8 ms·

I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not onl

I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not only that, they are often signing NDAs that prohibit them from telling voters what they have agreed to. It's no way to operate in a democracy, and voters are right to be angry.

colechristensen 3mo ago
[flagged]
- mrtesthah 3mo ago
  Is it really a matter of "national security" when the technology at hand is being used in a way that unilaterally benefits a small class of oligarchs at the expense of the rest of society? That's not really in the benefit of the nation anymore, is it?
  - AnimalMuppet 3mo ago
    Depends on what you think "the nation" is. Is it the "regular people"? Or is it the elite? (And whichever you think it is, and no matter how obvious you think it is, there are people who think it is obviously the opposite.)
    - svachalek 3mo ago
      There's practically nothing you can get 100% agreement on, and yet we can still find that there is a right answer.
  - WarmWash 3mo ago
    The technology at hand is essentially a genius in your pocket being given away for $20/mo. I mean yeah, $20 is greater than free, but let's have a least a mild level of honesty here
    - Gud 3mo ago
      It’s being “given away” by the dominating actors to suppress competition, let’s not pretend we’re getting a great deal here just because for a brief period we’re getting a small discount on LLMs. How about them DRAM prices?
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
adamsb6 3mo ago
I’m a voter who prefers we establish rules that be followed rather than encumber every project with a lengthy community dialogue.
- starik36 3mo ago
  That's it right there. Rules, not deals.
  - ghaff 3mo ago
    The two are often difficult to dissociate. My town had a fairly fractious town meeting around a rezoning proposal that was mostly for a fairly specific commercial purpose--that passed through a basically procedural mechanism in a second meeting.
- thewillowcat 3mo ago
  These companies aren't coming in, buying property at market rates, and developing it with existing infrastructure under current zoning laws. They usually want tax breaks, major infrastructure changes, and other accommodations and guarantees. It's completely reasonable for people to want a dialog with their representatives before those kinds of arrangements are made with a company on their behalf. And it's entirely reasonable for them to vote out reps that are overly accommodating. I live in an historic district. I had to attend a public meeting a couple years ago to get approval to change a lamp post. It is perfectly reasonable to ask tech companies to show up and defend massive projects to the public.
  - jnwatson 3mo ago
    A meeting to get a lamp post change is exactly how progress stops. It is why we can't build anything in US and it costs a billion dollars per mile of high speed rail.
    - defrost 3mo ago
      A data centre isn't a lamp post.
logicchains 3mo ago
[flagged]
- pesus 3mo ago
  OpenAI isn't a convincing source. Of course they're going to blame everything on someone else. They don't want to acknowledge the very real hate for AI that people have. It's also extremely likely that they themselves are involved in the very same thing but to push AI instead.
- overfeed 3mo ago
  Do you consider the American fight for Civil rights to have been motivated by Nazi (or Soviet) propaganda? Would one's opposition to the Nazis preclude them from supporting Civil Rights based on some truth exploited by Nazi propagandist? 1. https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/german-leaflet-for-black-american-soldiers https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/german-leaflet-for-black...
- coffeefirst 3mo ago
  The next time someone calls me an asshole I’m going to blame Chinese propaganda. Surely it’s that and not my personality.
nobodyandproud 3mo ago
Are those NDAs enforceable? That’s a major governance gap and problem if so.
- enoint 3mo ago
  Some information is legally required for them to disclose, if they’re acting in their official capacity. I feel like development on public land is too big to hide.
anthonypasq 3mo ago
> I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not only that, they are often signing NDAs that prohibit them from telling voters what they have agreed to. It's no way to operate in a democracy, and voters are right to be angry. People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood that involves non-public land just doesnt make any sense to me. Why do people think that because they have a house somewhere they should get the ability to freeze an entire town in time and disallow anyone to build anything. Seriously, where did this mindset come from?
- mattmatheus 3mo ago
  NIMBYism has been popular for a long time. People really do want datacenters (or at least, the things that having datacenters enable).. they just want them somewhere else.
  - vkou 3mo ago
    I'm not sure anyone but investors chasing yield feel a very strong need to see the planet covered in AI data centers, especially when the benefits seem to be rolling up, not down.
- rescripting 3mo ago
  This may come as a surprise to you, but people like living in pleasant surroundings. Just because I own the land does not mean I can open an abattoir next to an elementary school. Using land in different ways results in externalities that affect those around it. The people of a community should have some right to protect themselves from those externalities. How that happens in practice is a deeply flawed, messy, ugly process, but collectively deciding where to draw the line is part of living together as a community.
  - jcgrillo 3mo ago
    The next town over from where I live has basically no rules. No zoning, if you want to turn your property into a junkyard go right ahead! Even still, people are successfully fighting against a trash company putting in a landfill. I believe the levers they're pulling are a state wetlands permit and a state solid waste permit. The system is working.
esikich 3mo ago
I don't understand why people think they should be able to vote on things like this. Especially when they lack the necessary credentials to have an informed opinion on it.
- _doctor_love 3mo ago
  I mean, why do we let people without property vote in the first place? It's really only people with a vested interest who have something at stake.
  - esikich 3mo ago
    Who said anything about property?
    - dwb 3mo ago
      You are using the same logic as those who kept the franchise restricted to the property-owning class. Parent is rightly mocking you for it.
      - esikich 3mo ago
        Did you vote for the new McDonalds that got built? The new strip mall? The new apartment complex? The new water treatment plant that makes noise and stinks? The new metal shop? The new gas station? Let's start voting on everything and see how that goes. But we obviously don't because that's fucking stupid.
        dwb 3mo ago
        I don’t think dismissing direct democracy as “fucking stupid” is the kind of constructive commentary this site is after. It’s a complex issue and I wouldn’t advocate for it claiming it would fix everything, but in the representative democracy that we (supposedly) have, and the representatives that we tend to get, often cowed or corrupted by huge corporate interests, is it surprising that people want to take some influence back into their own hands? I’m not ever going to be against that kind of democracy.
ozim 3mo ago
I was living in a touristic area. Guess what was happening, local politicians were treating long term residents as trash in the face of big hotels/apartments who had loads of money. Fun part was that those apartments/hotels wouldn’t hire locals but rather people who would drive like 20-30 km away. Bad deal all way round for locals but of course local government people would pocket their share one way or the other if not from outright bribery.
- TurdF3rguson 3mo ago
  You live in a touristy area because you have a tourism-related job, right? Because where are the tourists supposed to stay if there's no hotels?
  - watwut 3mo ago
    Or, he did something else and mived away, vecause this sucked. There is never shortage of hotels. They pop up is actual econony supports it. No reason to take bribes
    - ozim 3mo ago
      For anyone who was poor in that area it was better to move out.
  - ozim 3mo ago
    Not really. I was just born there and it wasn’t as touristy when I was a child. It blew up as touristy place when I was a teenager and in my twenties. My parents had odd jobs, construction, chemical processing operations. There was some small scale industry running there as well but it went bust when people wanted fresh air for tourism. Even if the industry was really small scale for marketing sake local government got rid of all of it. I also don’t live there anymore as I wrote „I was living in a touristy area”. If I would stay there, there was no future for me there.
    - TurdF3rguson 3mo ago
redsocksfan45 3mo ago
[dead]
hammock 3mo ago
It ought to be illegal for a publicly elected official to enter an NDA like that. It goes against the same principles that are the reason why we have things like FOIA

