SysAdmin Weekly - 040 - Big Tech OWNS Your Compute... Should You be Worried?

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SysAdmin Weekly Podcast 040 -- Big Tech Owns Your Compute... Should You be Worried?

Hey everyone!

After a brief hiatus, the crew is back! This week I'm joined by both Paul Schnackenburg and Eric Siron for a longer one (nearly 90 minutes!) tackling a question that's been looming over a lot of our recent discussions:

What happens when access to compute becomes a subscription privilege instead of an owned capability?

Big tech bankrolling elections, Bezos pushing rented cloud PCs over owned hardware, a global RAM shortage driven by AI demand... all the ingredients for a dangerous consolidation of compute are falling into place. We dig into:

• The erosion of trust in cloud providers
• Geopolitical implications for non-US businesses
• How consolidated AI models could subtly shape reality
• The environmental cost of AI data centers (Google quietly dropped its net-zero goal.......yeah, we talk about that)
• The growing movement toward cloud repatriation and on-prem infrastructure

No silver bullet here. But awareness and intentional choices about where we place our trust and spend our money are the first steps.

Show Links Below

• SysAdmin Weekly Website
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Drop your thoughts below! Are you seeing compute consolidation concerns come up in your org? How are you thinking about it?