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Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

theregister.com

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Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#51

Post by a_paddy »

henry2023 wrote: post #37
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What fraction of Irish GDP is linked to datacenters? If I remember correctly from the pre-AI world, datacenters were at the heart of Dublin's industrial strategy, and they were credibly linked to a double-digit fraction of production.

Even in the hypothetical that datacenters would double Ireland’s GDP what real positive impact would it have if they pay zero taxes?

They do pay tax, 12.5%. Plus employment during construction and maintenance. There's also ancillary investment in national infrastructure such as Google's CO2 battery

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#52

Post by lemmox »

j45 wrote: post #40

Canada seems better positioned for datacenters since they can power them locally with a multitude of options and not impact the local grid.

FB just put shovels in the ground on a datacenter in Alberta. Bringing a new nat gas plant online nearby but it's a little quicker to bring the DC on than the plant.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#53

Post by naturalmovement »

infinite_spin wrote: post #38
hackerSkoolRoot wrote: post #27

Are we allowed post masto links? I'm an Irish techie. I shot a video about this. Sorry about the camera shake: https://mastodon.ie/@handi/116900076149521593

> Dump #datacenters - they are not critical Internet infrastructure! what is the alternative? I don't think self hosting is a robust/defensible option for a majority of internet services

Maybe we ought to take away society's Spotify etc. and go back to trading cassettes.

I predict it will last all of two days.

You see the mentally ill chaos unfold within hours when DNS or a CDN goes down. Imagine taking their datacenter-dependent toys away for more than a day.

How will they navigate job interviews (in between datacenter protests) without relying on ChatGPT to feed them answers?

Sounds like a circular dependency to me.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#54

Post by peab »

fabian2k wrote: post #14
thegrim33 wrote: post #2

They chose to add the word "guzzle". They could have just written "Irish datacenters now use 23% of the country's electricity". But they made the editorial decision to add in "guzzle". What's the word for this type of propaganda, where they add in some sort of adjective that wasn't needed, in order to prime the reader on how to think/feel, rather than just objectively reporting the facts? What are the odds that the c…

Journalism is allowed to have an opinion, that doesn't make it propaganda.

there's an unnatural amount of doomerism against datacenters, of exactly this kind. It's pretty obviously astroturfed.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#55

Post by infinite_spin »

stefan_ wrote: post #36
alephnerd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not misappropriation. Other countries within the EU could be much more business incorporation and FDI friendly, and IDA Ireland tends to be one of the more competent trade promotion agencies within the EU. Why should Ireland undermine 13% of it's GDP [0]? Edit: can't reply > Telling American multinationals you will have them pay 0 tax isn't exactly a "tax policy" as such Ireland's corporate tax rate is 12.5% but…

Telling American multinationals you will have them pay 0 tax isn't exactly a "tax policy" as such.

A parking structure owned by a shopping center might offer free parking in order to drive business goals. That's as much a policy as it would be if they were to charge a fee.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#56

Post by spwa4 »

infinite_spin wrote: post #38
hackerSkoolRoot wrote: post #27

Are we allowed post masto links? I'm an Irish techie. I shot a video about this. Sorry about the camera shake: https://mastodon.ie/@handi/116900076149521593

> Dump #datacenters - they are not critical Internet infrastructure! what is the alternative? I don't think self hosting is a robust/defensible option for a majority of internet services

Nobody hosts datacenters in Ireland because of capacity reasons. It's not a good location for power, people or connectivity. They host them there for tax reasons. You can bet your firstborn these datacenters are only the exact size that is the minimum allowed by tax law, not a square millimeter more.

Yes, datacenters are critical internet infrastructure. But in Ireland they're more like a sailing ship with the sails mounted underwater, because that's cheaper for tax reasons.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#57

Post by teamonkey »

illwrks wrote: post #7

A few years ago I was reading a recruitment report and was surprised to learn that Ireland is a large source of data scientists, so it’s no surprise really

I don’t really see the link between data scientists and datacentres, or even AI researchers and datacentres.

The data scientists aren’t the ones working in the data centres. There’s no real advantage to having the data they’re working on next door unless it’s extremely lag sensitive.

Local proximity of a datacentre is good for fintech, Netflix and gaming servers.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#59

Post by kridsdale3 »

peab wrote: post #54
fabian2k wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalism is allowed to have an opinion, that doesn't make it propaganda.

there's an unnatural amount of doomerism against datacenters, of exactly this kind. It's pretty obviously astroturfed.

In case you didn't know, The Register has been deliberately using this kind of language about ALL topics for nearly 30 years. It's part of their appeal and brand, like The Onion. People choose to read The Register because they have this adversarial stance and humorous tone about tech.
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