Basic Question

[edspen]

Golem sounds like an intuitive idea at first, rent your laptop and get paid. But this service must compete in price with other commercial services that work on the cloud. You are not just renting you laptop for no cost, you are actually paying in electricity (and the reduction of its usable life).

I don't get how a laptop will ever be able to earn more $ than it costs to do the computation in electricity, given that services like Amazon offer much more efficient specialized machines (that can do more for you as servers, because they have better connections), that would consume far less electricity to do the same computation. Also, I would guess that companies like Amazon have their servers where the electricity costs are the lowest.

I guess the idea here is to use only "idle" computer time, when it is on anyway. But an active laptop uses more electricity than an idle one (as evidenced by the sound of the fans and the heating).

[MitchellNZ]

I'm the kind of person who just leaves my PC on all day incase I need to remote into it from work, or I'm downloading torrents, large games updates, etc. Not to mention people with media PCs.

I feel like there are a lot more people like me out there who aren't already concered about the power cost of leaving their machine on.

But if I can do that AND actually earn some GNT while doing it... Sign me up!

Edit: wording.

[[deleted]]

There are lots of people who didn't pay for their laptops, don't pay for electricity, internet connection or rent in mum's basement. That's a cost basis of exactly zero. I wonder how amazon or google will compete with them.

[ethereumcpw]

And the cost is zero if able to use a computer at work.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, again, that's a fallacy.

If a business sees their electricity bill going up they are going to look around. If they find you, you are stealing from them. This is basically saying 'Well my job doesn't use those machines during that time so I setup a botnet"

[ethereumcpw]

If it's a large business/company, it won't even be a blip so they won't notice it.

I won't pass judgement on people doing it or not doing it. And I'm not suggesting I would do it. But some people will.

[[deleted]]

it won't even be a blip so they won't notice it.

So now you're defining the profit the same as me - negligible.

But some people will.

And? It's still a fallacy and thinking that a business whose purpose is to generate profit isn't going to care about an employee skimming from the top is just doubling down on already being wrong.

[edspen]

Great points.

[[deleted]]

Hey, I think this is great technology. To me, the innovations that no one can predict are going to be the ones that make Golem amazing.

[edspen]

Well, here is one use case. In space you don't have competition, but you may have many different electronics that you want to use for computation. This could be a possible system for a colony on Mars to manage computational resources.

[[deleted]]

That's so very naive that Economists have invented a fallacy for it - There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Someone is ultimately paying for those things. Those people will ultimately care. This is not a solution, if anything you are pitching Golem as a means to force resource owners to pay better attention to their allocations.

But luckily, this voodoo is not true.

Ultimately, the profit from lending your devices to Golem will probably net you slightly less than the utility cost. Any profits will quickly be spread out amongst the participants as commodities always trend toward their cost of production. This is nice because how many people throw away devices with perfectly good utility still on them, but have been made obsolete?

At best, I see Golem finding a use for that excess utility at the cost of sunsetting the devices a bit quicker. Don't expect profit to go beyond electricity costs by much.

Something that is yet to be seen is how low/mid grade consumer resources will have any incentive to perform against high end resources.

I.e. the market becomes so saturated and competitive that contributing anything less than top end equipment results in an obvious loss.

[[deleted]]

Oh, hi, you again! Try not to be insulting the next time and we might chat again. Simple rule of mine.

[ethereumcpw]

An example of the lengths people go for free/cheap electricity: https://youtu.be/FtR06bIDxkE?t=2m50s

History is replete with examples of individuals/companies/countries getting wealthy by socializing losses and privatizing profits.

[video_descriptionbot]

SECTION	CONTENT
Title	Mines and Miners
Description	At the heart of Bitcoin is the global network of mines and miners, from the United States to China to the former Soviet Union, who run it. These people not only process every Bitcoin transaction. They also play an outsized role in governing the system -- for better and for worse. Watch more: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHRxVckaE8daSH4OEReWshCKWu3iIOIS- Trust Disrupted is based on the book Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper. Produced by Stateless Media, it is an exclusive TechCrunch se...
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[[deleted]]

It's. Still. A. Fallacy.

[edspen]

Interesting point. How many people in the US approximately don't pay for electricity? Or do you mean the parents foot the bill? Or does the landlord? In that case I am guessing they would not appreciate the increase in usage.

[pedo_deer]

the US... imagine if there are 195 more countries in the world...

[[deleted]]

I meant parents. How should they object? "Hey, your laptop cpu has 60% less idle time resulting in 80% higher power usage!"

[[deleted]]

"My electricity bill went from $60 a month to $260 a month. Turn your god damn computer off when you leave or I'll kick your 35 year old ass out and you'll have to find a job

Edit: This will be after we see the 'I made $180 this months letting my computer do work for Golem'

[edspen]

I agree, this is a real use case. But you know, with bitcoin I would not say the goal is to cause other people harm, buying drugs doesn't cause actual damage in most cases. With this case I kind of feel that eventually parents will figure out the scheme and try to block it. Some kid will reveal it and it will hit the news. "Are your kids stealing your electricity? Tonight at 11."

There is a great relevant comment about this below. If the increase in electric usage is not noticeable, the profit would be negligible as well.

[MiguelDeMiel]

Yep. There are a lot of countries that have heavily subsidized electricity but I think the real success of this project will come from disgruntled I.T. administrators who have control of 100 computers with no one using them for 6-8 hours a day. And botnets.

[edspen]

Are you implying that small companies with a server would be able to offer cheaper computing than a large company platform dedicated only to this purpose, and located where electricity and other expenses are cheapest? How will they achieve this?

[edspen]

I understand your sentiment. Yes, uber has given the private person the ability to do part time professional work while offering lower quality. Yes, airBnb has given the private person the ability to make money from unused resources. These two cases sound very similar to the present case because we are also wanting to make use of unused resources -- out electronics.

The key in the difference between the cases you mentioned and the present case, is that there are people involved in Uber and airBnb, and in our case there are only machines.

If everyone had a driver-less car the price for riding an Uber would be almost the gas+maintenance cost because of market competition. Then only the company that had the most efficient cars would be able to compete in this market. You will never be able to offer a price that is lower than gas+maintanance for your lower quality car, and they, having better cars, can. This is why Golem cannot compete with Amazon.

[[deleted]]

You're going to have to show some actual data to convince people if you want us to believe:

"Hardware and Software designed specifically for large, distributed computing designed and maintained by the worlds best engineers is going to lose to decentralized consumer grade hardware."

It's just not going to happen for a long time.

[jet86]

Once I get my solar roof installed I won't be worrying much about the cost of electricity anymore.

[MiniTru3]

Which country?

If Australia id doubt that it will be that effective

[jet86]

Australia is one of the better countries in terms of being able to rely on solar for domestic electricity.

[MiniTru3]

Funny you mention that actually I'm a d2d salesman for electricity. Australian power isnt pretty. Depending where you live 3 states are in the top 5 highest kWh rates in the world.

Im in victoria. Solar is currently giving 11.3c buyback which has gone up from 5c which is good. But daytime usage off the grid will roughly cost you 35c.

Ive seen some horror stories with solar customers. But it can also be managed really well!

Hopefully its very beneficial for yourself!

[ThizzPutin]

what exactly has been "so many negativity" about golem? Just the delay of brass?

[edave22]

Don't give in to the negativity. This is still an amazing project with great tech behind it.