Something smells wrong. You could dump a gigawatt into resistive heating and not see such temperature rises so far away.
where there is a demand for results, academia will meet the supply
Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers
311–320 of 535 posts
Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers
#312I cannot figure out if this data center panic is legit or trumped up. There are legitimate nation-state and political entities that would love to create pressure for degrowth in this area. And, pollution and natural resources are a concern, yes, fine, sure. NIMBY happens, I get it ... *BUT*, we've been building huge data centers for decades and they are minuscule compared to the size of the earth. My skeptic meter ma…
This post is quite hilarious to read, it has to be satire
Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are engaging in the "but you participate in society" fallacy. One can critique systems they are still interacting with, to suggest otherwise is just so incredibly lazy.
Not at all. The post being responded to completely failed to acknowledge any value brought by data centers to the general populous. That's disingenuous. To force the point: run me through the scenario where we turn off all the data centers. Consider how much more water we will have, how much less expensive electricity will be, and what other problems might arise.
But that value is subjective. If my tap water is brown as a result of a DC, I may not agree with your positives. If my neighborhood is humming all night because of a DC, again, I might not have the ability to see what you see as positive.
So, my take is that maybe the pro-DC side can do better at seeing multiple perspectives instead of acting like anything negatively said about DCs is a psychosis.
Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a hobbyist IT enthusiast, not a professional computer guy, but from my point of view there's a big difference between a bunch of servers hosting something people want, like Netflix, and a warehouse full of GPUs running around the clock to make Lobster Jesus or whatever. It's also a proxy for people's feelings on AI--essentially the only way people have to fight back against the new technology that makes eternal g…
How is there a big difference between those two things? People want Netflix, people also want the output of AI whether that is lobster Jesus or something else. This seems more like substituting what people want, which clearly includes AI, for what some people think others should want. I can guarantee you there are people who don’t want Netflix and think it’s a waste of resources that encourage people to binge TV, bec…
The specific examples are not the point. Obviously some people hate Netflix and some people love Lobster Jesus. There is a rising sentiment against AI:
https://techstrong.ai/features/public-sentiment-sours-as-ai-...
>Should their preferences override those who do want it?
This is rather the point of government, balancing the competing amd incompatible desires of different groups of people for the benefit of everyone. Yes, if a community decides they don't want a GPU warehouse, using whatever means that community uses to make decisions (referenda, petitioning representatives, etc.), their desire should overrule the desire of people to have one. That's what society is!
Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
When Amazon gets to run an offgrid power plant for a new data centre that's permitted to release more co2 than any other single power plant in the US[1], you'll pardon me for wondering what the rush is and why it becomes literally everyone else's problem as a result. Build the data centre, sure, but if it takes you five years to build out the grid and sufficient generating capacity in a non stupid way in order to do…
Rush may be FOMO. Even as one who likes using AI, I think the economics is an investment bubble and mostly avoid it. I can't read your link, paywall, but my question regarding Musk's infamous polluting DC, I wonder why it had to be built near so many people . It's not like there's going to be a need for a huge pool of workers to commute to it.
Because they aren't really people unless they could afford a DC of their own. When you view half the world or more as NPC then it becomes trivially easy to ignore the needs of others.
Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
To continue to take us off topic, there is actually pretty limited evidence that this is true. It is true that wine doesn't do anyone any good (unless you count it making people more social or something). But the effects of one glass a night is indistinguishable from zero. There are definitely statistically significant morbidity effects at 3. I've been shocked reading public health proclamations that "anything above…
isn't one glass a night already lack of moderation? by drinking a glass a night, or even weekly such as every friday night you're creating habit and dependency.
It works very differently for different people, I think. Many people metabolize the alcohol more slowly, and get less of a "hit" from drinking, which makes them less susceptible to addiction. Others, like me, metabolize it very fast and that makes it quite a bit more addictive. Risk factors like ADHD increase this.
All that said, no one I've ever met said a glass of wine on Friday nights isn't "drinking in moderation". I think the medical establishment is quite well aligned on this. One source is the CDC, which defines moderate drinking to be roughly an order of magnitude more alcohol consumption than "one drink every Friday night."
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/about-alcohol-use/moderate-alcoh...
Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I do think the quality has gone down over my seven-ish years on HN, but that could be me just remembering "the good ol' days". Still so much better than Reddit though. It's not close. Reddit has a much lower quality set of posts and comments on average across technical subreddits.
Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers
#318If even on Hacker News a topic like this can't be objectively discussed, what hope do we really have? What is the solution? Even in a place like this, the comments are full of extremist ideology, bickering, people arguing from feelings, people just repeating echo chambers mantras, and a significant portion of the comments are probably from inauthentic/propaganda accounts. We're incapable of just using a place like th…
Turns out people have quite strong feelings about career -ruining and planet-burning tech advances.
I think it's good that there are topics that elicit emotional responses. It does make the discussion a bit difficult, gotta admit that.
Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a hobbyist IT enthusiast, not a professional computer guy, but from my point of view there's a big difference between a bunch of servers hosting something people want, like Netflix, and a warehouse full of GPUs running around the clock to make Lobster Jesus or whatever. It's also a proxy for people's feelings on AI--essentially the only way people have to fight back against the new technology that makes eternal g…
> there's a big difference between a bunch of servers hosting something people want, like Netflix, and a warehouse full of GPUs running around the clock to make Lobster Jesus or whatever. ChatGPT has been the most downloaded app every month for a year and a half.
And yet, AI is broadly unpopular:
https://techstrong.ai/features/public-sentiment-sours-as-ai-...
The fact that people try out ChatGPT does not change that. People are complicated!
Re: Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
i think this sentiment comes from a deep misunderstanding of how our modern society is the product of transitive satisfaction of wants. the developers churning out agent work on supergigaultramax effort are fulfilling the transitive preferences of people like supply chain managers, etc. who are in turn fulfilling the transitive preferences of a school teacher for cheap groceries, who are in turn.... This is how econo…
> the developers churning out agent work on supergigaultramax effort are fulfilling the transitive preferences of people like supply chain managers, etc. Sure, but that's the crux of it all, isn't it. Are they? And are they doing it that much better than before? I'm far from an AI coding skeptic at this point, the stuff works, and I use it, but I think it's fair to ask whether it's worth burning a middle class home's…
I think people should be allowed to do things, generally. If it's not worth it, the people doing it will go out of business (and quickly, at these prices). I think it is likely more worth it than you realize.
We're not talking about criticizing, we're talking about bans.