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Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

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Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#281

Post by svara »

tptacek wrote: post #78
mixdup wrote: post #24

I don't know what DC Blox was going to put in this particular datacenter, but they are a "traditional" colocation datacenter company. Maybe this one would've been superdense GPUs with a jet engine as electrical generator causing all kinds of noise, but it's also just as likely this would've been a project that 5 years ago no one would've batted an eye over, and wouldn't cause any issues in the local neighborhood That…

The funny thing about data center concerns in Chicagoland, where I'm hearing it, is that data centers are better neighbors than almost any other commercial real estate. The data centers in Aurora are surrounded with prairie green space; everything else, including the nicest office buildings, are a sea of eyesore asphalt parking lots. I get there can be real concerns, locally-specific, about energy usage (again: they…

AI company leadership are telling everyone, and that's paraphrasing only lightly, that there's a chance AI will destroy humanity, and will probably cause mass unemployment, so we need to put datacenters everywhere.

So why do people not like datacenters? Go figure.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#282

Post by JumpCrisscross »

perpetuallunch wrote: post #262
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby I wouldn’t dismiss the critics as NIMBY. They are closer to fuck it, nowhere. Some opposition is just anti-AI or misinformed about e.g. water use. But most of them have legitimate complaints about, on one hand, noise and power prices and, on the other hand, the shocking lack of contribution to local employment or taxes from these structures mintin…

I don’t understand why entry of a large consumer of electric in to an area should result in higher residential electricity prices. The new large-consumer can pay for the electricity it uses all by itself. If new generating capacity is required to meet the new, higher, demand, that should be factored in to the supply contract with the new large-consumer. What is the rationale for jacking up residential retail prices?…

> If new generating capacity is required to meet the new, higher, demand, that should be factored in to the supply contract with the new large-consumer

My understanding is this wasn't done.

> What is the rationale for jacking up residential retail prices?

The most understandable explanations I've heard had to do with grid upgrades. Crap the utility owns and controls and has to change to accomodate the new power flows.

More often, however, it looks like local and state government engaging in industrial policy by trying to get residents to subsidise the new datacenters.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#283

Post by Barrin92 »

godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #261
Barrin92 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He's so evil but the vast majority of Americans can't give up his products? Is he forcing people to login to Instagram or Facebook? People are perfectly fine with him making products, what they aren't fine with is he (and his peers) starting to think they're kings and trying to overrule the citizens of a state he doesn't live in. If it comes down to a chatbot and the latter they'll chose the latter. The datacenter o…

The modern American standard of life is based on global integration and state power. If you want to go back to some Garden of Eden fiction regarding Plymouth Rock based on the propagandizing of America's first nepo president you will not find much competition in your pursuit of a life of poverty and subsistence farming. Go log off and enjoy the woods. Or get serious and propose a plan for continued American economic…

>The modern American standard of life is based on global integration

The United States is virtually the least trade dependent country in the world[1] which is why you frequently see American governments wield trade policy as a weapon. Economically the US is practically self sufficient.

And insofar as the broad prosperity and provision of good jobs is concerned, those haven't improved in the computer age, they've been decimated, outsourced, and now threaten to be replaced by the very same data centers ordinary people are protesting. The explicit and stated goal by the people we have been talking about is not to increase the autonomy of the average person, it's to automate them away and put them on basic income.

[1]https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS?most_rec...

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#284

Post by kleton »

tptacek wrote: post #167
ashleyn wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reputation of datacenters precludes them due to some high-profile abuses of locals, as well as cities overcommitting brittle and unprepared infrastructure to them. Consumer energy prices in 13+ states hiked because the grid was unable to meet the sudden demand. SpaceX's datacenter in Memphis used gas turbines to rapidly deploy Colossus before the grid could be upgraded, which resulted in an increase in local air…

The infrastructure thing I get! The water thing is, I think, baloney, but depending on where you are there's energy generation concerns. Seems totally reasonable to me for local political bodies to demand that new data center projects account for what they'll do to the local power grid, and, obviously, running jet turbine gas generators is not a reasonable answer to those concerns. What frustrates me about the new po…

> The water thing

It’s amazing how Karen Hao managed to graduate from MIT without learning the difference between m^3 and L

