self-hosted communication infrastructure is analogous to renewable energy
the biggest practical advantage to renewable energy is that we can produce it ourselves and become independent of crises that happen in another part of the world. for example the iran war.
for digital infrastructure, it's the same. if facebook changes their policy to surveill all citizens in a new way, that creates a shock for everyone else. if we can self-host our services, then we become independent. so it's like solar-panels in the back yard, but for digital infrastructure.
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We on Lemmy instances are tryna do the same thing with social media
Much as renewables are most efficient in a grid, hardware is most efficient in a data center.
Can we distribute and become autonomous in both? Yes. Do the times hint we might have to? Also yes. Is it optimal? Not really.
When you self-host, your hardware sits mostly idle, waiting for you to need it. In a data center, that same piece of hardware could serve so many more people, each with their own schedule. The data center approach is more environmentally sustainable, as it makes better use of the hardware, and so requires much less of it for the same output.
Unfortunately, though, there are also big, huge externalities. Dependency. Abuse. Roadblocks. Advertisement economy. This is what mostly drives people to owning their own data and infrastructure. It's not a bright, perfect future for everyone. It's a necessity of time, not a perfect solution. Granted, it might be fun to fiddle around with.
That said, I do self-host, and I do own my solar panel. Such are times!
Efficiency depends. Both electrical grids and remote connections experence huge transmission losses. They also require additional work to deal with the larger concentration of power, noises, and heat compared to running the same nodes across a wider area.
An edge node can also be tapped as part of a distributed grid minimizing downtime as well.
Not to say they don't have plenty of cases where they are more efficient. For example data processing over very large colocated datasets, if the data is going to have to travel anyways that effecicny is lost in a distributed architecture.
Following the sun or distributing across large distances to avoid localized weather disruptions to renewables requires very high voltages to do cost effectively which is more difficult (not impossible) with a dynamic and distributed production network which will need to fluctuate between voltages for safety and effectiveness on demand compared to a high pressure to lower pressure only flow that a centralized grid can make. That said, if a building can power itself 99.99% of the time, the cost needed for transmission is much lower then a 100% import model.
well said. true, large solar parks are more efficient than garden solar panels. and data centers are more efficient than if i run my own server in my garage. still, they could both be located in the same village that i live in, instead of on the other side of the world.
True! Some level of distribution is essential for the resilience and doesn't eat too much of efficiency.
In fact, I've been contemplating on the possibility of small, neighborhood data centers. They could both reliably provide local information services, as well as on-demand computing power.
The efficacy of a system should be prioritised above its efficiency.
Pursuing efficiency exclusively, or even primarily, leads to excessive optimisation and brittle systems. Sustainability requires efficiency to be balanced with resilience, which requires redundancy.
Resources sitting idle is only wasteful if your goal is maximal extraction.
Wasn’t there an article recently about big tech lobbying to ban independent infrastructure and private, self hosted servers?
With all the age verification I want to run Ethernet cables directly between me and my neighbor's homes so bad. Problem is I don't know them
Find community events and orgs. Getting involved, even just a little, helps way more than you'd think. Talk to a local city admin and see if there are any municple isp projects or community isp projects and if not what committis might be good to listen in on and get to know.
At least that's what I am doing lol. Got the downtown wifi up and running at least! Ties in with the community center and library as well. Also helped pressure the fight against an ISP duopoly that was out here, now we are finally seeing non wisp alternatives for the cable providors.
Everyone that has the means should host an XMPP server. End to end encryption, federation, and a small footprint. Control your data. I feel so strongly that I wrote about it. https://roguesecurity.dev/blog/xmpp
And you can run it with solar panels!
A software/network stack worth mentioning: https://reticulum.network/
"keep talking, it's working, it's charging my phone! And they said I was crazy! CRAZY LIKE A FOX!"
"who the hell are you talking to?"
screams and runs away
I saw the drywall lifts holding the panels and had to comment, that is so fun to me for some reason
For now :(