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- Hacker News
- I understand location is important for web/traditional data centers but why do they put these AI centers so close to people? Could they not put them somewhere far away like maybe in the middle some Nebraska farmland where it's just miles and miles of corn everywhere or the desert? I guess water would be an issue but it's closed loop no? Couldn't they just truck in the water and re use it or something?by nenxk
- What stood out to me was this: "By a 27-5 vote". That number seemed really high, so I looked it up - this isn't a city or a county or some kind of private tax distict - its was the nation's first city-county government.
"The Metropolitan Council is the legislative authority of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, the nation’s first, fully consolidated city-county government, established in 1963. The Vice Mayor serves as the president of the Council, which is comprised of 35 district members and five members serving at-large."
by fred_is_fred - Yes, Nashville has a huge number of council members, and it's much better that way. I moved from there to Seattle, and there's 9 council members (7 districts + 2 city-wide) here so we share a representative with a huge area (six times the people and two and a half times the land) and our local concerns have no voice.by gs17
- >this isn't a city or a county
Yes it is, it's both of those things. Consolidated city/county governments are not a weird oddity that no one knows how to handle, they're not super common but they're not governmental arrangements from Neptune, either
by mixdup - > [T]he nation’s first, fully consolidated city-county government.
This feels really tortured. Their argument is that they can say this because “Metropolitan government is a consolidation of two governments rather than the county taking over the city or the city taking over the county government.”
But, multiple cities have consolidated city/county governments. San Francisco is one such example.
by Zafira - This isn't true?
San Francisco is consolidated in 1856 and according to Wikipedia, a century before Nashville (1963).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#cite_note-Coy_19... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville,_Tennessee
by iamdelirium - This doesn't sound like the proper use of eminent domain to me.by chrismcb
- Right, it's supposed to be used to take people's homes. /s
- Way better than all the other uses though.by inigyou
- My sincere theory is that this is finally the government/politics stepping in to take their cut from the AI revolution. The politicians now have a fee-based strategy where they can literally just stick a fee on any upcoming project(s). Pay up if you ever want your permits to go through and construction to get started.
- They did it because people didn't want a data center next to the zoo. There was a huge backlash against it, and the locals are very happy that they were listened to, I can promise you. No conspiracy theory necessary.by DangitBobby
- The value prop for the crazy sounding idea of putting GPUs into orbit.by xyzzy123
- While I’m sure there are people profiting off these movements, there is very real grassroots support for blocking datacenters and generally anything relating to AI and I can’t blame anyone other than the companies building it. I think in 30 years this will be studied as the worst marketed technology ever. It’s one thing if outsiders try to say your technology is dangerous, it’s another if the companies themselves are telling the public that they’re technology is either going to a) exterminate humanity or b) eliminate all jobs and institute a permanent underclass. I think they’re right that these are concerns and while our niche tech bubble maybe thinking also about the potential scientific benefits of the technology, all the wider world sees is multi-national tech companies taking advantage of areas with high political inequality to push through genuinely unfair contracts that saddle utility rate payers with higher fees, potentially negative health effects, and with very little long term job creation. This is also coming from companies that have ignored complaints about the overriding addiction and division which their platforms have allowed to propagate over the last 20 years all while many Americans watch historic levels of corruption in government in favor of those same companies go unpunished. At this point I think the tech world has really burnt all of its political capital with the wider populace and while we may sit back and complain that progress is being blocked by luddites, its not irrational to want to block the creation of a technology which you will pay the cost for while seeing a disproportionately small percentage of the rewards. I think if we’re going to see the actual proliferation of this tech and the benefits it will bring, their needs to be a) more publicized news of real benefits to human quality of life in visible fields like medicine and b) an actual plan for how to confer the rewards of technology more widely rather than just continuing to center in the hands of so few people and not just approaching it as higher gdp but also lower wealth inequality as long as its correlated with political powerby snaking0776
- You don't need a conspiracy theory. All these data centers were going up in rural/near rural areas that voted for this, but then the data centers made everyone else's electric bills go up.
I was for them and now I'm against them until they pay for their own electricity.
by Larrikin - It is probably not that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49180901 posted yesterday explains it well.by ajkjk
- There is a medical office building near my house along my walking route. It has a fancy, detached, fully enclosed generator building. When the generators are running the place emits a really high-pitched whine.
I can hear it approaching from a couple blocks away. I'm sure my dog and other animals hear it much better than me.
by user00005 - > high-pitched whine.
Does it have to?
I meant, it is a very common problem with lots of complain. I bet modern electronic can do it much less noise.
Does HN know something in this area?
by j16sdiz - We’ve been building data centers for many decades without problems. I used to service equipment at some in my area. Many had big chunks of green space around them, very desirable to live near.
