A LLM company wants to install a mini data center in your backyard
San Francisco-based startup SPAN will launch a network of liquid-cooled compute nodes in residential areas. In turn, residents will be offered discounted rates for electricity and internet.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260530234956/https://cybernews.com/ai-news/mini-data-center/Open linkView original on quokk.au
Gamers Nexus made a great video about this. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoYeJwN7Rkw
It's such a crazy idea. They're doing this because data center power capacity can't come online quick enough, data centers need permits, etc.
Residential power grids aren't designed to handle every house continuously pulling so much electricity.
Even if you don't consider power... They want to put over $250,000 worth of equipment in a box in people's front yards. 16 x RTX 6000 Pro GPUs, 4 AMD EPYC processors, 3TB of RAM, a 15kWh battery, and a 3 ton heat pump and liquid cooling powerful enough to keep all of that cool. I wonder how many will go "missing" 👀
So, placing a lot of computer equipment in a minimally-secured location? Forget Flock cameras, this is actually valuable scavenging.
Right?? $250,000 worth of equipment just sitting in a box in people's front yards. Crazy.
The junkies are going to upgrade from copper cables.
It's like someone saw a botnet as a valid alternative to a data center.
Are they wrong?
(I mean literally, not morally)
I had this thought that if things continue to move in the same direction, technology will split into corporate and independent. What I mean is that you either setup your home server with all local stuff you need and connect to Fediverse only, or your hardware and digital life fully dependents on corporations and subscriptions.
I never paid attention to the fact that people have racks at home in futuristic movies but I guess that’s how authors see future too
Tricking you into subsidizing their power use via bullshit backdoor utility deals wasn't working, so now they're trying to have you pay the power bill directly?