Do these TPU VMs have preemptible/spot pricing? I'm just a hobbyist, but it always seemed annoying before that one would have to orchestrate VMs to spin up/down alongside spot instances of TPUs manually.
If you are flexible, you (or your scripts) can access a lot of compute power at odd hours!
The TRC program welcomes hobbyists, artists, students, independent learners, technical writers, and a variety of others. We love it when the TPU Research Cloud enables people to do something that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
I definitely recommend applying to the TRC program - please feel free to say directly that you are a hobbyist. The sign-up form is short, and it's likely that you can access a lot of compute if you are flexible and persistent.