Comment by rtpg

Right now the "subsidies" etc I think make the calculus really tough, but for general compute.... for example running CI just on a Mac Mini can get you real cost effective throughput compared to running CI on GH runners and whatnot.

Things get cheaper at scale but that's where the provider's margins come in!

I do think there's also an interesting idea: you buy a box like this and run it at a fixed-ish cost (well, electricity). Your demand goes up but your supply is fixed... and that back pressure means that you still have good cost control.

With cloud providers it's a _biiiiit_ too easy to just increase spend.

Sometimes it's OK for things to just be slow.