# Darkbloom Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/darkbloom/ 9 people recommended Darkbloom in Hacker News comments, 10 had mixed feelings and 37 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 12 months, in 2 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule. 9 of the 9 people who recommend it commented in one thread, “Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs”. **Verdict:** More people criticize it than recommend it. Pays Mac owners for idle compute to run AI inference, praised for the economic idea and hardware-attested privacy angle. Critics doubt the privacy claims and the earnings math. Summary written by Claude from the comments below. ## What people warn about - Privacy claims don't hold up (5 comments in the sample): "there's no hardware enclave for third-party code available to do the type of attestation that would be necessary" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47789942)) "I am not entirely sure they understand that System Integrity Protection and Secure Boot can be turned off." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47789794)) "Everything they mention can be bypassed, so determined person can start stealing data from the network." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47822569)) - Earnings math doesn't add up (2 comments in the sample): "Because their numbers don’t work out. When you do the math on token cost versus inference speed…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791968)) "they subtract 12Ws of idle power, because they are assuming your machine is idling 24/7" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47789034)) - Hardware wear and thermal strain (2 comments in the sample): "Idle chips are mostly powered down, non-idle ones are working and that causes real measurable wear and tear on the silicon." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47798418)) "You're not taking into account the thermal strain on the machine, though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47791384)) - Few paying customers, little demand (2 comments in the sample): "essentially unusable as a provider unless they perform some serious lift to get actual paying customers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47798356)) "they do not generate inference requests to their network themselves to motivate early adopters" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47789590)) ## Why people recommend it - Idle Macs earn money (4 comments in the sample): "Part of a practical economic solution and may not be perfect so far is to use local AI for people to get paid for inference" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47820933)) "this looks like a great idea and might have a chance at solving the economic issue with running nodes for cheap inference" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47788747)) "It doesn't cost you anything to have it running, and if you get requests, you make money." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47789848)) - Seen as a sensible, good project (4 comments in the sample): "That's a good, valid approach and should work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47788762)) "That solution actually makes great sense." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47788771)) "It's a good project that makes sense." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47794936)) - Hardware-attested privacy approach is interesting (2 comments in the sample): "The hardware-attested privacy path is the interesting part of this, but the economic side has a quieter risk the thread has not named" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47797309)) "would have at least some credibility if there was a way to remotely attest a Mac's boot sequence and TCC configuration" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47790188)) ## Other LLM APIs people recommend - [Mistral](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mistral-large-4/): 206 recommend, 81 mixed, 205 criticize - [DeepSeek API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepseek-api/): 147 recommend, 17 mixed, 49 criticize - [OpenAI API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/openai-models/): 115 recommend, 41 mixed, 260 criticize - [Cerebras Inference](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cerebras/): 63 recommend, 33 mixed, 47 criticize ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Darkbloom", https://hackerapproved.com/p/darkbloom/ (9 recommend, 10 mixed, 37 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.