They’re called data centers because they… do actually have lots of meaningful data. Tons of it. A lot of it is stolen, most of it has no business being in these corporations’ hands, and none of it is available to you unless you can cut a big enough check, but it is real data. Why do you think palantir has been worming its way into every government agency? Its because they want valuable data, and they process that data in data centers.

I don’t know if this is a good idea necessarily, but what I do to get grime out from under my nails is to (very carefully) scrape under the nail and across the quick with the tip of my pocketknife. it’s got a very sharp, narrow blade with a fine point. Between that and a heavy-duty degreaser soap, something you might find at a mechanic shop, I can usually get my nails clean enough to eat with in fairly short order.

I have cut myself under a nail using this method and that is very unpleasant so it’s probably not ideal, but it works well enough with a steady hand that I keep doing it. Been many years now since I’ve drawn blood.

If time isn’t a factor, I’ll just wash normally and let whatever doesn’t come off just sit under the nails for a while. eventually it’ll grow out and wash out on its own and I don’t have to go poking around. I only use the knife if I don’t feel comfortable letting whatever’s under my nails stay there. Garden dirt? Let it ride. Automotive fluid medley? Probably not great to absorb through the skin, gonna try to get that off quickly.

My town does have a website but it doesn’t do much other than list phone numbers and office hours for a few departments. what services are available on it are contracted out to corporate partners. I would not be surprised if the website itself is managed by a corporation as well. It is mostly useless and there is very little motivation to improve it.

But I’m not really talking about a municipal datacenter, more like a community center or library branch having a digital commons for the neighborhood, with some useful tools, access to reliable data, and maybe some recreational software. Something like what Nextdoor should have been but not enshittified to death by VC.

lmfao = el-em-ef-ay-oh (like that one ancient party band)

I’d forgotten they ever existed, wow. A true flash in the pan.

My answer is “El’-em ay’-yo”, all the letters distinct but the AO get a little blended together. Southern US vowel sounds.

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.

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.

can’t wait to flee a pack of these on my ATV after robbing a megafarm for my scrappy resistance group.

Yeah but sharkbites aren’t necessary for PEX, I was just using them for convenience’s sake. Is there a benefit to doing home plumbing with CPVC over, say, PEX-B with crimped connections?

what’s the advantage of CPVC over PEX? I’ve run a few PEX lines off my old copper pipes and didn’t need any expensive tooling, just a ratchet cutter and sharkbite fittings, which were a little expensive but suited my small needs pretty well.

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Ooh yeah. I was imagining a modified chess engine controlling the red team but I like the dice. Simpler and possible to play with a regular set + red checkers for the queens (and dice ofc). maybe for each deadlock, roll a die and on a nat 1 both convert? That way there’s always a risk to leaving them alone. maybe the threshold starts at 1 and increases each turn they remain deadlocked.

For movement, each player rolls a die and moves the Nth queen, counting either up from a1 or down from h8, depending on which player is rolling. If the roll is higher than the number of queens, the farthest one moves. a d8 determines direction.

You could even do everything with just d6s, if that’s all you have. 1-4 is cardinal directions, 5 is diagonally toward the center, 6 is diagonally away from the center. Or something like that.

Red Scare chess: if two pawns remain deadlocked for four consecutive turns, both pawns are promoted to red queens which are controlled by neither player. After each player’s turn, one red queen moves. Red queens can:

• capture kings
• capture non-pawns
• convert an adjacent pawn to red queens

If a king is captured by a red piece, all their remaining pieces become red queens. the other player must eliminate all red pieces to win the game. It is possible for both players to lose.

Your op sounds… much bigger than mine lol. My place is less than a tenth of that. I could see running a battery car out to the equipment, then running that back to the barn to charge / swap batteries. I would love to build one but I don’t think it’s worth it at my scale.

My rough plan right now is to throw a big old motor in an old tractor chassis, and have a bunch of lead acid batteries on a pallet that sits on top of the engine compartment, and put a solar panel roof over all of it to charge in the field + keep the batteries (and me) out of direct sun. I should be able to drive into the barn, fork the battery onto a rack with a charge cable, fork a new pallet onto the tractor, plug everything in, and get back at it in about 15 minutes, but that’s 15 minutes from the time I drive into the barn to the time I leave the barn, it doesn’t account for transit time to and from the barn, but that’s only a few more minutes on a small farm.

I mean, diesel’s expensive too. Batteries already look tempting and I think they’re only going to look better as time goes on. The only real hurdle for me is the initial outlay for the new hardware.

I think there would have to be battery swaps. at large enough scales, it might even make sense to have a separate smaller vehicle just for running batteries out to the large machines, though fields swaps would be tough to keep clean.

For smaller jobs though, I could see running the tractor for a few hours, heading back to the barn to swap out the battery pack(s), then heading back out after maybe 15 minutes of downtime. At the rate that batteries would need to be swapped out, I think it would make sense to have batteries on a forklift pallet that can be forked off the tractor and onto a charging cradle, then fork a fresh battery pack onto the tractor and head back out. or, there could be a specialized battery swapping deck that the vehicle drives over, which would be cool because the same batteries and swapping gear could be used for cars and trucks.

With autonomous tractors, they could theoretically detect when they need a swap and orchestrate the swap automatically, making them capable of running nearly continuously, 24 hours a day. It would be very complicated and I don’t doubt that early implementations would have their share of headaches, but that looks like where we’re heading from my perspective.

Nice! I’m a little behind you, I think, but I’m determined to get there. The plan is to get my house, my farm, and the vehicles I use to 100% self-produced energy. It’s going slowly but it’s going.

One day I’m going to buy the last gallon of diesel I ever buy. I’d like it to happen a long time before I die.

God damn it, I knew his voice sounded weird. I just assumed he had a stutter and was bad at editing. Thanks for the catch.

Stealing this, thanks.

Do you know what it’s from? I can’t place it at all.