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#285

Post by dividedbyzero »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #282
perpetuallunch wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why entry of a large consumer of electric in to an area should result in higher residential electricity prices. The new large-consumer can pay for the electricity it uses all by itself. If new generating capacity is required to meet the new, higher, demand, that should be factored in to the supply contract with the new large-consumer. What is the rationale for jacking up residential retail prices?…

> If new generating capacity is required to meet the new, higher, demand, that should be factored in to the supply contract with the new large-consumer My understanding is this wasn't done. > What is the rationale for jacking up residential retail prices? The most understandable explanations I've heard had to do with grid upgrades. Crap the utility owns and controls and has to change to accomodate the new power flows…

Upgrades also take time and may not be a good idea seeing how the current AI buildout is financed. There is a certain amount of capacity right now and AI behemoths have the financial muscle to take what's there. If that leaves too little for everyone else, prices will reflect that as soon as existing contracts allow.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#286

Post by techpression »

tptacek wrote: post #222
rtpg wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the lots are empty. Is this not the same for the data centers? Have data centers solved parking provisioning in a way office parks haven't? > Second, no, these jobs are not generally filled by neighbors of the office complexes, or even people from the muni where the office complex is situated. I mean again... are the data center jobs like ... guaranteed to be people in the local area? Isn't the nature of th…

No, it's not the same! At least not at the data centers I've seen. Go look at the Aurora CH1 CyrusOne DC and then beam yourself down 88 a bit to the nearest office building and compare. Data centers have parking, but not a lot of it. CHI1 is ringed by a single two-sided line of spots. Every big box retailer is surrounded by an ocean of asphalt larger than CHI1 itself.

Feels like you’re cherry picking to make a point, so here’s some cherry picking on the other side https://www.fierce-network.com/data-center/top-10-ugliest-da...

So much dead ugly space, and let’s not look at them at night with enough external lighting to see from space (almost)

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#287

Post by account42 »

RandallBrown wrote: post #63
mixdup wrote: post #24

I don't know what DC Blox was going to put in this particular datacenter, but they are a "traditional" colocation datacenter company. Maybe this one would've been superdense GPUs with a jet engine as electrical generator causing all kinds of noise, but it's also just as likely this would've been a project that 5 years ago no one would've batted an eye over, and wouldn't cause any issues in the local neighborhood That…

> That's the unfortunate thing about the current climate around datacenters I always get a chuckle when I see people complaining about datacenters on the Internet .

The Internet we are talking on didn't require the current unsustainable data center build-out. This is like saying that people complain about companies dumping toxic waste when they themselves poop. Scale matters.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#288

Post by inigyou »

mixdup wrote: post #24

I don't know what DC Blox was going to put in this particular datacenter, but they are a "traditional" colocation datacenter company. Maybe this one would've been superdense GPUs with a jet engine as electrical generator causing all kinds of noise, but it's also just as likely this would've been a project that 5 years ago no one would've batted an eye over, and wouldn't cause any issues in the local neighborhood That…

Even the traditional DC companies are going all-in on AI.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#289

Post by inigyou »

Terr_ wrote: post #254
ashleyn wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reputation of datacenters precludes them due to some high-profile abuses of locals, as well as cities overcommitting brittle and unprepared infrastructure to them. Consumer energy prices in 13+ states hiked because the grid was unable to meet the sudden demand. SpaceX's datacenter in Memphis used gas turbines to rapidly deploy Colossus before the grid could be upgraded, which resulted in an increase in local air…

[flagged]

You can't just call the party you disagree with corrupt.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#290

Post by inigyou »

veunes wrote: post #168
tptacek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing about data center concerns in Chicagoland, where I'm hearing it, is that data centers are better neighbors than almost any other commercial real estate. The data centers in Aurora are surrounded with prairie green space; everything else, including the nicest office buildings, are a sea of eyesore asphalt parking lots. I get there can be real concerns, locally-specific, about energy usage (again: they…

A data center can be a much quieter neighbor than a warehouse or shopping center. The catch is that most of its impact is pushed into less visible systems

It can be, but you missed the important point: these ones aren't.
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