61–70 of 74 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So noise and pollution that makes it impossible to live in or sell your house is now simply 'fashionable' to hate?
Yep. The "noise and pollution" of a datacenter are bordering on nonexistent. The same goes for water use concerns and more. The environmental concerns are extremely overblown - but NIMBYs really don't need much to get going.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is a NIMBY a type of person or is it an incentive structure?
Both? People are very easy to FUD up about any local development, and they rarely bear any costs of denying those development. Being eager to uncritically lap up any FUD thrown your way is definitely a personal failing. Let alone spreading that FUD. But the fact that NIMBYs are allowed to wield an outsized power and do things like stall nuclear power for decades? That companies can engage in underhanded "find an acti…
https://www.fastcompany.com/3026312/what-silicon-valley-woul...
Silicon Valley tech should build mixed use high rise housing and datacenters right on their corporate campuses. All infrastructure to make this a reality is on them to provide. Zuck will be given a special exemption that allows him to build into the parts of that stinky salt marsh already approved for his semiabandoned shantytown.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and waiting to read an example. This might just be the first I’ve read. > “…by adhering to local zoning rules set 45 years ago” I live on Long Island NY. Here on LI and Upstate there are a surprising number of former industrial land and abandoned buildings. It’s the whole package—loss of jobs, years of post-industrial decline, lost revenue and old rules on the books. Ripe for a ne…
Why people oppose datacenters: Philosophical opposition to AI's impact on society. Resource utilization: power and water. Pollution: natural gas turbines on site and broadly the pollution of power generation, and noise pollution. Subsidies to multitrillion dollar companies at the expense of taxpayers. Impact on local community: traffic, construction, impact to surrounding home prices. Lies about the benefits of datac…
I think this is the real reason, while the others don't make that much sense when we really think about it.
Large datacenters are normally limited to industrial zoned land, so they're "competing" for space with other industrial projects, and their externalities are typically mild compared to other industrial projects.
Most datacenters create little traffic, minimal pollution, and no bad odors. They do use substantial power and water, but they pay for it (though in certain cases the economics aren't perfect).
I'd much rather live near a datacenter than a dump, sewage facility, refinery, etc. etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and waiting to read an example. This might just be the first I’ve read. > “…by adhering to local zoning rules set 45 years ago” I live on Long Island NY. Here on LI and Upstate there are a surprising number of former industrial land and abandoned buildings. It’s the whole package—loss of jobs, years of post-industrial decline, lost revenue and old rules on the books. Ripe for a ne…
Why people oppose datacenters: Philosophical opposition to AI's impact on society. Resource utilization: power and water. Pollution: natural gas turbines on site and broadly the pollution of power generation, and noise pollution. Subsidies to multitrillion dollar companies at the expense of taxpayers. Impact on local community: traffic, construction, impact to surrounding home prices. Lies about the benefits of datac…
How does this square with the fact that one county in Virginia derives half of its budget from datacenters?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why people oppose datacenters: Philosophical opposition to AI's impact on society. Resource utilization: power and water. Pollution: natural gas turbines on site and broadly the pollution of power generation, and noise pollution. Subsidies to multitrillion dollar companies at the expense of taxpayers. Impact on local community: traffic, construction, impact to surrounding home prices. Lies about the benefits of datac…
>Subsidies to multitrillion dollar companies at the expense of taxpayers. How does this square with the fact that one county in Virginia derives half of its budget from datacenters?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Subsidies to multitrillion dollar companies at the expense of taxpayers. How does this square with the fact that one county in Virginia derives half of its budget from datacenters?
Half of a dollar is fifty-cents. A lot of work is necessary to put that figure into the framing of the benefits of data centers for communities.
This headline seems misleading at best. There was, as far as I can tell reading both this piece and the original reporting in the WSJ[0], no community vote for or against data center construction. What appears to have happened is that Amazon simply followed the existing permitting rules for other industrial construction, “Amazon’s project was approved with a single signature—by the town’s community-development direct…
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and waiting to read an example. This might just be the first I’ve read. > “…by adhering to local zoning rules set 45 years ago” I live on Long Island NY. Here on LI and Upstate there are a surprising number of former industrial land and abandoned buildings. It’s the whole package—loss of jobs, years of post-industrial decline, lost revenue and old rules on the books. Ripe for a ne…
That's likely a big part of it.
AI data centers need an order of magnitude or more power than a cloud data center, and a lot more are being built.
Before with the lower power requirements and with slow and steady growth a data center project was handled by the utilities just like they handled a new factory or a new large shopping mall. The utility might need to add substation of some local transmission lines but it wasn't a big deal.
An AI data center uses so much more power that even if the utility has enough capacity overall to cover it, the AI data center needs that all at one site meaning quit a bit more new infrastructure needs to be built.
Now add in the number being built. The utility now is much less likely to have generation capacity to cover them, meaning the utility will have to buy electricity on the open market which is more expensive.
Another factor is that many AI data centers cannot wait for that and so find sources of energy other than the grid to tide them over for the several years it might take before the grid is ready for them. These sources are often not good for their neighbors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
6 years ago when the work to build the data center started, nobody cared about data centers. Should 6 years of planning be thrown away because data centers have recently become fashionable to hate?
So noise and pollution that makes it impossible to live in or sell your house is now simply 'fashionable' to hate?
Bias Disclaimer: Amazon pays my salary currently, although my job doesn't have anything to do with datacenter construction. Maybe I missed it, but the article doesn't seem to say what the "circumvention"/"loophole" that Amazon used was? It seems like Amazon went through the correct city permitting/legal processes years ago, and now residents want to complain about it years later because data centers are this year's c…
It's possible that the official process is a bad one and needs reform. But that's really not Amazon's fault, and it would be super weird for them to set up a bunch of additional hoops for themselves to jump through. Also not very democratic. > because data centers are this year's culture war hot topic? Or because they didn't notice until they saw actual construction.