Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

scienceaim.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 190 posts

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#111

Post by kube-system »

runtime_terror wrote: post #108
ecshafer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets say they build 100 Data Centers in Oswego county. Per Capita income is only $20k and one of the poorest in new york state. There is a lot of space that is not used for anything. 100 Data Centers is going to provide some amount of jobs at each one, remote hands, janitorial, security, etc. Those all pay more than the per capita income. At scale you need some amount of plumbers, facilities, electricians, etc. Not t…

Local labor is often not used to build them. Most of these companies have crews they bring in during build out. Plus the actual setup of the facility is highly skilled: everyone is imported. The only local jobs we're talking about would be things like security, cleaning, and maybe some site prep work. The actual technical staff will not be hired locally in the majority of cases. The argument here tho is the amount of…

Local labor is almost never used for these projects. Data centers are built by huge national or multinational construction companies, not a local general contractor.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#112

Post by dylan604 »

WarmWash wrote: post #57
dylan604 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once construction of a data center has completed, how many jobs will they actually be adding? It reminds me of the people saying that oil pipelines are good for jobs, but that's again only a temporary blip during construction. For data centers, for the sheer size of them, they are massively empty of people.

Those things are cash cows for local municipalities. I don't think that aspect is communicated at all, or at least the media leaves that part out. A town a with a $50M budget can easily have a single large datacenter cover the townsfolk's entire tax bill, and then some. The worst part is the fan noise, but I am sure they can figure that out.

What? These things are built specifically where the towns give them tax breaks

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#113

Post by autoexec »

WarmWash wrote: post #92

It's pretty obvious the outrage around datacenters has nothing to do with datacenters and everything to do with knee capping AI progress. People should just focus on that, because you really really have to reach to make a metal box that hums into an existential environmental crisis. Ultimately you end up looking stupid and uninformed, because you have to lie and half-truth to make datacenters look evil. And the peopl…

> People should just focus on that, because you really really have to reach to make a metal box that hums into an existential environmental crisis.

Turns out you you don't have to reach very far at all

https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06288

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/data-c...

https://news.asu.edu/20260518-environment-and-sustainability...

We already know that that data centers impact the environment in many ways and can be harmful for the water, air, and the health of the people around them. It's the dose that makes the poison though and so the push for more and more data centers increase the harms.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#114

Post by kube-system »

WarmWash wrote: post #92

It's pretty obvious the outrage around datacenters has nothing to do with datacenters and everything to do with knee capping AI progress. People should just focus on that, because you really really have to reach to make a metal box that hums into an existential environmental crisis. Ultimately you end up looking stupid and uninformed, because you have to lie and half-truth to make datacenters look evil. And the peopl…

> because you really really have to reach to make a metal box that hums into an existential environmental crisis.

I think most people are aware that computers don't emit pollution directly. It's the externalities that do.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#115

Post by autoexec »

gruez wrote: post #61
babypuncher wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mad rush to build datacenters at this unprecedented scale is already wreaking havoc on the consumer economy. The needs of everyday people are far more important than the whims of a few trillion dollar tech companies run by billioinaires.

That's a fair complaint, but banning data centers in NY isn't going to make RAM or GPU prices cheaper.

Anything that slows their expansion will at least delay some of the impact on RAM and GPU prices since they aren't buying up GPUs until the places are built. In the meantime NY doesn't have to deal with the harmful environmental and health impacts.

The data centers will ultimately end up being built elsewhere, until those places start pushing back. Without federal protections for the environment or the people all we can do is hope that state, county and city governments step up to make sure that data centers aren't harming them directly.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#116

Post by autoexec »

deepsun wrote: post #80

And that is why China wins in production.

Because they'll pollute their land/air/water and force their people to be harmed whenever it's economically convenient because the people in China don't have a voice in their government? I think I prefer democracy.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#117

Post by recursivegirth »

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #99
boringg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats new about this? We've had data centers for 20 years now? Research which impacts? Only thing new is speed of deployment and scale - which frankly would align with why we can't build in North America. I would agree that the political system is the place to push if you have real concerns about the our data center / AI build out - and that will be a huge part of this next election. No other way to either accelerate…

I agree. It seems reasonable to me in the sense that - only one year - only affects new agreements and not current buildouts - gives times for politicians to do whatever it is they need to do to satisfy their constituents

As a constituent, I see this as the right move.

I would not benefit from an outright ban so that would be too heavy handed. On the other hand - something has to be done. If anything else it's proof the people do have the power to convince their representatives that these affairs matter and we are paying attention.

I wouldn't be to quick to dismiss this as only political theater.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#118

Post by autoexec »

postalrat wrote: post #94

We aren't even trying any more. China and the east are the future.

I'm not convinced that communism is the future. I'm happy to stick with democracy where the government doesn't just force harms on the public whenever it will make them more money and voter's concerns about health and environmental impacts are listened to.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#119

Post by wat10000 »

fintechjock wrote: post #87
wat10000 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The massive spike in the price of RAM is making consumer electronics more expensive and worse.

True, for the average HN consumer But a new iPhone Pro is $154 cheaper than it was in 2020 when adjusted for inflation, and that is probably all the average consumer really cares about

High margin products are often the last to be impacted at retail because the seller has some cushion. And the impacts are only just getting started. We see the MacBook Neo with a somewhat sad 8GB RAM, most likely due to this. We'll see a combination of just plain higher prices (Steam Deck and Switch 2 have both gone up) and shrinkflation in the form of lower specs.

Re: New York just passed a one-year temporary ban on data centers

#120

Post by recursivegirth »

CodingJeebus wrote: post #79
zerobees wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised by your interpretation. As a deliberately polarizing analogy, the first Trump administration pushed for a policy that boiled down to the same principle: pause immigration from certain places "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on". I don't think anyone here would describe that example as a good-faith policy. I feel the same goes for the NY bill. It's not a sincere attempt t…

> it's just an attempt to shut unpopular projects down to appease the electorate. It's weird to see "the government is doing its job by responding to its voters" being framed as some nefarious and underhanded move.

It's not a comment crafted in good faith. It's telling you what to think and why, using an unrelated analogy to attempt to build credibility.
Post reply on HN