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Meta steals a tactic from Tesla and builds data centers in tents
- josefritzishere 5mo agoThis is madness. The polling is in and the public hates, positively hates AI. So of course the response is to do AI even more. https://newrepublic.com/article/209163/ai-industry-discovering-public-backlash https://newrepublic.com/article/209163/ai-industry-discoveri...
- shimman 5mo agoYeah but the public is against progress. The public cries for material needs like medicare for all, universal childcare, a jobs program? These are all clearly foreign actors that want to prevent American progress on AI! They must be Chinese agents for all we know, what sort of American wants to provide healthcare for their family over proudly paying higher utility rates to ensure a new batch of tech bros become billionaires?
- bell-cot 5mo agoYou don't move up the Cyberdyne Systems org chart by caring what the stupid little meatbags think.
- Dlanv 5mo agoThe public hates ai but also uses ai in mass quantities. Capitalism abides by your dollars not your voice. So people can decry ai all they want but if they keep using it, it won't go away. Even then it's probable that AI is a big enough productivity boost for certain industries that even if no consumers used AI, businesses would still prop AI up enough for it to live on.
- FabCH 5mo agoCapitalism abides by dollars only so long as force is not in play. When the Molotov cocktails start flying, dollars lose their grip. Simone Weil had good theoretical and practical observations on force vs economy 100 years ago.
- hcurtiss 5mo agoNah, dollars buy war machines. And for the first time in human history, we are on the precipice of projecting substantial ground force without the need for humans.
- diordiderot 5mo agoLol, sure. until the first "revolutionary" takes one in the chest. Americans are too comfortable. Leftist rhetoric is virtue signaling and costless.
- bigyabai 5mo agoArguably, they don't take one in the chest. Luigi Mangione lives in notoriety what he did; most people can't even name the CEO he killed, let alone frame them as a martyr. I disagree with theories of continual revolution, but it's pretty clear that class warfare still has valuable asymmetric qualities.
- mindslight 5mo agoRightist rhetoric is vice signalling, costly, and destructive. I'll choose the virtue signalling.
- akomtu 5mo agoThe public is forced to use AI at work and outside of work because the corpos are determined in inserting their AI everywhere. Then the people come back home and see that their energy bills have doubled because of AI datacenters. Of course people hate AI.
- john_strinlai 5mo agothere are polls where a sample of people say they hate ai. on the other hand, there are a billion+ weekly active users. from a business perspective, which of those two statistics would you give more weight?
- bluefirebrand 5mo agoHow many of those people are just feeling like they have a gun to their heads? Use the AI or become unemployed and unemployable? "People use AI so this must be a revealed preference" is such a bad argument when people are feeling so precarious
- john_strinlai 5mo ago>How many of those people are just feeling like they have a gun to their heads? Use the AI or become unemployed and unemployable? in the context of answering the implied question of the parent (everyone hates it so why do they keep doing it?), it does not matter at all.
- bluefirebrand 5mo agoOf course it matters If a large proportion of people are only using AI because they are being threatened with unemployment if they don't, then there's going to be massive resentment building up You may think that doesn't matter, but it does. History has shown over and over that you can only keep a lid on massive social resentment for so long before things break
- john_strinlai 5mo ago[dead]
- krige 5mo agoOut of the two? Probably the polls. "Active users" is blatantly a weasel metric.
- cyberrock 5mo agoThe public is against it for hypocritical reasons that they're not afraid to inflict on someone else. They're against the water and electricity use but they also angrily demand more semiconductor production that require building whole new reservoirs in Tainan, irrigation channels from the Han river, and coal plants in Anhui, as well as restarting Fukushima. Then when those companies come build plants in Arizona and New York, suddenly the reality of how the cow is butchered hits them and it stalls in permitting for years.
- sellmesoap 5mo agoTechnology is getting too in tents for me. /former boy scout
- jackyinger 5mo agoA desperate bid to get around data center bans: disguise them as homeless encampments
- Avicebron 5mo agoThe real unlock, the homeless can shelter for warm next to the gpus, and they can recruit some for some fent if they need workers. Heck, call it public housing and bringing jobs into the community.
- trallnag 5mo agoHomeless encampments or mountaineering base camps
- expedition32 5mo agoMicrosoft had a neat trick here in the Netherlands: instead of opening a new site they decided to make a their existing site higher by adding a few floors. Ofcourse that only works once the Dutch borg adapts!
- bluGill 5mo agoWhile that is done, unless land is expensive (which it rarely is by enough) building out is a lot cheaper than building up.
- burnte 5mo agoIt's easier to get datacenters approved than homeless housing projects.
- MSFT_Edging 5mo agoThey'll be bulldozed and all those servers will lose their ids and medications.
- commieneko 5mo ago"All this inference will be lost in time, like GPUs in rain."
