5 ms·

Datacenters need cheap energy, something no region in Europe is having in abundance (except maybe Norway, Sweden, and Finland). I don't think Lombardy was seein

Datacenters need cheap energy, something no region in Europe is having in abundance (except maybe Norway, Sweden, and Finland). I don't think Lombardy was seeing too much DC construction. It's just typical green politics. Forever backwards. Sure, people feel somewhat AI-fatigued, but blocking the future won't play out nicely for Italy or Europe in general.

utopiah 4mo ago
[flagged]
- perks_12 4mo ago
  AI is front and center of any new digital product these days. More and more tedious tasks are automated using agents, even in small businesses. Assuming Europe won't invest in datacenters, eventually it will find itself in a position where it is completely dependent on US and Chinese companies providing the core to such solutions to them. This will eventually lead to a situation where more and more value creation will flow towards these economies.
  - jjj123 4mo ago
    But in this case what does a country lose by blocking any and all data centers in its borders? A few ms latency?
    - perks_12 4mo ago
      You are assuming friendly and equal terms for all customers. What if Trump decides there should be 50% tariffs on tokens? Or what if certain use cases get blocked by OpenAI because they do not fit their worldview? Is it clever to implement AI in every step of the economy without the ability to self-host?
rvz 4mo ago
> But blocking the future won't play out nicely for Italy or Europe in general. Maybe find scalable alternatives or software optimizations that do not require the worlds energy or building even more data centers everywhere and further burning up the planet?
bigmadshoe 4mo ago
[flagged]
- perks_12 4mo ago
  We do. But currently we are choosing the Luddite way of doing things. Simply ignoring this fantastic technology is not a choice but economic suicide.
  - _vertigo 4mo ago
    Interesting — so in your opinion every country must build out datacenters or be left behind?
    - vessenes 4mo ago
      I'm not the original commenter, but I do think this is true, so I'll bite. Datacenters process data, but they do it in a particular location, and therefore are subject to local and national laws. It would be folly for a government to decide that some other country's laws and enforcement standards should be applied in absentia. Whether you love the singularity or hate it, you should whole-heartedly be advocating to have whatever datacenter your country will use be built on shore. In fact, you should also be whole-heartedly advocating for local frontier models / or at least locally managed open weights models for the same reason. But the datacenter is easy. Just build them. Your fellow citizens will use them. Why send all their data to some other country that might be a strategic adversary?
    - dukeyukey 4mo ago
      To a point, yes. Otherwise you are at the mercy of whoever's compute you use.
  - vrganj 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - perks_12 4mo ago
josefritzishere 4mo ago
Pretty sure blocking it will work perfectly.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
r_lee 4mo ago
wow, I'm so excited for this "future" where everyone is laid off and miserable
- perks_12 4mo ago
  The way I see it, we hit a ceiling with the capabilities of AI. Singularity will most likely not happen (not with the resource hunger of current methods). What remains are incredible tools to help remove the most tedious tasks from everyone's work.
  - HelloMcFly 4mo ago
    Which leaves us with plenty of time to take a stroll in our drought-stricken nearby park. What fun we'll have reading the placards of all of the species that used to exist in the nearby creek. Or if we're above wet bulb climate conditions again, we just watch the newest algorithm invent stories for us built on the uncredited labor of real artists.
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 4mo ago
  it's happening whether you like it or not.
qalmakka 4mo ago
As an Italian, I second that this is clearly a populist manoeuvre. Nobody in their sound mind would ever build a big datacentre in Northern Italy, the energy costs are way too expensive. There is no untapped hydro power available, fossil fuel is obviously always going to be more expensive than elsewhere, no nuclear power and you can't roll in a massive solar array with batteries due to how cramped the Po Valley already is. It would ironically make more sense to build it in Southern Italy, where once the political issues are sorted out, the access to wind and solar power are way easier and there are a lot of underdeveloped areas. But yes, in general Italy (or Europe, maybe except France or Northern Europe with hydro power) isn't the best place to build data centres. > blocking the future won't play out nicely for Italy or Europe in general. I think you're somewhat misunderstanding how things in Italy have been working for the better part of the last 2 decades. I am 95% certain that this measure was passed *precisely* because it had zero concrete political downsides. Italian political culture thrives in draconian or purely populist measures that end up being absolutely irrelevant or unenforced (with some terrible miscalculation every once in a blue moon, see the closure of nuclear power plants). You ban something, you get the political clout of doing that, and then nobody actually checks whether the government ever attempted to enforce that law, or that nobody was going to do it in the first place. Trust in me when I say, if building datacentres in Italy were economically sound nobody would have wanted to pass this measure
