8 ms·

Show HN: RentMyCPU – An open-source computational network

143 points by frank_lbt 5y ago

lanej 5y ago
Hard no.
spicybright 5y ago
Just some observations: - I don't have any info on how this works from the repo. 99% of people will click on the repo and click back because of the lack of this. I went on google and found a [this](https://sideprojects.net/posts/NB697xnBrWQioywoP/rentmycpu-rent-your-cpu-power-and-get-rewarded https://sideprojects.net/posts/NB697xnBrWQioywoP/rentmycpu-r...) link, but still no information. - How are payments processed? Do you need to trust the other party a good amount? As a cpu cycle seller, how do I know I'll get money for time I process? How does a cpu buyer know they aren't getting scammed? - How are computations done? If I have to re-write my existing software to leverage this, I might as well rent a VPS to save a lot of time. - Do I need to select user by user at a granular level to run my tasks, or can I just throw a task + $ at a pool and have the system figure it out? I love the idea though, it's really been a bit of a pipe dream for the past 20 or so years. It's just a very tough problem to execute correctly. Best of luck.
- throwawaypls 5y ago
  Don’t want to be cynical (and appreciate your more constructive feedback), but i’m surprised by the kind of stuff that makes up to the front page these days.
  - spicybright 5y ago
    I tend to agree. I don't expect every project to have a landing page with flat trendy graphics giving you the bullet points like a start up, but just a few paragraphs/link to a white paper would go such a long way.
    - geek_at 5y ago
      One or two screenshots of the web interface would have been enough
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  This reminds me of homomorphic encryption: you can perform computations on data while it remains encrypted, which would solve the trust problems you mention afaict. This seems like it would have enormous potential to change the cloud landscape. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
  - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
    My understanding (which is admittedly very little) though is that homomorphic encryption requires many times more computations compared to running on unencrypted data, so that could dampen it's usefulness.
    - Jhsto 5y ago
      It indeed seems to be: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.01945.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.01945.pdf
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Perhaps, but there is a LOT of unused capacity out there.
      - spicybright 5y ago
        It's less of a resource problem and more of an allocation/networking problem though. Most problems worth sourcing out requires a lot of data, and piping that through a home network connection to a "meh" CPU and back isn't that useful. Even if you spend time divvying it up, I can't imagine it would be easier/cost effecitve than just spinning up an AWS node to get it done.
neolog 5y ago
How does security work?
ampdepolymerase 5y ago
Paging @Samin100 https://vectordash.com/ https://vectordash.com/
gnabgib 5y ago
https://rentmycpu.azurewebsites.net/download https://rentmycpu.azurewebsites.net/download has a little more info
spicyramen 5y ago
Any detail design doc please
lockyc 5y ago
Rent your CPU out as part of a botnet!
- r3trohack3r 5y ago
  Botnet as a service already exists: https://brightdata.com/ https://brightdata.com/ Seems they recently rebranded, they used to be luminati.io
geocrasher 5y ago
In 2007 when distributed computing was still a New Kid On The Block, I shared an idea with a colleague for what I considered to be a good idea at the time: Distributed computing for hire. Families around the world have reasonable amounts of computing power that sits mostly unused; why not make a few bucks doing things similar to Folding@Home Seti@Home, but for a price? Get paid for your computations. Of course this was before Bitcoin was a thing, and looking back, it feels naïve to have thought it could be successful. I certainly lacked the expertise to build such a thing. But I wasn't the only one thinking of it. Others tried it and appear to have failed. From 2011: Ask HN: Is there a paid Distributed Computing service? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2499466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2499466 These days I'd be concerned to run somebody else's workload on my own equipment, lest the FBI/CIA/KGB/FSB/Interpol/SecretService/GRU show up at my door. Still, an interesting thought especially given how powerful so many devices have become.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  I'd be worried about offering storage to random people, but what kind of compute are you worried about doing? I guess someone could use this as a kind of proxy, right? Like have your system perform some attack or send some communication.
  - sp332 5y ago
    Maybe brute-forcing passwords?
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    > I'd be worried about offering storage to random people Isn’t that precisely how IPFS works?
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
      IPFS mostly functions with people choosing specific files to keep available.
  - geocrasher 5y ago
mhh__ 5y ago
Well, it's WebAssembly, so there can't possibly be any exploits!
- colordrops 5y ago
  Wait, is WebAssembly known to be insecure? This is news to me.
  - netsec_burn 5y ago
    The latest Chrome exploit released in the past day used it.
  - sirmc 5y ago
    There have been several PoCs of microarchitectural attacks, such as Rowhammer or Meltdown/ Spectre/ MDS, implemented in webassembly.
- Applejinx 5y ago
  If there are exploits, it's definitely going to be all Bitcoin and the like. Impossible for anything to compete against literally stolen, free CPU. Interesting way to make crypto eco-friendly: acknowledge that even the most exploitative mining rigs can't economically compete against literal cpu-jacking at scale :)
  - ddtaylor 5y ago
    CPUs cannot mine modern bitcoin in any capacity. Were at exahashes now.
hydrocat 5y ago
Last time I met John Maddog, he had a similar idea, already implemented and the whole "ecosystem" used it's own cryptocurrency. Project Cauã or something. Because I can't seem to find new news, I'm guessing that it's perhaps going downhill.
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
https://www.golem.network/ https://www.golem.network/ Haven’t thought of these guys in a while.
