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Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure
- ares623 2mo agoWho cares about pressure when you can now receive enough compensation to never worry about getting re-elected ever again. You can even fuck off to some safe haven country to live the rest of your life in peace and comfort.
- lardosaurusrex 2mo agostill isn't gonna stop people from releasing the massive built-up stress and obliterating anything these morons have attempted to build. if they weren't concerned then "hawaiian bunkers" wouldnt even be in society's vernacular. if any rich people get caught in the crossfire at this point then that's on them but society has made it pretty clear that this is not an "if" situation and more a "when" one.
- deepsun 2mo agoWhat I see today public will reelect anyway. So no worries about that either.
- ath3nd 2mo ago[dead]
- lazzlazzlazz 2mo ago[flagged]
- derwiki 2mo agoWho are the interest groups you’re referring to?
- jerrythegerbil 2mo agoA datacenter was built a couple hundred feet from my apartment complex around 2013-2014. Absolutely none of your comment would have even remotely held true at the time, and my family moved away as a direct result. Assuming positive intent, what’s different nowadays that makes it all different? It would actually make me pretty happy to hear about the incredible leaps and bounds that’ve been taken.
- Sabinus 2mo agoWhat did the nearby datacentre do that made you move?
- nfRfqX5n 2mo agoour energy bills went up 30% YOY and we are nowhere near a data center. It’s easy to see why people don’t like this
- happyopossum 2mo ago-> and we are nowhere near a data center. Please square that with a rational argument against data centers then?
- matteoraso 2mo agoThen it sounds like your energy bill wasn't because of a data centre.
- m0llusk 2mo agoSimilar to the trajectory of nuclear power which lost public approval for reasons that are not entirely rational.
- onaclov2000 2mo agoI have been half wondering if it gets bad enough will people be willing to support nuclear power again.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoGen Alpha or whatever the latest rising adults are called might. They are too young to remember any of the disasters
- phil21 2mo agoAll… three of them if you really try hard? Really only two qualify as disasters to me. Three Mile Island wasn’t great, but certainly not a disaster on any level I can figure.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoYeah Chernobyl was the only really bad one. Windscale was bad also but that was a long time ago and not a power reactor. Neither reactor design is anything anyone would try to run today. Edit: Well, RBMKs are still running in Russia but with significant safety upgrades.
- jamesfinlayson 2mo ago> It's incredible how much traction the completely fabricated anti-data center propaganda has gotten Agreed - here in Australia one of the big TV networks was heavily advertising a story last week about the big bad data centres coming to suburbia. You can be critical of Australia's local governments all you want, but at least in the big cities, no one is going without water or power for any appreciable amount of time due to data centres or anything else.
- protocolture 2mo agoI have been sending more letters to the editor and politicians than ever before. A senator down south has been repeating the noise concern trolling from the USA, but wont even go to his local DC <3 minutes from his office to have a listen. I saw someone defend the noise complaints by saying "Oh but we are getting one of those gas turbine ones" and when I looked at the project it was being built really far away from habitation to take advantage/mutually invest in Gas and Renewable power nearby. (The gas being used as a method to fill a pumped hydro project). Both power sources were approved before the DC. You just cant win. The stupid is the product. It really is just a case of opportunistic politicians feeding the mob.
- fleventynine 2mo agoI think there's room for win-win solutions here; the cost of placating the locals is a rounding error compared to the cost of these data centers. 1. Local governments can require that if the data center peak load is 1.0GW, they must provision transmission and generation capacity for the local region of 1.2GW; the extra power can be given to the neighbors at substantial discount. 2. Construct a public swimming complex nearby, heated with waste data center heat. 3. Local governments can enforce strict limits on environmental noise at the property boundary. I've personally stood right next to a 150MW-class datacenter and experienced sound levels less than traffic from a typical suburban 4-lane street; making the datacenter quieter than any other industrial use is a choice the builder can make if they have the right incentives. Setup directional microphones around the perimeter, and fine them $25,000 per minute per dB above the agreed threshold. Distribute the fines to the neighbors. Failure to pay promptly means the sheriff shuts down the power. All of these options are far cheaper than launching the data center into space...
- wahern 2mo ago[flagged]
- dozerly 2mo agoSpoken like someone that will not have a data center built near them at their expense in the near future
- phil21 2mo agoLiterally have lived within 1500 feet of a datacenter. Zero of my my non techie friends ever knew. It’s a non-issue. It’s like complaining about a vacant but well maintained warehouse next door. If you mean living next door to a power plant? Absolutely. But that is a different topic.
- dozerly 2mo agoWell, because of lack of infrastructure a lot of these data centers are power plants as well, and will continue to be without larger scale buildout of energy infrastructure. It’s not a non-issue right now.
- jmclnx 2mo agoAll the data centers do is: 1. use all the water 2. Increase electric costs but a large amount 3. Increase noise in the neighborhood If the above was false, no one would care. Plus these data centers provides almost no jobs, so there is no benefit to the community. Granted there is more tax revenue, but the people paying taxes do not see their tax burden go down. So the wonder why ??
- consensus1 2mo agoAll of the above are false, except for 3 which has actually happened in a few cases, though is definitely the outlier as I have been near data centers and couldn't hear a thing. And they provide a lot more jobs than the 0 jobs that were provided by the undeveloped land they are built on.