- napolux 4mo ago
  Just read the article > There are already 33 active data centres in the Milan metropolitan area alone; a further 10 are under construction and 23 under evaluation. Sometimes you will need to do stuff even if energy is not cheap. Come on (I’m italian too)
- bjohnson225 4mo ago
  The European Data Centre Assocation is expecting the highest growth rate in Europe to be in Milan and Madrid. "The selection of tier-2 metropolitan areas shows that overall, they are growing faster than market average. Madrid and Milan are clearly taking the lead and are both able to attract the biggest additional investments. It can safely be said that they are on their way to becoming additional tier-1 locations." https://www.eudca.org/documents/content/ZlZXb4bRSRefaEVqya2I_Aoea https://www.eudca.org/documents/content/ZlZXb4bRSRefaEVqya2I... (downloads a pdf) > Trust in me No, because being Italian doesn't mean you know anything about this. Most Italians think the primary Italian exports are mozzarella and tomatoes.
vrganj 4mo ago
You speak of the future as if it were some certain inevitable thing. The future is what we as humans decide it to be. Many humans don't like this vision of the future, where we burn our planet so as to concentrate even more power in the hands of the super wealthy. This is them shaping their own future.
- joe_mamba 4mo ago
  The future doesn't always care about what the majority wishes since not everything is up for debate, like for instance the creation and deployment of nuclear weapons, or whether your neighbor or allies suddenly decide to invade you.
  - vrganj 4mo ago
    Sure. But what's that got to do with data centers?
    - joe_mamba 4mo ago
      Was your comment on "will of the people" only about data centers or in general?
      - vrganj 4mo ago
        So of course you cannot decide how others will act, but you _can_ decide how you will prepare - that is how the future is shaped. In your examples, that'd be by increasing deterrence. Just like these taxes do.
        joe_mamba 4mo ago
        I don't think these are connected. You only get to have an opinion on data centers because politicians in Italy aren't directly impacted and have no skin in the game(no threats, international pressure, lobbying and bribes aimed their way). But if they did, I assure you your opinion wouldn't be taken into consideration on this matter and would be ignored. Forget nukes, but like if Italians would like a referendum similar to Brexit, on stopping all illegal boat migration coming at them every year, then that opinion wouldn't be given a thought. You DO get a vote on data centers because politicians don't care and it's an easy populist win for them as another commenter here said.
stymaar 4mo ago
> Datacenters need cheap energy, something no region in Europe is having in abundance (except maybe Norway, Sweden, and Finland). I don't think Lombardy was seeing too much DC construction There's a contradiction between your two first sentences…
Tade0 4mo ago
> It's just typical green politics. Forever backwards. I believe it has more to do with preserving the landscape that attracts so many tourists. Solar farms in Italy faced resistance for the same reason. It's not green politics.
monegator 4mo ago
>It's just typical green politics. Forever backwards No. In northern italy alone we have tens of thousands unused warehouse spaces. Let's use that space for datacenters and solar farms instead of destroying forever yet another plot of fertile land. If data centers will also bring nuclear to power them, i'm all for it. But let's be honest: realistically they will be powered by coal, maybe gas. As to why we have so much unused warehouses: some legally have no owner, some have declared bankrupcy and will be leased at absurd prices (it will cost half to build a new one), some were costructed illegaly and all stay there in the limbo because the local administrations would have to pay to reclaim the land
napolux 4mo ago
> I don't think Lombardy was seeing too much DC construction read the article: > Lombardy alone accounted for 63% of the applications submitted throughout Italy. > There are already 33 active data centres in the Milan metropolitan area alone; a further 10 are under construction and 23 under evaluation. > If the Milan hinterland is the most 'targeted' area, an increase in interest is also registered in the other provinces: in the rest of Lombardy there are three already active, plus one under construction and five under evaluation.
swiftcoder 4mo ago
> Datacenters need cheap energy, something no region in Europe is having in abundance (except maybe Norway, Sweden, and Finland) I think you are discounting the speed at which solar is accelerating in southern Europe. Power is already pretty much free during the daytime on the Spanish and Italian grids, and grid-scale battery installations are starting to come online to spread that curve wider.

