Smart phone or other things this sentence is usually trotted out for not so much.
The fact that I enjoy social use social media and AI, even though I have complicated feelings about the ethics of the companies building them, including the impact of expansion of data centers. This doesn't have to be all or nothing!
That and even Gavin himself got on the pulpit to preach how it was poorly drafted and shouldn’t be passed. I legitimately don’t think I saw a single person or advertisement for it, you’re the first.
In my local area, there's routinely local opposition to substations built due to growing residential demand and water infrastructure facility build.
They're old boomers who don't want anything built, especially not if it will economically benefit their children.
Even something relatively innocuous like an orange grove. Rented a house in one before. Peaceful most of the time, free citrus. But when it got too cold they’d burn diesel in these little tower things and run a wind machine (like a giant reverse windmill) that was loud as fuck all night.
Had some relatives that lived near some kind of paper pulping plant. Guess if that sucked or not?
Now that I think about it, the local environment not smelling like absolute shit is probably a relatively recent development.
Tech “ownership models” have accelerated the separation of haves and have nots. I’ve wondered if datacenters were regulated such that they become public goods (libraries, power and water infra, etc), if the public would invest more agreeably in them.
Just policy thinking out loud.
And agreed, when people have a problem with data centers, it isn't because of new technology, it's because the data centers represent taking resources (water, electricity, RAM) and power away (work as social leverage) from the people.
As someone who grew up in a country with near zero growth (some would call it “sustainable growth”) and the resultant stagflation, I wouldn’t wish that feeling of growing into an economy where you can only aspire to take from others, on my worst enemies.
I agree with these voters on almost everything, from the need for more energy and water infrastructure to using this growth to pay for basic needs like healthcare. But when push comes to shove, for growth, the cranes have to show up in your neighborhood and build stuff.
It seems like we are habituating the American public to just reject that and hope it goes somewhere else (tm) while they get the gains and that’s not how this works.
That's politics and democracy. People get to vote that, and people that want to make changes have to work to convince the people that the change is beneficial, otherwise they lose.
Also known as China, future world superpower. They have enough political continuity to formulate a strategy at national scale and execute on it.
It's crazy how they just keep winning while the US keeps shooting itself in the foot.
> while they get the gains
The gains continue to flow into the US... For now. I wonder how long that'll last.
"It'll use too much water." - It's going to use less water than the farm that used to run on this land. The county is gaining water from this.
"Our electrical bills will go up" - They're generating their own electricity and excess power will be put back into the grid
"Noise" - It's an hour away from any structure on a stinky swamp north of the Salt Lake
"Wildlife refuge" - This bird refuge is in Brigham City. The data center will be on the opposite end of the county. Some people seem to think it's right next door.
My concern is I don't want tax payers left holding the bag if this falls apart but it seems like, at least with this DC, that that's not the case. This is going to bring a LOT of money to my county which sorely needs it and a LOT of people to my dying rural town.
I really just have to come to the conclusion that we have a tiktok informed voting block here. I've had people ask me if I'm worried that the new data center will spy on me. What?
Edit: I checked. This is going to use 162 million less gallons per year than the farm.
Its not that hard to understand or deserves any gotcha questions. Maybe they should ask you how exactly do you plan to feed your family once all the jobs are gone and only ppl who have any say are data center owners. God i hate "well actually" tech nerds so much.
AI companies don't exactly try to hide the fact that their end goal is replacing all human jobs.
Private compounds owned by billionaires who believe data centers are the best. Seems to me, they already have a solution to their problem.
Data Centers on the Ballot
https://datacentersontheballot.com/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50361608)
This doesn't happen when UPS opens a distribution center or CVS opens a store because everybody knows UPS and CVS are bound by local laws. That cannot be said of e.g. SpaceX, so the only play is to keep them out, full stop. Nobody wants a neighbor who is above the law.
- There must be community benefits agreements negotiated transparently with the local community
- Any new datacenters being built cannot raise utility rates
- Some of the revenue generated by the datacenter must be set aside to improve power reliability
- Datacenters must not touch our waterways at all
- Datacenters must be built using union labor
A lot of the communities that had datacenters built in them ended up getting steamrolled in negotiations by the tech companies because you had the local government (in small towns, this is people who work part time making a few thousand dollars per year) negotiating a deal with the Google/xAI/Oracle/etc corporate lawyers. I think it makes sense to say that the buildout should be paused until fairer terms can be worked out on a national level, rather than letting this continue to happen.