- ninkendo 2mo agoI wonder what fallacy you’re going to use to justify GPU-heavy data centers using zero water: are you going to take the “they’re closed loop” path, and conveniently ignore that they need to be continually topped off, and that effectively makes them open loop anyway (or that they heat exchange with a separate loop that is evaporated?) Or maybe you’ll just say “sure the water evaporates, but it’ll rain down somewhere so it’s still zero” ignoring that the water is taken from a place it’s needed (a municipality) to a place it’s not (the ocean)? Or maybe you’ll point to some extremely rare designs that don’t continually consume water, and pretend they’re representative of all of them (when the number of truly closed loop data centers effectively rounds to zero.) I eagerly await your response.
- JimsonYang 2mo agoI mean Michigan really loves it when something gives jobs, so as long as the data center actually enacts on it then I suspect opposition will go away That said, we've seen data center projects often employ much less jobs than expected. I know Core Scientific when they did a data center in like Texas they employed like 10 people not 200
- JimsonYang 2mo ago*upate I just realized this is Saline, next to Ann Arbor and had a lot of student activism to push back against the data centre project like last year So imo I dont think the article truly represents the opinions and thoughts of most michiganders
- everdrive 2mo agoPopulism is on the rise, and nearly everyone is discontent. The discontent has gotten so out of hand that much of it is quite ridiculous, but it's serious enough that it must be dealt with. Given the past 20 years, I expect politicians to completely fumble this easy layup and find ways to force data centers anyhow.
- jrowen 2mo agoEveryone may be discontent (which might be a baseline feature of the human experience for many), but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it? Compared to the activism of the 60s and 70s, where so many people seemed willing to put their entire lives on hold for the cause, the fact that there is no major populist uprising against the dismantling of the institution of the presidency leads me to believe there is a threshold of contentment afforded by modern technology and QoL. In either case it is about populism though. Hopping on a bus to California to protest was a cool thing to do. Somehow this data center thing happened to catch on and become a lever people felt they could move with mere outrage, even if it does seem pretty misguided.
- sseagull 2mo ago> but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it? They did. They elected Trump. > no major populist uprising against the dismantling of the institution of the presidency Some people view the president as the only directly-elected person powerful enough to fight for them in dismantling the rest of a government that isn't working (or even actively working against them). So they implicitly want a strong president. This only goes as far as the president agrees with them of course.
- jrowen 2mo ago> They did. They elected Trump. I would say that speaks more to apathy than activism. > Some people view the president as the only directly-elected person powerful enough to fight for them in dismantling the rest of a government that isn't working I think consciously verbalizing a position even that nuanced and esoteric is niche, but there is certainly something to be said for peoples' susceptibility to a type of "strong" cult leader.
- dehrmann 2mo agoPeople are actually angry about inflation and a sense of a stagnant labor market. Data centers and AI play into both those fears.
- jrowen 2mo agoSadly if they were smart they would push for UBI rather than jobs or stopping data centers. Zero-sum scarcity mentality needs to end. Don't push back on prosperity. Push to have those gains distributed more evenly. Push for a ridiculous tax on data centers that goes directly to the local economy. If they don't buy it then it's the same result as blocking them on vibes.
- happytoexplain 2mo agoUBI is a distraction. Of course it would help, but it's not a solution. Nobody is going to accept "here's how you filthy masses can be miserable instead of very miserable" as an acceptable compromise. Calling people stupid for not accepting it is telling, and disconnected. Americans in particular will accept violence first (demonstrably), and this is in fact one of the defining virtues of Americans (yes, violence in the face of the imposition of misery by the wealthy is a virtue - not all cultures exhibit this virtue).
- jrowen 2mo ago> UBI is a distraction. Of course it would help, but it's not a solution. Nobody is going to accept "here's how you filthy masses can be miserable instead of very miserable" as an acceptable compromise. I don't understand this. It's the endgame. Compromise for what? Working an invented job they don't actually want to work? What is your idea of a solution that combats misery better than a free paycheck? People are confused into voting against their own interests all the time. Socialism is a bogeyman but Social Security is great (if UBI is too odious just call it lowering the social security age). I'm to be seen as "you filthy masses" guy when you seem to be advocating some form of mass violence? You could actually, just, exercise democracy to redistribute the wealth. I daresay that would be smarter.
- duxup 2mo agoWe’ve been visiting data centers for decades… now it appears to be a hot potato. It’s a bit surreal.
- kingstnap 2mo agoI really don't think it has anything to do with the datacenters as a building. It's more that AI has been kinda poison pilled in the minds of the people in terms of the negative emotions they feel regarding: * Billionaires * Job Loss * AI slop floods Ultimately they feel the need to be activists and they do so by being NIMBYs because you can have a ton of influence in municipal politics.
- TheAceOfHearts 2mo agoThere is a weird sense of entitlement that AI data centers should be allowed to get built anywhere, but I don't think the positive case has been made that it's actually that much of a net positive in many locations. The US is massive and if AI data centers are such a positive boon then it should be easy to find a place where they're actually welcome. Unlike traditional data centers where latency might be relevant, most AI data centers aren't latency sensitive so the default plan should be to build them far from major population centers. Just buy up a massive chunk of empty land in the middle of nowhere and drop all the data centers there. There is some misinformation around resource usage, but most data center constructions aren't being fully candid and transparent with their expected resource usage either. I think the key issue is that many major constructions haven't built any trust with local communities nor have they listened to people's concerns, but they feel entitled to force through their projects anyway. If you think that these AI data centers are great and incredibly beneficial, go advocate for your local government to bring construction to wherever it is that you live. Let people sort themselves out based on their interests.