No Data Centers in My Backyard • Hacker News Board

Re: No Data Centers in My Backyard

#11

Post by comrade1234 » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 11:18 AM UTC

I have a property in NW Wisconsin. It's incredibly poor there - it seems like most people working age are on disability - the new form of welfare. Money is earned mostly in summer and hunting seasons. It's pretty depressing. Lots of alcohol problems. I hired someone to clear some trees and make lumber out of them once and he showed up for the job three months later. At least he showed up though. Weirdest thing - he never came back after the job to get paid. I end up often hiring contractors from 90 miles away to get good ones.

But a data center wouldn't help. It would raise electric prices and doesn't really employ people.

It's kind of like one industry that is in the area - there's a company that grows huge amounts of cranberries but its mostly automated. As far as I know only three people work on this huge site. They let the cranberries grow, flood the area when they're ready. The cranberries float to the top for robots to skim the surface and harvest them. The humans just move things around for the robots.

Re: No Data Centers in My Backyard

#12

Post by decimalenough » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 11:23 AM UTC

zkmon wrote: post #8

People in UK opposed train tracks in steam engine days, saying that the train engine sound scares their horses and cattle. Ofcourse data centers are far worse. But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.

How are they "far worse"? Steam trains are noisy, polluting, require tons of coal, kill animals and people in their way, and crash fairly regularly (when built with 1800s technology).

A data center is a big grey box that sits there humming quietly, and that's it. They do require power and lots of it, but unlikely steam engines they'll happily use solar, nuclear or anything else.

Re: No Data Centers in My Backyard

#13

Post by alexpotato » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 11:25 AM UTC

I found the below line to get particularly "hard":

> When I visited DC in February to start researching the brewing AI backlash, I found that the top two uniting issues were kids’ safety and data centers.1 These were very different concerns from those I hear in San Francisco—a city with no kids and no data centers

Re: No Data Centers in My Backyard

#14

Post by StilesCrisis » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 11:25 AM UTC

zkmon wrote: post #8

People in UK opposed train tracks in steam engine days, saying that the train engine sound scares their horses and cattle. Ofcourse data centers are far worse. But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.

It sounds more like humanity opposes noise pollution?

Re: No Data Centers in My Backyard

#15

Post by StilesCrisis » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 11:27 AM UTC

decimalenough wrote: post #12

zkmon wrote: post #8

People in UK opposed train tracks in steam engine days, saying that the train engine sound scares their horses and cattle. Ofcourse data centers are far worse. But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.

How are they "far worse"? Steam trains are noisy, polluting, require tons of coal, kill animals and people in their way, and crash fairly regularly (when built with 1800s technology). A data center is a big grey box that sits there humming quietly, and that's it. They do require power and lots of it, but unlikely steam engines they'll happily use solar, nuclear or anything else.

Data centers are quite loud.

Re: No Data Centers in My Backyard

#16

Post by folkrav » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 11:27 AM UTC

decimalenough wrote: post #12

zkmon wrote: post #8

People in UK opposed train tracks in steam engine days, saying that the train engine sound scares their horses and cattle. Ofcourse data centers are far worse. But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.

How are they "far worse"? Steam trains are noisy, polluting, require tons of coal, kill animals and people in their way, and crash fairly regularly (when built with 1800s technology). A data center is a big grey box that sits there humming quietly, and that's it. They do require power and lots of it, but unlikely steam engines they'll happily use solar, nuclear or anything else.

“Humming quietly”? Really? Humming, yeah, sure, but ask the people living next door how quiet they are.

Re: No Data Centers in My Backyard

#17

Post by jappgar » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 11:28 AM UTC

decimalenough wrote: post #12

zkmon wrote: post #8

People in UK opposed train tracks in steam engine days, saying that the train engine sound scares their horses and cattle. Ofcourse data centers are far worse. But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.

How are they "far worse"? Steam trains are noisy, polluting, require tons of coal, kill animals and people in their way, and crash fairly regularly (when built with 1800s technology). A data center is a big grey box that sits there humming quietly, and that's it. They do require power and lots of it, but unlikely steam engines they'll happily use solar, nuclear or anything else.

it's a dumb comparison and you're doubling down on it

Re: No Data Centers in My Backyard

#18

Post by dataengineer56 » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 11:28 AM UTC

zkmon wrote: post #8

People in UK opposed train tracks in steam engine days, saying that the train engine sound scares their horses and cattle. Ofcourse data centers are far worse. But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.

>But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.

So you're saying the UK should never have built a railway system? It sounds like tech is right.

Re: No Data Centers in My Backyard

#19

Post by gyanchawdhary » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 11:28 AM UTC

zkmon wrote: post #8

People in UK opposed train tracks in steam engine days, saying that the train engine sound scares their horses and cattle. Ofcourse data centers are far worse. But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.

I disagree with the “evil monster” part, but thanks for sharing that example. I’ll probably use it the opposite way in meetings .. people were deeply skeptical of railways too, yet they ended up transforming society for the better.

Re: No Data Centers in My Backyard

#20

Post by wizzwizz4 » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 11:28 AM UTC

decimalenough wrote: post #12

zkmon wrote: post #8

People in UK opposed train tracks in steam engine days, saying that the train engine sound scares their horses and cattle. Ofcourse data centers are far worse. But it is amusing to see how humanity continues to oppose tech and the tech buldozes anyway, like a evil monster.

How are they "far worse"? Steam trains are noisy, polluting, require tons of coal, kill animals and people in their way, and crash fairly regularly (when built with 1800s technology). A data center is a big grey box that sits there humming quietly, and that's it. They do require power and lots of it, but unlikely steam engines they'll happily use solar, nuclear or anything else.

You're comparing steam trains in practice to datacentres in theory. To give one example: the US federal government is suspending all sorts of environmental regulations relating to pollution, just for datacentres: why would they do that if datacentres ran on clean solar or nuclear?