- scottlamb 5mo agoMeta's first five buildings took between two and three years to build, but Williams is almost done building out 200 MW (additional) off-grid power plants in a year, and to match that they're putting their equipment in tents. That raises questions for me: * Did they expect the next five buildings to also take between two and three years to build if done in the same manner? I'd hope it'd be significantly faster the second time because they've perfected the design, found good local contractors and suppliers, etc. * How much of the time was the actual structure vs. all the stuff inside they still have to do with the tents? * How long are they expecting to keep this? Are they anticipating extra problems like leaking roofs? * What are the "off-grid power plants"? Is this basically a whole bunch of diesel or natural gas generators? [edit: oh, yes, "The site is also powered by 200 megawatts of modular gas turbines". I wonder if they're trucking in the fuel too.] If so, yuck.
- bluGill 5mo agoI would guess the real problem is contractors are bottle-necked in good times, but not stupid enough to expand - knowing that bad times will come and they have to pay for all the expansion. (humans can be laid off, but you still need to make the payment on the bulldozer)
- scottlamb 5mo agoThat makes sense. Although I have to pick on your example a bit: wouldn't they still need a concrete foundation for all that weight and thus still need bulldozers? Still unsure how much of the work they're actually avoiding.
- fc417fc802 5mo agoIt's funny because at first I thought it made sense but the more I think about your question the more I'm skeptical. You still need the rack. Power distribution. Data lines. Cooling lines and whatever those connect back to. All the stuff that would have been embedded under the floor has to go somewhere (labor) and still has to be assembled (more labor). So they're saving time on what, the cement and steel shell? Or is this a building permitting issue where for some reason the bureaucracy surrounding a permanent structure is expected to drag on for years but somehow they got the tents permitted rapidly?
- christkv 5mo agoJust waiting for the first heist
- bubblegumcrisis 5mo agoI'm waiting for the first drone attack.
- christkv 5mo agoNothing of importance would be lost. But think about the amount of USD in each rack.
- fc417fc802 5mo agoIt seems absurd to me that we build such capital dense things above ground.
- SJC_Hacker 5mo agoDigging is expensive
- slicktux 5mo agoWhen I read the headline I imagined a huge tent with steel beam structure and professional grade covers with HVAC and concrete footprint. Seems everyone else imagined a camping tent. Different backgrounds I guess.
- Alex_L_Wood 5mo agoYeah, my immediate picture was a blue hobo tent with some extenders sticking out of it.
- Descon 5mo agoThose look like sprung structures's tents. They can get real fancy: https://www.sprung.com/ https://www.sprung.com/
- artisin 5mo agoWoW. I was thinking about building a new home recently, but now I'm thinking about pitching a membrane-tensioned tax haven, cuz last time I checked, temporary structures are exempt from property taxes. This is like the ultimate real estate hack.
- qingcharles 5mo agoGovernments hate this one trick!
- lokar 5mo agoSeveral gates at Santa Rosa airport are in a fancy tent. You don’t even notice at first.
- yanosh_kunsh 5mo agoI'm not sure why they even call them tents. Those are called fabric buildings. Fabric buildings have a lifespan of over 20 years[1] and this is limited by the PVC membranes, the actual steel structure can last a lot longer. [1] https://www.rubbusa.com/approach/quality/ https://www.rubbusa.com/approach/quality/
- jzymbaluk 5mo agoThe fact that these behemoths are being powered by gas generators is horrifying
- code_biologist 5mo agoYour language is ambiguous — your horror is in reference to natural gas turbine generators (used at these installations) and not gasoline generators (like in a home context)? Why the horror? I'd prefer the gas remain in the ground, but given the gassy production of US shale oil, I guess I'd rather it be used for this than just flared. I am frustrated that pollutant emissions aren't being policed, and also that the sudden turbine demand plus supply chain issues mean using aeroderivative turbines that are quite a bit less efficient than more complex combined cycle turbines. https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/how-gas-turbine-power-plants-work https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/how-gas-turbine-power-plants-wor...
- vel0city 5mo ago> I guess I'd rather it be used for this than just flared I doubt this is really reducing the rates of flaring and leaky wells. Its just additional demand. The biggest problem I've seen is they tend to build these somewhat close to residential areas with generation on-site. Often these power generation centers aren't right next to residential areas due to both air and noise pollution. But governments are often seeming to turn a blind eye.
- code_biologist 5mo agoYes, the noise pollution is insane. Benn Jordan's YT video "Datacenters Behaving Like Acoustic Weapons" is an insightful, scary 30 min video covering the datacenter infrasound noise, and the nasty things infrasound does to people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo
- mlyle 5mo agoWe have plenty of fields producing just natural gas in the US. It is not merely a byproduct of oil production. Only about 35 percent is “associated gas” production from oil production.
- FerretFred 5mo agoAs always, there are some very erudite comments here on HN, which is why I like the site so much. My erudite comment, or rather question, is this: why aren't these people using AI to solve all these problems? Surely it would be a good test of The Product and maybe it would give s[ck]eptics some food for thought?