colechristensen 3mo ago

[flagged]

mrtesthah 3mo ago
Is it really a matter of "national security" when the technology at hand is being used in a way that unilaterally benefits a small class of oligarchs at the expense of the rest of society? That's not really in the benefit of the nation anymore, is it?
- AnimalMuppet 3mo ago
  Depends on what you think "the nation" is. Is it the "regular people"? Or is it the elite? (And whichever you think it is, and no matter how obvious you think it is, there are people who think it is obviously the opposite.)
  - svachalek 3mo ago
    There's practically nothing you can get 100% agreement on, and yet we can still find that there is a right answer.
- WarmWash 3mo ago
  The technology at hand is essentially a genius in your pocket being given away for $20/mo. I mean yeah, $20 is greater than free, but let's have a least a mild level of honesty here
  - Gud 3mo ago
    It’s being “given away” by the dominating actors to suppress competition, let’s not pretend we’re getting a great deal here just because for a brief period we’re getting a small discount on LLMs. How about them DRAM prices?
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]

adamsb6 3mo ago

I’m a voter who prefers we establish rules that be followed rather than encumber every project with a lengthy community dialogue.

starik36 3mo ago
That's it right there. Rules, not deals.
- ghaff 3mo ago
  The two are often difficult to dissociate. My town had a fairly fractious town meeting around a rezoning proposal that was mostly for a fairly specific commercial purpose--that passed through a basically procedural mechanism in a second meeting.
thewillowcat 3mo ago
These companies aren't coming in, buying property at market rates, and developing it with existing infrastructure under current zoning laws. They usually want tax breaks, major infrastructure changes, and other accommodations and guarantees. It's completely reasonable for people to want a dialog with their representatives before those kinds of arrangements are made with a company on their behalf. And it's entirely reasonable for them to vote out reps that are overly accommodating. I live in an historic district. I had to attend a public meeting a couple years ago to get approval to change a lamp post. It is perfectly reasonable to ask tech companies to show up and defend massive projects to the public.
- jnwatson 3mo ago
  A meeting to get a lamp post change is exactly how progress stops. It is why we can't build anything in US and it costs a billion dollars per mile of high speed rail.
  - defrost 3mo ago
    A data centre isn't a lamp post.

