MizGanzer
Christine Lemmer-Webbercomputers are a blessing
computer corporations are a mistake
computer datacenters are unforgiveable
computer corporations are a mistake
computer datacenters are unforgiveable
this is a shitpost of sorts but in all earnestness, datacenters *were* a mistake
Imagine what computing would be like if it were still highly networked but datacenters weren't involved
btw for anyone wishing to explain datacenters to me, I will let you know in advance that, alas, my first tech job was as a datacenter technician at Google from 2005-2007
Ben 🏳️⚧️🍉@cwebber That must have been rough. I only had occasional DC visits, though did spend a couple of weeks in one putting all the cabling in place before we moved the servers in there. They are horrible places to spend any amount of time in, wouldn't recommend them to anyone. I couldn't imagine working full time in one
Asta [AMP]@cwebber a datacenter is a little like an activity pub, which is a place where activities get together to share in the warm glow of companionship, except this time the activities are data.
David Bremner@cwebber That was a different Google though. These days a shareholder value focused datacenter has to have a side hustle as a private prison, live fire killer robot training range, or something similarly patriotic.
@bremner Indeed, 2005 me had said "I wouldn't work for any corporation, except for Google, because they seem to be trying hard to be ethical"
And when I got there, I really felt that was true, and over the course of two years, I watched the beginning of that erode
maryjane 
Diane
yomimono, still on earth@alienghic I have that job (at a place with WAY smaller scale) and I do really enjoy opening the door to the machine room knowing that I am going to guide a machine to the Other Side
John Wq 
Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️@cwebber
Instead, they could try explaining to you a neat little concept called "ActivityPub". Maybe you've heard of it? 😋
Instead, they could try explaining to you a neat little concept called "ActivityPub". Maybe you've heard of it? 😋
Bitslingers-R-Us@cwebber I liked my datacenter. They had free snacks and drinks in the kitchen, little offices we could use, showers, good A/C in Phoenix...
But then after the colo reseller I was using went out of business and I ran a backup server out of a bedroom for a year, I realized it was nice for me but not necessary.
But then after the colo reseller I was using went out of business and I ran a backup server out of a bedroom for a year, I realized it was nice for me but not necessary.
Gik 
| 💙➡️🇺🇦@cwebber minimizes labor costs while maximizing real estate value. Both terrible in the long term.
zvavybir 
🍉 
@cwebber Given how often someone has to explain ActivityPub to you, I'd say that that qualifies you for not knowing anything about data centers…
Caleb Herbert@cwebber Occasional outages. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
Jason Lefkowitz@cwebber There was a line I read back in the '90s -- I think in something by Robert X. Cringely, but I've never been able to find the exact piece again -- that said "today eBay is hosted in a datacenter, but in 10 years it will be hosted on the CEO's laptop, and in 20 years it will be hosted on their wristwatch."
We lost that future when Moore's Law hit the wall, of course. But I still dream about it
@jalefkowit It wasn't Moore's Wall that killed it! It was a number of things, including ISPs banning home hosting.
Big unpack tho
qwazix@cwebber @jalefkowit I blame NAT: so many things would be different if devices were not behind a NAT and it was not abused as a cheap firewall.
Luna Dragofelis ΘΔ 🏳️⚧️ &@cwebber @jalefkowit and that, as far as I know, was a response to the whining of the copyright industry
waaaaaa, people can host websites from home where there might be unlicensed copyrighted content, waaaaaa
better ban all home hosting lol
waaaaaa, people can host websites from home where there might be unlicensed copyrighted content, waaaaaa
better ban all home hosting lol
nicopap
djuber@LunaDragofelis @cwebber @jalefkowit the push against home hosting was as much motivated by the potential to upsell "business" connections, an extra $10 per month to not have random DHCP assignment changes, an extra $25 per month to remove data caps or get symmetric data rates. When your ISP is also a media company, copyright concerns carry more business weight, but rent extraction via misfeatures for residential services probably was sufficient to drive people away from experimenting
Daniël Franke 
@djuber @LunaDragofelis @cwebber @jalefkowit And let's not forget them dragging their feet on IPv6 adoption, making NAT ubiquitous.
