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In Virginia, Data Centers Collide with Zero-Carbon Goals

6 points by EA-3167 2y ago

tssva 2y ago
I find it interesting that the need for new transmission lines was mentioned as almost a throw away when this has been a large cause for the growing local resistance to data centers in VA. A key reason for the rejection of the data center project mentioned in the article was that it would require installation of new transmission lines. The approved smaller size reduces the requirement for new transmission lines.
dopylitty 2y ago
Nobody ever asks if these data centers are actually providing any value to society. There's just this assumption that ever growing compute capacity is a good thing. Then you get into this sort of induced demand situation where more compute capacity exists so people feel like they can use ever more compute capacity for increasingly pointless things. But it's time we look at each and every workload and decide if it's really worth increasing our energy and water usage as well as devastating our land for it to be possible. Modeling proteins for healthcare? Sure. Generating useless multimedia content that nobody will ever look at? Probably not. Training yet another glorified autocorrect? Definitely not. People think when they hoard data in ~the cloud~ or waste enormous amounts of resources on things like LLM training there's no harm but it has real impacts.
- vlan0 2y ago
  >Nobody ever asks if these data centers are actually providing any value to society. Please, do not spot with data centers. It is an element of our consumer based economy. We should ask why for many things we consume in our life. Data centers are just a byproduct of this consumption.
- hulitu 2y ago
  > Nobody ever asks if these data centers are actually providing any value to society To society, maybe no, but to CIA/NSA (Virginia) for sure.
Grimeton 2y ago
Well that took a while... Wait till people figure out that we can do a lot of the stuff with way less power when moving away from x86. Can't wait for that revolution to happen.
threeio 2y ago
"DATA CENTERS and Virginia have been hand in glove for almost three decades, since companies like MAE-East, Equinix and AOL built some of the earliest modern facilities" Companies like MAE-East triggers me so much...

6 points by EA-3167 2y ago

I find it interesting that the need for new transmission lines was mentioned as almost a throw away when this has been a large cause for the growing local resistance to data centers in VA. A key reason for the rejection of the data center project mentioned in the article was that it would require installation of new transmission lines. The approved smaller size reduces the requirement for new transmission lines.

dopylitty 2y ago

Nobody ever asks if these data centers are actually providing any value to society. There's just this assumption that ever growing compute capacity is a good thing. Then you get into this sort of induced demand situation where more compute capacity exists so people feel like they can use ever more compute capacity for increasingly pointless things. But it's time we look at each and every workload and decide if it's really worth increasing our energy and water usage as well as devastating our land for it to be possible. Modeling proteins for healthcare? Sure. Generating useless multimedia content that nobody will ever look at? Probably not. Training yet another glorified autocorrect? Definitely not. People think when they hoard data in ~the cloud~ or waste enormous amounts of resources on things like LLM training there's no harm but it has real impacts.

vlan0 2y ago
>Nobody ever asks if these data centers are actually providing any value to society. Please, do not spot with data centers. It is an element of our consumer based economy. We should ask why for many things we consume in our life. Data centers are just a byproduct of this consumption.
hulitu 2y ago
> Nobody ever asks if these data centers are actually providing any value to society To society, maybe no, but to CIA/NSA (Virginia) for sure.

Grimeton 2y ago

Well that took a while... Wait till people figure out that we can do a lot of the stuff with way less power when moving away from x86. Can't wait for that revolution to happen.

threeio 2y ago

"DATA CENTERS and Virginia have been hand in glove for almost three decades, since companies like MAE-East, Equinix and AOL built some of the earliest modern facilities" Companies like MAE-East triggers me so much...