logicchains 3mo ago

[flagged]

pesus 3mo ago
OpenAI isn't a convincing source. Of course they're going to blame everything on someone else. They don't want to acknowledge the very real hate for AI that people have. It's also extremely likely that they themselves are involved in the very same thing but to push AI instead.
overfeed 3mo ago
Do you consider the American fight for Civil rights to have been motivated by Nazi (or Soviet) propaganda? Would one's opposition to the Nazis preclude them from supporting Civil Rights based on some truth exploited by Nazi propagandist? 1. https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/german-leaflet-for-black-american-soldiers https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/german-leaflet-for-black...
coffeefirst 3mo ago
The next time someone calls me an asshole I’m going to blame Chinese propaganda. Surely it’s that and not my personality.

nobodyandproud 3mo ago

Are those NDAs enforceable? That’s a major governance gap and problem if so.

enoint 3mo ago
Some information is legally required for them to disclose, if they’re acting in their official capacity. I feel like development on public land is too big to hide.

anthonypasq 3mo ago

> I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not only that, they are often signing NDAs that prohibit them from telling voters what they have agreed to. It's no way to operate in a democracy, and voters are right to be angry. People believing they are entitled to dictate what other people do with their property, or believing they should have some say in the "character" of their neighborhood that involves non-public land just doesnt make any sense to me. Why do people think that because they have a house somewhere they should get the ability to freeze an entire town in time and disallow anyone to build anything. Seriously, where did this mindset come from?

mattmatheus 3mo ago
NIMBYism has been popular for a long time. People really do want datacenters (or at least, the things that having datacenters enable).. they just want them somewhere else.
- vkou 3mo ago
  I'm not sure anyone but investors chasing yield feel a very strong need to see the planet covered in AI data centers, especially when the benefits seem to be rolling up, not down.
rescripting 3mo ago
This may come as a surprise to you, but people like living in pleasant surroundings. Just because I own the land does not mean I can open an abattoir next to an elementary school. Using land in different ways results in externalities that affect those around it. The people of a community should have some right to protect themselves from those externalities. How that happens in practice is a deeply flawed, messy, ugly process, but collectively deciding where to draw the line is part of living together as a community.
- jcgrillo 3mo ago
  The next town over from where I live has basically no rules. No zoning, if you want to turn your property into a junkyard go right ahead! Even still, people are successfully fighting against a trash company putting in a landfill. I believe the levers they're pulling are a state wetlands permit and a state solid waste permit. The system is working.

esikich 3mo ago

I don't understand why people think they should be able to vote on things like this. Especially when they lack the necessary credentials to have an informed opinion on it.

_doctor_love 3mo ago
I mean, why do we let people without property vote in the first place? It's really only people with a vested interest who have something at stake.
- esikich 3mo ago
  Who said anything about property?
  - dwb 3mo ago
    You are using the same logic as those who kept the franchise restricted to the property-owning class. Parent is rightly mocking you for it.
    - esikich 3mo ago
      Did you vote for the new McDonalds that got built? The new strip mall? The new apartment complex? The new water treatment plant that makes noise and stinks? The new metal shop? The new gas station? Let's start voting on everything and see how that goes. But we obviously don't because that's fucking stupid.
      - dwb 3mo ago
        I don’t think dismissing direct democracy as “fucking stupid” is the kind of constructive commentary this site is after. It’s a complex issue and I wouldn’t advocate for it claiming it would fix everything, but in the representative democracy that we (supposedly) have, and the representatives that we tend to get, often cowed or corrupted by huge corporate interests, is it surprising that people want to take some influence back into their own hands? I’m not ever going to be against that kind of democracy.

ozim 3mo ago

I was living in a touristic area. Guess what was happening, local politicians were treating long term residents as trash in the face of big hotels/apartments who had loads of money. Fun part was that those apartments/hotels wouldn’t hire locals but rather people who would drive like 20-30 km away. Bad deal all way round for locals but of course local government people would pocket their share one way or the other if not from outright bribery.

TurdF3rguson 3mo ago
You live in a touristy area because you have a tourism-related job, right? Because where are the tourists supposed to stay if there's no hotels?
- watwut 3mo ago
  Or, he did something else and mived away, vecause this sucked. There is never shortage of hotels. They pop up is actual econony supports it. No reason to take bribes
  - ozim 3mo ago
    For anyone who was poor in that area it was better to move out.
- ozim 3mo ago
  Not really. I was just born there and it wasn’t as touristy when I was a child. It blew up as touristy place when I was a teenager and in my twenties. My parents had odd jobs, construction, chemical processing operations. There was some small scale industry running there as well but it went bust when people wanted fresh air for tourism. Even if the industry was really small scale for marketing sake local government got rid of all of it. I also don’t live there anymore as I wrote „I was living in a touristy area”. If I would stay there, there was no future for me there.
  - TurdF3rguson 3mo ago

redsocksfan45 3mo ago

[dead]

hammock 3mo ago

It ought to be illegal for a publicly elected official to enter an NDA like that. It goes against the same principles that are the reason why we have things like FOIA