Or maybe, just maybe, one can acknowledge that a thing benefits them personally isn't necessarily justified for the whole country or humanity as a whole, and admitting this makes them less hypocritical?
That's aside from the build-out jobs.
Anyone who works anywhere close to data center build including construction, networking, sysadmin is cleaning up right now. Their wages have doubled and demand is huge.
Maybe it is 100 permanent jobs, but that's huge for a small community, and the thousands of temporary jobs make an impact, too.
The classic economic force concentrating people and businesses into small geographical areas is jobs, and perhaps jobs can finally be much more remote than in the past.
BTW, people will accept data centers near them when the price is right. The data center people just need to find that price.
I’ll take data centers over pig farms pulp mills any day of the week.
This is not going to affect small businesses.
I think they have very rationally concluded there is no economic growth benefiting them in massively consolidated capital building the infrastructure to replace their small businesses and jobs.
Maybe people who don’t quite like that should be more articulate about it rather than using seeming post hoc reasoning like “water”? I don’t know. In my experience the bar for frustrated-five-on-the-street is quite high if they want to avoid an aww-shucks this voting bloc and their social medias.
[1] https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621575/thereversecenta...
If you think Flock cameras are bad, you have no idea the kind of surveillance the Chinese government uses on their people.
As I've gotten older, I've stopped trying to help people help themselves. Instead, I just watch and close my door in their face when they beg for help.
What money is it going to bring? 6 months of noisy construction work and then like.. half a dozen security guys on shifts and an engineer call out once a week?
I don't doubt you need the money. But the tax take on these places is always fictional.
If you look at 10-36MW DCs, the number of people on site is like 10, many are security and it's not a proportional relationship.
You're proving my point. No one is actually thinking about this. Everyone is just driven by hatred for people who have more money than them.
If they have a grid connection, they are going to take power from the grid when cheaper than generating power.
2. I’m anti-data center. I think at some point, you pull the levers you have? I think the tech industry is too consolidated and wields too much power, and the whole data center buildout has been done under a shroud of secrecy.
I think it’s rational to pull the levers you have, when the industry is predicting something close to the apocalypse.
Yes it’s mostly vibes, but until the industry stops acting like fucking nutters. I’m voting on vibes.
All farming should be stopped immediately and converted to data centres, then we’ll have unlimited water!
Some farming should indeed be stopped, and we would have more water. Farming is not an unmitigated food, no matter how sarcastic you are.
There is also the increase in cost of borrowing for everyone. Going this fast is just insane.
You were asking for good reason against the data centers - I would imagine not being complicit in the detrimental effects caused by burning exorbitant amounts of fossils for electricity could be one of them.
I get generalized anxiety about pace of progress, but then let’s have that discussion rather than the canards about water or noise (which can be real in some cases, but taking GP at their word that’s not the case here).
This is the crux. It's different because data centers are illegally operating gas turbines. If CVS were playing loud music all night every night, nobody would doubt the ability of local law enforcement to shut it down. That is not true of (specifically) AI data centers, so it is rational to reject them until law enforcement gains the ability to police them.
It sounds like they'd be using the natural gas pipeline they would generate from starts in Opal, Wyoming, and that the company behind it was in huge amounts of debt and filed Chapter 11 a few years ago.
So at a glance, I'm curious if it might be this is helpful to everyone, but would need someone with more info to chime in before I could say that.
Am I allowed to think less of people who vote for stuff like mandatory prayer in schools, even if it is their community and their right to vote for what they want?
Also: Why the actual fuck is it taking AOC (who doesn't even live here) to ask these questions and connect the dots publicly.
And "This is going to bring a LOT of money to my county which sorely needs it and a LOT of people to my dying rural town." is a pipe dream. If you're honest about it, I think you know that.
