To stop assholes from bombing them
Give me example where datacenter is bombed in the US?
There was a guy who planned to bomb us-east-1. Someone reported it and the feds gave him a fake device.
If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
101–110 of 133 posts
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#102I'm as big of a skeptic on these AI companies and question deeply the long term value of data center buildout as a land use policy in the communities where they're being built. But: > So let me ask the question directly: if AI data centers are such a tremendous benefit to communities, why are so many of them being built without meaningful community input? Because of this (emphasis mine): > They’re watching their util…
Can you say with absolute certainty that sick animals and long term impacts on their health are not caused by data centers? Certainly we have long list of examples where industrial activity contaminated areas with little oversight and it did kill animals and cause long-term impacts on health. I think you're saying that data centers do not pollute in a way that would cause sick animals or long-term impacts on health,…
So this might be controversial and I'm unable to phrase it better, but you can't always engage in good faith to address claims when the claimant themselves are incapable of engaging in good faith to make them.
I could be convinced on negative environmental impact of data centers in a few ways. I could believe there's additional strain on water purification infrastructure if the open loop cooling systems are using additives and creating additional volume of water that existing treatment plants weren't designed to handle. I could believe that additional power demand and on-site generators using fossil fuels could create pollution where it didn't exist before. I could believe that in a rush to build quicker, construction crews take shortcuts.
Basically all industrial activity on this planet creates waste that can harm people. That's why we create zones for it away from residences, and why land closer to it is cheaper.
This is all stuff you can engage with good faith. The problem is these are not the claims that the crazy people are making, and not the ones it sounds like the author of TFA is bothering to investigate. There's a large group of people that will believe "thing bad, thing hurt" with zero evidence besides vibes, and you can't meet with psychosis on shared ground.
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many technicians? And from where? Its unclear to me how often this stuff actually needs to be done. And how resilient the overall system is to failure. Is it imperative to swap out one point of failure immediately or can you let them batch up and send Joe from California out qaurterly?
Technicians are constantly behind in work. Many data centers are pulling 24/7/365 shifts to keep up with demand. Larger data centers have hundreds of full time employees. Yes many servers are left in fail over states for long periods of time, but that can only be done because new capacity is actively being deployed to make up for that fail over. Modern data centers are far too big for a single person to be repairing…
100-200 FTE's per data center by one estimate.
I have let's say 17 data centers being built in my town. 1700 jobs is not enough according to the people in opposition. The real number is likely higher, and my town is under 30k people.
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#104What is the advantage to not keeping them a secret? The populist movement against AI is growing rapidly, and is supported by bunk science which affirms people's pre-existing biases (like the idea that data centers suck up all the water in a community, or raise the ambient temperature by a single-double digit number of degrees F). AI is a genuine source of economic growth. I can understand wanting to curtail it, but i…
more money to other countries who don't allow protesting or even complaining about data centers,
The point of living in a rich country is that you don't lower your standards to shit holes with corrupt governments...
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#105The conflation of concerns and synechdochal arguments are a wonder to behold.
So many people flailing around to justify their feelings rather than thinking rationally.
Goes both sides. Anyone who works in tech is immediately circumspect when they defend AI data centers.
Hell I will always side with locals WHO ACTUALLY LIVE THERE than IT workers in their Google cubicles lmao. Ofcourse America in it's dystopian wisdom is now making corporations vote...
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US has deindustrialized and since the rise of NIMBY politics hasn't built new industry in any scale at all. The first freeway revolts happened in 1959. In the meantime, basically everyone has agreed that industrial growth and manufacturing as an abstract concept is Good (TM) but definitely not in my backyard. For a long time these kinds of things were just being built in neighborhoods where the residents were too…
I think it's good to remind people that the industrial revolution was very close to never happening. This is from Dud Dudley writing in 1665, whose own ventures to manufacture steel en masse before Abraham Darby succeeded. > "I have been opposed by many adversaries, as by wood colliers, mine owners, and others who, being poor men, did, by misguided advice, throw down and destroy two of my furnaces and my works, and c…
Fascinating quote and good point.
