On: Can a Rubik's Cube be brute-forced?

[gwern]

It's been fine when I've used terabyte instances for dynamic programming stuff similar to OP. You are babysitting it and waiting for a specific answer, not running a permanent service which will hemorrhage $$$ when you forget to turn it off. At dollars an hour, hard to forget...

[bradknowles → gwern]

So long as you actually play close attention to it, that's not a problem.

The issue is that many people fail to pay close attention, and that's where the money can really rack up.