> My question was more, how does this help individuals without access to clean water

If the principle of it is sound, which I cannot verify, then by a manufacturer picking up the idea. Developing it into a product and selling it to individuals.

They are basically saying (paraphrasing) "Hey we suck at manufacturing things at scale, so we won't continue with this idea. But we don't want to let our learnings go to waste. Go ahead and learn from our experiments and mistakes. Maybe one of you out there can make it work as a product."

Open sourcing a dehumidier isn't very exciting, mind you

I think it's very exciting. I'd love to have everything in/around my house open source.

> dystopian 'how can it be co-opted by corporations for business ends'

Why is it "dystopian" and "co-opting" if a company uses a technology like this to operate in a more environmentally friendly way?

People love to shit on companies (not specific ones, just "big companies" as a concept in general), completely ignoring where our standard of living comes from.

Considering the project is self-described as a way to get drinking water into peoples hands, it certainly seems a bit dystopian to immediately jump to using this to collect water for DC’s… especially considering the original comment was asking “how do you build this”, not “what could you use this for”

I'd understand this more if the two uses would somehow conflict, e.g. by competing for a limited resource. But here? If anything, this is going to either preserve other water sources for others, or put more money behind the technology.

People need DCs too, not just corporations.

Yeah sure, but 1) prior to needing DCs, people need clean drinking water, and 2) the subset of people who need DCs is vastly smaller than those who need clean drinking water.

Well I'm sure we can look at both problems at the same time.

Wait, what?

What exactly is a data center by your definition? What individuals (that are entirely disconnected from corporations) need them? How many individuals have personal data centers of such a scale that they would need to produce liquid water on-site for their computing needs?

I genuinely believe you’ve described an entirely theoretical person that doesn’t reside in this universe.

People need institutions to run functioning societies. These (public) institutions are one of the most traditional users of large-scale computing. Even in 60s there was a lot of computing done by public institutions. To fulfill the requirements of modern life, DCs are a must.

Most modern buildings have at least few racks of compute/storage for services like TV/phone/internet, camera recordings, etc. Even family houses have small racks nowadays.

I’m aware that people and institutions need and have computing devices. What qualifies as a data center?

This site is likely not hosted out of a person's closet, hence you commenting here is likely a product of a data centre.

Ignoring this specific example, a majority of the population uses social media for leisure and online tools for work (email, banking, etc.).

A majority of interconnects between ISPs and networks are hosted in data centres too... so there wouldn't be much of an internet without them.

If you closed all data centres over night, the majority of the above would disappear and certainly would not be able to scale as large as it had without data centres... hence, a majority of people need data centres to maintain their current standard of living.

The comment said "people", not "individuals" or "a person".

And considering how highly technical something like a modern water treatment plant can be, data centers are already a major force behind some of our potable water.

I need one to host successful blogs and my data hoarding.

Considering they said allowing others to build on this progress I would imagine that they have not achieved their stated goal yet:

>The team aimed to build a highly lightweight, portable, cheap (<5% of user’s income) device that an individual could use to produce 5L of drinking water per day.