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A curious thing to read some writing "burn down the datacenters", on datacenters.
Regardless, while a healthy response to mega AI DCs, there are others, that probably shouldn't go onto the bonfire.
By example, a small locally-owned DC not far from me ensures all our elections are on sovereign infra, looks after a decent chunk of the public sector, is committed to low-to-no CO2e, low-ewaste & indigenous rights.
Small, ethical, sovereign DCs can & do exist, & point to a less awful future.
@JulianOliver Perhaps the “burn down the data centers” phrase doesn’t have enough space on the poster to present a nuanced message. Surely nobody is so anti computer that they want to burn down all data centers. The DCs that are a problem are obvious. It’s pretty clear that nobody could mean all of them, isn’t it?
You’re right about the Goldilocks approach: not too big, not too small.
@JulianOliver insert the meme with the guy popping outta a well to point out we still participate in society
@JulianOliver That's not what data center means. If someone is calling a server closet a "data center" because they think it sounds cool/modern/hi-tech 🤡, that's on them.
@dalias Hardly a closet, but I get your point! https://catalystcloud.nz/
@JulianOliver OK, that's more like what we had before "data center" was a thing, and at a more reasonable scale. I don't think folks want to burn those down. But I also think we should be moving away from a model where they're the default way things are done. It requires oursourcing enormous amounts of trust and centralizing targets.
The only reason this kind of hosting is needed is that we made running your own equipment on-premises too complex to do without highly-paid expert staff and made residential & office internet connectivity "consume-only" with NAT hell.
@dalias Big fan of on-prem, and decentralised/p2p topologies, & 20yrs ago I would've generally agreed we shouldn't need DC's.
But after launching projects that went large, incl serving ISOs and streaming etc, sites in the press, I'd need top business fibre at home to still have a pipe good for anything else. My rack Dell's and NAS at home are loud, and power hungry too. Having the capacity to on-prem and meet a large audience on a surge requires privilege (& good qdiscs skills!). 1/3
@JulianOliver
Saw a proposal earlier to have one in every house, solar powered, battery backup, distributed computing. I used lots of electricity and computer equipment donated to folding@home and shut down when air became bad, Salt Lake City’s Winter inversions.
@stevewfolds Love the idea.
While I personally cherish home hosting, the reality of it is that at population scales it would be vastly more energy (even with renewables), network, money & mineral expensive than centralising thousands of instances of sites & services on hypervisors on shared metal on pub Internet infrastructure.
When you start doing the numbers, a many-centers topology of smaller regional DCs is saner than a point-cloud of decentered servers in every home, as much as I love it
@JulianOliver
Utah is about to get a monster, planned to cover 40,000 acres/640 = 62.5 square miles.
@stevewfolds Yes I read, awful.
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