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US residents angry datacenters 'shoved down our throats' are recalling officials
- hintymad 3mo agoNice. It's great to see democracy work. Now do the California officials everywhere. Oh wait, my bad. Constituents are happy with Karen Bass and the like. Never mind.
- Danox 3mo agoThe honeymoon is over. Among regular citizens, gamers and some groups of tech, many are now incensed by the cost of memory, I was once mildly enthusiastic about AI but now not so much.
- Zigurd 3mo agoThe public seems to be aware that it's a hype driven grift, much more so than when it was a flood of DTC dot-coms, or plowing fiber to nowhere. There's so much money sloshing around that people correctly believe the potential for corruption of their supposedly representatives is rife. People know Kevin O'Leary isn't a real businessman, and the crypto bros pivoting to AI data centers are scammers. The incentives, especially property tax concessions, all look like corporate welfare. Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break?
- g42gregory 3mo ago> Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break? As Kevin O'Leary said to the interviewer recently, when asked why he is getting subsidized by the tax payers: "You don't understand how free markets work..." You can't make this up.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- mikestew 3mo agoI'm sure it's more than the cost of memory. The person that does all of their computing on their phone doesn't care. They do care that aspect of life is infected with this shit. From the useless "AI" chatbot that is really just a reskin of their old POS chatbot (or an "Actual Indian"), to the U. S. government talking about giving money to these companies ('cuz ol' Larry and Elon need the money), all the way to the tech bros that will...not...shut up about it. And to drive it all, we'll need to put a jet engine next to your house, sorry. Cryptocurrency was mildly annoying, then AI said "hold my beer...".
- sofixa 3mo agoDon't forget the US government openly bragging about using AI for targeting in the Iran war, while also trying to pretend it didn't strike a school and kill a few hundred schoolchildren. (No we don't know if it was AI that made the mistake, and it's not like we're likely to get a proper investigation into it)
- throwaway85825 3mo agoThe school used to be a military base office. Acting on stale data is common for both humans and ML models.
- sofixa 3mo agoAnd a wall between the two was built a decade ago. Considering it was hit on day one, obviously it was considered an important target, which makes it inexcusable that nobody checked it in a decade. https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/4314de01-04f9-43f8-9411-c46805a325d5 https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/4314de...
- throwaway85825 3mo agoA navy base on the contested straight of hormuz is always going to be a priority target. Militaries have pre existing contingency plans. Typically military bases don't move very fast.
- naturalmovement 3mo ago[flagged]
- mikestew 3mo agoComplains about pollution, but still breathes the air, eh? What is your suggestion, a strongly-worded letter to the editor of your local newspaper? Arming the dumbest among us... Conveniently leaving yourself out of that group, I'm sure.
- AlexeyBelov 3mo agoIt's a 70 day old account (as per usual). Just flag and move on.
- infamouscow 3mo agoPointing out hypocrisy is a losing strategy in politics. I implore you to continue with this strategy.
- Spooky23 3mo agoAnd yet here you are, chilling with the dumbs.
- shimman 3mo agoThere are differences in types of data centers and hyper scale data centers are extremely different than what you're imagining.
- naturalmovement 3mo ago[flagged]
- shimman 3mo agoOk so you not only don't know the difference, you also think you should be able to act like a tyrant against the local populations for not bending toward your will. You're a great imperialist but like a bad human...
- RajT88 3mo agoThe mass data center build out is only partly driven by AI. There is a big cloud capacity crunch across the big providers, has been for a while and it is getting worse.
- shimman 3mo agoThere is no cloud capacity crunch, what a bunch of hog wash. What we've mostly got are some of the most inefficient systems on the planet where consumers are also building some of the most inefficient projects on top of it. There is no real effort being put towards maximizing the amount of resources you can get out of hardware, the game for the entire duration of our industry has been throwing more money to buy more hardware. Now that there are actual limits happening, there still isn't any major motivation to truly rewrite things to be better or more efficient. What they're trying to do instead is force the US government to bail them out via corporate welfare or to threaten allies into buying their wares.
