Julian Oliver
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.
Rich Felker
@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.
Rich Felker
@JulianOliver It's like folks calling the room with their TV a "home theater". It's not. If I say "burn down the home theaters" talking about actual extravagances of the ultra rich, I'm not talking about their misnamed living rooms.
Rich Felker
@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.
Julian Oliver
@dalias Hardly a closet, but I get your point! https://catalystcloud.nz/
Rich Felker
@JulianOliver Dedicated high-performance hosting makes sense for distributing large files that are low- or no- access control, although P2P is really the right solution for that.
But we really should not be outsourcing sensitive personal information to data centers unless it's just routing e2ee channels thru them.
Julian Oliver
@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
Julian Oliver
@dalias I host sensitive data on some jurisdictionally appropriate (for threat model) DCs, & for clients (usually NGOs), FDE or with strongly encrypted data partitions on bare metal, a good IDS, & administered over self-hosted VPN. In other cases I host at home or in studio.
Hosting on-prem has its own unique & considerable risks if doing at-risk work, especially if that work is in the jurisdiction you live in.
In such cases better OpSec is to host over the border, in a resistant jurisdiction
Rich Felker
@JulianOliver One thing that's usually not accounted for in threat modeling this stuff is the difference between the threat of unauthorized access by state actors without the knowledge of the people affected, versus the same but with the knowledge of the people affected.
On-premises can't protect you from seizure, but it can protect you from having things seized and searched without your knowledge. And if what they want is to do it without your knowledge, it can prevent it from happening at all.
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