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I get your point about small companies occupying a niche as their distinct competitive advantage, but in this case, one has to ask the obvious question: why doe

I get your point about small companies occupying a niche as their distinct competitive advantage, but in this case, one has to ask the obvious question: why doesn't Lambda Labs have a problem with fraudulent crypto mining, if the bar for entry is so low and it's so much easier to be up and running in minutes? And whatever the answer is, one hopes that there is some particular reason why Lambda Labs doesn't think AWS could replicate it... otherwise, it wouldn't be a durable enough moat to defend their business model long-term.

marcosdumay 4y ago
That's quite easy to explain. They don't have a problem because the people that contract them do it explicitly to run GPUs. They don't have to protect a massive number of people that don't exactly know what they are hiring.
- strgcmc 4y ago
  That makes sense under a certain set of assumptions I suppose, namely that you might think AWS's problem arises mostly from normal customers not realizing that someone has hijacked their account to run GPU crypto mining without their knowledge, because GPU instances were not their intended use case. So "people that don't know what they are hiring" is the failure mode you're concerned with. But I wonder more about, say a fraudster using stolen credit cards or gift card abuse, to open an account, or abuse a free trial, and if Lambda Labs makes it super easy and low friction to start up a GPU, then the fraudster can open an account, mine crypto immediately, rack up as much crypto as they can for days or a month until billing fails or trial expires, and just try to squeeze Lambda for as much computing power as they can subject to Lambda’s ability to detect fraud. Low friction for customers, usually translates directly to higher risk of abuse. AWS adds its limits and friction for a reason, not because they enjoy making life harder (esp. since, easier for customers == more business/revenue).

marcosdumay 4y ago

That's quite easy to explain. They don't have a problem because the people that contract them do it explicitly to run GPUs. They don't have to protect a massive number of people that don't exactly know what they are hiring.

strgcmc 4y ago
That makes sense under a certain set of assumptions I suppose, namely that you might think AWS's problem arises mostly from normal customers not realizing that someone has hijacked their account to run GPU crypto mining without their knowledge, because GPU instances were not their intended use case. So "people that don't know what they are hiring" is the failure mode you're concerned with. But I wonder more about, say a fraudster using stolen credit cards or gift card abuse, to open an account, or abuse a free trial, and if Lambda Labs makes it super easy and low friction to start up a GPU, then the fraudster can open an account, mine crypto immediately, rack up as much crypto as they can for days or a month until billing fails or trial expires, and just try to squeeze Lambda for as much computing power as they can subject to Lambda’s ability to detect fraud. Low friction for customers, usually translates directly to higher risk of abuse. AWS adds its limits and friction for a reason, not because they enjoy making life harder (esp. since, easier for customers == more business/revenue).