I'm sorry guys I've been a bit distracted lately, I'll fire up some more hardware.
I always keep one box on WCG, or at least try to.

Started a day late but as always the project frustrates me. Never been able to fill the cache no matter what settings or sub-projects I choose. Anyhoo running what they send.

2024-08-29 16:00 UTC - 2024-09-01 16:00 UTC
NFS@Home

2024-09-19 15:00 UTC - 2024-09-22 15:00 UTC
To be defined

The new sprint has been announced, Numberfields at Home
https://www.formula-boinc.org/sprints.py?race=2&division=1&standing=team&sprintid=21
 

2nd to last sprint for 2024,
 
https://www.formula-boinc.org/sprints.py?race=2&division=1&standing=team&sprintid=26 

Si-Dock
Despite not being a fan of this project since the invasion of Ukraine, I tried to get tasks unsuccessfully. But others are getting them it seems.
 
 
 
 

I just looked and I am getting a lot of errors, "server canceled", and "abandoned". If that doesen't stop I/m pulling the plug.
An Idea should this be run under Linux or something?  What am I doing wrong?
 
 

I had so many errors, installed and reinstalled all the MS visual C++ and still. It even made one box display  go blank after a few minuets running. I am not sure what the heck is going on.

bill1024
I had so many errors, installed and reinstalled all the MS visual C++ and still. It even made one box display  go blank after a few minuets running. I am not sure what the heck is going on.

 
No idea where you get your C++ install / update files from.
I've had good luck using the update tool from techpowerup to update All versions of MS visual C++
 
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/
 
  Visual C++ Redistributable Runtimes All-in-One

I never thought of trying Linux, duh.
 
Someone on the FB forum mentioned that Russia does not share the results of these projects with the world anymore. Must have a tight clamp over the scientific community and university system.
Hopefully the people are getting some benefit from them. 
 

TSBT caught cheating in the last Formula BOINC Sprint on SiDock (December 5-8).

There were inconsistencies noticed by several volunteers during this sprint with "Anonymous" hosts generating insanely high credits. and MANY of these hosts in existence. these could be seen by the 3rd party stats sites like Free-DC. these hosts were being awarded ~7000 credits per task, while most normal hosts were being awarded ~400 per task. The way this was happening was the hosts were faking their Flops rating for the CPU (this is easily done by editing the flops rating and then disabling CPU benchmarks in the BOINC client so that it stays inflated and not overwritten by a benchmark run). Normally for projects that use a Flops based credit system, they have a wingman to double check the credit reward to, which makes this kind of cheating less effective (two cheaters would have to match up to receive the inflated credit) but for SiDock since they are not using quorum of 2 validation, all results are marked valid and a single person can inflate their credits easily like this.

The SiDock Admins were notified and they did their investigation. Their response is a bit cryptic, likely due to a language barrier. Response here: https://www.sidock.si/sid..forum_thread.php?id=292

"SiDock is not F1" obviously a reference to FB since they set their Sprint schedule around the F1 race schedule
"we will be fining fairly" a reference to the credits removed for cheaters discovered

and looking at the 3rd party sites again, you can see exactly who lost all the points from that "fining".



over 20 million points removed from TSBT primarily (edit, not over 33M lost), and a few others on other teams as well (that were not even participating in the FB Sprint). That 20M 33M point reduction should knock off TSBT's 1st place finish in the sprint at the very least and IMO they should be banned outright for such blatant cheating. This isnt the first time TSBT has been caught cheating. almost every single participating member of the TSBT was found with faked hosts and credit removed.

Tim (UBT-Timbo) continues to turn a blind eye, and threaten anyone who accuses TSBT of cheating with a ban, but wont ban TSBT for actually cheating. and his response to being made aware of all these facts is "that's up to the SiDock admins and nothing to do with FB" which is just an outrageous response when the cheating happened to directly benefit during the sprint on FB. 

I would urge anyone here that has an account on FB to voice your concerns and opposition to this behavior on the formula BOINC forums (I am unable to because Tim is so paranoid of anyone signing up to speak truths like this that he will not validate any new users on the forums). I would also consider boycotting FB for 2025 and beyond. there are better competitons out there that don't support and harbor cheaters.

It's really sad that people have to cheat to make themselves feel good. The people caught should be banned.
I wonder how many other projects use this system to award points, how many other sprints they cheated in' And the marathon points throughout the year are skewed. They need to fess up and own it. Then step down.
"The way this was happening was the hosts were faking their Flops rating for the CPU (this is easily done by editing the flops rating and then disabling CPU benchmarks in the BOINC client so that it stays inflated and not overwritten by a benchmark run)."
 
 

Looks like nine of ten members of that team had points deducted. Lots of points at that. If it's true they cheated their team should be zeroed out for the year and they can start fresh. Except the year is pretty much over zero them out for the whole year.
 
Don't look good https://stats.free-dc.org...sid/43#google_vignette

Pretty sad! 


also pututu at [H] 
https://stats.free-dc.org/team/sid/7

bill1024
It's really sad that people have to cheat to make themselves feel good. The people caught should be banned.
I wonder how many other projects use this system to award points, how many other sprints they cheated in' And the marathon points throughout the year are skewed. They need to fess up and own it. Then step down.
"The way this was happening was the hosts were faking their Flops rating for the CPU (this is easily done by editing the flops rating and then disabling CPU benchmarks in the BOINC client so that it stays inflated and not overwritten by a benchmark run)."

 
Hi

I agree with everything you say. :-)

The problems are that;
a) There is probably more than one team (perhaps limited to some members of some teams) who may have also cheated in the past, and until the BOINC projects can resolve this (in their validation routines before awarding any credit), then such cheating can go undetected and so it might be happening a lot or perhaps only in certain cases (such as on FB Sprints, on BOINC Games Sprints or similar events such as Project Challenges). 
b) Once caught, which is what has happened to TSBT, then I would expect them, via their team founder, to request to be excluded from any further FB events. That would be the professional way for their team to deal with this, as you clearly stated.

But if they choose not to admit to their cheating, then I as FB admin and Sebastien as FB founder will decide on the appropriate action.
regards
Tim