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'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

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Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#141

Post by shepherdjerred »

ratelimitsteve wrote: post #111
bluGill wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do use water, and the numbers look very large which makes for big scary headlines. However people who actually know how water is used in a city are used to numbers much larger than that.

it's the demand delta, not the total demand, that's concerning. Also not all use cases are created equal: using water to keep people alive is legitimate and using water to build a machine that can automatically almost count the number of vowels in a sentence is not legitimate, especially when that usage drives up demand and makes it harder to use water to keep people alive.

Why do you get to choose what is and isn’t legitimate?

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#142

Post by triceratops »

leonidasrup wrote: post #132
triceratops wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or use batteries. Also residential and industrial use will be lower at night. So the existing grid supply may also be enough.

In many places the contraty is true, peak electricity prices are after sunset, during night.

> peak electricity prices are after sunset

The famous evening duck curve, when people go home and cook and turn on heating/cooling appliances. California is able to flatten that out with batteries alone.

https://eticaag.com/battery-storage-and-the-duck-curve-march...

> during night

When everyone's asleep? Serious doubt, please show your sources.

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#143

Post by catlikesshrimp »

WarmWash wrote: post #130
catlikesshrimp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dictatorships abolish all free press, they don't like it. There was a quote where I live "Free press dies along democracy" and it did.

But our press isn't free, it's bound by what gets dumb human brains to put their eyes on ads.

Perfect is the enemy of good. Oligarchy is still better than Monarchy

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#144

Post by Henchman21 »

inferniac wrote: post #74
doublepg23 wrote: post #73

Many things divide us here: Wawa or Sheetz; cheesesteaks or pierogi; Eagles or Steelers; but I very glad we could come together on this.

why? data center opposition is just morons who don't know what they're talking about 99% of the time

Buddy I work in world class premier data centers and I don’t want more of ‘em either. I appreciate that you think I’m a moron though for wanting to protect my community from douchebags like yourself. But respectfully I reject your bullshit.

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#145

Post by luxuryballs »

anon84873628 wrote: post #93
luxuryballs wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why and how would they contaminate the water supply though? Sounds like a municipality problem, a water consumer shouldn't be feeding back into the system, or is it being caused by poorly executed construction practices? Maybe when they first pipe in or something is being left open during construction, this seems like it shouldn't happen if things are being done properly, water supply systems are not a new technology…

The construction itself absolutely alters local watersheds: 1. Replacing forests and fields with concrete buildings prevents rainwater from filtering into the soil, which stops local aquifers from recharging. 2. During storms the rain runs off impervious surfaces and can cause downstream flooding. 3. Heavy land grading washes loose sediment into nearby waterways, destroying aquatic habitats and turning private drinki…

how would this mess with a water supply though, or are we talking the private wells? with a private well though it's something you want to mitigate either way, filters, etc, granted I have only seen the handful of clips where someone is showing dirty water coming out of the tap and I am trying to trace the chain of responsibility for the water supply, thanks for the detailed response btw

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#146

Post by insane_dreamer »

lordgilman wrote: post #21
kerhackernews wrote: post #2

Really the main issue causing the data center backlash is because they aren't building new 100% green energy production capacity with it. When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike. Additionally, without that green energy capacity they will cause much more air pollution.

I suspect the authors of this paper would like to hear out your evidence for increasing energy prices https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19777 In the United States at least there's been plenty of polling on why people oppose data centers. Consistently, it's water usage and water contamination fears, which is exactly what you see most often in social media and discussed online. I think a lot of high-minded rationalizations ar…

> In the United States at least there's been plenty of polling on why people oppose data centers. Consistently, it's water usage and water contamination fears,

where I am the water is a part of it, but a big issue is electricity prices going up (which they will)

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#147

Post by no-name-here »

triceratops wrote: post #142
leonidasrup wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many places the contraty is true, peak electricity prices are after sunset, during night.

> peak electricity prices are after sunset The famous evening duck curve, when people go home and cook and turn on heating/cooling appliances. California is able to flatten that out with batteries alone. https://eticaag.com/battery-storage-and-the-duck-curve-march... > during night When everyone's asleep? Serious doubt, please show your sources.

The 2024 NYT infographic also has a nice visualization of how batteries flattened the evening curve as of then: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/batte...

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#148

Post by insane_dreamer »

ifwinterco wrote: post #77
kerhackernews wrote: post #2

Really the main issue causing the data center backlash is because they aren't building new 100% green energy production capacity with it. When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike. Additionally, without that green energy capacity they will cause much more air pollution.

Also Sam, Dario et al have constantly (like literally, every single week at least) been telling us that AI is going to make all of us unemployable and have to live on welfare. Is it any wonder people hear that and go "hmm, no thanks" when the prospect of a massive whirring data centre next to their house is raised? The SV LLM crowd know a lot about LLM psychology but seemingly very little about human psychology

> The SV LLM crowd know a lot about LLM psychology but seemingly very little about human psychology

I doubt that it's ignorance on their part. I think their target audience with those comments is the US government, basically setting up OpenAI/Anthropic as "too big to fail" in the sense that "if AI is _inevitably_ going to take away everyone's jobs, then we'd better make sure that it's US AI and not Chinese AI or some "rogue AI" that's doing it, and the government should 1) be in bed with us, 2) provide a financial backstop, and 3) not regulate us or put on the brakes so that we can stay ahead of the Chinese.

They don't care what the "normal" American thinks.

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#149

Post by quickthrowman »

anon84873628 wrote: post #93
luxuryballs wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why and how would they contaminate the water supply though? Sounds like a municipality problem, a water consumer shouldn't be feeding back into the system, or is it being caused by poorly executed construction practices? Maybe when they first pipe in or something is being left open during construction, this seems like it shouldn't happen if things are being done properly, water supply systems are not a new technology…

The construction itself absolutely alters local watersheds: 1. Replacing forests and fields with concrete buildings prevents rainwater from filtering into the soil, which stops local aquifers from recharging. 2. During storms the rain runs off impervious surfaces and can cause downstream flooding. 3. Heavy land grading washes loose sediment into nearby waterways, destroying aquatic habitats and turning private drinki…

The first three apply to any construction project with a paved surface and there are ways to mitigate that, you can collect the runoff in a cistern/tank that filters back into the groundwater or collect it in a retention pond which does the same thing.

Items 4 and 5 apply to any facility with cooling towers, not limited to but including hospitals, apartment buildings, schools, prisons, cold storage warehouses, combined cycle power plants, large commercial buildings, paper plants, retirement homes, commercial bakeries, industrial facilities with heat rejection needs, etc.

The sixth one applies to virtually every power plant in existence.

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#150

Post by estearum »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #141
ratelimitsteve wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's the demand delta, not the total demand, that's concerning. Also not all use cases are created equal: using water to keep people alive is legitimate and using water to build a machine that can automatically almost count the number of vowels in a sentence is not legitimate, especially when that usage drives up demand and makes it harder to use water to keep people alive.

Why do you get to choose what is and isn’t legitimate?

Well "you" don't "get to", but this is precisely why we made the concept "states" and use "state power" to counteract other natural modalities of power.

Which is being demonstrated by the use of state power to kill data center development.

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