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What frustrates me the most is that part is totally unnecessary. The quick profit and grabbing market share is what drives it, not the tech itself.

Residential power doesn’t have to go up because of data centers, that’s a choice. We can make them pay higher property tax rates if we want to compensate for a relatively low number of jobs created given the revenue generated. It’s not like fracking, it’s just a bunch of computers and some hvac

I'd love to see a realistic data center bit in a similar city game. You zone the land, it suts fallow for years and eventually starts sucking up all the water and increasing pollution because it's running 6 gas turbines

They thought people dont really care about environment issues but they are finding out thats not true.

Data centres now feel like they would be a "business deal" building in SimCity 3k/4 like the federal prison or the toxic waste dump: brings in money, but your mayor rating tanks (and in this case, the building also requires a lot of power and water, too).

Yep, even if you remove LLM, training from that conversation entirely, "we're going to triple Utah's fossil fuel usage in order to store more emails" is not a great message.

that data centers produce so few jobs is, honestly, also self-inflicted. you've got West Virginians begging for fucking FRACKING because it just might bring in a few more jobs

Yeah, the whole "bow down and accept the inevitable to make somebody else richer" message seems to finally be hitting.

data centers are basically modern fracking. huge externalities, all borne by the local communities and not the companies ruining fucking everything while profiting from it

...and then making relatively recent tech obsolete, it starts to feel like we are all being extorted. Pay this, or else! Buy this, or else! You could lose access! You will be wiped out! Oh and we made porn with your image without your permission! They do not seem rich b/c they are bringing value.

And steal all your water

That and the whole NFT/cypto stuff on the back of social media turning the world toxic while the billionaire owners amassed country economy sized piles of wealth.

Agreed. Much of the current “safety” discussion is focused on what AI might some day be. The real trouble is thinking that these things are AIs, and using them for applications they simply cannot do reliably.

That and ketamine.

Once November 6, 2024 happened there was no other moral strategy but accelerationism if we’re to minimize suffering

there isn't anyone the tech ceos hate more than the coders who work for them

We need to get these Silicon Valley assholes better hobbies so they retire to do something they enjoy.

The cool nerds avoided "career progression" and didn't get put into the CEO spots

Yuuuuuuuup. Definitely feeling the late stage capitalism where the enshittification and the constant advertising gets more aggressive and worse, and the benefit to the consumer is... I hope I'm not the only one thinking it's time to get off social media and get involved in the community more.

I am beginning to suspect they want us to mostly die.

Guys like Zuck the fuck have stayed pretty quiet lately; I think he knows he's not super liked right now and if probably a shit bag, so it's not in his best interest to poke the PR bear at this time. However, some of these billionaire freaks truly do think they deserve their status imo.

In Texas they are running pro-data center propaganda ads as roll ads on YouTube and probably on cable (I don't watch enough to know if it's not gymnastics seasons XD)

If predictive algorithms actually worked for anything but a few niche applications people would ignore the costs. It is the horrible combination of more expensive and also quite crappy. Like being fired for a less experienced replacement that is bad at everything but sucking up.

A lot of this is capitalizing on neither political party adopting an anti-AI stance. Which is weirdly planning out for them so far. This is yet another issue where elites are wildly out of step with the population as a whole.

Also the entire reaoson so many municipalities are in competition with each other for data center site awards is because they are huge contributors to municipal finances with very little cost in services

Were not Lake Tahoe folks told to get their electricity from somewhere else? It seems quite far-fetched though I am curious.