- ddtaylor 5y ago
  Just a few weeks ago they finally launched mainnet!
- ignoramous 5y ago
  http://elastos.info/ http://elastos.info/ and https://cosmos.network/ https://cosmos.network/ give you building blocks to build something similar to https://golem.network/ https://golem.network/ https://orchid.com/ https://orchid.com/ and https://mysterium.network/ https://mysterium.network/ are doing something similar but with network/bandwidth; whilst https://filecoin.com/ https://filecoin.com/ and https://sia.tech/ https://sia.tech/ are focused on storage. Got to say, despite HN's general aversion towards blockchain/crypto, the space is budding with some really interesting decentralized frameworks, platforms, and apps not possible before at this scale. As evidenced by Coinbase's numbers, they seemed to have absolutely zoomed past Stripe, and so it looks like there's some undeniable momentum and velocity in web3 initiatives.
zelon88 5y ago
Funny sidebar, I had an idea for something like this as a feature to a larger product. The scope creep of this concept eventually wound up consuming the entire project and it had to be surgically removed to save the original project. I'd like to revisit the idea someday. Maybe this is my chance? I will be exitedly following this closely.
ackbar03 5y ago
I would love to be able to rent people's spare gpu compute. It's be a lot cheaper than aws or any other cloud service
- hmaxwell 5y ago
  https://vast.ai/console/create/ https://vast.ai/console/create/
  - hadeson 5y ago
    This was a thing until mining ETH is profitable again.
- Proven 5y ago
  Not necessarily. If your workload can be split, in many cases the amount of places to bring your data to would mean expensive and slow data transfer - N times to N points vs once to AWS.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
Well done OP, Congratulations on the launch! Several others have pointed out why they wouldn't use such a service, I would definitely use this; Not to make money per se but to distribute my compute load within my network across the computers, smartphones, tablets, TVs i.e. whatever with a browser capable of running web assembly. Consumer level distributed computing is my pet peeve and I'm obsessively power conscious about my computing needs. I use low power, silent computing systems in my house that means Intel U/ AMD G series CPU, loads of ARM SoCs, Consoles for gaming etc. and for anything demanding I compute using cloud. Considering I use only low power systems, I could really use distributed computing to improve my productivity and that's been currently limited to some data science loads using Dask, Modin and occasional use of programming languages designed for DC. Update: I have added your project link to a distributed computing problem thread on my problem validation platform. Hopefully those who are looking for such a solution would be able to find it there. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/218-distributing-computing-loads-across-all-devices-distributedcomputing-computation https://needgap.com/problems/218-distributing-computing-load...
cable2600 5y ago
With the right malware, your CPU rents itself as part of a Botnet. I remember doing the Seti at Home and Folding at Home projects as a screen saver that used CPU time to solve problems. That was for charity. How is this different than mining for Bitcoin or any other virtual currency? I want to make sure my CPU is not used for illegal means and then the FBI busted down my door because my CPU was part of a peer to peer network serving kiddie porn?
- ddtaylor 5y ago
  > How is this different than mining for Bitcoin or any other virtual currency? Bitcoin mining is finding y < sha256(sha256(x)) - that's it. When you mine coin you don't give anyone the ability to execute Turing complete code. Even their transaction "scripting" language isn't Turing complete. > I want to make sure my CPU is not used for illegal means and then the FBI busted down my door because my CPU was part of a peer to peer network serving [illegal material]? You run the same risks every time you click a link in a web browser currently. It can execute WASM code and it has network access.
Galanwe 5y ago
How is that different from mining ETH, which is basically running others' programs (smart contracts) in exchange for ETH.
- randalluk 5y ago
  Every Ethereum smart contact is validated (run) on every node in the Ethereum network, in order to achieve distributed consensus. It should be possible to be thousands of times more efficient than that (which suggests they could achieve much lower prices for buyers combined with greater rewards for CPU owners).
  - kuroguro 5y ago
    Imagine writing a contract that could mine more ether :O
de6u99er 5y ago
Why can't I leave your website using the back button? This is already untrustworthy.
pytlicek 5y ago
There is under a header written: "Rent your CPU power and win money !" I'm not sure if I understand it right, but "WIN MONEY" is not the same as "EARN MONEY" :D No TOS, Docs, anything. To me this looks like a good Clickbait :/
williesleg 5y ago
Finally a replacement for aws!
tirrex 5y ago
I think this would only work if a known company backs this up and control the workload/program/users. Otherwise, it is a heaven for hackers/spammers
monkeydust 5y ago
Been using Gridcoin to provide idle CPU capacity to BOINC projects. Works well - once you have it all setup - which can take some time.
wittjeff 5y ago
See also Popular Power from 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Power
peter_d_sherman 5y ago
>"RentMyCPU An app made to compute tasks from other nodes in the network using your CPU and you earn money for that. [...] How it works This app works with webassembly files. These files are executed in a sandboxed environment (because uwp apps are sandboxed by default). You have the ability to execute a webassembly file on many nodes. To differentiate the node on which the webassembly file is executed, a numeric parameter is passed." What's the story with WebAssembly and sockets/API calls? I assume that WebAssembly prevents whatever it is running from opening sockets and making API calls... If it doesn't -- then how will you prevent Black Hats / ill-intentioned people -- from creating Bot and DDoS networks, and other mayhem?
aabbcc1241 5y ago
When integrated with RentMyRAM and RentMyDisk, we have Ethereum back, except the computation don't have to be repeated on every nodes in the network.

