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A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

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Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#541

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

andrepd wrote: post #342
josephg wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a clip the other day of an American comedian doing crowd work in Paris. He asked the audience what America should do, and the French said - something like - they should punch the police more and light things on fire. To me that sounds crazy! But, I can see how it works for the French. They protest all the time, and the government is very responsive to the needs of the people. Much more so than the American gove…

I know that "French strikes" and "French setting fire to things" is a popular American trope, but things really don't work like that. If that were the case France would be a much better place than other European countries, and it really is not.

Only if you believe that always caving in to a violent mob burning random (private citizen-owned, non-government) cars in Paris leads to better outcomes for the country.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#542

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

TrackerFF wrote: post #308

More than once I've read stories about small local counties selling huge plots of lands to companies promising to build data centers, only for those companies to flip the land instantly for double or triple the price. There seems to be no shortage of desperate rural areas that are more than willing to sign ridiculous no-strings-attached deals with companies, in the hopes that they'll geta a couple of years with econo…

But why don't those small local counties desperate for funds just sell their plots of land for double of triple the price themselves?

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#544

Post by compsciphd »

Leonard_of_Q wrote: post #345
enaaem wrote: post #274

American zoning is weird. You can't walk to a grocery store, but you can walk to a data center.

Mwah, that depends on what you consider walking distance. I remember walking back from a Rite-Aid in SF when attending an IETF conference, entering the conference hotel and being asked by other attendees 'where the hell I managed to find a Rite-Aid here'? Well, it may have been a 1.5 km walk but it was there, sure enough. I did not look it up beforehand, just started walking out of the centre and found one. Sure, if…

I used to walk from the main library to the metreon every sunday (made a day of visiting library and seeing a movie). It's not a long walk to most americans. It's easy, in that its a flat walk. Less easy (at least then) as it wasn't always the most pleasant area to walk through depending which way one went (detours et al). Staying on market was fine, walking up minna (sp?) less so.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#545

Post by dvdkon »

mikrotikker wrote: post #536
enaaem wrote: post #274

American zoning is weird. You can't walk to a grocery store, but you can walk to a data center.

As a new zealander walking to a grocery store sounds weird. I've lived in 7 houses some rural some urban and in none of them could I walk to a grocery store, so it's very weird to hear it exalted as some "standard" that America always fails in.

New Zealand, along with Australia, shares a lot of its urbanism with the US and Canada. In the rest of the (urbanised) world, I'd say it's expected to be able to walk to stores, especially in cities.

It's interesting to ponder if it's just the low density (caused by "having too much land" to expand on) or other factors that deprioritise walking like this.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#546

Post by themaninthedark »

ranger_danger wrote: post #485
josephg wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a clip the other day of an American comedian doing crowd work in Paris. He asked the audience what America should do, and the French said - something like - they should punch the police more and light things on fire. To me that sounds crazy! But, I can see how it works for the French. They protest all the time, and the government is very responsive to the needs of the people. Much more so than the American gove…

That only works for the French because they're afraid to disappear their own citizens. US has been doing it for the last year and a half.

>US has been doing it for the last year and a half.

Individual jurisdictions have been doing that for much longer than a year and half.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli...

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#547

Post by oytis »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #444
BryanBigs wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch any random sampling of body cam footage and you won't think the majority of violence was the cops. I'm amazed at the restraint honestly. Now when I was a kid...getting thrown into a paddywagon while hammered after mouthing off to a cop was a right of passage.

Do you think the selection of what body cam footage cops make available is without bias?

Still I can't think of an event where Swiss cops would be able to collect similar footage.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#548

Post by snickerbockers »

Leonard_of_Q wrote: post #366
snickerbockers wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won't work when your tour guide can't even answer questions about what the computers do because theyre all running VMs that are rented out on an ad-hoc basis.

The tour guide could just give that answer to any such question. It'd be comparable to the answer given to someone who wants to know what that new railroad which was built where there used to be fields or forest is used for: people ride it to go somewhere, freight is passing over it going places. Having said this I do feel like these data centres should be built in such a way that waste heat is used in some way. Use…

I don't think train tracks are comparable because they're effectively one dimensional. You dont need to burn down the forest you just need about 20 feet or so on either side of the track.

WRT the environmental aspect, I think it's patently obvious that nobody who builds these things cares because there are a number of far simpler ways to reduce their footprint which dont get implemented.

Pumping waste heat out to residential heating or some hypothetical industrial application is, at best, just recycling. It only makes sense if you have to accept that the waste inevitably exists whether you recycle it or not, otherwise recycling is never the best way to do anything.

I think there's also inherent risk in building infrastructure that relies on the continual operation of this massive facility that could just as easily be shut down in a few years and written off as a fad. Trusting silly valley to support any product over the long term is never a safe bet.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#549

Post by jazzyjackson »

ElijahLynn wrote: post #509

I've had a few fantasies that if I become wealthy enough ever that I want to buy a whole bunch of multiple city blocks in my city make them public parks. But I did have that same fear is how do I ensure they survive? Do I do a land trust or something like that? How would a donation survive so something like this doesn't happen?

You find an institution that is likely to continue to exist and let them manage it. You need someone to sue on your behalf 1000 years down the line.

Long Now foundation hosted a talk [0] on this, “Continuity: Discovering the Lessons behind the World’s Longest-lived Organizations”

[0] https://longnow.org/talks/02021-rose/

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#550

Post by TrackerFF »

lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #542
TrackerFF wrote: post #308

More than once I've read stories about small local counties selling huge plots of lands to companies promising to build data centers, only for those companies to flip the land instantly for double or triple the price. There seems to be no shortage of desperate rural areas that are more than willing to sign ridiculous no-strings-attached deals with companies, in the hopes that they'll geta a couple of years with econo…

But why don't those small local counties desperate for funds just sell their plots of land for double of triple the price themselves?

Lack of network/connections. The first company that flips the land, will go into the deal with potential buyers, and lowball the crap out of the seller.

Sometime the sales (when they flip) are done via acquisition by the target company.

In all practical sense, the first buyer functions as a scout, doing research and negotiations, and make at tops a couple of million. A nice payday, but not enormous amounts of money. But for sure money that would have come handy for the county that owned the land.

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