- RajT88 3mo agoThat's certainly another way of looking at it. But the ground truth is: Cloud customers want to deploy more resources, and they can't build data centers and fill them with hardware fast enough to meet that demand. Cloud customers are fighting for who gets to the front of the line to deploy more stuff. That part is undeniable.
- senordevnyc 3mo agoSo why don’t these orgs who are voracious for profits just rewrite things to be more efficient? Probably because rewriting things also uses a scarce resource: organizational attention. I’m in this boat myself on a micro scale: I run a fleet of GPU servers for my SaaS and I know that I could improve the efficiency of what I’m running on them by 20% or more, but it’s far cheaper and more effective in the short run to just throw more hardware at the problem than for me to spend weeks or months overhauling things. At some point the scales may tip, but right now hardware is still cheaper than my time is.
- 3mo ago
- Spooky23 3mo agoThat’s just a minor speed bump in the circus of criminality that has been created by the US regime. When Elon did his thing, it was way more than just firing federal workers. They dismantled key parts of the regulatory system. The SEC was purged, the lawyers were chased out of DoJ, and contracts that were key to external/industry groups like FINRA were terminated — they purged most of their staff. AI and crypto is just the means of the grift. The corruption vig being applied to the markets is distorting everything. We see it with memory and food.
- nfw2 3mo agoDemand crunches spur supply chain capacity improvements when the market is left alone from populist interventions.
- throwawayqqq11 3mo agoDo you regard delusional billionaire circular funding as populist intervention too?
- CraigJPerry 3mo agoSounds like a certainty stated like that. So not like toilet paper during covid? what if the market was hard to enter? What if the inputs aren't available? What if the costs of the inputs rises? What if the capital for expansion isn't available? What if the manufacturers don't expect demand to persist? What if there's a shortage of skilled labour? What if it takes years to expand supply? What if there wasn't effective competition? I'm not sure it's as certain as you seem to claim.
- atmavatar 3mo agoWith consumer brands (e.g., Crucial) being shuttered in the wake of AI companies buying up all available RAM production capacity, it's difficult to imagine consumer RAM production even returning to normal anytime soon. It seems all but assured that it will require the AI bubble to burst plus several years to return to normalcy, particularly as RAM manufacturers have also been repeatedly caught price fixing.
- danaris 3mo agoThat only happens if the producers don't a) believe the crunch is caused by a bubble that's going to pop in a few months, or b) see the crunch as primarily an opportunity to rake in enormous short-term profits.
- surgical_fire 3mo agoAhh the "free market" fable. Like any fable it is a cute story. It is also bullshit.
- andrekandre 3mo ago
- AviationAtom 3mo agoOnce the demand from AI companies lets up there will be some bangin' deals
- zeristor 3mo agoIf you want to by a RAM chip factory in a cyclical fire sale.
- JKCalhoun 3mo agoYou might be missing the larger issue: regular citizens are not paying attention to RAM costs, they are more generally just sick of tech and sick of tech bros specifically. Datacenters are a effigy/proxy.
- functionmouse 3mo agothe bull case for industrial AI looks a lot like turning the whole planet into paperclips
- tayo42 3mo agoWhat's driving the need for datacenters All over the world? Aren't there only a handful of companies need compute and can build datacenters? This isn't aws building more regions is it? Also recently I was surprised and not surprised to find people are making anti ai like their identity now. Like there's a reddit community dedicated to this
- ChiperSoft 3mo agoInvestors, thats what is driving it. AI is the only thing venture capital has cared about since 2022, so the people who earn fortunes from sucking on the VC teat are following the money. It doesn't matter if the data centers are worthless in five years, they will have extracted wealth from building them.
- SoftTalker 3mo agoHow do you extract wealth from building a highly capital-intensive physical plant? Construction crews and building material suppliers do not work on a promise of future payments.
- coldpie 3mo agoYou get VC to give your company $X00 M to build out AI capabilities, take a $X M salary for yourself, and retire. Doesn't matter what happens past that.
- ChiperSoft 3mo agoThe same way subcontractors make money, they take a cut of the building cost. VC invests a billion on a five year contract, you take a million as your salary for those five years and use the rest to pay for construction and initial operating costs. If the data center isn't profitable, oh well, you got paid 5 million all the same. If it is profitable, well thats just a bonus.
