<![CDATA[My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters.]]>My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. 2005-2007, I was a datacenter assistant monkey working from Google working somewhere in the Chicago suburbs, swapping out hard drives and ram and writing shell scripts, as myself and my friends unknowingly laid down the prototype for the kinds of datacenters we all see today.

And so it is with some significant expertise that I say:

Fuck datacenters. Datacenters are an anti-pattern.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/topic/34a83167-5fb1-42f4-a6ca-d361731e84ce/my-first-job-was-building-out-the-first-mega-datacenters.RSS for NodeMon, 25 May 2026 08:10:48 GMTSat, 16 May 2026 13:36:43 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 17:54:24 GMT]]>@jayalane @farfalk @cwebber “data centers = networking” is the same as saying “data center water and power consumption = indoor plumbing and wiring.” We had global networking long before the present eruption of resource-hogging new data centers. My point was exactly as stated: the so-called problems that the DCs are supposed to solve are fake. A narrative beard for fraud and global resource extraction.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://beige.party/users/Moss/statuses/116585533548181857https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://beige.party/users/Moss/statuses/116585533548181857Sat, 16 May 2026 17:54:24 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 17:41:45 GMT]]>@cwebber I did this in Oregon. The town looks nothing like its old self.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.sdf.org/users/hohokam/statuses/116585483827521267https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.sdf.org/users/hohokam/statuses/116585483827521267Sat, 16 May 2026 17:41:45 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 17:41:32 GMT]]>@Moss @farfalk @cwebber sorry I can't quite understand your point. I am sure you use the internet for distributed software; data centers per se allow networking. Having products controlled by monopolistic rent seeking companies that haven't a better business plan than ads is a political problem, not so different from rail roads/oil distribution; political solutions will work when we focus on democratic power not individual purity. Bubbles happen when $ is unregulated by work/life/democracy.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.online/users/jayalane/statuses/116585482985144097https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.online/users/jayalane/statuses/116585482985144097Sat, 16 May 2026 17:41:32 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 16:48:42 GMT]]>@datenwolf @farfalk @cwebber lots of financial institutions still have private datacenters, and still run IBM mainframes. Just easier to manage from a security perspective.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/shredder7579/statuses/116585275224805932https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/shredder7579/statuses/116585275224805932Sat, 16 May 2026 16:48:42 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 16:47:08 GMT]]>@cwebber
huh

interesting.

about that same time;

had 3 interviews with the goog

as a 'linux beige box wrangler'

at a big campus dc in northern va

my linux clue-kit was deep & shallow at the same time

they passed me over

I was bummed, bigly

then it all changed

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://spore.social/users/cpm/statuses/116585269053657012https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://spore.social/users/cpm/statuses/116585269053657012Sat, 16 May 2026 16:47:08 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 16:46:51 GMT]]>@cwebber @farfalk what are your thoughts on smaller businesses running their own datacenters? Having done rack and stack in a few myself, those at least seem less evil to me.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/shredder7579/statuses/116585267966612805https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/shredder7579/statuses/116585267966612805Sat, 16 May 2026 16:46:51 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 16:36:58 GMT]]>@farfalk @cwebber A datacenter doesn't solve problems. A 2026 datacenter built on modern AI compute as intended usage literally, solves zero problems (As the "Content" that is its output is the solen and flawed sea of data can't give you anything better than only does completely unpredictable things 20% of time and it costs thousands a day). All it can do is serve us a degraded version of what we already had. It runs culture through a shredder. A methamphetamine dealer high on their own supply pastes all the shreds back together and tries to add meaning. It's dangerous nonsense and it's accelerating the biggest crisis the world has ever faced. So yes, fuck datacentres of all kinds. We already built far too many of them, we need to be looking at frugal computing, not hyper accelerating the energy costs to an already fragile planet.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://defcon.social/ap/users/115968467698693484/statuses/116585229082996144https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://defcon.social/ap/users/115968467698693484/statuses/116585229082996144Sat, 16 May 2026 16:36:58 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 16:28:18 GMT]]>@cwebber The main motivations for using data centers are security, reliability, flexibility, and efficiency. A data center can manage power consumption much better than your typical on premises installation. Infrastructure can be shared by many users, which allows dynamic scaling without having to over provision on premises. It also allows users to share expert reliability and cybersecurity engineers.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/tdietterich/statuses/116585194984173697https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/tdietterich/statuses/116585194984173697Sat, 16 May 2026 16:28:18 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 16:06:09 GMT]]>@raven667 @cwebber @farfalk sure I just don’t want to be seen as someone who hasn’t considered the obvious counterpoints. I have the “always include depth-first nuance” kind of autism and ocd. But yeah I think if we design protocols right, maybe people won’t even have to self-host in many cases. It could be some truly p2p stuff than can run on the client.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/thomasjwebb/statuses/116585107903855908https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/thomasjwebb/statuses/116585107903855908Sat, 16 May 2026 16:06:09 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 16:01:58 GMT]]>@johns @farfalk Yes, all things I worried about, as they were happening, and all of which have enormously clear and worrying impacts on user agency

