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Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

darkbloom.dev

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Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#171

Post by washadjeffmad »

stavros wrote: post #157
eigengajesh wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers are optimistically legit -- it's calculated based purely considering we have demand for all machines at all times. We don't have that right now, but fairly optimistic that people will do it. That's why we don't recommend purchasing a new machine. Existing machine is no cost for you to run this. Electricity is one cost, but it will get paid off from every request it receives. Electricity is only deducted w…

You're not taking into account the thermal strain on the machine, though. A machine that's 100% utilized (even worse if it's in bursts) will last less than an idle machine.

Not appreciably, and not before a 5-yr AppleCare+ warranty expires.

Out of our >3000 currently active Apple Silicon Macs, failures due to non-physical damage are in the single digits per year. Of those, none have been from production systems with 24/7 uptime and continuous high load, which reflects your parenthetical.

Perhaps we haven't met the other end of the bathtub curve yet, but we also won't be retaining any of these very far beyond their warranty period, much less the end of their support life.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#172

Post by stavros »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #171
stavros wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not taking into account the thermal strain on the machine, though. A machine that's 100% utilized (even worse if it's in bursts) will last less than an idle machine.

Not appreciably, and not before a 5-yr AppleCare+ warranty expires. Out of our >3000 currently active Apple Silicon Macs, failures due to non-physical damage are in the single digits per year. Of those, none have been from production systems with 24/7 uptime and continuous high load, which reflects your parenthetical. Perhaps we haven't met the other end of the bathtub curve yet, but we also won't be retaining any of…

I think the point of this is more "use the machine you have at home" than "do a TCO analysis and see if it's profitable", though. People like to keep their machines working for longer, generally.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#174

Post by kamranjon »

haspok wrote: post #138

Having strong SETI@Home vibes from 25 years ago, except of course, this is not for the greater good of humanity, but a for-profit project. Problem is, from a technical point of view, what kind of made sense back then (most people running desktops, fans always on, energy saving minimal) is kind of stupid today (even if your laptop has no fan, would you want it to be always generating heat?)... I definitely want my lap…

My m4 max mbp with 128gb of memory is constantly training 24/7 on weekends- it’s why I bought the thing.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#176

Post by nnevatie »

jonhohle wrote: post #175

> That is not a technology problem. It is a marketplace problem. I cringe every time I see this sentence structure. I know the joke is about emdashes, but the “Its not …. It’s ….” drives me crazy.

Only an em dash missing in between to be chefs-kiss-perfect.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#177

Post by jaffee »

client side of this kind of needs to be open source unless I'm running it on a dedicated machine and firewalling it from the rest of my network. Or the company needs to have a very strong reputation and certifications. curlbash and go is a pretty hard sell for me

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#179

Post by runako »

nxpnsv wrote: post #49
runako wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many people who do not have ready access to a million dollars to purchase said Mac minis, much less the operating capital to rack & operate them. Very smart play to build a platform, get scale, and prove out the software. Then either add a small network fee (this could be on money movement on/off platform), add a higher tier of service for money, and/or just use the proof points to go get access to capital…

If those numbers are true, they could tart with one Mac and can double every few months. But, I guess there are also many people who do not have ready access to whatever a Mac mini costs either...

You can run the simulation out, but if the idea works, you can get to scaled revenue much faster than organic growth keeping 100% of the margin.

This is essentially the same reason even the best money managers take outside money to start, even if they eventually kick out the investors.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#180

Post by dgacmu »

@eigengajesh - Your cost estimator lists Mac Mini M4 Pro with only 24 or 48GB options, but the M4 Pro mini can also be configured with 64GB. At least, I hope so, as I'm typing this on one. ;-)

Oh, also, you seem to have some bugs:

Gemma: WARN [vllm_mlx] RuntimeError: Failed to load the default metallib. This library is using language version 4.0 which is not supported on this OS. library not found library not found library not found

cohere: 2026-04-16T14:25:10.541562Z WARN [stt] File "/Users/dga/.darkbloom/bin/stt_server.py", line 332, in load_model 2026-04-16T14:25:10.541614Z WARN [stt] from mlx_audio.stt.models.cohere_asr import audio as audio_mod 2026-04-16T14:25:10.541643Z WARN [stt] ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'mlx_audio.stt.models.cohere_asr'

Trying to download the flux image models fails with:

curl: (56) The requested URL returned error: 404

darkbloom earnings does not work

your documentation is inconstent between saying 100% of revenue to providers vs 95%

I think .. this needs a little more care and feeding before you open it up widely. :) And maybe lay off the LLM generated text before it gets you in trouble for promising things you're not delivering.

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