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

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

#141

Post by square_usual »

runtime_terror wrote: post #109
fintechjock wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you estimate is the annual electricity spend for those living next to data centers and those who don’t?

Not sure how to answer this. It's pretty well documented that datacenters (esp the AI variety) are offloading grid expenses to customers as higher baseline costs. The issue is that these DCs are not paying for the cost of the necessary grid upgrades but are instead having the power cos pass these costs off to all consumers as base increases.

> It's pretty well documented that datacenters (esp the AI variety) are offloading grid expenses to customers as higher baseline costs.

I'm sure you can present this documentation, then.

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

#142

Post by square_usual »

CodingJeebus wrote: post #65
ecshafer wrote: post #34

Populist nonsense like this is all that New York passes. Data Centers have minimal impact, provides some jobs, and New York needs to upgrade their power system and build more power plants anyways.

> Data Centers have minimal impact 50k residents of Lake Tahoe need to find a new source of electricity now that their power provider is planning to feed a nearby data center[0]. 0: https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-...

[dead]

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

#143

Post by autoexec »

fintechjock wrote: post #133
autoexec wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How are they harming consumers? Consumers like breathing ( https://spectrum.ieee.org/data-centers-pollution ) and drinking clean water ( https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/data-center-accused-m... ). The noise is loud enough to cause hearing damage, and the smell and light pollution isn't helping consumers either.

Those are residents, not consumers across the US

Consumers across the US are the residents. They're the same people. Especially when it comes to those living around data centers. The CEOs of amazon, google, and microsoft aren't living next to data centers and being subjected to the worst of the harms those data centers cause. The people who live near data centers are the consumers of those companies (while also being the products those companies sell). The consumers buying RAM and GPUs are the same people suffering from the pollution data centers cause and paying the price for the environmental harms. We are the consumers. You, me, and our families.

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

#144

Post by bloppe »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #91
bloppe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest possible tax break is zero tax, which is what you get when they move out of state

Again, it would have been a net loss for the city. So walking away with zero is a huge win.

How do you figure? Curious as to where the costs come from

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

#145

Post by j_w »

fintechjock wrote: post #134
j_w wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> consumers would vastly benefit from cheaper software, nearly unlimited cloud storage, lower property taxes. What data centers are bringing cheaper software, unlimited cloud storage (for free?), or lower local property taxes?

Cheaper software – all of them Nearly unlimited cloud storage - AWS / Google / etc. Data centers are the Cloud Lower property taxes - data centers increase the property tax base, creating tax compression, which shift property tax from consumer –> company. I'm in Texas, so can only be sure that is true here. I have not looked at all other states.

Cheaper software: where is this cheaper software? Most users don't pay for most software. Facebook/Instagram are introducing paid plans now. LLM companies are seemingly starting to increase prices.

Unlimited cloud storage: Where are consumers getting unlimited cloud storage from? I'm not aware of AWS/Google/others reducing prices/providing unlimited plans.

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

#146

Post by kube-system »

wat10000 wrote: post #119
fintechjock wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Macbook Neo is 8GB because the A18 Pro has 8GB memory baked into its sandwich-style package at TSMC. The way these SoCs are constructed doesn't lend itself to having it paired with an arbitrary choice in memory specification the way other laptops do.

And Apple has longer-term contracts for delivery of their chips. Apple is more insulated from short term supply shocks because of this, and their giant pile of cash. But even they have discontinued some high-RAM configurations because of the situation.

As you mention, products elsewhere that use RAM have already gone up in price.

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

#147

Post by WarmWash »

autoexec wrote: post #139
WarmWash wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Datacenters are bad because they make it harder for polluters to dilute/hide their pollution levels

I really don't disagree that the agriculture industry has pollution problems they need to address. It's just also true that one of the environmental problems data centers can cause is making existing problems with water quality much much worse. That's also a major problem. Maybe Amazon knew about it before they built their data center. Maybe they didn't. Each community where data centers pop up gives us more informat…

Amazon can just mix in more water post cooling and then by your metric the problem would be solved. They can just rely on dilution like the farmers do.

Or we can use our brain and actually hold the right people accountable.

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

#148

Post by kube-system »

fintechjock wrote: post #133
autoexec wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How are they harming consumers? Consumers like breathing ( https://spectrum.ieee.org/data-centers-pollution ) and drinking clean water ( https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/data-center-accused-m... ). The noise is loud enough to cause hearing damage, and the smell and light pollution isn't helping consumers either.

Those are residents, not consumers across the US

Residents of homes are typically consumers of utilities, and consumer utility rates are going up in areas of high energy demand.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/confronting-and-addressin...

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

#149

Post by fintechjock »

j_w wrote: post #145
fintechjock wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheaper software – all of them Nearly unlimited cloud storage - AWS / Google / etc. Data centers are the Cloud Lower property taxes - data centers increase the property tax base, creating tax compression, which shift property tax from consumer –> company. I'm in Texas, so can only be sure that is true here. I have not looked at all other states.

Cheaper software: where is this cheaper software? Most users don't pay for most software. Facebook/Instagram are introducing paid plans now. LLM companies are seemingly starting to increase prices. Unlimited cloud storage: Where are consumers getting unlimited cloud storage from? I'm not aware of AWS/Google/others reducing prices/providing unlimited plans.

> Cheaper software

Software prices are down 73% since 2000: https://x.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/2015463505298878746

> Nearly unlimited cloud storage

$9 / month for 2tb of cloud storage is a pretty sweet deal for anyone. And unfathomable if you travelled back in time before data centers were scaled.

Data centers are a net good for all consumers. Pretty significantly!

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