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.coop/users/cwebber/statuses/116585091467984480https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.coop/users/cwebber/statuses/116585091467984480Sat, 16 May 2026 16:01:58 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 16:00:09 GMT]]>@thomasjwebb @cwebber @farfalk there is always a "but sometimes" so maybe we can take it as a given that for any strident statement in short form chat there isn't all the nuance about exceptions.

The overall direction seems right to me though. We've got a not insignificant ipv6 deployment for residential use, where is the Cobalt Qube of personal computing? There is no good *technical* reason I shouldn't be able to host my personal email on my own domain, at home, on my own computer, along with a website or whatever. Big monopolistic platforms, which require huge datacenters and complex tech stacks, are an antipattern.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/raven667/statuses/116585084299938740https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/raven667/statuses/116585084299938740Sat, 16 May 2026 16:00:09 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 15:55:01 GMT]]>@cwebber @farfalk yeah, this is the way back to "personal computing"

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/raven667/statuses/116585064113149836https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/raven667/statuses/116585064113149836Sat, 16 May 2026 15:55:01 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 15:52:50 GMT]]>@cwebber @YakyuNightOwl Looking at the replies, I'm seeing so many of us who built this who are in dismay at what it was built into.

For me it was working for an enterprise CRM/CIM software company '05-10. I supported the development of knowledge bases and customer support streamlining (chat, automation) because I thought it would be used to relieve call center agents and help customers get to accurate information faster. Instead it became a dehumanization tool, distancing customers from accessing real people and real help when they actually need it, and reducing the tech skills of agents. Utterly devastating.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://defcon.social/users/corbden/statuses/116585055543420617https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://defcon.social/users/corbden/statuses/116585055543420617Sat, 16 May 2026 15:52:50 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 15:31:57 GMT]]>@farfalk @cwebber

Small and mid sized businesses used to host their very own compute infrastructure, some 30 years ago. I was there, I worked summer jobs in their IT departments

IBM System/36, AS/400, Novell Netware, dBase/Clipper… those were the staples of the times, you could find at least one of them, but often several in most mid-sized businesses in Europe and North America.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://chaos.social/users/datenwolf/statuses/116584973408406751https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://chaos.social/users/datenwolf/statuses/116584973408406751Sat, 16 May 2026 15:31:57 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 15:27:30 GMT]]>@farfalk @cwebber

There's a very simple and actually very affordable alternative to data centers, both commercially and consumer: Self hosting.

Do you have a router in your home? Congratulations, you've got more computing resources than you'll ever need for your own little soapbox on the web as well as sending & receiving email.

