Ask HN: Distributed data centers in our basements

There needs to be incentives for people other than the distributed system users to participate as hosts. Risks also need a way to be offloaded cheaply by the hosts.

Risks: Co-mingling your home's ISP with the basement rack seems like a surefire way to get your personal devices blocked if external basement rack users are running a VPN through it and doing heinous stuff. Annoying, maybe solvable with an ISP device reboot. But that particular risk is worse depending on whether the host's jurisdiction allows the assumption of identity based on IP. Risks around general liability. Risks around tax implications when internal revenue folks see the opportunity to collect capital gains tax on your income generating property. So many risks!

The only encounters I've had with companies trying to incentivize this type of setup are Storj and Sia - both pay their host operators in cryptocurrency, which is just another risk IMO. Despite my own involvement with Storj, generating enough income to offset my energy bill by about 25% monthly, the implementation that wins out and gains wide traction has a lot of groundwork to lay for those utility contracts, risks, and incentives.

It might work, but I see the security aspect (physical security) of the data center won't be respected in a normal house basement, unless of it's only intended for personal use, but still the electricity bill might be too high for a house

What's unrealistic is the widespread state of IT ignorance among the masses and the kleptocracy that profits from it.

Without this widespread ignorance, and with IPv6, a global per host, and without the disappearance and massive price hikes of RAM and storage, we could all have a home server running, for example, a family's personal services:

- contacts (Radicale/Baïkal/Davis/*)

- photos (Immich, PhotoPrism, ...)

- video (Jellyfin and the like, even Stash for those who fancy it)

- files in general (e.g. SyncThing)

- email (fetched via OfflineIMAP and similar, served via Dovecot+webmail for those who want it, etc.)

- federated XMPP/Matrix for family and friends

- ...

And even for the State, a national blockchain for digital identity (NFTs), contracts (e.g. property sales, etc.), and money, with a node for every family and consensus to regulate it, for maximum resilience and reliability, thus also enabling electronic voting.

But well, given the widespread IT ignorance, it's just a pipe dream.

In this model, we would have de facto teleworking, and therefore de-urbanisation, with houses and sheds with solar panels on the roof, batteries, and activities shifted to maximise self-consumption—thereby electrifying without loading the national grid, in a true and substantial transition that would otherwise be unrealistic.

Personally, that's how my house is, national blockchain aside (but with a personal lightning node anyway), and it works beautifully; it would work brilliantly up to ~45° latitude across the EU and slightly less (I think, I haven't checked the PV maps) for North America. Simply doing this would kill off the aforementioned kleptocrats. No cities means:

- no end to private property for the majority

- no dependence on private collective transport in the hands of a tiny few

- no fast tech/fast fashion with very low costs for the vendor but high costs for the customer and nature due to the piles of waste

- no ready-meal deliveries with tons of packaging

A resilient, renewable society (including the built environment) that can evolve but doesn't have the majority enslaved to a tiny few. This is why it isn't happening.

At least one company is working on it. Https://leaf.cloud

It can work in actually developed countries such as South Korea that have effectively 100% fiber coverage.

In crony capitalism countries (US) or countries that have been governed by braindead "Das Internet ist Neuland" conservatives (Germany) and as such have less than 25% FTTB coverage, you can't run a data center.