I think you're overestimating the relevance of these data centers for regular people. They can get by just fine w/ local¹ & a lot less environmentally destructive computational resources.
Even you use HN.
Not everything can be local.
My friends and family aren't going to be convinced to use a Jitsi instance running in my house (where I pay $0.35/kWh).
A website that runs on an infra that could sit in a cupboard under the stairs serving hundreds of thousands of users with very small loading time.
> My friends and family aren't going to be convinced to use a Jitsi instance running in my house
> (where I pay $0.35/kWh).
Using an old phone or laptop as server means you'll end up with a single digit annual electricity bill for that.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/29/omen-ais-plan-to-optimize-...
I guess 'turning the entirety of the American public against data centers' is not something they factor into the cost analysis.
From the taxes they provide
If I was in SF & working for Google or Meta then maybe you might have a point but I'm not in SF or any major metropolitan area so from my perspective the whole thing is actually a net negative.
https://www.northernpublicradio.org/wnij-news/2024-12-02/dek...
https://ipmnewsroom.org/how-do-data-centers-benefit-the-plac...
> META received a 55 percent tax break as part of the Enterprise Zone Tax abatement program, which is a state initiative
You asked this
> How do I, as an ordinary person, benefit from Meta's data centres?
And I gave the answer. How do you think you can eliminate the middleman?
> Enterprise Zone Tax abatement program
The amount I showed was after accounting for the Tax abatement program. And its almost as if there's a reason the state wants to have this program in the first place. Almost as if it helps broader society.
All of these guys benefited from owning computers and using the computers owned by universities and now they're trying to convince us we should pay them for every bit that gets processed.
No thanks. I don't want that. I'd rather see the tech industry collapse and go back to pen and paper.
> "I'm all right, Jack" is a British expression used to describe people who act only in their own best interests, even if providing assistance to others would take minimal to no effort on their part.
> The phrase is believed to have originated among Royal Navy sailors: when a ladder was slung over the side of a ship, the last sailor to climb on board would say, "I'm all right Jack; pull up the ladder."
> The latter half of the phrase has been used to call out unfairness and hypocrisy on the part of those who are seen to have benefited from opportunities handed out to them, only to deny such opportunities to others.
Just look at the proposed data center in Utah. It was originally proposed to be larger than Manhattan, use more electricity than the entire state uses, in a place that already is suffering a water crisis. And for what? So a few connected politicians can get bribes, and AI money can be made by people thousands of miles away, while meanwhile AI takes the jobs from people that actually live in Utah (not my words, these are the words of folks like Amodei and others actually building this stuff).
Pretending this is just a consolidation of servers currently living in office closets is laughable.
bix6•1h ago
Hey where’s that person from yesterday who argued with me over the 1m vs 1cm hole in the boat?
Everyone saying stop talking about data center water use is missing the entire point as this article shows.
jatora•1h ago
theyreallhere•1h ago
jcheng•40m ago
jazzyjackson•17m ago