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Building stuff is good stewardship. We complain about NIMBYs. But with a few relatively modest regulations data centers can be quite friendly. They don’t genera
by rayiner 2mo ago
Building stuff is good stewardship. We complain about NIMBYs. But with a few relatively modest regulations data centers can be quite friendly. They don’t generate traffic, congestion, etc. They don’t strain school or police infrastructure. Basically need some noise regulations. But the NIMBYs will kill it.
- alpha_squared 2mo agoNIMBY is largely used for housing development discussions and to contort it in support of developing data centers is incredibly intellectually dishonest. If we're going to rebrand things to blur lines, I propose rebranding data centers to pedophile content hubs. The rest of your argument is full of similar cherry-picking for dishonest discourse.
- gruez 2mo ago>NIMBY is largely used for housing development discussions and to contort it in support of developing data centers is incredibly intellectually dishonest. No, it's frequently used in infrastructure discussions as well, eg. high speed rail or power transmission lines.
- goatlover 2mo agoOr like property on the Texas Mexico border through which a wall is being built sealing off acres of private land from the owner.
- rayiner 2mo agoThat’s the opposite of NIMBYism. Public infrastructure getting built despite inconvenience to affected landowners.
- hotpotatoe 2mo agoThat pointless infrastructure that has ‘inconvenienced’ landowners is also destroying a national park, so I guess we are all being inconvenienced. And funneled billions of tax dollars to private contractors.
- rayiner 2mo agoYes, building public infrastructure generally involves paying private contractors to do it. Who do you think builds government buildings?
- JuniperMesos 2mo agoOpposing new housing construction is bad in basically the same way that opposing data center construction is bad; and I'm happy to use the same word to describe both groups of people.
- goatlover 2mo agoWhy is opposing data center construction bad? People need housing, if there isn't enough affordable housing around, then opposing it can be bad. But also people who live there should have a say in what gets built near them, since they have to live with it.
- rayiner 2mo agoPeople need infrastructure. Data centers are infrastructure.
- goatlover 2mo agoInfrastructure for what? To push AI, crypto and gambling on everyone? How about build this "infrastructure" in the back yards of billionaires? They should have plenty of land.
- cpburns2009 2mo agoThere's a 100% chance this very website you're arguing on is hosted in one if not more data centers.
- watwut 2mo agoOh please, running this site does not require any of these data centers. Nor new power plants.
- cpburns2009 2mo agoI don't doubt you could host this site on any old Raspberry PI, but I guarantee it's hosted in a data center.
- mcmcmc 2mo agoCSAM Factory rolls off the tongue a bit better
- TitaRusell 2mo agoCitizens having a say in what is going on in their neighborhood is now controversial. Big brother knows best.
- JuniperMesos 2mo agoCitizens having a say in what is going on in their neighborhood is why housing in the bay area isn't expensive, they use that say to prevent the construction of new housing.
- foco_tubi 2mo agoProp 13 is why housing is expensive in California. Full stop. It was a bandaid over a wound and now the body has sepsis.
- AnthonyMouse 2mo agoIf that's supposed to explain it then why is housing also expensive in Massachusetts or Colorado? It's ~18% more in California than Massachusetts but ~313% more in Massachusetts than Oklahoma.
- foco_tubi 2mo agoMassachusetts and Colorado arrived at expensive housing markets through other means, but as far as I know they don’t have any sort of massive lock-in incentive like Prop 13.
- AnthonyMouse 2mo agoThe lock-in incentive is counterproductive but the main cause is still zoning. Prop 13 makes it so long-term owners don't want to sell because moving triggers a huge tax hike even at the same property value, and the most idiotic thing about it is that you also get the tax hike if you build anything new on the land. It would actually have been a major pro-housing rule if adding new units kept the low taxes. But that still doesn't reduce turnover to zero, and with prices as high as they are there, that would mean developers snapping up any property that comes onto the market and turning it into multiple units that are each worth the original price. Unless prevented from doing so by zoning, which is the actual problem and the same one causing it in other states. The main contribution of Prop 13 isn't a direct effect, it's that it makes residents more inclined to support the restrictive zoning rules that actually cause the problem.
- usernomdeguerre 2mo agoNot all things built are positive, so it can't be good stewardship just to build. And is the reason they don't strain infra because they don't meaningfully improve the community or its economy?
- rainsford 2mo agoThis seems like an entirely predictable outcome of data center builders and operators behaving like anti-social neighbors with noise just because no law prevented them from doing so. Building a data center near homes and running your incredibly loud gas turbine generators 24/7 for months, destroying the property values and quality of life for the people living there, is a giant middle finger to the community they've moved into. I'm not saying the backlash banning them entirely rather than adding some additional regulations is entirely logical, but it's very understandable. And should have been eminently predictable.
- AnthonyMouse 2mo ago> This seems like an entirely predictable outcome of data center builders and operators behaving like anti-social neighbors with noise just because no law prevented them from doing so. The vast, overwhelming majority of data centers source power from the grid rather than continuously operating gas turbines, and the obvious response to the ones that do is to have a moratorium on gas turbines rather than data centers.
- trhway 2mo agoAn extremely large dark black box. A haunted house on steroids. Not so quietly humming 24/7. Polluting the air from the large scale mobile gensets. Sucking in all the water and electric power so that the residential rates are going up and up. I'm all for the datacenters, the more the better, it is the great race of acceleration of our civilization. Yet, it is pretty clear, and with history being the witness, that the tech-bros and MBAs will build it without any regard for the well-being of impacted communities. Thus we have the game of what communities will [be forced to] take a one for the team. And this is why space base datacenters will be a thing :)
- masfuerte 2mo agoFactories were originally located near housing (or vice versa) because the factories needed lots of workers. This doesn't apply to data centres. They don't need to be near anybody's home, so why should anyone be obliged to suffer their externalities? Just build your data centre somewhere else.
- mcmcmc 2mo agoThey don’t generate any value for local communities either!
- rconti 2mo agoThey need more than "we will prioritize". They need to act. They need to source power _today_, not just promise at some point in the future they'll probably fund a power plant, while raising rates for human consumers in the short, medium, and long term, for example.
- ungreased0675 2mo agoData centers would be a benefit if my power bill and property taxes didn’t jump to subsidize the tax breaks my city gave them. I don’t want to pay for infrastructure multi-billion dollar companies should be funding.
- AnthonyMouse 2mo agoCan you name any place where property tax rates on other residents were increased as a result of a tax break to a data center compared to the baseline of the data center not being there?
- pstuart 2mo agoSo you'd be ok with a data center across the street from your house?