Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs • Hacker News Board

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#121

Post by mike_hearn » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:11 AM UTC

mirashii wrote: post #119

mike_hearn wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wiped my post because you are right. I don't think it needs a full SGX-style TEE. What's missing is a link to designated requirements. Abusing a nonce field doesn't seem to work, or if it does I can't figure out how. The MDM/MDA infrastructure would need to be able to include: public key from SEP -> designated requirement of owning app binary The macOS KeyStore infrastructure does track this which is why I thought…

I can buy the idea that if you can have the MDM infrastructure attest the code signing identity through the designated requirements, that you can probably come pretty close, but I'm still not quite sure you get there with root on macOS (and I suspect that this is part of why DCAppAttest hasn't made it to macOS yet). Certainly, it still doesn't get you there with their current implementation, as the attempts at blocki…

Yeah I didn't quite understand the need for PT_DENY_ATTACH. Hardened runtime apps that don't include get-task-allow are already protected from debugger attach from the start of the process, unless I misunderstood something.

I'm not quite sure why Apple haven't enabled DCAppAttest on macOS. From my understanding of the architecture, they have every piece needed. It's possible that they just don't trust the Mac platform enough to sign off on assertions about it, because it's a lot more open so it's harder to defend. And perhaps they feel the reputational risk isn't worth it, as people would generalize from a break of App Attest on macOS to App Attest on iOS where the money is. Hard to say.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#122

Post by miki123211 » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:17 AM UTC

> Operators cannot observe inference data.

Is there some actual cryptography behind this, or just fundamentally-breakable DRM and vibes?

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#123

Post by keremimo » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:20 AM UTC

gleenn wrote: post #99

You have to install their MDM device management software on your computer. Basically that computer is theirs now. So don't plan on just handing over your laptop temporarily unless you don't mind some company completely owning your box. Still might be a validate use for people with slightly old laptops lying around, but beware trying to share this computer with your daily activities if you e.g. use a bank on a browser…

MDM is the absolute deal breaker. No way in hell will I ever make my Macbook into an unsellable brick if they so decide to lock my computer with MDM.

Even moreso, not for pennies/month

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#124

Post by lxglv » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:27 AM UTC

znnajdla wrote: post #118

kennywinker wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those people who could live off $200USD/month can afford or already have a mac mini in the house?

They already have an iPhone. They could save up or borrow for a Mac Mini if they had to. Some of those people I know who live on $200/month have $30k in the bank.

then you are talking about low spend, not low income

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#125

Post by znnajdla » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:34 AM UTC

lxglv wrote: post #124

znnajdla wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have an iPhone. They could save up or borrow for a Mac Mini if they had to. Some of those people I know who live on $200/month have $30k in the bank.

then you are talking about low spend, not low income

Not really. There are lots of people who have low income and low spending, but not low savings. Retired pensioners with savings. Young families who inherited from deceased parents/grandparents. Highly paid professionals on sabbatical. I've met people from all of those categories in Ukraine who live on $200/month.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#126

Post by znnajdla » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:38 AM UTC

sethherr wrote: post #46

znnajdla wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe lunch money for you, but there are people in some parts of the world who live on $200/month. Like Ukraine.

But they probably don’t have M5 MacBook pros idling

They can acquire one if it offers real opportunities like this.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#127

Post by grvbck » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:42 AM UTC

Broken calculator or am I missing something here?

  Macbook Air M2  8GB   12h/day -> $647/month

  Mac Mini M4     32GB  12h/day -> $290/month

I mean, I'd be happy to buy a few used M2 Airs with minimal specs and start printing money but…

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#128

Post by aacid » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:44 AM UTC

znnajdla wrote: post #53

kennywinker wrote: post #8

I have a hard time believing their numbers. If you can pay off a mac mini in 2-4 months, and make $1-2k profit every month after that, why wouldn’t their business model just be buying mac minis?

The numbers are obviously high, because if this takes off then the price for inference will also drop. But I still think it’s a solid economic model that benefits low income countries the most. In Ukraine, for example, I know people who live on $200/month. A couple Mac Minis could feed a family in many places. As a business owner, I can think of multiple reasons why a decentralized network is better for me as a busin…

Isn't this same premise as "lets buy few GPUs to mine crypto and have passive income"? It didn't work very well and it probably won't work now either. If there is money to be made, bigger players will get in there, buy out all mac minis they can, drive price up for regular people and inevitably drive inference price down so you'll be lucky to get initial investment back

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#129

Post by puttycat » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:46 AM UTC

> Every request is end-to-end encrypted

Afaik you will need to decrypt the data the moment it needs to be fed into the model.

How do they do this then?

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#130

Post by znnajdla » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:47 AM UTC

NiloCK wrote: post #105

znnajdla wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers are obviously high, because if this takes off then the price for inference will also drop. But I still think it’s a solid economic model that benefits low income countries the most. In Ukraine, for example, I know people who live on $200/month. A couple Mac Minis could feed a family in many places. As a business owner, I can think of multiple reasons why a decentralized network is better for me as a busin…

On the latency point - your requests are still going through the coordinator of the system here. So on average strictly worse than a large provider. You - Darkbloom - Operator - Darkbloom - you, vs You - Provider - you --- On the censorship point - this is an interesting risk surface for operators. If people are drawn my decentralized model provisioning for its lax censorship, I'm pretty sure they're using it to gene…

I'm not talking about Darkbloom specifically, but rather this business model in general. I'm sure a future version of Darkbloom could be P2P for better latency. Or their central operator nodes could be geo-balanced. Liability for censorship doesn't matter if it's truly zero trust. Anyway censorship is not my main concern. Low-latency decentralized inference with no US BigTech dependency is a much bigger selling point in Europe.