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Company Alpha will probably just call up AWS or Azure and sleep easy. Company Beta can't really compete because they have to pay both themselves and their contr
by smoldesu 4y ago
Company Alpha will probably just call up AWS or Azure and sleep easy. Company Beta can't really compete because they have to pay both themselves and their contributors; AWS could sell ML compute at-cost and still turn a profit.
What made this type of business feasible/attractive for cryptocurrency is that the miners were Company Beta. There wasn't two mouths to feed or two pockets to line, just a direct and transparent reward scheme for people donating compute. Projects like Folding@Home have leveraged world-scale networks before, but I'm not aware of anyone who's managed to monetize it.
- throwaway14356 4y agoIt would require a problem that reasonably fits the solution. You for example get a keyboards and a set of hands with each node, a webcam, a microphone. I have no real idea but it seems the hand of cards isn't hopeless.
- humanizersequel 4y ago>AWS could sell ML compute at-cost and still turn a profit How? Definitionally, they wouldn't be turning a profit.
- smoldesu 4y agoTraditionally, people don't just get one thing from AWS. If their ML compute doesn't make money, S3 Object Storage will. My bigger point is that AWS and Azure have much greater control over their margins than a business like the one OP was describing.
- latchkey 4y agoLarge enough miners don't have the right hardware. Mining requires a tiny cpu, very little ram and gpus with a max of 8gb, oh and 100mbit. There was never an incentive to buy hardware that could be reused for other purposes since mining itself was such a cash cow. Company Beta likely started off with hardware for AI/ML and mined on the side when they didn't have enough customers.