utopiah 4mo ago

[flagged]

perks_12 4mo ago
AI is front and center of any new digital product these days. More and more tedious tasks are automated using agents, even in small businesses. Assuming Europe won't invest in datacenters, eventually it will find itself in a position where it is completely dependent on US and Chinese companies providing the core to such solutions to them. This will eventually lead to a situation where more and more value creation will flow towards these economies.
- jjj123 4mo ago
  But in this case what does a country lose by blocking any and all data centers in its borders? A few ms latency?
  - perks_12 4mo ago
    You are assuming friendly and equal terms for all customers. What if Trump decides there should be 50% tariffs on tokens? Or what if certain use cases get blocked by OpenAI because they do not fit their worldview? Is it clever to implement AI in every step of the economy without the ability to self-host?

rvz 4mo ago

> But blocking the future won't play out nicely for Italy or Europe in general. Maybe find scalable alternatives or software optimizations that do not require the worlds energy or building even more data centers everywhere and further burning up the planet?

bigmadshoe 4mo ago

[flagged]

perks_12 4mo ago
We do. But currently we are choosing the Luddite way of doing things. Simply ignoring this fantastic technology is not a choice but economic suicide.
- _vertigo 4mo ago
  Interesting — so in your opinion every country must build out datacenters or be left behind?
  - vessenes 4mo ago
    I'm not the original commenter, but I do think this is true, so I'll bite. Datacenters process data, but they do it in a particular location, and therefore are subject to local and national laws. It would be folly for a government to decide that some other country's laws and enforcement standards should be applied in absentia. Whether you love the singularity or hate it, you should whole-heartedly be advocating to have whatever datacenter your country will use be built on shore. In fact, you should also be whole-heartedly advocating for local frontier models / or at least locally managed open weights models for the same reason. But the datacenter is easy. Just build them. Your fellow citizens will use them. Why send all their data to some other country that might be a strategic adversary?
  - dukeyukey 4mo ago
    To a point, yes. Otherwise you are at the mercy of whoever's compute you use.
- vrganj 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - perks_12 4mo ago

josefritzishere 4mo ago

Pretty sure blocking it will work perfectly.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

r_lee 4mo ago

wow, I'm so excited for this "future" where everyone is laid off and miserable

perks_12 4mo ago
The way I see it, we hit a ceiling with the capabilities of AI. Singularity will most likely not happen (not with the resource hunger of current methods). What remains are incredible tools to help remove the most tedious tasks from everyone's work.
- HelloMcFly 4mo ago
  Which leaves us with plenty of time to take a stroll in our drought-stricken nearby park. What fun we'll have reading the placards of all of the species that used to exist in the nearby creek. Or if we're above wet bulb climate conditions again, we just watch the newest algorithm invent stories for us built on the uncredited labor of real artists.
b65e8bee43c2ed0 4mo ago
it's happening whether you like it or not.

qalmakka 4mo ago

As an Italian, I second that this is clearly a populist manoeuvre. Nobody in their sound mind would ever build a big datacentre in Northern Italy, the energy costs are way too expensive. There is no untapped hydro power available, fossil fuel is obviously always going to be more expensive than elsewhere, no nuclear power and you can't roll in a massive solar array with batteries due to how cramped the Po Valley already is. It would ironically make more sense to build it in Southern Italy, where once the political issues are sorted out, the access to wind and solar power are way easier and there are a lot of underdeveloped areas. But yes, in general Italy (or Europe, maybe except France or Northern Europe with hydro power) isn't the best place to build data centres. > blocking the future won't play out nicely for Italy or Europe in general. I think you're somewhat misunderstanding how things in Italy have been working for the better part of the last 2 decades. I am 95% certain that this measure was passed *precisely* because it had zero concrete political downsides. Italian political culture thrives in draconian or purely populist measures that end up being absolutely irrelevant or unenforced (with some terrible miscalculation every once in a blue moon, see the closure of nuclear power plants). You ban something, you get the political clout of doing that, and then nobody actually checks whether the government ever attempted to enforce that law, or that nobody was going to do it in the first place. Trust in me when I say, if building datacentres in Italy were economically sound nobody would have wanted to pass this measure