143 points by frank_lbt 5y ago

Hard no.

Just some observations: - I don't have any info on how this works from the repo. 99% of people will click on the repo and click back because of the lack of this. I went on google and found a [this](https://sideprojects.net/posts/NB697xnBrWQioywoP/rentmycpu-rent-your-cpu-power-and-get-rewarded https://sideprojects.net/posts/NB697xnBrWQioywoP/rentmycpu-r...) link, but still no information. - How are payments processed? Do you need to trust the other party a good amount? As a cpu cycle seller, how do I know I'll get money for time I process? How does a cpu buyer know they aren't getting scammed? - How are computations done? If I have to re-write my existing software to leverage this, I might as well rent a VPS to save a lot of time. - Do I need to select user by user at a granular level to run my tasks, or can I just throw a task + $ at a pool and have the system figure it out? I love the idea though, it's really been a bit of a pipe dream for the past 20 or so years. It's just a very tough problem to execute correctly. Best of luck.

throwawaypls 5y ago
Don’t want to be cynical (and appreciate your more constructive feedback), but i’m surprised by the kind of stuff that makes up to the front page these days.
- spicybright 5y ago
  I tend to agree. I don't expect every project to have a landing page with flat trendy graphics giving you the bullet points like a start up, but just a few paragraphs/link to a white paper would go such a long way.
  - geek_at 5y ago
    One or two screenshots of the web interface would have been enough
throwaway894345 5y ago
This reminds me of homomorphic encryption: you can perform computations on data while it remains encrypted, which would solve the trust problems you mention afaict. This seems like it would have enormous potential to change the cloud landscape. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  My understanding (which is admittedly very little) though is that homomorphic encryption requires many times more computations compared to running on unencrypted data, so that could dampen it's usefulness.
  - Jhsto 5y ago
    It indeed seems to be: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.01945.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.01945.pdf
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Perhaps, but there is a LOT of unused capacity out there.
    - spicybright 5y ago
      It's less of a resource problem and more of an allocation/networking problem though. Most problems worth sourcing out requires a lot of data, and piping that through a home network connection to a "meh" CPU and back isn't that useful. Even if you spend time divvying it up, I can't imagine it would be easier/cost effecitve than just spinning up an AWS node to get it done.

