Pirates@Home - Revision history

Al Piskun: add primates screensaver

2026-06-04T14:56:10Z

add primates screensaver

← Older revision		Revision as of 14:56, 4 June 2026
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	=== Primates@Home (April Fools 2008) ===		=== Primates@Home (April Fools 2008) ===

			[[File:Primates@Home screensaver Starboard 5.21.gif\|thumb\|Primates@Home screensaver Starboard 5.21 featuring the message: gag monkey p]]
	On 1 April 2008, Pirates@Home was temporarily replaced by a spoof project called '''Primates@Home''', which appeared at <code>primates.spy-hill.net</code>.<ref name="primates">Primates@Home (2 April 2008 archive). [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/primates/ Primates@Home]. BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> The project homepage proclaimed:		On 1 April 2008, Pirates@Home was temporarily replaced by a spoof project called '''Primates@Home''', which appeared at <code>primates.spy-hill.net</code>.<ref name="primates">Primates@Home (2 April 2008 archive). [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/primates/ Primates@Home]. BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> The project homepage proclaimed:

Al Piskun: add screensaver gifs

2026-06-04T02:05:44Z

add screensaver gifs

← Older revision		Revision as of 02:05, 4 June 2026
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	'''[https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/ Pirates@Home]''' was a volunteer distributed computing project built on the [[Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing]] (BOINC) platform. It was never intended as a scientific research project in its own right; instead, it served as an important and cheerful test-bed for the development of the BOINC software ecosystem, beginning in 2004.<ref name="boincwiki">[[BOINC Wiki]]. [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Pirates@Home ''Pirates@Home'']. University of California, Berkeley. Last edited 22 July 2022. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> Notably, it played a foundational role in the creation of [[Einstein@Home]], one of the most successful BOINC projects ever launched, and later helped develop BOINC's social software tools.<ref name="myers-mediawiki">Eric Myers. [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Eric_Myers User:Eric Myers]. MediaWiki.org. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> Its playful pirate theme was a deliberate signal to participants that this was ''not'' a serious scientific computing project but a platform for experimentation and fun.<ref name="pirates2005">Pirates@Home Mission 1 Archive (24 June 2005). [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/2005/ Pirates@Home]. BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref>		'''[https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/ Pirates@Home]''' was a volunteer distributed computing project built on the [[Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing]] (BOINC) platform. It was never intended as a scientific research project in its own right; instead, it served as an important and cheerful test-bed for the development of the BOINC software ecosystem, beginning in 2004.<ref name="boincwiki">[[BOINC Wiki]]. [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Pirates@Home ''Pirates@Home'']. University of California, Berkeley. Last edited 22 July 2022. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> Notably, it played a foundational role in the creation of [[Einstein@Home]], one of the most successful BOINC projects ever launched, and later helped develop BOINC's social software tools.<ref name="myers-mediawiki">Eric Myers. [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Eric_Myers User:Eric Myers]. MediaWiki.org. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> Its playful pirate theme was a deliberate signal to participants that this was ''not'' a serious scientific computing project but a platform for experimentation and fun.<ref name="pirates2005">Pirates@Home Mission 1 Archive (24 June 2005). [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/2005/ Pirates@Home]. BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref>

	[[File:~~BOINC_Manager~~.~~png\|right~~\|thumb\|~~200px\|The BOINC Manager client, the software used by participants in~~ Pirates@Home ~~to receive and process work units~~.]]		[[File:Pirates@Home screensaver Scroll 4.53.gif\|thumb\|Pirates@Home screensaver Scroll 4.53]]

	== Background ==		== Background ==
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	=== The Starsphere screensaver ===		=== The Starsphere screensaver ===
			[[File:Pirates@Home screensaver Sextant 4.91.gif\|thumb\|Sextant 4.91 - Einstein@Home Starsphere screensaver development]]
	One of the most significant achievements of Mission 1 was the development of the '''Starsphere''' screensaver for Einstein@Home. Pirates@Home served as the live testing environment for this 3D screensaver, which was authored by Bruce Allen and David Hammer of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Eric Myers of Vassar College.<ref name="starsphere">Bruce Allen, David Hammer, Eric Myers. [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/starsphere.php The Einstein@Home Starsphere Screensaver]. Pirates@Home Archive. BOINC Synergy. 15 February 2005. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref>		One of the most significant achievements of Mission 1 was the development of the '''Starsphere''' screensaver for Einstein@Home. Pirates@Home served as the live testing environment for this 3D screensaver, which was authored by Bruce Allen and David Hammer of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Eric Myers of Vassar College.<ref name="starsphere">Bruce Allen, David Hammer, Eric Myers. [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/starsphere.php The Einstein@Home Starsphere Screensaver]. Pirates@Home Archive. BOINC Synergy. 15 February 2005. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref>

