Thread

1. aliasxneo · 1791145670 · focus · HN ↗

   I lived in a smaller rural town near a Google datacenter. During my career there I had routinely come across some outlandish accusations made about our water/power usage from the locals. But for obvious reasons I could never dispute them. I remember we hired a local who'd grown up in the town and he was "really surprised" when he started to see what we were doing to remain efficient.

   The current data center craze just feels like the same thing but on a bigger scale.

   1. WarmWash · 1791151707 · focus · HN ↗

      The current hysteria has little to do with datacenters and a lot to do with societal unrest about AI.

      1. numbsafari · 1791151921 · focus · HN ↗

         Also the unforced error around NDAs and attempts at bypassing environmental and other reviews. People don’t like the idea of their local elected officials bypassing the rules in the dark.

         I understand these companies want to move fast, but this seems to be one of those cases where going slow gets you there faster.

         1. vovavili · 1791152819 · focus · HN ↗

            >People don’t like the idea of their local elected officials bypassing the rules in the dark.

            Others don't like technological progress to be reduced to the speed of bureaucracies who have no compelling incentive to be particularly efficient. Especially when the technology at hand might end up making quite a few of these bureaucracies much less staffed.

            1. whatshisface · 1791153176 · focus · HN ↗

               The thinking on display in this thread is something like,

               "I needed to add a billing address field to the order flow, so I suggested we use Kafka to process shipping requests. My boss said the form field should turn red if an invalid address was entered, and in response, the team lead objected that Oracle charged too much for MySQL. I checked for a pricing page but found a 'call us' form. The CTO decided to go with Kafka, and told us that landlines are an obsolete platform."

               1. vovavili · 1791153302 · focus · HN ↗

                  I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say.
            2. estearum · 1791154093 · focus · HN ↗

               People dislike secretive bureaucrats more than they dislike slow or overstaffed ones.

               Good luck with this attitude homie!

               1. JumpCrisscross · 1791158766 · focus · HN ↗

                  > Good luck with this attitude homie!

                  This was the attitude these leaders took, though. It shouldn’t be downvoted simply for being wrong—it’s wrong in an interesting way.

                  Lots of folks in Silicon Valley thought they’d be cheered for bypassing bureaucracy. They were wrong and will pay dearly for it, possibly with their wealth and freedom. But it was a commonly-accepted attitude, in part driven by the Bay Area’s obscenely inept bureaucracies around power and building.

         2. tbrownaw · 1791157257 · focus · HN ↗

            > Also the unforced error around NDAs and attempts at bypassing environmental and other reviews.

            Hasn't it been common knowledge for a while -- as in since well before the ai boom -- that those reviews are in practice mostly tools for obstructionism (I don't want anything built) and extortion (fund this project and we'll drop our complaint), and are a significant chunk of why we suck at megaprojects in recent decades?

            Is that's even half true, I don't think the "unforced" there really applies.

            1. vel0city · 1791160919 · focus · HN ↗

               If they're truly there to just be crooked and corrupt then sure let's remove/reduce them openly and together.

               Shady backroom deals are bad though, and selectively choosing to apply the rules to some and wave them for others isn't cool, in either direction.

            2. samudrijan · 1791161539 · focus · HN ↗

               I like clean water to drink and air to breathe and a climate that isn’t on an increasingly hotter trajectory. Government should police corporations.

               1. WarmWash · 1791162924 · focus · HN ↗

                  We could also just stop giving bad corporations money. I can assure you it's the thing that they absolutely hate the most and 10x as effective as trying to write legislation.

                  1. katdork · 1791163814 · focus · HN ↗

                     this works less and less as corporations buy from each other and everybody has things like pensions/401k and investments. there are also many who will buy shit regardless. it's just ignoring the reality of the situation, really.
                  2. fzeroracer · 1791165797 · focus · HN ↗

                     Companies aren't earning the majority of profit from your average joe buying products anymore. The consumers are investors: Rich assholes with too much money, gamblers, and true believers. It's a lot like how McDonalds true income comes not from consumers but from holding and renting out valuable plots of land.
               2. onion2k · 1791179048 · focus · HN ↗

                  That's entirely fair and reasonable if you level your complaints about power and water use at everything that uses a lot rather than just data centres.

                  If you're only saying we need fewer data centres then your argument is against AI, and not in favor of sensible approach to the climate.

            3. Forgeties79 · 1791164445 · focus · HN ↗

               Then let’s change the laws and regulations.

               In a society of laws you can’t just ignore the ones you don’t like, otherwise it undermines the entire system and suddenly the ones we all generally like/support aren’t being followed either.

               1. Gigachad · 1791173335 · focus · HN ↗

                  Elon musk used his hundreds of billions of dollars to buy a social media platform to push a certain politician, bribed voters, and bought his way in to the government to fire everyone who would investigate his AI business.

                  You can't just "change laws" when the people building these data centers control the laws.

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