Too much to read.
Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs
181–190 of 271 posts
Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they paid promised > $1k/m for FLUX 2B on a Mac they would go broke in less than a month. On a single 5090 that model would provide an inference througput so high they'd have to pay close to $50k/m for the results. The numbers are absolute fraud. You shouldn't be installing their software cause fraud could be not just about numbers.
Can you rephrase that? I don't think I've read it correctly. It sounds like you are saying it would normally cost $50k on a 5090 and they can do equivalent work paying $1k. That's sounds like a $49k profit margin, but you say they will go broke.
I'm assuming it's meant the other way around.
Given their estimates of a Mac being able to generate $1k (per month?) a 5090 with a lot more power would be able to generate $50k. For a $3k piece of hardware. Which is obviously not realistic. (As in, nobody is paying that much for the images, which seems to match well with no actual requests on the system.)
Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs
#183I 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?
No provider maintains 100% utilization of GPUs at full rate. Demand is bursty - even if this project is successful, you might expect, e.g., things to be busy during the stock market times when Claude is throwing API errors and then severely underutilized during the same times that Anthropic was offering two-for-one off peak use.
And then there's a hit for overprovisioning in general. If the network is not overprovisioned somewhat, customers won't be able to get requests handled when they want, and they'll flee. But the more overprovisioned it is, the worse it is for compute seller earnings.
I suspect an optimistic view of earnings from a platform like this would be something like 1/8 utilization on a model like Gemma 4. Their calculator estimates my m4 pro mini could earn about $24/month at 3 hours/day on that model. That seems plausible.
Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs
#184> 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.
I see it everywhere now, it's even in videos and how people talk.
Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs
#185> 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.
It learned it from humans....
Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs
#186You 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
The MDM profile doesn’t grant that
Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs
#187Actually more useful than Bitcoin. Brilliant idea.
Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good point! But they argue that: > PT_DENY_ATTACH (ptrace constant 31): Invoked at process startup before any sensitive data is loaded. Instructs the macOS kernel to permanently deny all ptracerequests against this process, including from root. This blocks lldb, dtrace, and Instruments. > Hardened Runtime: The binary is code-signed with hardened runtime options and explicitly without the com.apple.security.get-task-a…
Couldn't someone just uhh... patch their macOS/kernel, mock these things out, then behold, you can now access all the data? If it's not running fully end to end in some secure enclave, then it's always just a best effort thing. Good marketing though.
You can probably just tap the HTTP(S) connection to spy on the data coming through. I think it's a mistake to assume any kind of privacy for this service.
The biggest argument for remote attestation I can think of is to make sure nobody is returning random bullshit and cashing in prompt money on a massive scale.
Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs
#189Actually more useful than Bitcoin. Brilliant idea.
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Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs
#190> 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.
It's not a sentence-structure problem. It's an effort problem.
But the real solution is to do this other thing. If you'd like I can give you the three-step guide to fixing the thing you asked me to fix.
/s