neolog 5y ago

How does security work?

ampdepolymerase 5y ago

Paging @Samin100 https://vectordash.com/ https://vectordash.com/

gnabgib 5y ago

https://rentmycpu.azurewebsites.net/download https://rentmycpu.azurewebsites.net/download has a little more info

spicyramen 5y ago

Any detail design doc please

lockyc 5y ago

Rent your CPU out as part of a botnet!

r3trohack3r 5y ago
Botnet as a service already exists: https://brightdata.com/ https://brightdata.com/ Seems they recently rebranded, they used to be luminati.io

geocrasher 5y ago

In 2007 when distributed computing was still a New Kid On The Block, I shared an idea with a colleague for what I considered to be a good idea at the time: Distributed computing for hire. Families around the world have reasonable amounts of computing power that sits mostly unused; why not make a few bucks doing things similar to Folding@Home Seti@Home, but for a price? Get paid for your computations. Of course this was before Bitcoin was a thing, and looking back, it feels naïve to have thought it could be successful. I certainly lacked the expertise to build such a thing. But I wasn't the only one thinking of it. Others tried it and appear to have failed. From 2011: Ask HN: Is there a paid Distributed Computing service? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2499466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2499466 These days I'd be concerned to run somebody else's workload on my own equipment, lest the FBI/CIA/KGB/FSB/Interpol/SecretService/GRU show up at my door. Still, an interesting thought especially given how powerful so many devices have become.

ALittleLight 5y ago
I'd be worried about offering storage to random people, but what kind of compute are you worried about doing? I guess someone could use this as a kind of proxy, right? Like have your system perform some attack or send some communication.
- sp332 5y ago
  Maybe brute-forcing passwords?
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  > I'd be worried about offering storage to random people Isn’t that precisely how IPFS works?
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
    IPFS mostly functions with people choosing specific files to keep available.
- geocrasher 5y ago

mhh__ 5y ago

Well, it's WebAssembly, so there can't possibly be any exploits!

colordrops 5y ago
Wait, is WebAssembly known to be insecure? This is news to me.
- netsec_burn 5y ago
  The latest Chrome exploit released in the past day used it.
- sirmc 5y ago
  There have been several PoCs of microarchitectural attacks, such as Rowhammer or Meltdown/ Spectre/ MDS, implemented in webassembly.
Applejinx 5y ago
If there are exploits, it's definitely going to be all Bitcoin and the like. Impossible for anything to compete against literally stolen, free CPU. Interesting way to make crypto eco-friendly: acknowledge that even the most exploitative mining rigs can't economically compete against literal cpu-jacking at scale :)
- ddtaylor 5y ago
  CPUs cannot mine modern bitcoin in any capacity. Were at exahashes now.

hydrocat 5y ago

Last time I met John Maddog, he had a similar idea, already implemented and the whole "ecosystem" used it's own cryptocurrency. Project Cauã or something. Because I can't seem to find new news, I'm guessing that it's perhaps going downhill.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

https://www.golem.network/ https://www.golem.network/ Haven’t thought of these guys in a while.

ddtaylor 5y ago
Just a few weeks ago they finally launched mainnet!
ignoramous 5y ago
http://elastos.info/ http://elastos.info/ and https://cosmos.network/ https://cosmos.network/ give you building blocks to build something similar to https://golem.network/ https://golem.network/ https://orchid.com/ https://orchid.com/ and https://mysterium.network/ https://mysterium.network/ are doing something similar but with network/bandwidth; whilst https://filecoin.com/ https://filecoin.com/ and https://sia.tech/ https://sia.tech/ are focused on storage. Got to say, despite HN's general aversion towards blockchain/crypto, the space is budding with some really interesting decentralized frameworks, platforms, and apps not possible before at this scale. As evidenced by Coinbase's numbers, they seemed to have absolutely zoomed past Stripe, and so it looks like there's some undeniable momentum and velocity in web3 initiatives.

zelon88 5y ago

Funny sidebar, I had an idea for something like this as a feature to a larger product. The scope creep of this concept eventually wound up consuming the entire project and it had to be surgically removed to save the original project. I'd like to revisit the idea someday. Maybe this is my chance? I will be exitedly following this closely.

