this post was submitted on 15 May 2026
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I would love a (solar-powered) community datacenter that hosts services for the local population. Community bulletin board or forum to share event notices, lost pets, road closures etc, simple messaging and filesharing utilities for those not technical enough to host their own, maybe some simple games like chess or cards.
The problem with the current explosion of datacenters is that they don't benefit the community at all, they're just digital oil rigs that drain the community of resources while also actively poisoning the area they're in. Small wonder communities are against them.
Digital Oil Rig is such a great analogy for multiple reasons.
Honestly that doesn't really need a datacenter, a single solar panel and a low power computer or couple of PIs.
I think the scale of these AI datacenter build out is part of the problem, that level of compute is really only useful for AI and Ai-adjacent loads like mass surveillance!
I guess it depends on how much equipment is needed before something becomes a "datacenter". I don't really see a community hub being a massive supercomputer, maybe a small office or a room in a local library. I'd argue that a single server could be called a datacenter if it centralizes data, but I don't think that is the common understanding of the word. Maybe the word needs to be reclaimed.