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The moral panic over data centres is foolish

economist.com

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Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#101

Post by lbriner »

neuroticnews25 wrote: post #26
jpgvm wrote: post #6

NIMBYs are the enemy of all that is good in the world. No datacenters isn't about AI or even resources like water or power, it's mostly about real-estate and housing prices as usual. If we listened to NIMBYs we would have no new infrastructure, no high density housing, no public transport.... oh wait.

Why would a huge industrial scale investment be in anybody's backyard? Is this a US thing? It seems intuitive it belongs in a sparsly populated area.

I think a large part is being close enough to existing utilities to save the installation costs of 40 miles of cable, telecomms etc (all duplicated of course). However, some data centres are built in the middle of nowhere but that is potentially then a nature problem because why spoil this nice countryside with a massive non-descript building?

I like Copenhill (https://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/planning/copenhil...), where they decided that waste handling is not nice so why not make it nice by building a ski slope on it. I suspect that a bit more creativity could make people want data centres (free heating and hot water anybody? Hot spring baths? Free hosting for local schools and charities?)

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#102

Post by hypfer »

jedberg wrote: post #31
lc9er wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. Then then you live next to one.

No thanks, they are loud. I even called that out. But no one should be living next to them. Those people need to get their local government to regulate noise from all buildings. The companies won't do it on their own. (This is part of why I no longer help build them, because when I asked about reducing noise and using green power I was laughed at).

I genuinely do not understand what happened here.

Like.. you came in invalidating the people, then, when called out, you say what is effectively "well their criticism is actually right".

And.. That's that. I guess. Are you sure that you're taking part in the conversation and not just stringing words together based on probabilities?

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#104

Post by coffeefirst »

jedberg wrote: post #84
coffeefirst wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. What ways? Suppose I wanted to call the governor and say “I have an answer to how to regulate these that solves the noise problem” what would we be asking for?

Regulations about 95th percentile decible levels at certain distances, and regulations about max decibel levels at certain distances, for all buildings.

Sure. But what’s the technical way or meet that requirement? Is there a specific method or is it just that they can but they don’t care because there’s no law?

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#105

Post by jpgvm »

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #68
timmg wrote: post #40

I was actually pretty worried that the anti-datacenter backlash would stunt and important industry (for the US). But I think the effect will be that the companies building them will "sweeten" the deal for the local towns where they are building -- probably by way of taxes. And while that will be a drag on their development (by adding costs), the scale won't be bad enough to really hurt. And in that sense, everyone wi…

> "sweeten" the deal for the local towns where they are building Yes. And datacenter companies have to foolish to slow-walk doing this. When you are building a 10 to 50 billion dollar construction project, it may be worth giving the local town 100 million (plus 10k directly to every resident) to do with as they please, and it would certainly grease the wheels.

They are slow walking it because you simply can't build the generation fast enough anyway. It's also why you are seeing a lot of project with their own generation plants on site, either stuff like the SpaceX/X/AI (I dunno what you call it man) datacenters - i.e very adhoc methane stuff or proper LNG generators ala Meta.

This is mostly an America problem right now because that is where everyone wants to build the DCs and it's the market with the most stagnant generation: https://en.macromicro.me/collections/26367/electricity/14247...

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#106

Post by CPLX »

SamBam wrote: post #39
jedberg wrote: post #15

I have a lot of left leaning non-tech friends. They are all very much against AI data centers. I've built AI data centers, and I keep trying to educate them, but they just won't listen. The water is mostly part of a closed system. Sure, you need a lot to build one, but once it's running it's pretty water efficient. The lack of green power is a problem, but as the article points out, you now have a large customer subs…

Besides the data center itself, many people in the US are against what the data center is bringing: more AI. Most regular people have not been sold on the idea that more AI will be good for them or their families or communities personally. Instead all they hear is AI taking away jobs, and AI preventing high schoolers and college kids from learning how to read a book and write an essay. Most people think a world with…

There’s no need to mince words, they’ve been aggressively told that AI will eliminate nearly every job.

If you need your job to feed your family then what Sam or Dario is saying is quite literally a threat to kill your children.

Of course they’re full of shit, it’s more like a very useful business automation project but if you say stuff like that you can’t be surprised when people hear it and form highly rational opinions about it.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#108

Post by ok123456 »

milkshakes wrote: post #92
ok123456 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have. That's a common objection to golf courses. The difference here is that data centers are both economically and environmentally extractive. People in the community, or at least in the surrounding area, will play golf there. Data centers are purely extractive, and that's why they have become so galvanizing. It's transferring probably the only real asset these communities have left, their open spaces, direct…

> data centers are purely extractive please, tell me more > people in the community, or at least in the surrounding area, will play golf there going to go out on a limb here and guess that net-net, a datacenter provides more benefits to a broader spectrum of society than a golf course does.

That is quite a limb to go out on.

What is the exact value proposition of AI as it exists right now for the average person who lives where these things are being built? They don't even get jobs. With golf, they can enjoy the outdoors and escape a little bit.

Re: The moral panic over data centres is foolish

#109

Post by bayindirh »

jpgvm wrote: post #90
bayindirh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or even resources like water or power I wonder, do you know how much energy or water is required to run a datacenter with direct liquid cooled systems? Not the SOTA AI data centers which are popping up like mushrooms, a general ballpark is enough. This is not a loaded question. Given your knowledge, you must be knowing much more than majority of HN.

I actually happen to know a lot about this! I have been in and around datacenters for ~16yrs and I work on direct liquid cooled hardware at $DAY_JOB. Back when I was running my own startup I moved to Mascot, Sydney to be near Equinix SY3 that was being built which we had bought a decent chunk of committed capacity in. Mascot was originally an industrial area but was gentrified a lot over the last 20ish years but the…

Thanks a ton, for the information. It's greatly appreciated.

I'm personally not interested in the details that you can't provide, that was not something I was aiming for, but putting a ballpark number for ~1.1L/kWh is very eye opening (I know it's not some accurate figure, but yeah). Considering a SOTA GPU uses somewhere from 700W to 2.5kW depending on the manufacturer and performance level...

Now I'm wondering how the dumped heat affect these water bodies (i.e. rivers, lakes, etc.). Their relative heat capacity w.r.t. this amount dumped heat can't be infinite so they can handle this forever.

Hope to meet you someday. Have a nice day! :)

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