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Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas

en.ilsole24ore.com

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Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas

#11

Post by rvz »

Cryptocurrencies never needed so much data centers as there are many alternatives to the worst one (Bitcoin) that improved their performance and there are environmentally friendly alternatives.

LLMs on the other hand have an insatiable requirement for trillions of dollars of data centers, causing memory prices to skyrocket, companies to layoff staff to increase capital expenditure on even more data centers instead of improving the software to run these models.

There are no 'environmentally friendly' alternatives to LLMs and this tax tells you everything you need to know why it exists.

Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas

#12

Post by bryanlarsen »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #7
markusw wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Yeah, but they do produce food which data centers do not. This is an odd argument to make.

Only a very small fraction of farmland produces food we directly eat. The OP's linked article has a great illustration of that.

Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas

#16

Post by dukeyukey »

joe_mamba wrote: post #8
markusw wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Yeah agriculture is bad for the environment, but at least it feeds us to keep us alive, so we can say it's worth it. Datacenters don't. They don't even create that many jobs like a factory for instance so we can say the mass employment offsets the environmental damage.

The services provided by a data center do provide jobs. My job for one, and I'm guessing a majority of posters here too.

Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas

#17

Post by niek_pas »

joe_mamba wrote: post #8
markusw wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Yeah agriculture is bad for the environment, but at least it feeds us to keep us alive, so we can say it's worth it. Datacenters don't. They don't even create that many jobs like a factory for instance so we can say the mass employment offsets the environmental damage.

> Yeah agriculture is bad for the environment, but at least it feeds us to keep us alive

This is true, but don't forget a _lot_ of agriculture feeds _animals_ that we in turn eat. If you want to make optimal use of land for human needs, most modern agriculture is not that.

Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas

#18

Post by toasty228 »

dukeyukey wrote: post #14
nekzn wrote: post #2

[flagged]

1. The EU spends enormous sums subsidising farmers. 2. Italy != Europe. Countries can and will do things differently to other countries.

> 1. The EU spends enormous sums subsidising farmers.

As if it was a charity lmao, this is a top priority, before defense even, food security will become more and more of a problem, that and water

Re: Lombardy increases charges for the construction of data centres in green areas

#19

Post by perks_12 »

Datacenters need cheap energy, something no region in Europe is having in abundance (except maybe Norway, Sweden, and Finland). I don't think Lombardy was seeing too much DC construction. It's just typical green politics. Forever backwards.

Sure, people feel somewhat AI-fatigued, but blocking the future won't play out nicely for Italy or Europe in general.

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