For the moment it's too much of a configuration challenge for john-and-jane-doe average, but that's a software problem, that's very much solvable.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://chaos.social/users/datenwolf/statuses/116584955952468297https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://chaos.social/users/datenwolf/statuses/116584955952468297Sat, 16 May 2026 15:27:30 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 15:27:10 GMT]]>@johns @cwebber @farfalk it's telling that hardware for user-controlled computing is disappearing. Memory and storage are disappearing from the market and it feels *intentional*. https://investors.micron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/micron-announces-exit-crucial-consumer-business

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/celeduc/statuses/116584954618185159https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/celeduc/statuses/116584954618185159Sat, 16 May 2026 15:27:10 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 15:14:22 GMT]]>@cwebber @farfalk How would you approach defining the threshold of concentration past which it's undesirable? The only obvious approach I can think of is "it's too high if there's a positive feedback loop", but that's both not really knowable and probably too low, given that we ~started from much concentration and arrived at current, clearly undesirably high, levels thereof.]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.wuatek.is/objects/7ae50bcf-c75b-4218-874b-fcc6911be7bchttps://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.wuatek.is/objects/7ae50bcf-c75b-4218-874b-fcc6911be7bcSat, 16 May 2026 15:14:22 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 15:13:52 GMT]]>@cwebber @farfalk like, I can appreciate some of the advantages of having them. Like you could get more computer per watt, maybe. I think valuable research is done with supercomputers and modern, more modular approaches to big data. But we could do way more with way fewer datacenters if these weren't used as a way to paywall functionality at the server side. The move to the cloud almost makes me miss when my problem was Cubase requiring a USB dongle.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/thomasjwebb/statuses/116584902340366111https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/thomasjwebb/statuses/116584902340366111Sat, 16 May 2026 15:13:52 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 15:05:41 GMT]]>@farfalk @cwebber Really look at “the problems data centers try to solve”. At face value, LLMs and other “AI” are not functional or even profitable by themselves, but they are the supposed reason for the data center boom. But there’s strong evidence that the boom is driven by market manipulation for the hardware, not organic demand for its work. Further, the face value function of “AI” is to extract short term cash value while denying resources to humans. That is the secondary problem the centers try to solve (first being fraudulent investment in the centers themselves). That’s why framing it as “what’s your alternative” is a mistake.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://beige.party/users/Moss/statuses/116584870128975312https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://beige.party/users/Moss/statuses/116584870128975312Sat, 16 May 2026 15:05:41 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 15:02:14 GMT]]>@cwebber @farfalk Well you see Datacankers that way and I entirely agree. When will those presently apathetic about Datacancers realize their browsing and posting options have shrunken in quantity and quality? Some may built for bit mining but most have an objective I would call brain mining.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://noc.social/users/ottomate/statuses/116584856592261180https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://noc.social/users/ottomate/statuses/116584856592261180Sat, 16 May 2026 15:02:14 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 15:00:23 GMT]]>@cwebber @farfalk I think it more corresponds to the death of personal computing as it was? People don't have desktops anymore and barely have laptops other than for work? Which is a problem for p2p? Seems like most people's decentralized/federated nodes for things are hosted in data centers? All question marks because just speculating.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.librem.one/users/johns/statuses/116584849310148021https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.librem.one/users/johns/statuses/116584849310148021Sat, 16 May 2026 15:00:23 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 14:59:48 GMT]]>@cwebber I agree with your premise. However, realistically, convincing businesses to return to on-prem is challenging. It's not just about management – maintaining, securing, and procuring on-prem hardware is a significant expense and effort compared to provisioning cloud resources.

MSPs could help, but even with their assistance, the ongoing costs and complexity often favor cloud-native solutions.

How do you think we could convince small business owners to move from Shopify for example?

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116275598325320422/statuses/116584847004825754https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116275598325320422/statuses/116584847004825754Sat, 16 May 2026 14:59:48 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 14:57:37 GMT]]>@cwebber @thomasjwebb why am I starting to hear Bohemian Rhapsody in my head?

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/stormygleason/statuses/116584838428469628https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/stormygleason/statuses/116584838428469628Sat, 16 May 2026 14:57:37 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to My first job was building out the first mega-datacenters. on Sat, 16 May 2026 14:25:17 GMT]]>@cwebber At the moment we ended up with a phone that could do most of what we wanted, but had no agency over, at the backend there was the datacenter explosion, which we had no agency over. Now you can't even buy a laptop anymore because the datacenter explosion caused scarcity of its components. Check mate.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.coop/users/gert/statuses/116584711311921568https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.coop/users/gert/statuses/116584711311921568Sat, 16 May 2026 14:25:17 GMT