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

When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

theconversation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 164 posts

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#21

Post by makeitdouble »

MostlyStable wrote: post #11
usrusr wrote: post #4

Misleading title: they are using eminent domain to seize land for power lines to data centers. (emphasis mine) This is still quite debatable, but so much less so than the implied accusation that they would somehow sell out their privileges as subcontractors for the data centers themselves.

There have been some pretty egregious misuses of eminent domain in the past, but using it for infrastructure is pretty much the quintessential justification. That's basically the only reason to have eminent domain at all. Arguing against it when that's how it's being used is, in my opinion, essentially arguing against the very concept of eminent domain. Which one can totally choose to do! But they should be up front…

> Arguing against it when that's how it's being used is, in my opinion, essentially arguing against the very concept of eminent domain

You're giving a blank check to use it as long as it's infrastructure, and as any simple rule, it's prone to get abused way beyond it's primary goal. IMHO the issue is nuance and balance, we should accept that whether it's applicable is an "it depends" matter.

Keeping it too simple and black and white means companies can now strategically place data centers and get the local government to seize all the land leading to it, and vice versa, local govs can nudge companies to target specific places to seize wherever they want. Especially as the plans aren't required to come to fruition.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#22

Post by shit_game »

serial_dev wrote: post #9
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the compute demands for nationwide AI video surveillance?

AFAIK, video surveillance is less computationally expensive than LLMs, and much of the work can be done at the edge devices. So don’t worry, there is already probably a nationwide video surveillance system out there, even without Kevin

Regardless of the computational needs to facilitate mass surveilance, there are inescapable storage needs precipitated by surveilance. Governments want to retain data because its value in the future is unknown in the present. This is the entire premise behind the Harvest Now Decrypt Later[0] principle that fuels much of the previous surveilance actions taken by governments. But HNDL is speculative; it either hedges on the bet that computational breakthroughs will weaken encryption methods to the point where brute force attempts at decryption are not financially feasible for most actors but still physically possible, or rely on a backdoor in an encryption algorithm to decrypt data that is valuable. There has been much speculation about this feasibility and value RE: quantum computation and also the design of encryption algorithms from the ground up (see things like the Clipper Chip and RSA's relationship with the NSA).

With things like video, photo, audio, and liturgical surveilance, the data is largely out in the open (or simply purchased from their hosting platforms, leading to social media and adtech companies like Facebook and Google being defense contractors by nature) and does not need to be decrypted (in most cases) - rather, it needs to be correlated. This is a great task for machine learning because that's what the field has largely been engineered to do for the last 60 years, but it relies so, so, so heavily on having data to both train on and use in its practice. Storage of all data is the perfect end-goal of a surveilance state. Storage requires data centers. Data centers of this calibre are effectively black sites in that they are nigh impenetrable in both practical and legal senses, and I'd wager many data centers host actual digital black sites simply due to their ubiquity as means of doing so coupled with the necessity of the hardware and facilities they provide that are needed for doing so.

Theres really nothing that will ever be publicly available that would say "this data center has a hundred thousand SOTA GPUs in it that are doing gait recognition on every camera in every airport in the world in real time" versus "this data center is a bunch of tape machines that store everything ever recorded from every facsimilie of Room 641A[1]".

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_now%2C_decrypt_later

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#23

Post by DeepSeaTortoise »

serial_dev wrote: post #9
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the compute demands for nationwide AI video surveillance?

AFAIK, video surveillance is less computationally expensive than LLMs, and much of the work can be done at the edge devices. So don’t worry, there is already probably a nationwide video surveillance system out there, even without Kevin

IMO you highly underestimate the amount of processing and storage video surveillance requires. There is just no good way to determine if you took that pen or made the newly illegal handgesture towards the wrong person 12 years ago unless you have enough storage to keep all the footage around and the processing power to search through it or prepare it for new types of queries in reasonable time.

Also, have you considered AI being necessary to fill in for missing surveillance footage if the cameras are failing (the ruling class)? E.g. the whole Epstein (PR) disaster could have been avoided if the cameras could have been kept running and the footage post-processed in time.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#24

Post by michaelt »

serial_dev wrote: post #9
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the compute demands for nationwide AI video surveillance?

AFAIK, video surveillance is less computationally expensive than LLMs, and much of the work can be done at the edge devices. So don’t worry, there is already probably a nationwide video surveillance system out there, even without Kevin

Video-processing AI can be very flexible in its demands.

