It appears he is selling a service where he comes to you (optionally with a Mac Mini which is probably why he's buying multiple) and sets up OpenClaw for you.
They definitely do. A common configuration is running a supervisor model in the cloud and a much smaller model locally to churn on long running tasks. This frees Openclaw up to lavishly iterate on tool building without running through too many tokens.
There are few open source projects coming along that let you sell your compute power in a decentralized way. I don't know how genuine some of these are [0] but it could be the reason: people are just trying to make money.
There have been countless projects to sell distributed compute power. I don't know of any that have gotten much traction. Everyone keeps trying to create new ones instead of developing for the existing ones.
The one you linked to looks clearly like a pump-and-dump scam, though.
No it’s like someone owning a Ferrari and looking down on someone who drives a Corolla. Or that’s how they see it, anyway. Plus there’s the annoyance with interoperability: it’s not just about status, it’s about all your iMessage group chats that don’t play nice with android
iMessage lock in is a huge thing. When it was new and was still e2ee I ended up buying iPhones for everyone I regularly messaged.
These days it is insecure however because they backdoored the e2ee and kept it backdoored for the FBI, so now Signal is the only messenger I am reachable on.
Blue bubble snobbery is presently a mark of ignorance more than anything else.
I agree that it’s stupid to judge people for it, but you do have to admit that especially with not all people having RCS, the feature set of SMS and MMS that you have to deal with when not using iMessage is pretty barbaric. From the potato-quality videos (ironically, I recall QuickTime was heavily involved in that spec, lol) to the asinine way Apple lets you apply a reaction and then sends it as a verbose text… From an iPhone user’s point of view, a “green bubble” means “this conversation will work like it’s 2003.”
Yes, I know 99.999% of Android users are on WhatsApp (or WeChat, Line, or Telegram depending on cultural background) but at least half of iPhone users aren’t on those, so we still have to keep using Messages for a lot of people.
I assume the suggestion is that they need to run their bot on a machine that's up 24x7 (and they don't want to do that with a laptop since they probably carry it places and such), AND they want it to manage their texts by interacting with the Mac version of the Messages app.
But if you connect those dots you've got people trying to date by having an AI respond to texts from potential dates which seems like you're immediately in red-flag-city and good luck keeping that secret for long enough to get whatever it is you want.
Forget about dating. If you want the AI to be able to send texts from your number, and you own an iPhone, I think your only other choice would be to port your number to Google Voice?
> But if you connect those dots you've got people trying to date by having an AI respond to texts from potential dates
Yeah I’m trying to wrap my head around what sort of reads like “It is messed up that people avoid talking to eachother because of software because it messes up people’s ability to use software to avoid talking to eachother”
(Yes android users are discriminated against in the dating market, tons of op eds are written about this, just google it before you knee jerk downvote the truth)
If someone is shallow enough to write you off for that, is that someone you want as your partner?
Probably the Mac Mini. A few OpenClaw users are buying the agent a dedicated device so that it can integrate with their Apple account.
For example: https://x.com/michael_chomsky/status/2017686846910959668.
Why would it need more than 1? Couldn't they do this with any Mac with an Apple account?
It appears he is selling a service where he comes to you (optionally with a Mac Mini which is probably why he's buying multiple) and sets up OpenClaw for you.
That truly cant be it right? This is like satire? How much do you even charge for that?
Unfortunately not satire, and the answer is $500
Mac Minis are perfect for locally running demanding models because they can effectively use ordinary RAM as VRAM.
but people dont use OpenClaw with local models
They definitely do. A common configuration is running a supervisor model in the cloud and a much smaller model locally to churn on long running tasks. This frees Openclaw up to lavishly iterate on tool building without running through too many tokens.
Unless you're running a large local model in 192GB+ this just won't be ideal, based on real-world experience.
Considering there are 1.5M openclaw agents, created by 17,000 humans, it seems like some people really would use more than 1.
Are you saying that software is THAT inefficient so that you can’t run a few hundred of them on a single Mac Mini? : D
if you are counting reported moltbook accounts there are not, the API was spammed by scripts to create accounts
This was on HN a few days ago, I wasn't counting anything:
https://www.wiz.io/blog/exposed-moltbook-database-reveals-mi...
There are few open source projects coming along that let you sell your compute power in a decentralized way. I don't know how genuine some of these are [0] but it could be the reason: people are just trying to make money.
0. https://www.daifi.ai/
There have been countless projects to sell distributed compute power. I don't know of any that have gotten much traction. Everyone keeps trying to create new ones instead of developing for the existing ones.
The one you linked to looks clearly like a pump-and-dump scam, though.
That one definitely looks like a crypto scam.
The entire point of the article is about the Mac mini sales flying through the roof because of this.
Mac-Minis
[flagged]
So you might be discriminated against by some ignorant teenagers? Probably for the best.
who's "afraid" of green bubbles? it's like saying a toyota corolla driver is afraid of the ford pinto
No it’s like someone owning a Ferrari and looking down on someone who drives a Corolla. Or that’s how they see it, anyway. Plus there’s the annoyance with interoperability: it’s not just about status, it’s about all your iMessage group chats that don’t play nice with android
Apple chose the colors well. For whatever reason the shade of green they chose just gives a bit of ick.
"Nissan" might have fit better than Ford Pinto here.
It's a real thing, you're either too old and/or not dating young people. Some do care a lot.
IMO it is pretty shallow to pick dating partners based on their mobile OS but yeah it does happen.
iMessage lock in is a huge thing. When it was new and was still e2ee I ended up buying iPhones for everyone I regularly messaged.
These days it is insecure however because they backdoored the e2ee and kept it backdoored for the FBI, so now Signal is the only messenger I am reachable on.
Blue bubble snobbery is presently a mark of ignorance more than anything else.
I agree that it’s stupid to judge people for it, but you do have to admit that especially with not all people having RCS, the feature set of SMS and MMS that you have to deal with when not using iMessage is pretty barbaric. From the potato-quality videos (ironically, I recall QuickTime was heavily involved in that spec, lol) to the asinine way Apple lets you apply a reaction and then sends it as a verbose text… From an iPhone user’s point of view, a “green bubble” means “this conversation will work like it’s 2003.”
Yes, I know 99.999% of Android users are on WhatsApp (or WeChat, Line, or Telegram depending on cultural background) but at least half of iPhone users aren’t on those, so we still have to keep using Messages for a lot of people.
People are buying mac minis so their openclaw instances can date?
I assume the suggestion is that they need to run their bot on a machine that's up 24x7 (and they don't want to do that with a laptop since they probably carry it places and such), AND they want it to manage their texts by interacting with the Mac version of the Messages app.
But if you connect those dots you've got people trying to date by having an AI respond to texts from potential dates which seems like you're immediately in red-flag-city and good luck keeping that secret for long enough to get whatever it is you want.
I don't follow this logic.
Forget about dating. If you want the AI to be able to send texts from your number, and you own an iPhone, I think your only other choice would be to port your number to Google Voice?
> But if you connect those dots you've got people trying to date by having an AI respond to texts from potential dates
Yeah I’m trying to wrap my head around what sort of reads like “It is messed up that people avoid talking to eachother because of software because it messes up people’s ability to use software to avoid talking to eachother”
You're saying I might have trouble getting a date if I don't have a Mac mini?
Imo using android is a great way to filter out extremely boring and vapid individuals from my dating pool.
Do you want to know how I can tell you didn't read the article?
Do you want to know how I can tell that you did not read the hacker news guidelines.