Does anyone rent out their spare CPU resources? Who do you use, is it worth it?
Does anyone have any experiences with these services like gollum Network? Is it safe? Does it earn you a net monetary gain compared to your electric bill? I have a pretty nice desktop that sits around for most of the day, just wondering what else I can do with it while I'm at work.
Please note, I'm asking specifically for people who have actually done this and what their experiences were, good and bad. I understand I'm not going to make tons of (or possibly any) money or start a business.
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I've never done this, so take my response with a cup of salt, but it's worth mentioning that the big guys with scalable server resources (e.g., Amazon, Microsoft, etc.) are very heavily optimized/efficient, and running on grids with dirt cheap electricity.
Unless you're renting for a very niche purpose, I'd be shocked if you could break anywhere close to even at residential electricity rates on consumer gear.
Especially since in the summer every watt you use has to be cooled with your AC. In the winter the temp is on your side a little, but still probably going to be hard to break even.
If you use electric heating, then the use of electricity for computation is basically free in winter, no?
Purely electric heating is pretty rare I'd think. Most will be heat pump which is wayyy more efficient than an electric heater