ackbar03 5y ago

I would love to be able to rent people's spare gpu compute. It's be a lot cheaper than aws or any other cloud service

hmaxwell 5y ago
https://vast.ai/console/create/ https://vast.ai/console/create/
- hadeson 5y ago
  This was a thing until mining ETH is profitable again.
Proven 5y ago
Not necessarily. If your workload can be split, in many cases the amount of places to bring your data to would mean expensive and slow data transfer - N times to N points vs once to AWS.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

Well done OP, Congratulations on the launch! Several others have pointed out why they wouldn't use such a service, I would definitely use this; Not to make money per se but to distribute my compute load within my network across the computers, smartphones, tablets, TVs i.e. whatever with a browser capable of running web assembly. Consumer level distributed computing is my pet peeve and I'm obsessively power conscious about my computing needs. I use low power, silent computing systems in my house that means Intel U/ AMD G series CPU, loads of ARM SoCs, Consoles for gaming etc. and for anything demanding I compute using cloud. Considering I use only low power systems, I could really use distributed computing to improve my productivity and that's been currently limited to some data science loads using Dask, Modin and occasional use of programming languages designed for DC. Update: I have added your project link to a distributed computing problem thread on my problem validation platform. Hopefully those who are looking for such a solution would be able to find it there. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/218-distributing-computing-loads-across-all-devices-distributedcomputing-computation https://needgap.com/problems/218-distributing-computing-load...

cable2600 5y ago

With the right malware, your CPU rents itself as part of a Botnet. I remember doing the Seti at Home and Folding at Home projects as a screen saver that used CPU time to solve problems. That was for charity. How is this different than mining for Bitcoin or any other virtual currency? I want to make sure my CPU is not used for illegal means and then the FBI busted down my door because my CPU was part of a peer to peer network serving kiddie porn?

ddtaylor 5y ago
> How is this different than mining for Bitcoin or any other virtual currency? Bitcoin mining is finding y < sha256(sha256(x)) - that's it. When you mine coin you don't give anyone the ability to execute Turing complete code. Even their transaction "scripting" language isn't Turing complete. > I want to make sure my CPU is not used for illegal means and then the FBI busted down my door because my CPU was part of a peer to peer network serving [illegal material]? You run the same risks every time you click a link in a web browser currently. It can execute WASM code and it has network access.

Galanwe 5y ago

How is that different from mining ETH, which is basically running others' programs (smart contracts) in exchange for ETH.

randalluk 5y ago
Every Ethereum smart contact is validated (run) on every node in the Ethereum network, in order to achieve distributed consensus. It should be possible to be thousands of times more efficient than that (which suggests they could achieve much lower prices for buyers combined with greater rewards for CPU owners).
- kuroguro 5y ago
  Imagine writing a contract that could mine more ether :O

de6u99er 5y ago

Why can't I leave your website using the back button? This is already untrustworthy.

pytlicek 5y ago

There is under a header written: "Rent your CPU power and win money !" I'm not sure if I understand it right, but "WIN MONEY" is not the same as "EARN MONEY" :D No TOS, Docs, anything. To me this looks like a good Clickbait :/

williesleg 5y ago

Finally a replacement for aws!

tirrex 5y ago

I think this would only work if a known company backs this up and control the workload/program/users. Otherwise, it is a heaven for hackers/spammers

monkeydust 5y ago

Been using Gridcoin to provide idle CPU capacity to BOINC projects. Works well - once you have it all setup - which can take some time.

wittjeff 5y ago

See also Popular Power from 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Power

peter_d_sherman 5y ago

>"RentMyCPU An app made to compute tasks from other nodes in the network using your CPU and you earn money for that. [...] How it works This app works with webassembly files. These files are executed in a sandboxed environment (because uwp apps are sandboxed by default). You have the ability to execute a webassembly file on many nodes. To differentiate the node on which the webassembly file is executed, a numeric parameter is passed." What's the story with WebAssembly and sockets/API calls? I assume that WebAssembly prevents whatever it is running from opening sockets and making API calls... If it doesn't -- then how will you prevent Black Hats / ill-intentioned people -- from creating Bot and DDoS networks, and other mayhem?

aabbcc1241 5y ago

When integrated with RentMyRAM and RentMyDisk, we have Ethereum back, except the computation don't have to be repeated on every nodes in the network.