- Theodores 5mo agoWhy not ask someone that can do astrology to do your stock picks and sports bets for you? You know and I know that The Product is at best nowt more than 'astrology'. The Product does do search engine things though, and it could be scaled down to fit in a phone or even a watch, to be good enough for 'the pub quiz' or for writing a gormless email. As for the article, META does very little for the vastness of the corporation. They have gazillions of developers yet Facebook and Instagram are as boring as ever, Threads and the Metaverse are just lame and what else do they do, apart from serve ads?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- frognumber 5mo agoExtreme competition and Safety Are opposites.
- arjie 5mo agoThe whole thing is like a video game: your construction and power are your limiting factors. We need to CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS and so on. It's interesting that this is such a limiter on the ground that SpaceX is pursuing AI satellites in space. Truly an incredible time to be alive.
- emsign 5mo agoThis is not a video game.
- zeafoamrun 5mo agoIt's literally factorio
- WarmWash 5mo agoThe only thing SpaceX is pursuing is dumb money.
- diordiderot 5mo agoGet some skin in the game then smart guy
- bigyabai 5mo ago> this is such a limiter on the ground that SpaceX is pursuing AI satellites in space What is your source for this claim? It sounds like conjecture to me. Neither power nor construction is easier in space than it is on Earth. Higher power means higher heat dissipation, which means higher-cost satellites or downsized AI hardware. Construction is monumentally more expensive when you have to ship GPUs and their associated infrastructure away from the planet where they're manufactured. SpaceX's orbital compute will not compete against any ground-based AI capacity. It will most likely be used for edge processing of Starlink sensor data, either as an SAR solution, multiband jamming apparatus, or any other SDR applications used at the orbital scale. There is no other justification that I am aware of that necessitates space-based AI inference. The commercial space-based AI line is a glaringly obvious coverup.
- vel0city 5mo agoMicrosoft had trialed datacenters in tents nearly 20 years ago. I remember hearing about their trials at some talks back in the day. Crazy to look back on the dates here, felt like it wasn't that long ago. https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hyperscalers/new-from-microsoft-data-centers-in-tents https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hyperscalers/new-from-mi...
- fc417fc802 5mo agoThey also tested out sinking data center modules in shallow water to reduce the difficulties surrounding both cooling and land use. I wonder if anyone has revisited that idea in light of present market conditions?
- manarth 5mo agoThey have! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/09/worlds-first-wind-powered-underwater-datacentre-starts-operating-in-china https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/09/worlds-first-w...
- luk212 5mo agoSo AI infrastructure buildout is starting to feel a lot like emergency industrial mobilization... Also, building rapid temp shells plus nearby gas turbines paints a very different picture than the one conveyed by the "clean-energy" PR around hyperscale data centers.
- akomtu 5mo agoThis is what happens when people with big money succumb to AI psychosis.
- kajman 5mo agoThe real sickness is the years spent chasing stock buybacks and low taxes while infrastructure and industrial capacity languished. What an absurd situation where arrays of "temporary" on-site gas turbines are the only viable way to build new infrastructure like this.
- kylehotchkiss 5mo agoOur parents aren't getting enough AI generated patriotic calls to action! roll out the bulldozers!!
- sorieus 5mo agoThese datacenters have been under construction since at least June of 2025. You can see 1 building was already up in 2025 and the land was just farmland back in 9/13/2024. So this construction has been over 1 year in the making. Does this mean its construction slop? For reference colossus xAI datacenter was up and running in less than 7 months. I couldn't tell you at what capacity but this doesn't seem like quite the same story. Edit For a little more context xAI colossus 2 looks to be an empty warehouse on 3/10/2025. By 12/2025 they had already either filled the warehouse or they couldn't use the space because they appear to built multiple structures outside for the datacenter. For comparison again meta already had that datacenter there for a number of years and then over 2 years added those structures. In 9 months it appears Tesla built a datacenter into an existing building and added structures.
- KaiserPro 5mo agoWhen I left at the start of 2025, they were already building the tent. The difference between Meta and tesla is that meta has done it many times before and in loads of countries.
- felooboolooomba 5mo ago>Inside the tents, AI chips, likely worth billions of dollars, will go about their business. I wonder how the security is. It's just a matter of time until organized crime will start paying attention to this. Perhaps a bet for polymarket?
- thepryz 5mo agoBetter than most businesses. Most data center campuses I've seen, regardless of construction, were behind a substantial permitter fence and had some on-premise guard force. Like razor blades, they would be better to intercept GPUs or other equipment when in transit though there have been decades of rumors that such goods are usually done by trucking companies with ties to organized crime.
- felooboolooomba 5mo agoThere was a recent case in the UK where a trucking company was sold. The new owner then proceeded to steal shipments.
- rasz 5mo agoImagine a drone dropping incendiary payload. I dub thee ransomhardware.
- felooboolooomba 5mo agoAny data on how these tents cope in a storm?
- iJohnDoe 5mo agoOff topic. The internet is so broken when someone still posts to X.com and then a news outlet posts that as an article. Maybe if it wasn’t X.com being used it wouldn’t be so bad. Seems like we can do better.