The current climate around seems very sudden.
by duxup - > The current climate around seems very sudden.
Is it?
Grievances against big tech - over issues like the stupendous amount of money being created for very few, and the damage being inflicted among many other things - have been building for years. Whether you view those complaints as legitimate or not very much depends on your point of view, but the anger is there, it is real, and it is palpable.
AI was the tipping point for a lot people, especially younger people. My teenager refuses to use it. Then, Elon Musk went to Memphis and threw gas on the fire, providing a perfect illustration of why people are so upset.
Data centers are an avatar right now of all of that because they are a physical manifestation of what people can't otherwise fight.
- You can't think of a single new development in the situation?
Sorry to be snide - you can certainly make an argument that the demands of AI should not affect public perception of data centers, but you should simply make that argument, rather than mysteriously omitting any reference to the issue.
- Big Tech has accumulated too many grievances across too many segments of society and made too much money in the process, so let's not act surprised at a backlash. And data centers are remarkably well-suited as a focal point for people to express those accumulated grievances. So I wouldn't look too hard at all the many and varied reasons that data centers are being opposed, but instead at the quickness and ferocity and consistency with which they are being opposed. It reminds of the movement in the US and Canada in the 90's to oppose unfettered globalization - though this already feels larger and more widespread (and less late to the party).by standardUser
- Same city:
>The 60,000-seat stadium is projected to cost $2.1 billion, including $1.26 billion of public money—the largest stadium subsidy in U.S. history.
by haunter - Stadiums actually provide utility to the local community
- Amazing that the new stadium has less capacity tooby hall0ween
- Nashville politics operate in an extremely narrow window.
The local government has a degree of autonomy, but there are unspoken checks on it by a generally hostile state government. Nashville is represented by Democrats while the state is controlled by Republicans. There is an implicit threat that if the city fails to pursue the state's objectives the state will punish it.
Recently the city angered the state because it refused to hold the Republican convention. The state retaliated by passing a law to shrink the Nashville city council and another to take control of its airport. The state also took control of the Nashville tourism board that has a slush fund paid for by city taxes.
There is a direct line between state reps and local politicians. So for example when state lobbyists were angered at the loss of parking due to a bike lane they called up a council member to have the lane removed.
Which is all to say that the stadium deal was ordered by the state and not something the city had a real say in.
If the datacenter people go and cozy up to the governor or legislators the state will lean on the city again and they will ram it through as well.
by JeremyNT - I live in Nashville. This story is all over the place in general. People assume all the things like it will make their rates go up, etc.
I'm not opposed to data centers in general but the location is right next to our zoo which has grown tremendously along with the city over the past twenty years. Took my kids there when they were small and we still have a couples membership.
It's very difficult even here to get facts about this whole thing, but I'm pretty sure the million dollar an acre price was a factor in the original deal.
Now on top of that take a city government who's still recovering from many criticisms from the ice storm earlier this year where people were without power for weeks. The demand for action has been great and very loud.
But ... eminent domain to take over the land? That is a terrible precedent to set and very dangerous. Honestly if the politics were on the other side here (say, the state government who claimed eminent domain), it would probably be seen as the terrible thing it is (the state government is incredibly maga but the city is very left).
- This sounds like one of those cases where the opposition may be right about the project and still wrong about the mechanismby veunes
- Agreed and disagreed. It is a terrible precedent for sure. On the other hand, government inaction, usually hiding behind arcane codes, process, and blame circles gets really frustrating. In that world, they'd still be waiting on a court date(if even) when the data center cuts its ribbon.
It's kinda nice to see them just drop the nuclear option on something the people didn't want. At this point, it's kinda nice to see a government accomplish anything nice at all.
by silisili - Chattanooga (just hours away) has a DC Blox data center, approximately 50,000sqft (tiny!), located on the southwest corner of Main Street and Center Streets – yet if you didn't know it was there, you wouldn't know it was there. It is entirely surrounded by apartment buildings and smaller retail.
I spent most of my IBEW apprenticeship working in data centers of all sizes (5-300,000 sqft), and micro co-location facilities (like DCb's) are entirely different from the likes of the AWSes and cryptomining operations of this world (250,000sqft+).
Happy for the zoo exhibits/animals, but this particular co-lo wasn't even among the egregious data center owners.
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My recommendation to data center planners: small cities have cheaper land, and lots of love/power/cronyism. You may get further by buddying up with the smaller fishes/communities.
- What I think is nice is that the political parties opposed to data center development are actually taking concrete steps, exercising specific powers, to advance their goals.
So much opposition to tech boils down to whining, and then the tech companies get to do whatever they want anyway. Same complaint applies generally to the democratic establishment. It's nice to see people finally waking up to the reality that opposition has to use its teeth, not just bare them.
by j2kun