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Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

niemanlab.org

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Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#81

What makes a data center an 'AI data center' vs other kinds? I am sure that certain workloads are better suited for a particular server rack vs another; but can't a data center built for other computing needs also do AI and vice-versa?

Different I/O, power and cooling requirements for majority GPU workloads?

GPUs have been in high demand since cryptocurrency became a thing? Are you saying that something built for AI can't be used for other workloads?

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#84

what's funny is the website looks AI generated though that's just the style of the time i guess.

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I don't know that local control is an unalloyed good. The interstate highway system would never have been built if we followed this as a principle, for example. For another example, Californian voters consistently vote for state level increases in housing, yet locally consistently vote against increasing housing in their community.

At some point national and state level goals must supercede local control if progress is to ever be made.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#85
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not violence. The word “violence” doesn’t mean anything you don’t like. I don’t understand why some people want to call everything violence. Watering down the meaning of a word doesn’t help anything.

Killing you slowly is very much violence.

TIL that the air I breath is committing violence against me.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs, progress, cheap tokens, growth

Replacing good jobs with subscriptions that funnel money to the oligarchs

Yeah, only think about your job that’s gonna go away anyways. Zero global perspective or long-term thinking.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#87

Is there a map of munitions plants and spy centers and other facilities whose sole purpose is to active oppress, harm and outright kill people? Or the offices of ads agencies defacing countless public spaces, injecting noise into every activity and wasting billions of hours combined of everybody's life?

False equivalencies, you can be against ai and imperialism and ads. Go make those maps if you think they’re problems, otherwise you’re just shutting someone down for caring about something that impacts them but you don’t care about

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#88

Opposition data center is stupid. We need as many data centers as possible. If you actually want to make a difference how about you mandate that they all come with their own solar and battery power packs. When the hell did the left become so regressive?

> We need as many data centers as possible

Why?

So we can destroy as many jobs as possible in as short an amount of time while nuking the environment from orbit and funneling trillions to china for the hardware?

The fact that you position anti-ai as a “left” thing means you’re not engaging with this seriously anyway. The environment isn’t a left-right thing. Jobs aren’t a left-right thing.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#89
post #65

The Erin Brockovich page itself repeats the canard, on the front page, that these sites endanger ecosystems with their water consumption.

Unfortunately the entire situation is quite confusing because in addition to spanning a wide range of geographies and local utility situations there's also a wide variance in the care taken by the different players. For example I was surprised to learn of a recent ~300 MW buildout with entirely closed loop cooling (I had erroneously believed all cooling at that scale to be evaporative). Meanwhile we've got whatever xAI is doing with "mobile" generators.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#90

AI is good, but the impact of data centers on the environment cannot be ignored. Over a longer time scale, AI is just one wave, while the environment will take much longer to recover.

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