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Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

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Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#221

Post by mike_hearn »

ajross wrote: post #94
tptacek wrote: post #65

The Erin Brockovich page itself repeats the canard, on the front page, that these sites endanger ecosystems with their water consumption.

I mean, the wastewater issues can be real in some environments. It's not a completely insane idea and like all things can be reasonably discussed and mitigated. It's not like these things have the ecological impact of steel foundries or fruit orchards, but they're not parks either. I do think the tech industry would be wise to do more outreach and less sneering, though. Freakouts about AI (which ultimately is what th…

If it's not rational it's not reasonable. The two words are more or less synonyms, unless you're using the word reasonable to mean something like "not uncommon".

AI does have clear tangible benefits everyone can see and understand! That's why ChatGPT has 800M+ actives! Those people aren't just experimenting anymore, they're getting real value. I myself ask models questions about all kinds of things many times per day, it's entirely replaced search engines for me. It's much more immediately useful than something like aviation which created a lot of noise and risk (objects falling out of the sky!) yet took many decades to become available at a price point ordinary people could afford.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#222

Post by mike_hearn »

ralph84 wrote: post #54
AuthAuth wrote: post #43

This datacenter stuff is such populist brainrot.

Big Tech isn't exactly doing a great job of marketing them. Saying they're for AI while doing mass layoffs attributed to AI isn't a winning message.

That's like saying Big Industry didn't do a good job of marketing factories in the industrial revolution. Datacenters aren't meant to be directly marketed. The benefits accrues to those who purchase the resulting services, and the marketing is for those services.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#223

Post by mike_hearn »

tjmc wrote: post #99
didgetmaster wrote: post #69

What makes a data center an 'AI data center' vs other kinds? I am sure that certain workloads are better suited for a particular server rack vs another; but can't a data center built for other computing needs also do AI and vice-versa?

Data center mech eng here - from our perspective it's higher rack densities typically due to GPUs. It's certainly possible to have high densities due to CPUs as well but I've seen a significant spike in rack densities in the last couple of years which has caused a switch from air cooling to liquid to chip. One side effect of higher density is less footprint on the building to exhaust the heat, which is one reason (th…

It is a nightmare for sparkies! See Meta's creative solution:

https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/pull/132936/changes#diff-...

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#224

Post by coldtea »

tiffanyh wrote: post #21

Why go through the effort when such work has already been done? https://www.datacentermap.com/datacenters/ Not being negative. But isn’t there existing highly reliable data that already exists for this?

This is about " major AI-focused and hyperscale data centers running AI workloads". Not any random one.

It also accepts user reporting of new developments, breaks them down in several categories (tracking proposed, operational, under construction, etc).

And eventually it can also track more information about them, specific to their cases (amount of water and energy used, pollution reports, etc). E.g. it has information like "1.2 GW AI factory broke ground May 12, 2026 at Eastgate Commerce Center (Little Blue Pkwy & MO-78). 400 acres, up to 10 buildings. ~1,200 construction jobs / ~130 full-time. Multi-billion-dollar investment; $150bn taxable industrial development revenue bonds secured." for some.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#225

Post by amscanne »

petre wrote: post #151
fc417fc802 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the entire situation is quite confusing because in addition to spanning a wide range of geographies and local utility situations there's also a wide variance in the care taken by the different players. For example I was surprised to learn of a recent ~300 MW buildout with entirely closed loop cooling (I had erroneously believed all cooling at that scale to be evaporative). Meanwhile we've got whatever x…

The heat has to go somewhere and that is the environment. 300 MWh is enough energy to boil over 3k metric tons of water. That's 107 medium fuel trucks for perspective.

This seemed high to me.

According to Google, one ton of water takes about 730kWh to boil. So I think you’re off by an order of magnitude, it’s only ~450 metric tons.

(But this assumes that no heat is radiated away in other forms.)

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#226

Post by zozbot234 »

tjmc wrote: post #99
didgetmaster wrote: post #69

What makes a data center an 'AI data center' vs other kinds? I am sure that certain workloads are better suited for a particular server rack vs another; but can't a data center built for other computing needs also do AI and vice-versa?

Data center mech eng here - from our perspective it's higher rack densities typically due to GPUs. It's certainly possible to have high densities due to CPUs as well but I've seen a significant spike in rack densities in the last couple of years which has caused a switch from air cooling to liquid to chip. One side effect of higher density is less footprint on the building to exhaust the heat, which is one reason (th…

Isn't that just HPC?

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#227

Post by slavik81 »

hunterpayne wrote: post #165
pesus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the issue is the "reassurance" is identical to propaganda and manipulation. It definitely doesn't help that the companies having to "reassure" people have aligned themselves with so many others that have been pushing propaganda to manipulate others for some time now. Nor does it help that many of the same companies that need to "reassure" people are also actively doing the opposite - see the billboards bragging…

I think the marketing about not hiring humans is mostly what it is. There are also foreign entities actively spreading propaganda. But their claims are so wildly insane they get shot down pretty quickly. So it isn't just about messaging. It is about not being hated. If they hate you, the truth doesn't really matter.

I keep thinking back to that e-card, "once you hate someone, everything they do is offensive."

I don't think tech companies appreciate the extent to which they used to get the benefit of the doubt just because people liked them.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#228

Post by howLongHowLong »

mike_hearn wrote: post #220
SilverElfin wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a canard? In Florida a data center drew water in an unauthorized way and the surrounding community had issues with brown water and had to go into water rationing. Even if datacenters are highly efficient, if the water supply is strained, you can pollute people’s supply by drawing wells down too far and things like that.

There are lots of nonsensical stories like this circulating on social media right now. Water draw for datacenters can't turn tap water brown. That's a supply or piping issue.

https://hellawater.com/why-is-my-water-brown-causes-solution... Here's one link amongst many a quick Google search that explains how low system pressure from increased demand can cause discolored water. (Check out the section on municipal water supply disruptions) I live in new orleans and entire neighborhoods need to boil water in periods of high demand.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#229

Post by thinking_cactus »

hunterpayne wrote: post #155
petre wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heat has to go somewhere and that is the environment. 300 MWh is enough energy to boil over 3k metric tons of water. That's 107 medium fuel trucks for perspective.

Luckily AI data centers produce nowhere near that amount of heat. Remember the heat is waste and 300 MWh is the total draw. Some of that energy becomes heat. That ratio is somewhere like 100:1 though. Also, the waste water is only like 10F hotter than the intake. We build GW sized PP all the time and they will leak far more heat (as like on the order of 100x) than a 300 MWh AI data center. Thought there were supposed…

Also powerplants are quite (relatively) efficient in terms of heat-to-energy output, often >50% afair. So a 1GW power plant will generate something like 2GW of heat (or less), not 30GW.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#230

Post by IshKebab »

runtime_terror wrote: post #116
thiagoperes wrote: post #49

It's poetically beautiful that the tool was very very clearly built mostly if not entirely using AI

I'm curious peoples criteria to determine this or is it just "vibes"? Like I get it looks a lot like apps built with AI but weren't LLMs trained on real website and a metric ton of website templates? Is it possible they used a template or other UI library?

They're heuristics but yes there are some clear tells. For prose, Wikipedia has a great list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

For code, I haven't read as much slop so I'm not as sure but one big tell is an unusual number of basic & unnecessary comments. And if it's version controlled, hilariously long commit messages with multiple sections.

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