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Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

darkbloom.dev

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Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#191

Post by btown »

saagarjha wrote: post #83
btown wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the paper: https://github.com/Layr-Labs/d-inference/blob/master/papers/... > Apple’s attestation servers will only generate the FreshnessCode for a genuine device that checks in via APNs. A software-only adversary cannot forge the MDA certificate chain (Assumption 3). Com- bined with SIP enforcement (preventing binary replace- ment) and Secure Boot (preventing bootloader tampering), this provides strong evidence…

I am not entirely sure they understand that System Integrity Protection and Secure Boot can be turned off.

My understanding from the paper is that doing so should cause certain things in Apple's hardware security enclaves to break a signing chain, and a server-side MDM system integrated with Apple servers can detect this. But I'm not familiar with the underlying technology, so not sure if underlying assumptions are incorrect.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#192

Post by mbesto »

eigengajesh wrote: post #151
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 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…

> That's why we don't recommend purchasing a new machine. Existing machine is no cost for you to run this.

You misunderstood. If the ROI is there, there is enough capital in existence for you to accelerate your profit. So why even deal with the complexity of renting people's hardware when you can do it yourself?

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#193

Post by projektfu »

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.

In a little while, AI will reverse the order and everyone will be happy.

Tired: That is not a technology problem. It is a marketplace problem.

Wired: This is a marketplace problem, not a technology problem.

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#195

Post by woadwarrior01 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #101
dinobones wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right. Apple is perfectly capable of doing remote attestation properly. iOS has DCAppAttest which does everything needed. Unfortunately, it's never been brought to macOS, as far as I know. Maybe this MDM hack is a back door to get RA capabilities, if so it'd certainly be intriguing, but if not as far as I know there's no way to get a Mac to cough up a cryptographic assertion that it's running a genuine macOS kernel/b…

> iOS has DCAppAttest which does everything needed. Unfortunately, it's never been brought to macOS, as far as I know.

Apple's docs claim it's been available on macOS since macOS 11. Am I missing something here?

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicecheck/dcappa...

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#196

Post by daniel_iversen »

eigengajesh wrote: post #150

hey guys! i'm the creator. let me know if you have any questions.

Hi! Others have noted this too but you can't seem to buy credits right now, it says "This page couldn’t load" in a custom error page when you've selected the amount and click continue to checkout. Congrats on launching such a cool project that's getting people excited, thinking and discussing :)

Re: Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs

#198

Post by dchuk »

Interesting concept. Two sided marketplaces are hard to bootstrap but maybe just enough curiosity would get the flywheel going. Hell they should just try and convince people to enroll as providers but then also use the service even if it’s hitting their own machines until there’s some degree of supply and demand pressure then try and get only providers to sign up. Or set up some way to encourage providers to promote others to use the service (the 100% rev share kind of breaks that concept but anything can change).

I wish this was self hostable, even for a license fee. Many businesses have fleets of Macs, sometimes even in stock as returned equipment from employees. Would allow for a distributed internal inference network, which has appeal for many orgs who value or require privacy.

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