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	New account creation during this phase required an invitation code, a feature specifically being tested for potential use in I2U2.<ref name="aug2006">Pirates@Home (August 2006 archive). [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/2006-aug/ Pirates@Home]. BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref>		New account creation during this phase required an invitation code, a feature specifically being tested for potential use in I2U2.<ref name="aug2006">Pirates@Home (August 2006 archive). [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/2006-aug/ Pirates@Home]. BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref>

	~~[[File:BOINC logo July 2007.png\|right\|thumb\|150px\|The BOINC logo. Pirates@Home was one of the earliest projects on the platform and made lasting contributions to it.]]~~

	=== Primates@Home (April Fools 2008) ===		=== Primates@Home (April Fools 2008) ===
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	== Technical details ==		== Technical details ==
			[[File:BOINC logo.png\|right\|frameless\|150x150px]]
	The Pirates@Home server was initially configured on a Red Hat 7.3 machine, upgraded to Fedora Core 3 and then Fedora Core 4 over the course of its operation.<ref name="spyhill-create" /> The project ran on the standard BOINC software stack with a MySQL backend. The BOINC Synergy project catalogue lists it as running on Windows, Linux, and macOS client platforms.<ref name="boinc-projects-list" />		The Pirates@Home server was initially configured on a Red Hat 7.3 machine, upgraded to Fedora Core 3 and then Fedora Core 4 over the course of its operation.<ref name="spyhill-create" /> The project ran on the standard BOINC software stack with a MySQL backend. The BOINC Synergy project catalogue lists it as running on Windows, Linux, and macOS client platforms.<ref name="boinc-projects-list" />

Al Piskun: first light

2026-06-03T19:29:54Z

first light

New page

{{Infobox software
| name = Pirates@Home
| logo = Piratelogo.gif
| logo caption = Pirates@Home logo
| description = Pirates@Home was a completed BOINC software testing project hosted by Vassar College and later Spy Hill Research, used to develop the Einstein@Home screensaver and test BOINC platform features including forum software and MediaWiki integration.

| status = Completed
| category = Software testing
| compute = CPU
| dependencies = None

| developer = Eric Myers
| author = Eric Myers
| sponsor = Vassar College (Mission 1); Spy Hill Research (Extended Missions)
| maintainer = Eric Myers
| released = 2004
| discontinued = c. 2013
| repository =

| operating system = Windows, Linux, macOS

| website = {{URL|http://pirates.spy-hill.net/}}
}}

'''[https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/ Pirates@Home]''' was a volunteer distributed computing project built on the [[Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing]] (BOINC) platform. It was never intended as a scientific research project in its own right; instead, it served as an important and cheerful test-bed for the development of the BOINC software ecosystem, beginning in 2004.<ref name="boincwiki">[[BOINC Wiki]]. [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Pirates@Home ''Pirates@Home'']. University of California, Berkeley. Last edited 22 July 2022. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> Notably, it played a foundational role in the creation of [[Einstein@Home]], one of the most successful BOINC projects ever launched, and later helped develop BOINC's social software tools.<ref name="myers-mediawiki">Eric Myers. [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Eric_Myers User:Eric Myers]. MediaWiki.org. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> Its playful pirate theme was a deliberate signal to participants that this was ''not'' a serious scientific computing project but a platform for experimentation and fun.<ref name="pirates2005">Pirates@Home Mission 1 Archive (24 June 2005). [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/2005/ Pirates@Home]. BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref>

[[File:BOINC_Manager.png|right|thumb|200px|The BOINC Manager client, the software used by participants in Pirates@Home to receive and process work units.]]

== Background ==

=== BOINC and volunteer computing ===

The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is an open-source middleware system that enables scientists to harness the idle processing power of millions of volunteered home computers around the world. Originally developed at the University of California, Berkeley by David Anderson as part of the [[SETI@home]] project, BOINC was designed to be a general-purpose platform that any researcher could adopt.<ref name="phys-lsu">Bernard Schutz. [https://www.phys.lsu.edu/mog/mog25/node7.html Einstein@Home: a mega-computer for gravitational waves]. Louisiana State University Department of Physics. 2004. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> A BOINC project distributes small packets of work, called ''work units'', to participating computers. Each computer processes its assigned work unit and returns the result. The aggregate of thousands or millions of such calculations amounts to the kind of computational throughput that would otherwise require a dedicated supercomputer.

