61–70 of 293 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is just pure histrionics, you have no understanding whatsoever of the scale of data center water consumption, electricity consumption, new capacity coming online, etc.
How much water does a DC use?
Ok. A serious question. I frequently hear that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity. Then why are they using gas turbines? Is it because they can generate more power with a smaller real estate footprint?
It's because the permits are easier to get. It's very hard to get people to organize to make renewable energy permitting easier.
Eg https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/pollution-musks-unper...
You know, we don't actually have to do this. The people could block the gates and prevent the delivery of the turbines. The local fire department could fail their inspection and prevent the gas from being turned on. The UPS could "mysteriously" go up in smoke during it's commissioning. None of this is preordained. We, the phyical persons, can choose how we want to live, and what constraints the corporate persons must…
All this at the very low cost of: your job. You can't have an unbreachable blockade 24/7 in front of there, very soon they'd send police to disperse. Fire dept has to justify the failing, if everything up to code and the inspector make it fail it will delay for at most a week and the guy will lose his credibility. The guys delivering and installing the UPS are just trying to make a living too, destroying the thing wi…
A lot of new data centres have been announced in Alberta, Canada. Which is a weird location given that Alberta has a derelict power grid that can barely serve the current load, and runs almost entirely on fossil fuels. Meta, for instance, plans a $13B data centre in Sturgeon County. https://www.vozpopuli.com/indux/en/alberta-approved-a-932-me... They all plan on powering them by building massive natural gas generatin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Communism dried up the third largest lake in the world just for irrigation (while starving tens of millions in the meantime).
No one mentioned communism?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Communism dried up the third largest lake in the world just for irrigation (while starving tens of millions in the meantime).
The irrigation plan was in response to the famine, and it worked, it was the last famine in the soviet union.
Those in power seem to think that a compute advantage is necessary to maintain economic advantage. Despite this, the voters universally hate data centers, so much so that both NY and TX have data center construction moratoriums. Despite this, those in power refuse any environmentally aware energy policy nor water policy. Despite this, companies have been trying to be environmentally aware for either moral or marketin…
The overall American economy is going to pay the price in the long term. And current foreign policy is reducing trust in America as a reliable and stable partner, which will make things even worse.
It's hard to see how much worse it could get, short of outright invasion or allying with Russia.
Just this week, amongst other news:
* America's useless adventures in Iran have used up so many Patriot missiles there aren't any left to defend Kyiv against Russian missiles, while Iran is still firmly in control of the Straits of Hormuz.
* Meddling in Greenland went up a notch with landing equipment to start oil drilling.
* State Department funding MAGA-oriented "free speech" disinformation campaigns in the UK.
* The revival of Trump's tariffs under the hypocritical guise of guarding against slave labour. Especially when the US prison system is such a large domestic source of slave labour.
Zero trust left here. Zero desire to visit the US ever again.
Those in power seem to think that a compute advantage is necessary to maintain economic advantage. Despite this, the voters universally hate data centers, so much so that both NY and TX have data center construction moratoriums. Despite this, those in power refuse any environmentally aware energy policy nor water policy. Despite this, companies have been trying to be environmentally aware for either moral or marketin…
This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 billion to stop building wind farms. It also made solar inverters illegal last week.
That’s overstating it. A couple clarifications.
It banned foreign (edit) made equipment because it’s known for cybersecurity issues. It was the FCC that restricted new foreign-made connected inverters over grid cybersecurity concerns. [1]
1. https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adds-foreign-produced-power...
> This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 billion to stop building wind farms.
The $1.2B is real, but it wasn’t payment to stop construction. RWE agreed to surrender three offshore wind leases and settle related claims. Anyways, RWE’s three leases were in very early development and weren’t expected online until the 2030s. [2]
You can still think both policies are bad. But those are different claims.
2. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/rwe-says-reached-12...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 billion to stop building wind farms. It also made solar inverters illegal last week.
> It also made solar inverters illegal last week. That’s overstating it. A couple clarifications. It banned foreign (edit) made equipment because it’s known for cybersecurity issues. It was the FCC that restricted new foreign-made connected inverters over grid cybersecurity concerns. [1] 1. https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adds-foreign-produced-power... > This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 bil…