendly as it could be.  As long as Vijay mostly depends (and listens) to the same old internal group there, his view will be limited to "everything is just ducky".

mdk7777777
how come there is no quote function?  or am i just missing it?

there's a button on the bottom right hand corner in the post you want to quote.

Well another thread deleted and locked in the FF.
 
https://foldingforum.org/...16&t=26122#p262194
 
And no, I did not take part.
 
People were noticing that the core counts were dropping to zero for Linux.
Could this be related to the error I pointed out two months ago on Feb. 20th?
 
https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=25623&start=75#p259256
 
Today, NV CPU = 50K
However NV Cores = 142K
 
After two months they will neither discuss, nor correct, nor even allow others to discuss the strange nature of the STATS reporting.
 
Now, would this be a great topic for a communications person to tackle?
Or should we just ignore it and continue to lock the FF threads when people point it out?
 
Really?  And people say I am the one who is extreme...Looks like extreme censorship still rules on the FF.
 
 
 

PS, I see the link isn't working in my post regarding the locked thread:
try again,
 
https://foldingforum.org/...c.php?f=16&t=26122

I agree with the sentiments of the BA folders, I myself wish we could use every playstation and xbox and make Dell include FaH as part of their bloatware. However, after reading through some of the so called scandalous pande censorship topics, the vast majority of the posts seem completely reasonable and they do address the topics being discussed. As far as locking threads where the answer has been given, it is a bit iron fisted, but after the post has been answered it usually devolves into a completely different topic.
 
Honestly, i fold for my grandfather and everyone else out there with any of the ailments we do research for, and i could care less what the Pande Labs forum moderators are like, because I am not folding to have the privilege to post freely on a forum. I fold for the science and all the political nonsense being created and the needless drama is a distraction and a detractor to anyone interested in the actual work we do for humanity or the project itself. I wholeheartedly agree that there are huge gaps in their communication with us the donors, and I can see that their reporting system is either totally broken or is being neglected in favour of higher priority tasks, such as creating new work units. Let's not forget that they are essentially a business, they have to provide results and continue streamlining and evolving to attract new revenue sources and secure funding and i am sure at least a few of the researchers wish they could make work units for the ps3's and drag every old piece of computing hardware and put it to use, but its just not an efficient allocation of funds and man power.
 
Ultimately we have no say in what they do, we aren't actually donating we are volunteering our computers to their project, so instead of getting butthurt over perceived slights and imaginary duels with faceless internet forum moderators can we get worked up about the fact that half the people on these forums care more about the imaginary points they receive then the actual benefit of the work they are using their hardware for? Can we get worked up about the fact that your neighbours, your friends and your co-workers aren't folding whenever they can, as much as they can?
 
All i ask is that we as a team and a community here at EVGA don't get bogged down by our ego's and that we foster a good environment for growth and learning and that we attract people to our cause, to better society and the lives of others. And if you cant stand the researchers and the people in charge of FaH, then help out our friends with Crunching, there are plenty of transparent and accountable work units you can help support.