Dave bauer@cwebber @jalefkowit Never realized that ISPs blocked hosting. I've been hosting something or other for 25 years. Don't tell Spectrum.
Daniel Gibson
Duncan Bayne
-𝚍𝚜𝚛- (has pronouns)@cwebber Usenet/2 and Granddaughter-of-FIDOnet?
Ursidinoj/The Bjornsdottirs
SubductionRheology@cwebber I don't think you could do modern computing without datacenters even if communication was free. A database the size needed by a State Farm or a Progressive Insurance needs to be hosted in a datacenter to meet QoS requirements. And to do datascience queries in a reasonable timeframe lots of compute resources are needed locally. In a datacenter these resources can be returned to the pool after the query.
svenk@SubductionRheology @cwebber Yes and No — technologies like IPFS, Seti@Home, Ethereum Virtual Machine demonstrate that distributed computing is technically possible. I clearly compare apple with bananas here but in history, computing engineering was many times driven by economical will, not the other way around. In other words, "where is a will there is a way".
Ember 
@SubductionRheology @cwebber exactly! without datacentres, disgusting surveillance corps like that wouldn't be able to exist
Athena L.M.@cwebber you mean to tell me, that you took the tools we made so that computers wouldn't have to be in one place, and you turned around, and you used them to make computers that are /even more in one place/??
Richard Barrell
Panicz Maciej Godek@cwebber everyone could easily have their home server the same way everybody has their modem
Phairupegiont@cwebber this is a shitposts of sorts but... slow, unreliable and inefficient?
Paul SomeoneElseI think about this all the time.
(for example:)
So many of us have home cable/dsl/fiber that could totally
support two way traffic and more load.
Like I always feel this need to put things on a VPS when
I can just serve up stuff from my house fiber.
(for example:)
So many of us have home cable/dsl/fiber that could totally
support two way traffic and more load.
Like I always feel this need to put things on a VPS when
I can just serve up stuff from my house fiber.
gkrnours
babble encat@cwebber I have been thinking about friend-to-friend networks and an idea that somebody called "communist web hosting"
it's probably redundant with your work but maybe I'll get lucky and make something useful
@babble_endanger you're always welcome to try to build something on top of our work!
Michiel Scholten@cwebber that'd be interesting. More cubbies at home and at offices? Also, probably less efficient cooling, but maybe because of that the use of more efficient hardware? What's your thought process here, apart from DC's being terrible to spend time in?
🌈 Andrew ☄️
Janne Moren@cwebber
I know it's a shitpost, and I get what you mean.
But sometimes, in HPC, you can't do things on just a single computer (or a loosely networked set of machines).
Also, for the same work, running it on separate desktops would take more energy than running it on a cluster in a datacenter.
Haelwenn /элвэн/ 
@cwebber I think Internet Exchange ones makes sense but other datacenters… ought to be a random dedicated room in a building they already own.
@cwebber sounds like someone just had to go to the Loud Hot Bright Place
Ludwig Vielfrass@cwebber My three favorite things in this world are music, computers, and movies. They are all amazing and awesome.
Stick the word "industry" on the end of each of them, and they all become hellscapes.
cerementmovies are a great example – industrialization has led us to the “missing middle” – we have indie and art films on one end and formulaic blockbusters on the other – studios refuse to take a risk so we no longer have the middle tier that gave us the enduring cult classics and fan favorites, no more Grade B hits, no more drive-in features, no more Princess Bride quote sessions devolving into giggles – instead, we’re stuck with endless sequels and reboots
Jake Rayson
cy
yavien 💚
Jan Hamal Dvořák@cwebber @xChaos Runs a small DC where I house my cobbled up "desktop Ryzen with ECC RAMs on a server board inside cannibalized old supermicro chassis" server.
Heat is reused by the inhabitants of the house apartments. They have this huge bag of water right next to my server. Now imagine if cities laid fiber and every other house had a small DC like that.
There is a middle ground.
John Colagioia@cwebber As John Sherman put it, though with some parts of the vertical not-yet-invented, "if we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life."
Wulfy
Vicente ⁂@n_dimension @cwebber hacked the planet into pieces
Derek Martin@n_dimension also, nobody cares if you hack a Gibson in 2025.