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Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

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Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#131

Post by runn1ng »

soupboy wrote: post #21

From [1] - "Our users volunteer their idle compute resources because they want to be part of something valuable to the world. We believe that this is a motivator far more powerful than paying people a small amount of money every month.". Yeah, I don't think that is going to work, especially because you are for-profit organization not SETI [1] - https://gridspot.com/gridspot_safe

I don't get this.

People install their program, contribute the power of their computers for free and Gridspot takes money.

Why would anyone do this? Why would anyone contribute their computer resource for other people to make money from that? I would rather, I don't know, mine bitcoins or set up a Tor proxy.

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#132

Post by runn1ng »

sdesol wrote: post #121
pash wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google shows results for "gridspot.exe" on ID-this-process sites dating from mid-March. So it's out there and has been for a few months. The question is whose machines it's running on.

Google also has this link as the #1 link ... well for me anyways. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120329124823AA... It does in bring into question whether or not gridspot.exe was installed nefariously.

Selling botnets as cloud service? That is not be such a bad idea after all...

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#133

Post by RivieraKid »

adamsmith wrote: post #25
soupboy wrote: post #21

From [1] - "Our users volunteer their idle compute resources because they want to be part of something valuable to the world. We believe that this is a motivator far more powerful than paying people a small amount of money every month.". Yeah, I don't think that is going to work, especially because you are for-profit organization not SETI [1] - https://gridspot.com/gridspot_safe

There's a surprising behavioral economics result that says people will do things for free that they won't do for small amounts of money. A check in the mail for a dollar or two every month isn't as compelling as being part of a group effort. And empirically, it seems to be working. The number of contributing machines is currently in the six figures. The main risk right now is on the demand side, i.e. whether or not p…

Well, people won't do things for free, if someone takes the money for their effort. What is the number of contributors who know exactly what's going on?

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#135

Post by jasonzemos »

deno wrote: post #109
jasonzemos wrote: post #47

What happens when the contributor abruptly cuts out?

Same thing as with Spot Instances on Amazon. Save your work often, reschedule eagerly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcPNnUo60pc&feature=play...

Yes but Amazon operates out of a datacenter that will /strive/ to be online for all but a few minutes of each year. Transient machines spread over the internet on home or office PC's /do not/ have the same operational parameter.

At this point I'm somewhat unsure of their actual business model. Are they reselling VPS instances from real providers or are they sourcing computational power from home/office PC's? This seems entirely unclear based on the reactions of this thread and the mostly ambiguous stuff written on their website.

If they are sourcing computational power SETI@home style my question remains, and I encourage it to be upvoted and answered on such a technically competent site such as this. Marketing hype is cool, but I'm still an engineer when it comes to making choices.

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#136

Post by davidmr »

adamsmith wrote: post #25
soupboy wrote: post #21

From [1] - "Our users volunteer their idle compute resources because they want to be part of something valuable to the world. We believe that this is a motivator far more powerful than paying people a small amount of money every month.". Yeah, I don't think that is going to work, especially because you are for-profit organization not SETI [1] - https://gridspot.com/gridspot_safe

There's a surprising behavioral economics result that says people will do things for free that they won't do for small amounts of money. A check in the mail for a dollar or two every month isn't as compelling as being part of a group effort. And empirically, it seems to be working. The number of contributing machines is currently in the six figures. The main risk right now is on the demand side, i.e. whether or not p…

I can think of precisely zero ethical ways you could already have more than 100k machines participating. An explanation from you would be very, very nice to see.

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#137

Post by podperson »

My immediate response was "surely this is less than the cost of the electricity to run the CPUs" but it turns out it's equal to the marginal cost of heating a room with CPUs relative to conventional heating (natural gas or electricity) -- which is pretty genius.

In the long run you would expect this would drive up the bidding for idle CPU time, meaning that having a couple of idle computers in your house would generate you a small amount of positive revenue, in much the same way that contributing electricity back to the grid using solar cells could. Of course, most people have no use for solar cells (which are expensive), whereas a lot of us have use for local CPU.

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#139

Post by jasonzemos »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #126
ricardobeat wrote: post #45

Is this related to last year's node knockout entry for a distributed chess AI?

As someone that's done some work on parallel chess, I don't see how this could have anything to do with the subject.

I work in the field too. These are exactly my thoughts on the matter, and I'm sorely disappointed with the comments in this thread hinting as such so far.

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#140

Post by malkia »

Maakuth wrote: post #130
fl3tch wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that most Skype users don't even know they are carrying traffic for the network. The client silently punches a whole in their router and makes itself a pain to close (for example by reconfiguring what the red X does) without ever explaining why it wants to keep running so badly.

My understanding is that after MSFT acquisition, they don't use their customer devices as supernodes anymore [1]. For "silent hole punching" with UPnP, that is very much business as usual for any VoIP application as well as other applications, such as Windows' Teredo IPv6 thingy. [1]: Ars Technica seems to confirm: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-s...

Now that was news to me :) Didn't know they've changed it that way. Thanks for the article!
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