"I really just have to come to the conclusion that we have a tiktok informed voting block here." sounds like you're trying to insult whole groups of people. But if you get your news from Fox news, this isn't the insult you think it is.
also you
* "A lot of people here seem upset about it but when I talk to them I can't get a single good reason to oppose the data center."
* "I really just have to come to the conclusion that we have a tiktok informed voting block here. I've had people ask me if I'm worried that the new data center will spy on me."
First, maybe they don't trust the company doing the development, or Kevin Oleary. What they are saying may or may not be true, but if they've made a habit of being casual with the truth or not following through on their word it doesn't really matter, does it?
That is tough, and it is why it's so important to maintain ones reputation.
Second, I seem to recall Oleary running around to news outlets telling anyone with a camera that the only reason that anyone would oppose the project was if they were somehow working with the PRC and trying to hurt America.
"Why do you think you get a say on what happens in my home?" is a very valid thing you said, and I actually respect it. If, instead, I said something like, "you are just tool of Elon Musk and AI has tricked you" it would probably feel insulting and you would be predisposed be hostile to me.
I think the way the project was done was disrespectful to other people in the area. Ultimately, laws and the voting process will handle it as it should be. If the project can be relied on to bring the benefits without causing the harm that you claim it will, it should be a slam dunk case.
A third thing is that, regardless of local benefit, people are concerned about economic security and loss from AI and this specific project can't escape that, regardless of how good it is. Our field has made its own bed, to an extent, there. The concern are valid and public statements by the involved CEOs and large scale layoffs can't be waved away.
Yeah, from natgas right? Or maybe diesel generators? Or are they building one of the practically nonexistent green energy data centers?
Maybe Oleary should spend a minute figuring out there is resistance to the project by listening to the people in the area, and if it's really a good idea he should be able to make his case to convince them otherwise.
Maybe it's how he's done it, more than the outcome. And that is not an invalid reason, people enjoy feeling respected and that they have a voice.
There also seems to be a Utah-specific bill from last year requiring large electricity users to pay the additional infrastructure and power-supply costs attributable to serving them rather than shifting those costs onto existing utility customers. This is also not the case everywhere DCs are being built.
Generating their own electricity how? I would be pissed if I got one of these xAI power turbines near my area [1]. And even if they weren't loud, gas plants are environmentally bad.
> They're generating their own electricity and excess power will be put back into the grid
Electricity prices will go up! The data centers won't keep generate their own electricity if they aren't forced to. They will just take electricity from the grid when it's cheaper than generating, and will start generating only when the costs of generating are lower.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/musks-ai-power-plant-ge...
How are they generating that electricity though? If it's fossil fuels, then that's not very sustainable.
In my country the only real concern is electricity. The main reason we attract data centers is cheap, renewable electricity. Now, if the operators really built their own electricity generation infrastructure, the cost of existing electricity wouldn't matter much. So I suspect the plan is to mostly utilize existing capacity, which will drive prices higher, especially when it's not windy. It's not ordinary citizen that are worried, also companies in other energy-intensive industries have voiced their concern. And those industries tend to employ way more people than data centers ever will.
I think electricity needs of ordinary people and businesses that employ them should always come first. Data center operators should be required to build enough capacity to meet the increase in electricity demand. Otherwise it's just modern day colonialism, exploiting our resources without much local economic benefit.
Silicon Valley and it's kool-aid chugging autists have fucked America in the ass one time too many, methinks.
And with how secretive a lot of those behind these constructions have been, I think everyone is within their right to crank their cynicism towards data centers to the max.
Worse is that there's every evidence that AI is actually just a waste of money, but because there's so much investment in it, we'll all get to lose our jobs when it flops anyway. In the long-term it's just a lose/lose for everyone, and I think people are starting to figure that out. There's general mistrust, because the investors and the implementers are not trustworthy.
So the farm is no longer there? As in it is using zero water right now?
> "Our electrical bills will go up" - They're generating their own electricity and excess power will be put back into the grid
Serious doubt. They will use whichever is cheaper, and that's going to be the grid.
How much?
i thought personal attacks and perjoratives arent allowed on HN? hmm
SV_BubbleTime•39m ago
Drake Yes: Green compute sanctuaries
Bet me this isn’t just going to be a PR issue.