Even if a camera supports 4k 60fps video, the 'edge AI' can downscale the input to 224x224 2fps and use a small network.

Often the 'edge AI' just needs to detect humans/cars/pets and trigger saving some footage to an SD card/turning on a light. It's not the end of the world if it misses some things or raises false alarms sometimes.

And if you buy a Reolink on Amazon expecting it to be able to recognise a face from 20 yards away, you'll be disappointed.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#25

Post by Frieren »

I am all for Communism and giving more priority to projects that help all society. But this is not it.

It would help if the power grid was public property, thou. It would help if the power grid was build so the majority of citizens profit. It would help if the power grid was build for someone else than big tech.

Meanwhile building railroads is impossible. Could we convince AI companies to build their datacenters on trains? USA would have in a few years the largest train network in the world.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#26

Post by steele »

wahern wrote: post #8
usrusr wrote: post #4

Misleading title: they are using eminent domain to seize land for power lines to data centers. (emphasis mine) This is still quite debatable, but so much less so than the implied accusation that they would somehow sell out their privileges as subcontractors for the data centers themselves.

It's more misleading than that. The power line that "may" "primarily"[1] serve a private data center has started construction "after nearly 20 years of planning, permitting and lawsuits"[2]. Per usual, NIMBYs continually move the goal posts and rely heavily on rhetoric to oppose a project. Data center opposition is providing them with great PR fodder, but they would have opposed these projects regardless. This is why…

Throw around NIMBY as a pejorative until you're blue in the face. Landowning residents have a civic duty to exercise their interests to prevent the remote monied and powerful from packaging their speculative investments as valuable infrastructure when the profits are privatized and the losses are socialized. The gambling addicts aren't going to spend a single day in prison when neglected overbuilt "infrastructure" directly causes mass casualties or pervert the shape of communities spanning generations.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#27

Post by oliwarner »

bob1029 wrote: post #15
usrusr wrote: post #4

Misleading title: they are using eminent domain to seize land for power lines to data centers. (emphasis mine) This is still quite debatable, but so much less so than the implied accusation that they would somehow sell out their privileges as subcontractors for the data centers themselves.

To be even more nuanced, the land is not typically taken entirely. The more typical solution is an easement with compensation for the land owner to cover the reduction in utility. Transmission lines are pretty harmless when considering things that could be built instead. Zero emissions, silent, no illumination, etc.

Pretty harmless? That's easy to say until it's your land and view that now has pylons and restrictions dumped on it.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#28

Post by oliwarner »

MostlyStable wrote: post #11
usrusr wrote: post #4

Misleading title: they are using eminent domain to seize land for power lines to data centers. (emphasis mine) This is still quite debatable, but so much less so than the implied accusation that they would somehow sell out their privileges as subcontractors for the data centers themselves.

There have been some pretty egregious misuses of eminent domain in the past, but using it for infrastructure is pretty much the quintessential justification. That's basically the only reason to have eminent domain at all. Arguing against it when that's how it's being used is, in my opinion, essentially arguing against the very concept of eminent domain. Which one can totally choose to do! But they should be up front…

It should be used for essential infrastructure for public use.

Power lines to a private DC seem to miss on both counts.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#29

Post by jaredklewis »

oliwarner wrote: post #28
MostlyStable wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been some pretty egregious misuses of eminent domain in the past, but using it for infrastructure is pretty much the quintessential justification. That's basically the only reason to have eminent domain at all. Arguing against it when that's how it's being used is, in my opinion, essentially arguing against the very concept of eminent domain. Which one can totally choose to do! But they should be up front…

It should be used for essential infrastructure for public use . Power lines to a private DC seem to miss on both counts.

We run power lines to everything else: houses, offices, commercial buildings, factories, and so on. Any particular reasons we should have a special exception where we don't run them to data centers?

Where I live pretty much every piece of land has some sort of easement on it: for water, power, or something else. Seems weird to me if we can insist that now everything needs to be frozen and no more infrastructure upgrades.

Re: When can a power company take your land for data center infrastructure?

#30

Post by steele »

bpodgursky wrote: post #18
hack1312 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it’s your house and land being stolen we’ll see how you feel

Are you under the impression people are not compensated by eminent domain? In fact, a huge portion of the sentimental press stores over eminent domain are attempts by homeowners not to cancel the project, but to increase the payouts. Often the homeowners would be quite sad to see the project cancelled, they just want to milk the settlement via litigation.

[flagged]
Post reply on HN