Setting up a new BOINC project involves configuring server software, designing client applications, testing scheduling, validating results, and building community features. All of these components needed to be tested before any major scientific project could go live. Pirates@Home was created precisely for this purpose.

=== Einstein@Home and the need for a test project ===

In 2004, physicist [[Bruce Allen]] of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics was preparing to launch [[Einstein@Home]], a project that would use volunteer computing to search for continuous gravitational wave signals from spinning [[neutron star]]s in data from the [[Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory]] (LIGO) and the [[GEO 600]] detector in Germany.<ref name="eah-launch">David Anderson. [https://boinc.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=5034 The Einstein@home project was officially launched this morning]. BOINC Message Boards. 19 February 2005. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> The Einstein@Home team needed a working BOINC project to develop and test the system before its public launch, particularly its distinctive ''Starsphere'' screensaver. Eric Myers, then an Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at [[Vassar College]] in Poughkeepsie, New York, and a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, set up Pirates@Home as that prototype.<ref name="myers-spyhill">Eric Myers. [https://www.spy-hill.net/myers/ Eric Myers: BOINC]. Spy-Hill.net. Spy Hill Research. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> As Myers described it:

{{Quote|To prepare for the design, development and deployment of Einstein@Home I had previously set up another BOINC project for testing, called Pirates@Home.|source=Eric Myers, [[mediawiki:User:Eric_Myers|MediaWiki.org]]<ref name="myers-mediawiki" />}}

The name was chosen deliberately. As the BOINC wiki explains, the name was chosen to make it clear that it was only a test project, not the beginning of Einstein@Home.<ref name="boincwiki" /> A pirate theme fit the bill perfectly: it was memorable, obviously tongue-in-cheek, and gave the project a lively community identity while keeping expectations appropriately low.

== Mission 1 (2004 to 2005) ==

=== Launch and early operations ===

Pirates@Home first appeared online in the summer of 2004, with the earliest archived snapshot of the site dated '''19 September 2004''' — appropriately, [[International Talk Like a Pirate Day]].<ref name="sept2004">Pirates@Home (19 September 2004 archive). [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/Archive/sept_19_04/ Pirates@Home]. BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> The project was hosted on a server at Vassar College (initially at <code>pirates.vassar.edu</code>) running on Red Hat Linux, later updated to Fedora Core.<ref name="spyhill-create">Eric Myers. [https://www.spy-hill.net/help/boinc/Create_Project.html Creating and Configuring a BOINC Project]. Spy-Hill.net. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> Participants were welcomed with a characteristically piratical greeting:

{{Quote|Aaargh! Welcome, mates, to the Pirates@Home project! This is a test of the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC).|source=Pirates@Home homepage, September 2004<ref name="sept2004" />}}

From the outset, the website was transparent about its experimental nature. The project stated plainly that it was not doing any real scientific computation and that participants were just having fun with BOINC.<ref name="pirates2005" /> Work units issued during this period were very small test packets, released in limited quantities to verify the BOINC scheduling, validation, and credit systems. BOINC version 4 was required of all participants.<ref name="sept2004" />

The project homepage listed several potential future sponsors in a humorous fashion, including the [[National Science Foundation]], the [[American Physical Society]], the [[LIGO Scientific Collaboration]], the GEO 600 collaboration, the [[World Year of Physics 2005]], and the organisers of International Talk Like a Pirate Day.<ref name="sept2004" />

=== The Starsphere screensaver ===

One of the most significant achievements of Mission 1 was the development of the '''Starsphere''' screensaver for Einstein@Home. Pirates@Home served as the live testing environment for this 3D screensaver, which was authored by Bruce Allen and David Hammer of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Eric Myers of Vassar College.<ref name="starsphere">Bruce Allen, David Hammer, Eric Myers. [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/starsphere.php The Einstein@Home Starsphere Screensaver]. Pirates@Home Archive. BOINC Synergy. 15 February 2005. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref>

The Starsphere screensaver displays a rotating celestial sphere showing the traditional constellations and the positions of the three gravity-wave detector sites represented by "L"-shaped markers — a reference to the fact that each detector is essentially a very large [[Michelson interferometer]]:

