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Groan. Your comment is the most depressing thing I've read today. What a sad way to look at the world. People are doing stuff and having fun. Meanwhile a whole
by bahmboo 25d ago
Groan. Your comment is the most depressing thing I've read today. What a sad way to look at the world. People are doing stuff and having fun. Meanwhile a whole sub-cult is sucking from the doom straw and mumbling carbon, water, greed, blah. The sport of Golf consumes far more resources than any AI data center.
- Black616Angel 25d agoOkay, but firstly golf is probably the most useless sport ever and secondly there is more than one AI datacenter. Yes, some people have fun, but most of the "fun" nowadays is just endless mindless consumption.
- minimaxir 25d agoHow people derive fun is different from person to person.
- wilg 25d agoGolf consumes more water than ALL datacenters on earth.
- emsign 25d agoBut they both consume too much water. That's why we need less of both. Much less golf courses though.
- bahmboo 25d agoLol. Let's not pick on golf? All sports are pointless depending on how you look at them. But here we are thousands and thousands of years later and humans want what humans want.
- wolfy1993 25d agoRemind me what golf club comes close to the energy consumption of a data center? Or do you literally mean the entire sport of golf vs 1 data center?
- deleted 25d ago[deleted]
- alexk307 25d agoI was curious and tried to come up with a crude estimate - all of the golf courses in the US use approximately the same amount of energy (mowing, fertilizer, etc) as one 1GW DC does.
- xp84 25d agoK, but they're paying for that energy though. And the land and the building costs, etc. I really don't want to live in a country where the government just arbitrarily says "Oh, sorry we have 'enough' datacenters / Subway sandwich shops / golf courses / storage facilities so you aren't allowed to build one" -- even if it becomes a populist belief that they should. The fact is, at this point there is so much demand for DC capacity that the prices are super high, and thus it's worth building them. Many people believe that it's a bubble or whatever. If they're right, well then a lot of people building DCs right now will lose their shirts. If they're wrong and the demand is sustained, DCs are exactly what we need to be building.
- djeastm 25d ago>where the government just arbitrarily says "Oh, sorry we have 'enough' datacenters / Subway sandwich shops / golf courses / storage facilities so you aren't allowed to build one" -- even if it becomes a populist belief that they should. It's not really arbitrary though, is it? It's decided by duly-elected representatives who answer to the citizens of the municipality. A government "of the people", etc. I feel like what you're arguing against is precisely why we have local governments in the first place.
- Revanche1367 25d agoI’m not commenting on whether generative AI is especially resource-wasteful or not, but a lot of people online seem to have newly discovered the existence of data centers.
- MonkeyIsNull 25d agoWow, just a quick check .... it appears you are correct. Golf: ~531 billion gal/year Data centers: ~17 billion gal/year Golf ≈ 31× as much Indirect Water footprint via Electricity Usage: Golf: ~500–531B gallons Data centers including electricity: ~228B gallons
- squeegmeister 25d ago[deleted]
- HDBaseT 25d agoI don't really get the golf course hate. We need more green spaces, we need people to be active. Golf is a fairly quite sport, animals do foster around the greenery with golf courses. I would much rather a golf course than hot concrete everywhere.
- totallygeeky 25d agoGolf courses are not green spaces, come on now. They are most often limited in their access and devoid of greenery native to the area or that supports pollinators. Grass does not equal green space, and certainly not the flavor of green that is present in golf courses. The alternative to a golf course is not hot concrete either, that's a false dichotomy.
- dgently7 25d agoits because "green spaces" and "spaces with greens" are not the same. just imagine a 150 acre generic park or forest instead of an over fertilized over watered field for a single game played by only .002 percent of people. golf is generally a huge waste of space for the amount of value we get from it per person and should have no place anywhere near a population center where we actually need more green space.
- bahmboo 25d agoI'm not hating on golf. My grandfather would be appalled! In crowded urban areas they don't work so well anymore. And I'm also not against using our resources for human pleasure!
- moomoo11 25d agoI just ignore most of these people. 99.9% of the time they're losers who peddle misinformation.