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

New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 307 posts

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#261

Post by KellyCriterion »

orbifold wrote: post #13

All this AI doomerism is hiding the obvious and immediate harm that will cause a mass extinction event. Funnily enough people at Anthropic are predicting the end of the Anthropocene, completely absolving themselves from any responsibility for the actual reality that the Anthropocene is defined by human made geologically noticeable changes. Like causing a global climate catastrophe.

It is the paperclip AI scenario: The AI is cheating humans to produce only one thing - but in reality today, its not paperclibs, but datacenters as "the most important product": So the scenario still holds :-D

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#262

Post by convolvatron »

surgical_fire wrote: post #246
ipaddr wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The natives in Europe are white. You are bundling a lot of ethnicities, many of those who historically had major grievances amongst themselves, in race bullshit very specific to the US. A "white" label is very meaningless this side of the pond. I have little patience for this shit, the US truly is a sick place if your rhetoric is what it produces.

one thing that largely undermines even the notion of US whiteness is that 50 years ago the definition of white was very different. Italians were swarthy and not properly white. Irish, while ostensibly white in color, were a degenerate race. Half of the 'white' people in the US are race traitors because they just don't believe in this crap in the first place, and apparently they are on the chopping block too.

Arbitrary bigotry always finds a way to claim that it represents a truth.

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#263

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

brikym wrote: post #101

On this map I can't see _any_ nuclear under construction in the US yet the rest of the world seems to be building many. When a man has a hammer everything is a gas turbine. GEV stock has treated me well but I'd much rather nuclear was winning. It's a catch22 problem because nuclear is much slower to build than a data center so there is no demand from the data centers. And the nuclear plant doesn't know the demand wil…

The world isn’t building nuclear power. It’s simply too slow to build and expensive to be relevant.

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#264

Post by vrganj »

simianwords wrote: post #241
vrganj wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole is nothing but the sum of specifics. The oceans are boiling [0], marine life is dying [1]. Land close to the water will be land under water soon [2]. The ice caps are melting and setting free all sorts of diseases. [3] Large parts of our planet on fire all the time now, here's one from Australia from this year [4], but I'm sure you've read about wildfires in Spain and France this year, Australia last year,…

But life expectancy is highest and stil increasing. Do you have any proof this trend would reverse?

That model assumes no major external factors changing.

You think life expectancy will stay the same when forests burn down, we run out of water and crops, conflicts start everywhere, cities start flooding, we get more and more storms, energy crises because we have to shut down power plants etc etc?

You're basing your read on wayyyy too simplistic a metric that compresses true life expectancy into something not accounting for most meaningful dimensions.

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#265

Post by fhdkweig »

gruez wrote: post #171
jurgenburgen wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need a numerical advantage to dominate if you have a technological / organizational advantage. The British empire was outnumbered 10 to 1 and still managed to control a large portion of the world for a while. US government is working overtime to make sure legacy technologies stay around while the rest of the world is investing into the future.

>US government is working overtime to make sure legacy technologies stay around while the rest of the world is investing into the future. "Rest of the world"? Europe isn't even a player in the AI race. China might be better placed, but they also lag the US in terms of model development and capital deployed. They've been catching up, but that's not the same as "[American will] be in a similar place to Canada at best".…

>>US government is working overtime to make sure legacy technologies stay around while the rest of the world is investing into the future.

>"Rest of the world"? Europe isn't even a player in the AI race.

I think the legacy technology he is referring to is the more about the electrical generation method rather than the AI use of that electricity.

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#267

Post by gspr »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #121
xyzelement wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Will my kids be an ethnic minority in their own country in the next generation - and if so, what's that going to be like for them? What about this is an essential concern for you? Like, what are the potential harms?

To racists, people who look different are inherently harmful. Racists are terrible.

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#268

Post by atonse »

inigyou wrote: post #57
mocana wrote: post #11

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?

For a DC it's probably reliability. You need wind to be spread over a large area to even out random changes in power availability. And, obviously, solar power works during the day.

But this is essentially a solved problem even at utility scale, with renewables + battery banks, right? This isn't cutting edge stuff.

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#269

Post by cwal37 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #201
lee_ars wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas specifically has heavily politicized and demonized wind power, in spite of having massive successes with it prior to 2016 and being a leading producer of it. Solar isn't as bad, but is still seen as "leftist." The political landscape in TX is vastly more friendly to natural gas. In other words, they are using gas turbines because the politicians are stupid.

Texas leads the nation in solar installed and solar planned. How do you reconcile that with your theory?

*utility-scale solar, not solar overall

Re: New Amazon Data Center Is Set to Have the Most Polluting Power Plant in the U.S.

#270

Post by vrganj »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #134
amarcheschi wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel it is hard to grasp for an American how much perception of US shifted in eu. This is just anedoctal of course, but a famous Italian singer famous for having written a song about American and sexual liberation decades ago, wrote an updated version. The former is "America", the latter is "America INC." You can guess which one depicts America in a bad light. I wouldn't have expected a famous singer to make such a…

Why do you think Americans don't grasp it? There are really two groups here: - MAGA who doesn't care what Europe thinks - not-MAGA who are just as shocked and disappointed as everyone else on the planet

I don't think the first group understands how important Europe is to America's status as superpower, while the second group operates under the delusion that the world will go back to business as usual after the next presidential election.
Post reply on HN