data-centers - Distributed Thoughts

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data-centers

A collection of 3 posts

Sharp Bones

SoftBank is converting a former Sharp LCD factory in Sakai into a 140-megawatt AI data center. The press wrote it up as a growth strategy. What it actually is, is an admission about where compute can and cannot be built in 2026, and the admission has nothing to do with chips.

The Great Refusal

The Great Refusal

In six weeks, 300+ data center bills have been filed across 30+ states. Six states have moratorium proposals. Local governments in 14 states have already hit pause. The industry frames this as a PR problem. It is an architecture problem.

When in Doubt, Go Up: Orbital Data Centers and the Limits of Architectural Imagination

When in Doubt, Go Up: Orbital Data Centers and the Limits of Architectural Imagination

Two weeks ago, a company filed paperwork with the FCC requesting permission to launch up to one million satellites into low Earth orbit. Not communication satellites. Not GPS. Data center satellites. Solar-powered, laser-linked orbital compute nodes, designed to run AI inference workloads from space. The filing included the