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Big Tech's A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/business/energy-environment/ai-data-centers-electricity-costs.html
29•moneycantbuy•3h ago

Comments

grafmax•2h ago
Not just bills. These data centers, a major driver of new energy use, are contributing to climate change. Sadly it seems to be another way for large companies to offload externalities onto the public.
kolinko•1h ago
Are they? IIRC MS & Google were running on carbon neutral sources.
rambojohnson•1h ago
Carbon neutrality doesn’t refill a drained reservoir used to cool off these machines. Running your servers on wind power doesn’t make the millions of gallons they’re dumping into cooling systems any less gone.
rambojohnson•1h ago
To say nothing of the exorbitant amount of water used to cool these machines, we’re on track to face a water shortage crisis long before any other climate change impact.
arghwhat•1h ago
Water availability is a regional climate change impact, which does not apply everywhere.

It's very stupid to evaporate potable water on purpose in dry regions, but note that many numbers in this area are highly sensationalized by taking e.g. the maximum design capacity of the cooling system instead of the actual load, and that there are several other cooling solutions. Most proper facts die tragic deaths before they make it to mainstream news media. :/

lelandbatey•1h ago
https://archive.is/YOo1H
brotchie•1h ago
But the vast majority of my $500+ a month PG&E bill is for transmission, not generation.
prasadjoglekar•1h ago
And according TFA, those poles and wires for transmission are a large part of the increase in costs that are forecasted.

Ideally, the folks who request the new plants and transmission lines pay for them, but it appears tech cos are attempting to pass the transmission cost burden onto residential consumers.

teeray•1h ago
[delayed]
taeric•1h ago
500 a month sounds steep. I'm assuming you live somewhere that requires AC every day?

The article referred to driving prices up from 2020 due to making the infrastructure stronger by as much as 30%. Which, yeah, about 150ish of your bill.

It is less clear on how much it will need to go up because of increased demand? The prediction is 8%. Which, again, not nothing. But it is telling that there is more increase from infrastructure than there is generation? I don't know that that will change?

buckle8017•1h ago
this is nonsense and the author even admits it

> In the coming years, artificial intelligence could turbocharge those increases

the cost of residential power is going up because of the shift away from natural gas towards solar

failing to admit this or worse lying about it is not going to actually help long term

kolinko•1h ago
what? solar is cheaper than natural gas.
mensetmanusman•1h ago
Solar+battery is the proper comparison.

Blurry rendering of games on Mac

https://www.colincornaby.me/2025/08/your-mac-game-is-probably-rendering-blurry/
93•bangonkeyboard•1h ago•28 comments

We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application

https://mitchellh.com/writing/ghostty-gtk-rewrite
138•tosh•2h ago•43 comments

Gemma 3 270M: Compact model for hyper-efficient AI

https://developers.googleblog.com/en/introducing-gemma-3-270m/
499•meetpateltech•7h ago•204 comments

Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/aug/14/cant-pay-wont-pay-impoverished-streaming-services-are-driving-viewers-back-to-piracy
335•nemoniac•6h ago•326 comments

Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness

https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23765914&cid=65583466
451•MilnerRoute•5h ago•294 comments

I made a real-time C/C++/Rust build visualizer

https://danielchasehooper.com/posts/syscall-build-snooping/
181•dhooper•7h ago•46 comments

Airbrush art of the 80s was Chrome-tastic (2015)

https://www.coolandcollected.com/airbrush-art-of-the-80s-was-chrome-tastic/
45•Michelangelo11•4h ago•13 comments

Org-social is a decentralized social network that runs on Org Mode

https://github.com/tanrax/org-social
107•tanrax•1d ago•49 comments

Time travel is self-suppressing

https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09157
19•warrenm•2h ago•23 comments

Show HN: OWhisper – Ollama for realtime speech-to-text

https://docs.hyprnote.com/owhisper/what-is-this
95•yujonglee•8h ago•32 comments

What's the strongest AI model you can train on a laptop in five minutes?

https://www.seangoedecke.com/model-on-a-mbp/
486•ingve•2d ago•178 comments

OneSignal (YC S11) Is Hiring Engineers

https://onesignal.com/careers
1•gdeglin•2h ago

DINOv3

https://github.com/facebookresearch/dinov3
58•reqo•3h ago•12 comments

New protein therapy shows promise as antidote for carbon monoxide poisoning

https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/news/2025/new-protein-therapy-shows-promise-as-first-ever-antidote-for-carbon-monoxide-poisoning.html
205•breve•11h ago•48 comments

Architecting large software projects [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSpULGNHyoI
75•jackdoe•2d ago•31 comments

Show HN: I built a free alternative to Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer

https://github.com/embedpdf/embed-pdf-viewer
151•bobsingor•8h ago•35 comments

Homekit-steam-user-switcher: A way to remotely switch Steam users using HomeKit

https://github.com/rcarmo/homekit-steam-user-switcher
25•rcarmo•3d ago•2 comments

Lambdas, Nested Functions, and Blocks (2021)

https://thephd.dev/lambdas-nested-functions-block-expressions-oh-my
18•zaikunzhang•3d ago•3 comments

Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/08/an-update-on-blood-oxygen-for-apple-watch-in-the-us/
317•thm•10h ago•231 comments

Managing time shiftable devices (2024)

https://bitsandtheorems.com/managing-time-shiftable-devices/
8•Knaapje•2d ago•1 comments

The Interactive Digital Transcription and Analysis Platform (2024)

https://osf.io/preprints/osf/jx3pk_v1
3•Hooke•3d ago•0 comments

All Souls exam questions and the limits of machine reasoning

https://resobscura.substack.com/p/all-souls-exam-questions-and-the
46•benbreen•1d ago•22 comments

Launch HN: Cyberdesk (YC S25) – Automate Windows legacy desktop apps

52•mahmoud-almadi•8h ago•37 comments

1976 Soviet edition of 'The Hobbit' (2015)

https://mashable.com/archive/soviet-hobbit
238•us-merul•4d ago•80 comments

Bluesky: Updated Terms and Policies

https://bsky.social/about/blog/08-14-2025-updated-terms-and-policies
79•mschuster91•7h ago•115 comments

Reverse Proxy Deep Dive: Why Load Balancing at Scale Is Hard

https://startwithawhy.com/reverseproxy/2025/08/08/ReverseProxy-Deep-Dive-Part4.html
46•miggy•3d ago•2 comments

What does Palantir actually do?

https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-what-the-company-does/
183•mudil•1d ago•154 comments

How to rig elections [video]

https://media.ccc.de/v/why2025-218-how-to-rig-elections
142•todsacerdoti•11h ago•104 comments

Nyxt: The Emacs-like web browser

https://lwn.net/Articles/1001773/
121•signa11•3d ago•31 comments

500 days of math

https://gmays.com/500-days-of-math/
154•gmays•2d ago•82 comments