Thread

Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage

384 points · 503 comments · sensanaty

fasterik · 1791149723 · focus · HN ↗
The concern around data centers looks a lot like a moral panic. They've been around for decades and nobody cared before the backlash against AI. They're like any other industrial building, subject to the same resource constraints and zoning laws. I suspect if the owners of that land built a steel mill, a semiconductor fab, or anything other than a data center with similar power and water requirements, nobody would care.
1. therein · 1791150318 · focus · HN ↗
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  1. fasterik · 1791150919 · focus · HN ↗
    >Get out of here. Either you have a simple mind or you are commenting in bad faith.
    I find it more and more common that people who disagree online respond by attacking the commenter personally instead of addressing their arguments. Saying "it's bigger" isn't enough; you need to explain why a building full of computers is fine if it's 100 acres but not if it's 1000 acres. You also need to explain why we shouldn't oppose comparable scale manufacturing, research, or warehousing facilities.
    Cameras are different than data centers. Trying to connect the two is a rhetorical technique, not an argument.
    therein · 1791159571 · focus · HN ↗
    The reason I didn't explain it is because it is obvious.
    Because one of them has a ton of GPUs and TPUs in it while the other one doesn't.
    And for the cameras, one is doing using state of the art detection and has connectivity.
    Both are obvious things to people in here.
    goda90 · 1791177570 · focus · HN ↗
    Calling people's concerns a moral panic is a personal attack too.
2. tzs · 1791152045 · focus · HN ↗
  You are overlooking scale and pace. No one is trying to build more steel mills in the next 3 or 4 years than have been built over the entire history of the steel mill industry so far, with each new steel mill using around an order of magnitude more energy in the same space than steel mills built a few years ago.
  1. fasterik · 1791152275 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not against local governments setting zoning laws and regulations if they're concerned about the pace of growth. Personally, I'm not concerned because I think we can and should invest in infrastructure to keep up with demand. This will benefit all industries, not just AI. My point is that I suspect (I'll admit that I haven't done any research on this) that people wouldn't be against facilities with the exact same footprint if they didn't carry the label "data center" and this is primarily driven by a backlash against AI rather than the resource use itself. In that sense, they're trying to rebrand a political/culture war issue as a zoning or utility issue.
  2. hinkley · 1791156064 · focus · HN ↗
    After Prohibition was repealed, we didn't outlaw public drinking, but we did outlaw public drunkenness. There's only about a factor of 2-3 between the legal and the illegal activity. A fairly narrow margin between acceptable and excess, if you ask me. But it's not unique in that regard. We have the same kind of rules for interest rates, for instance. We accept this much, but not a larger amount.
    ButlerianJihad · 1791157270 · focus · HN ↗
    > we didn't outlaw public drinking
    Tonto, dunno who "we" is but around my metro area, public drinking is rather tightly controlled.
    I am not really aware of the laws around walking down a public sidewalk with a beer in hand. It is certainly gauche but a done-thing to sit at a bus stop and have a Fireball or two.
    However, any drinking establishment that serves alcohol will stop you at the door and won't permit anyone to carry drinks outside of their premises. That's a strict thing. My apartment community bans drinking in walkways and stairwells, which was probably done more by non-residents than my neighbors. So there are a lot of bans on public drinking, even if it is not blanket-outlawed.
    A couple of major developments at the shopping mall, though: traditionally all American movie theaters were dry, but that rule has been relaxed, and even the major chains are serving alcohol now. At the mall there has been instituted a "sip & stroll" policy, where designated bars can serve you a plastic cup, and you can roam around the mall with drink-in-hand, as long as you observe the borders of it, where you can't walk into the parking lot or off-premises with your booze.
    In general, I have seen many liquor-related laws be relaxed and lightened across my county and state. It seems that there's a general lack of will to crack down on the demand-side, when there is lots and lots of profit to be had on the healthcare-side, where you will get a diagnosis and medication and treatment, whether that is IOP or in-patient, so why not encourage more drinkers to overindulge? Broken window fallacy FTW!
    ryukoposting · 1791171084 · focus · HN ↗
    > dunno who "we" is but around my metro area, public drinking is rather tightly controlled.
    Relevant reading: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-container_law" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-container_law
    tl;dr details vary by state and municipality, but with very few exceptions you can't walk around a random town drinking fireball. Or, well, you can as long as you don't get caught.
    I've seen what you're talking about though. It seems like the big trend for millenials has been "<blank> but with booze." Barcades. Sip & stroll at malls. Booze in movie theaters. Paint & Sip. The microbrewery craze that's partly just "bars but make them fancy"
    If you really want to get thrown for a loop, go read up about the Tavern League. One of the most powerful lobbies in Wisconsin state government is a massive cartel of... bars.
3. TheJoeMan · 1791167542 · focus · HN ↗
  These new proposals, which have been suspiciously hidden under NDA’s, misdirection, etc. are ENORMOUS. And the local permitting in my area has data centers categorized as “light industrial”, and thus passed a 1-year moratorium to revisit the code. I am fully aware of smaller data centers along the highway I drive every day with no issue, and as such I do not consider myself crazy.
  1. bryan_w · 1791173774 · focus · HN ↗
    But are the NDAs new, or were you manipulated into caring about them this time and not the 1000's of other times it's happened (across various industries)

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