- jeroenhd 3mo agoInvestors chasing the ideal of not having to employ any people while still making money somehow. And, of course, being the company to provide all the AI; in a gold rush, don't dig for gold, start selling buckets.
- Recurecur 3mo agoWe should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters. National governments are largely viewing AI as a strategic capability. That’s not to say there aren’t downsides, but they vary quite a bit depending on location and grid capacity. I actually expect there will be major progress made on the energy efficiency and performance of LLM models using novel hardware. So, the buildout may overshoot by quite a bit… If so I hope we can find a use for all those racks…
- pton_xd 3mo ago> We should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters. I'm pretty sure the economics of it for the average citizen takes care of the resentment all by itself. No need for elaborate conspiracy theories.
- dgellow 3mo agoThere really isn’t a need for foreign interests to artificially boost the negative sentiments towards data centers, hyperscalers are doing a pretty terrible job at getting the public onboard
- dosisking 3mo agoChina is not the enemy.
- SoftTalker 3mo agoTwo things can be true.
- mikestew 3mo agoWe should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters. AI companies are doing a fine job of driving the resentment all by themselves, they don't need China's help. Whether you're right or wrong is irrelevant, these companies are doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to help the public's view of them. They seem to think that they don't need public support.
- raychis 3mo agoPeople aren’t mad about technology. They’re mad about being told after the fact that their town might lose water, power, quiet, or tax revenue to a project they didn't have a say in. Build the future, sure. But don’t sneak it past the people who have to live next to it. If you have to sneak it like that, then maybe it is not worth having. Get sick of all the shady behaviour and lying. These companies, owners, and CEOs need to be taken down a peg.
- skybrian 3mo agoWhy would they lose tax revenue? I imagine these small cities gain tax revenue, but this doesn’t really drive NIMBY politics.
- doublerabbit 3mo agoWhen do enterprises ever proper pay tax? If they did we all would be better off. They will pay the minimum tax and that will then be pocketed by the local politicians who pushed for the DC. The town gets a pittance compared to the profit produced from these DCs. One of the incentives to build in these areas are that they can pay low tax in the first place.
- skybrian 3mo agoMy understanding is that local governments often get more in tax revenue than they spend on additional services. Which explains why they want to do it. Example: https://wjla.com/news/local/loudoun-county-virginia-taxes-data-centers-new-restrictions-budget-supervisors-board-kershner-data-center-revenue-new-positions-estimated-millions-operating-money-politics?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://wjla.com/news/local/loudoun-county-virginia-taxes-da... > In January, Loudoun County estimated about $895 million in data center real and personal property tax revenue, and the county’s entire operating budget was projected to be $940 million, according to County Supervisor Mike Turner (D-Ashburn). > Loudoun County’s next budget will spend $4.7 billion in the next fiscal year which includes funding for LCPS, according to the county. … > Loudoun County Public Schools will be getting $111.8 million more than last year, and county employee compensation will increase, according to the county. They’re getting lots of money from data centers and spending it on things like employees and schools, while lowering residents’ taxes slightly. Apparently you believe differently but where did you learn that?
- wewtyflakes 3mo agoI feel that the resentment to be short sighted. Datacenters do not vote, but people do. If a datacenter is in a locale, it gives those voters a de-facto, outsized, soft power.
- throwaway85825 3mo ago>gives those voters a de-facto, outsized, soft power How?
- delecti 3mo agoYou, via your electeds, (in theory) have more power over a datacenter in your own jurisdiction than not. Though that does depend a lot on your electeds not being in the pocket of the datacenter's owners, and on the regulatory environment of the country/state leaving power available to city/county officials to do anything.
- throwaway85825 3mo ago>(in theory) >leaving power available This just sounds like 'no' but with extra indirection.
- dheera 3mo agoNo, it doesn't. Voters decide very little in the United States. People with money decide almost everything. They have better lawyers and better lobbyists than you do.
- wewtyflakes 3mo agoIf you go in with the assumption that democracy does not work, then there is also no point in protesting, as being angry about datacenters would mean nothing anyway.