It should also be remembered that while the industrial revolution netted humanity enormous wealth and eventually a higher average standard of living, it also kinda sucked for the generations of working class living through it, prior to labor reform. Millions of people lived entire lives where the industrial revolution was nothing but bad for them and never saw the upside. So anybody opposing a new industrial revolution is not necessarily acting out of irrationality.
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you say with absolute certainty that sick animals and long term impacts on their health are not caused by data centers? Certainly we have long list of examples where industrial activity contaminated areas with little oversight and it did kill animals and cause long-term impacts on health. I think you're saying that data centers do not pollute in a way that would cause sick animals or long-term impacts on health,…
So this might be controversial and I'm unable to phrase it better, but you can't always engage in good faith to address claims when the claimant themselves are incapable of engaging in good faith to make them. I could be convinced on negative environmental impact of data centers in a few ways. I could believe there's additional strain on water purification infrastructure if the open loop cooling systems are using add…
As you wrote it, it really reads as "everybody who says datacenters have health impacts is a crackpot" but I think your intent was "some people who say datacenters have health impacts are crackpots".
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
compared to almond farms ? You phrase that as if almond farms use a reasonable amount of water.
Present your own data
Not OP, but here's a link from one of the previous times this was discussed.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts...
Almond farming uses massive amounts of water, which has caused environmental impact concerns in the past.
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's good to remind people that the industrial revolution was very close to never happening. This is from Dud Dudley writing in 1665, whose own ventures to manufacture steel en masse before Abraham Darby succeeded. > "I have been opposed by many adversaries, as by wood colliers, mine owners, and others who, being poor men, did, by misguided advice, throw down and destroy two of my furnaces and my works, and c…
Fascinating quote and good point. It should also be remembered that while the industrial revolution netted humanity enormous wealth and eventually a higher average standard of living, it also kinda sucked for the generations of working class living through it, prior to labor reform. Millions of people lived entire lives where the industrial revolution was nothing but bad for them and never saw the upside. So anybody…
Kind of. I think the history is interesting here and complex.
One of the hard things to grasp is that the industrial revolution was preceded by an environmental collapse. Part of the reason there was a switch to coal (despite being seen as inferior to wood at the time) was massive depletion of wood in England and the high cost of importing not just timber but even just firewood.
Add this in to the enormously expensive wars England was fighting all through this period and stressed everything from labor and food supplies (which also triggered demand for steel and copper and brass) The industrial revolution happened against a backdrop of national crisis so it's hard to know what was being caused by the revolution and what the revolution was helping paper over.
And on top of this, when Engels and Marx wrote about the squalor and desperation of their time (which was very real), nearly a hundred years had passed and something much different was happening. Massive amounts of peasantry were being dispossessed of lands and forced into urban slums. Cities grew something like 10x in a single generation. This wasn't really the fault of the industrial revolution but because of really bad policy.
(BTW, this period in England when wages and quality of life backslid is now called "Engels' Pause" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engels%27_pause)
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#110What is the advantage to not keeping them a secret? The populist movement against AI is growing rapidly, and is supported by bunk science which affirms people's pre-existing biases (like the idea that data centers suck up all the water in a community, or raise the ambient temperature by a single-double digit number of degrees F). AI is a genuine source of economic growth. I can understand wanting to curtail it, but i…
> I can understand wanting to curtail it, but in return you are getting fewer jobs,
since AI -- as designed to be deployed -- is taking away jobs, then by enabling data centers you are in fact getting fewer jobs
yours is the same perverse argument that was used to build Walmart Supercenters (lower prices! they'll create jobs!) which literally destroyed the economy of many small towns and communities, and paved the way for every other big box retailer to do the same
so don't be surprised that people aren't eager to enable something that is designed to destroy their livelihood