* '''LIGO Hanford Observatory''' (LHO), Hanford, Washington, USA (N 46.45°, W 119.41°), consisting of two interferometers with 4 km arms (H1) and 2 km arms (H2).
* '''LIGO Livingston Observatory''' (LLO), Livingston, Louisiana, USA (N 30.56°, W 90.77°), with one 4 km interferometer (L1).
* '''GEO600''', Hanover, Germany (N 52.24°, E 9.81°), a 600 m interferometer.<ref name="starsphere" />

The screensaver also renders the known [[pulsar]]s as purple dots clustered in the plane of the Milky Way, supernova remnants as dark red dots, and nearby galaxies out to 30 [[megaparsec]]s as green dots. An orange search-marker indicates the current sky position being analysed, described in [[right ascension]] and [[declination]].<ref name="starsphere" /> The screensaver was translated into at least nine languages by the Pirates@Home community, including German, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Polish, Czech, and Hungarian.<ref name="starsphere" />

From a physics standpoint, Einstein@Home was designed to search for gravitational wave signals from rapidly rotating neutron stars. The signal from such a star would be a nearly sinusoidal wave at a frequency related to the star's spin rate and its quadrupole moment <math>Q_{22}</math>. The [[gravitational wave]] strain amplitude at a distance <math>r</math> is approximately:

:<math>h \approx \frac{16\pi^2 G}{c^4} \frac{f^2 Q_{22}}{r}</math>

where <math>f</math> is the gravitational wave frequency (twice the rotation frequency), <math>G</math> is the gravitational constant, and <math>c</math> is the speed of light.

The Pirates@Home project also maintained a dedicated page of '''Einstein@Home team statistics''' for the Pirates@Home volunteer team, so participants could track how much computing time their community was contributing to the actual scientific project.<ref name="pirates2005" />

=== Security incident ===

On 12 June 2005, the Pirates@Home server was hacked. The intrusion was detected quickly, the server was taken offline, and a full system inspection and reinstallation was performed. The incident was reported to the community on the project forums.<ref name="pirates2005" />

=== Shutdown of Mission 1 ===

With Einstein@Home officially launched on '''19 February 2005'''<ref name="eah-launch" /> and running successfully, the need for Pirates@Home's original test mission was complete. The project announced on 23 June 2005 that it would shut down the following day:

{{Quote|The Pirates@Home project and web site will shut down sometime in the late morning (EST) on Friday, June 24th, 2005.|source=Pirates@Home news, 23 June 2005<ref name="pirates2005" />}}

The server went offline as planned on '''24 June 2005''' at approximately 10:50:26 UTC, as recorded in the BOINC Synergy archive snapshot.<ref name="pirates2005" />

== Extended Mission (2006 onwards) ==

=== New server, new mission ===

In January 2006, Pirates@Home returned — this time on a new server hosted at <code>pirates.spy-hill.net</code>, running under Myers's own Spy Hill Research operation.<ref name="boincwiki" /> The BOINC Wiki records that the project reappeared in January 2006 on a different server to act as a test stand for another LIGO-related project, called Interactions in Understanding the Universe (I2U2).<ref name="boincwiki" />

I2U2 was an NSF-funded science education initiative<ref name="boincstats">BOINCstats. [https://boincstats.com/si/page/projectNews/4 News from the Projects: Pirates@Home]. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> that aimed to provide high school teachers and students with access to LIGO environmental data — from seismometers, magnetometers, and weather stations — for inquiry-based investigations called "e-Labs."<ref name="myers-spyhill" /> The BOINC discussion forum software was being considered as a platform component for I2U2, and Pirates@Home was used to test it.

=== BOINC social software development ===

During the Extended Mission, the additions made to BOINC for I2U2 were focused on social interaction and community features rather than distributed computation. As the BOINC wiki summarises:

{{Quote|The forums were modified to add privacy, to add attachments to postings, to give users limited but rechargable ratings points, and to add keyword classification of postings.|source=BOINC Wiki, ''Pirates@Home''<ref name="boincwiki" />}}

Myers also developed the [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:BOINC_Authentication BOINC Authentication] extension for [[MediaWiki]], which allowed a wiki to be integrated seamlessly with a BOINC project, using the BOINC project's user database for authentication rather than requiring a separate wiki login.<ref name="myers-mediawiki" /> This extension was demonstrated on the Pirates@Home glossary wiki.<ref name="myers-meta">Eric Myers. [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:EricMyers User:EricMyers]. Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref>

The extended mission also served as a general sandbox for BOINC server modifications. The project wiki maintained a collection of pages classified as "BOINC Hacks," documenting how project administrators and application developers could exercise more refined control over their projects — including a comprehensive list of scheduler restriction techniques.<ref name="boincwiki" />

New account creation during this phase required an invitation code, a feature specifically being tested for potential use in I2U2.<ref name="aug2006">Pirates@Home (August 2006 archive). [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/2006-aug/ Pirates@Home]. BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref>

[[File:BOINC logo July 2007.png|right|thumb|150px|The BOINC logo. Pirates@Home was one of the earliest projects on the platform and made lasting contributions to it.]]

