I regret building this $3000 Pi AI cluster

(www.jeffgeerling.com)

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Aurornis ◴[19 Sep 25 14:52 UTC] No.45302320[source]▶

>>45302065 (OP) #

I thought the conclusion should have been obvious: A cluster of Raspberry Pi units is an expensive nerd indulgence for fun, not an actual pathway to high performance compute. I don’t know if anyone building a Pi cluster actually goes into it thinking it’s going to be a cost effective endeavor, do they? Maybe this is just YouTube-style headline writing spilling over to the blog for the clicks.

If your goal is to play with or learn on a cluster of Linux machines, the cost effective way to do it is to buy a desktop consumer CPU, install a hypervisor, and create a lot of VMs. It’s not as satisfying as plugging cables into different Raspberry Pi units and connecting them all together if that’s your thing, but once you’re in the terminal the desktop CPU, RAM, and flexibility of the system will be appreciated.

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1. wccrawford ◴[19 Sep 25 15:53 UTC] No.45303061[source]▶

>>45302320 #

Geerling's titles have been increasingly click-bait for a while now. It's pretty sad, because I like his content, but hate the click-bait BS.

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2. jonathanlydall ◴[19 Sep 25 18:01 UTC] No.45304562[source]▶

>>45303061 (TP) #

If it makes an appreciable difference to how much money he makes on YouTube then I can’t begrudge him for doing it.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

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3. mrguyorama ◴[19 Sep 25 18:51 UTC] No.45305076[source]▶

>>45303061 (TP) #

Blame Youtube. They are the ones that run a purposely zero sum and adversarial system for directing attention at your videos. If he doesn't have a high enough click rate on his videos, Youtube will literally stop showing them to people, even subscribers.

Youtube demonstrably wants clickbait titles and thumbnails. They built tooling to automatically A/B test titles and thumbnails for you.

Youtube could fix this and stop it if they want, but that might lose them 1% of business so they never will.

They love that you blame creators for this market dynamic instead of the people who literally create the market dynamic.

4. geerlingguy ◴[19 Sep 25 21:33 UTC] No.45306912[source]▶

>>45304562 #

Just to add context — I've been experimenting on my 2nd channel (Level 2 Jeff) with titles that are straight/barebones exactly describing the content of the video, vs a slight bit of clickbait (never untrue, but certainly more intriguing and not describing the exact topic of the video).

The ones that are dead straight with no clickbait are 10/10 (the worst performers), and usually by a massive margin. Even with the same thumbnail.

The sad fact is, if you want your work seen on YouTube, you can't just say "I built a 10 node Raspberry Pi blade cluster and ran HPL and LLMs on it".

Some people are fine with a limited audience. And that's fine too! I don't have to write on my blog at all—I earn negative income from that, since I pay for hosting and a domain, but I hope some people enjoy the content in text form like I do.

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5. pmw ◴[20 Sep 25 01:20 UTC] No.45308919{3}[source]▶

>>45306912 #

Thanks for the transparency. Much respect to you.

6. asalahli ◴[20 Sep 25 20:02 UTC] No.45316864{3}[source]▶

>>45306912 #

FWIW I like Level 2 Jeff more and I would watch the videos with or without the clickbait-y titles. As you've said I've never found your titles deceptive so if they bring you more money, then more power to you

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