napolux 4mo ago
Just read the article > There are already 33 active data centres in the Milan metropolitan area alone; a further 10 are under construction and 23 under evaluation. Sometimes you will need to do stuff even if energy is not cheap. Come on (I’m italian too)
bjohnson225 4mo ago
The European Data Centre Assocation is expecting the highest growth rate in Europe to be in Milan and Madrid. "The selection of tier-2 metropolitan areas shows that overall, they are growing faster than market average. Madrid and Milan are clearly taking the lead and are both able to attract the biggest additional investments. It can safely be said that they are on their way to becoming additional tier-1 locations." https://www.eudca.org/documents/content/ZlZXb4bRSRefaEVqya2I_Aoea https://www.eudca.org/documents/content/ZlZXb4bRSRefaEVqya2I... (downloads a pdf) > Trust in me No, because being Italian doesn't mean you know anything about this. Most Italians think the primary Italian exports are mozzarella and tomatoes.

vrganj 4mo ago

You speak of the future as if it were some certain inevitable thing. The future is what we as humans decide it to be. Many humans don't like this vision of the future, where we burn our planet so as to concentrate even more power in the hands of the super wealthy. This is them shaping their own future.

joe_mamba 4mo ago
The future doesn't always care about what the majority wishes since not everything is up for debate, like for instance the creation and deployment of nuclear weapons, or whether your neighbor or allies suddenly decide to invade you.
- vrganj 4mo ago
  Sure. But what's that got to do with data centers?
  - joe_mamba 4mo ago
    Was your comment on "will of the people" only about data centers or in general?
    - vrganj 4mo ago
      So of course you cannot decide how others will act, but you _can_ decide how you will prepare - that is how the future is shaped. In your examples, that'd be by increasing deterrence. Just like these taxes do.
      - joe_mamba 4mo ago
        I don't think these are connected. You only get to have an opinion on data centers because politicians in Italy aren't directly impacted and have no skin in the game(no threats, international pressure, lobbying and bribes aimed their way). But if they did, I assure you your opinion wouldn't be taken into consideration on this matter and would be ignored. Forget nukes, but like if Italians would like a referendum similar to Brexit, on stopping all illegal boat migration coming at them every year, then that opinion wouldn't be given a thought. You DO get a vote on data centers because politicians don't care and it's an easy populist win for them as another commenter here said.

stymaar 4mo ago

> Datacenters need cheap energy, something no region in Europe is having in abundance (except maybe Norway, Sweden, and Finland). I don't think Lombardy was seeing too much DC construction There's a contradiction between your two first sentences…

Tade0 4mo ago

> It's just typical green politics. Forever backwards. I believe it has more to do with preserving the landscape that attracts so many tourists. Solar farms in Italy faced resistance for the same reason. It's not green politics.

monegator 4mo ago

>It's just typical green politics. Forever backwards No. In northern italy alone we have tens of thousands unused warehouse spaces. Let's use that space for datacenters and solar farms instead of destroying forever yet another plot of fertile land. If data centers will also bring nuclear to power them, i'm all for it. But let's be honest: realistically they will be powered by coal, maybe gas. As to why we have so much unused warehouses: some legally have no owner, some have declared bankrupcy and will be leased at absurd prices (it will cost half to build a new one), some were costructed illegaly and all stay there in the limbo because the local administrations would have to pay to reclaim the land

napolux 4mo ago

> I don't think Lombardy was seeing too much DC construction read the article: > Lombardy alone accounted for 63% of the applications submitted throughout Italy. > There are already 33 active data centres in the Milan metropolitan area alone; a further 10 are under construction and 23 under evaluation. > If the Milan hinterland is the most 'targeted' area, an increase in interest is also registered in the other provinces: in the rest of Lombardy there are three already active, plus one under construction and five under evaluation.

swiftcoder 4mo ago

> Datacenters need cheap energy, something no region in Europe is having in abundance (except maybe Norway, Sweden, and Finland) I think you are discounting the speed at which solar is accelerating in southern Europe. Power is already pretty much free during the daytime on the Spanish and Italian grids, and grid-scale battery installations are starting to come online to spread that curve wider.