- dheera 3mo agoOn the contrary, if democracy works, then there is no point in protesting, as you would just vote (or campaign and run for office) instead. Most large scale protests are in fact because democracy failed to give the people a voice, and decisions were made without the input of the people.
- energy123 3mo agoThe DCs are going up across middle income countries: industrial zones in South East Asia, India and Morocco, and also UAE/Saudi. Anger towards DCs are pertinent from a politics-in-rich-country angle, but it has no relevance on the overall trajectory of where we are heading. If DCs get banned in the US, there are still many middle income countries who want them in their special industrial zones, due to the FDI and employment opportunities they bring, and these countries provide generous tax breaks to hyper scalers to compete for their business. Malaysia and India are recent examples of this policymaking. The new US funded DC zone in Philippines is another example. There's an interesting geopolitics (emphases on "geo") angle to this if these critical assets are going to increasingly be built overseas.
- confidantlake 3mo agoThey provide very few employment opportunities.
- Hamuko 3mo agoYeah, the only point where DCs employ a lot of people are during the construction period. Maybe good if you have a ton of excess electricity and you need to prop up your local construction industry for the next five years.
- sanguinesphinx 3mo agoAlways with the threats. "You better roll over and take it, because those other countries are" How about the middle ground of ok, you can build the datacenter, but it's owned by the locality. They can lease it back to the builder for the privilege of being able to operate on their ground. And the lease is steep. No more second homes on the cape, or private italian schools for the kids.
- nfw2 3mo agoA random people on hn, presumably not a data center manager, is not "making a threat" by talking about potential second order effects of data center policy. No despicable data center apologist has ever suggested that communities shouldn't negotiate the best deal they can get to compensate for the incurred costs and externalities. Why do you feel justified defining what terms a community can agree to when considering hosting a data center? Do you not believe the democratic right for them to self-govern.
- LocalH 3mo agoI believe framing this as people being against "data centers" is missing the target. Data centers have existed for decades, ever since business started using computers. What people really have an issue with is data centers designed for AI, using far more power than prior data centers. Honestly, I think we should just ban "AI" of all forms and get it over with. Rip the bandage off before the wound underneath turns into gangrene
- cosmic_cheese 3mo agoThis latest round of projects are often located within or next to communities too, where most pre-AI projects were more out of the way, increasing immediately visible impact dramatically via noise and air and water pollution.
- LocalH 3mo agoI've been flagging nearly every HN post that has anything to do with AI, even negative. The quicker we get "AI" out of our zeitgeist, the better. AI isn't even a solid term, the term "artificial intelligence" is almost 100 years old at this point, and the definition has changed so many times that it's a useless term. ELIZA was "AI". But it didn't have the same level of societal damage. HAL 9000 was "AI". Games have "AI" for decades. But "AI" today has been coopted by corporations who seek to lock people into their AIaaS. Local LLMs exist, and I have a few models on my computer for fun. Those models still probably used more power than I would like to be generated. But I will never, ever, ever use cloud AI to even so much as ask a question. If there is a long-term future in AI, it's in local models
- stevetron 3mo agoSimply change the pricing so that the datacenters pay a higher rate to subsidize everyone else. The handwriting was on the wall with this issue since the O'Bama administration: he had been convinced that putting all health care records in one central repository i.e. server famrs, and then unleash AI-systems on all that data, would come up with a cure for cancer. And at that time, there was an electricity shortage problem. Another server farm is the one that the NSA built in Utah where the local power grid has been unable to keep powered-up. That's the one purported to have the backdoor on everyone's internet traffic kept. But some people prefer I go away with my foil hat.
- AviationAtom 3mo agoHere they have mandated that data centers pay any cost associated with servicing them, as well as signing a contract and having a bond, should they go insolvent. As well, excess tax revenue from them is going to be used to credit homestead tax bills.
- tomaow 3mo ago[flagged]
- newsomix9xl 3mo agoGiven problems around housing, health insurance , job security, crime, gun violence, pay, gas prices/inflation, and a myriad number of issues that affect people and their neighbors directly we're seeing an honest to god non-astroturfed domestic opposition to ... Data Centers?