=== Primates@Home (April Fools 2008) ===

On 1 April 2008, Pirates@Home was temporarily replaced by a spoof project called '''Primates@Home''', which appeared at <code>primates.spy-hill.net</code>.<ref name="primates">Primates@Home (2 April 2008 archive). [https://pirates.boincsynergy.ca/primates/ Primates@Home]. BOINC Synergy. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> The project homepage proclaimed:

{{Quote|Primates@Home is currently testing what happens to primates when you disturb the natural environment to which they have become accustomed. Do they react with confusion? Bemusement? Anger and hostility? A mixture of these?|source=Primates@Home homepage, 1 April 2008<ref name="primates" />}}

The project listed humorous potential future sponsors including the National Geographic Society, the Bronx Zoo, the Philadelphia Zoo, the Honolulu Zoo, and the San Diego Zoo. It also featured a "Shakespeare Project" in which participants could solve [[reCAPTCHA]] tasks in exchange for virtual bananas.<ref name="primates" /> The copyright notice read "Copyright © 2008 Timmy the Monkey."<ref name="primates" />

=== Final mission and legacy ===

The project continued intermittently in subsequent years, used for testing new BOINC client and server code before new stable branches were released.<ref name="boincstats" /> The last archived snapshot dates to July 2013.<ref name="boinc-projects-list">BOINC Synergy Wiki. [https://boincsynergy.ca/wiki/BOINC_projects BOINC Projects: Completed BOINC Projects]. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> Myers noted on his personal site that he hoped to put the project to good use for a further mission in the future, though no additional mission was publicly documented.<ref name="myers-spyhill" />

== Technical details ==

The Pirates@Home server was initially configured on a Red Hat 7.3 machine, upgraded to Fedora Core 3 and then Fedora Core 4 over the course of its operation.<ref name="spyhill-create" /> The project ran on the standard BOINC software stack with a MySQL backend. The BOINC Synergy project catalogue lists it as running on Windows, Linux, and macOS client platforms.<ref name="boinc-projects-list" />

Because Pirates@Home performed no real scientific computation, it generated no floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) in any meaningful sense; any BOINC credits awarded were for testing purposes only, and the work units were essentially trivial placeholder computations. This made it easy to focus on infrastructure testing without worrying about the correctness of scientific results.

The project was configured as a "permanent test project" with intermittent availability. The BOINC wiki entry lists its institution as "Spy Hill Research (under contract to LIGO)" and its official launch date as '''02-06-2004'''.<ref name="boincwiki" />

== Impact and significance ==

Pirates@Home occupies a notable place in the history of volunteer computing. It was one of the earliest BOINC projects after SETI@home itself, and its direct contribution to the infrastructure of Einstein@Home was lasting. The Starsphere screensaver developed and tested through Pirates@Home became a celebrated feature of Einstein@Home, which went on to attract over one million registered users<ref name="eah-wp">Wikipedia. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein@Home Einstein@Home]. Retrieved 2026-05-01.</ref> and to contribute to the discovery of dozens of previously unknown radio pulsars.<ref name="myers-spyhill" />

Beyond the screensaver, Pirates@Home's contributions to BOINC's social and community software — particularly the forum enhancements and the MediaWiki authentication extension — have benefited many subsequent BOINC projects. The "BOINC Hacks" documentation produced through Pirates@Home remains a reference for BOINC project administrators.<ref name="boincwiki" />

The project's cheerful culture also helped establish that BOINC communities could be welcoming and fun, lowering the barrier to participation and demonstrating that volunteer computing projects need not be dry or inaccessible.

== See also ==

* [[Einstein@Home]]
* [[SETI@home]]
* [[Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing]]
* [[LIGO]]
* [[GEO 600]]
* [[Gravitational wave]]
* [[Neutron star]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

[[Category:BOINC projects]]
[[Category:Completed BOINC projects]]
[[Category:Software testing]]
[[Category:Volunteer computing]]
[[Category:Gravitational wave astronomy]]