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- Hacker News
- The tech oligarchs and their boosters are doing more to radicalize the US populace than Bernie or AOC ever could.
The mask has been slipping for a while, but a combination of Trump getting elected and AI psychosis has lead to a lot of premature celebration over their belief in being the new masters of the permanent underclass. Now the the mask is completely off and revealed them for the disgusting reptiles they have always been.
by paradox242 - In every good market crash, there's a flash point. In 2008, it was the Lehman Bros collapse and congress refusing the initial bailout. This might be the flashpoint, 75 data centers blocked this year and a supermajority of Americans against their construction.by panny
- Stopped in an election year. I suspect some politicians may change their minds come December.by 0cf8612b2e1e
- Here I was thinking it will be somewhere between next-generation Nvidia chips, and inability to get ROI before the end of relatively quick GPU depreciation schedules.
- People don't want them stopped entirely, they just want some kind of reasonable tradeoff or restrictions. The current government just doesn't care or listen at all. Just say "we hear you, here's what we are doing about your concerns" instead of silence or "fuck you, deal with it".by tencentshill
- Why would this cause a market crash? A supply crunch in AI will push prices up.by jdm2212
- If stopped before construction, the organizations funding the data centers still have the investment funds and can build in a different location or, worst case, give the money back to investors.
Assuming demand keeps up, owners of already-existing data centers continue to get windfall profits.
It would be like what happens when housing prices go up due to lack of supply.
by skybrian - > Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is positioning himself as a positive voice on AI
Given Meta's (and also Mark's) reputation, I wonder how much that is helping the cause and how much its opponents...
by xg15 - It's been amazing to watch how tone-deaf these AI "thought leaders" and CEO's have been during this hype cycle.
"look, we made this thing that's going to put everyone out of work, or destroy 99% of the planet except those of us who have built bunkers, leveraged a massive bet on the entire economy over it, if we're wrong we get bailed out by YOU, and guess what, it's coming to a neighborhood near you!"
and they are surprised at the backlash or that people are tossing molotovs at them? It's just crazy to me the kind of bubble one must live in to not see this coming from a mile away.
by JohnMakin - Cosmetics market is roughly the size of data centers. Doesn’t seem to be destroying the planet despite using comparable amount of water and orders of magnitude more chemicals.by dzhiurgis
- I dunno, I think it's mainly because people don't like them, and that's mainly about the first point and the general perception of inequality in the economy. It's a bit hard to argue against that, regardless of how strong your position is.
(IMO the environmental impact of datacenters has been pretty overblown. Water usage is a concern in some places for some datacenters but it's really not a big issue for most of them, the main thing that has some merit on a larger scale is the electricity demand, but the concerns are largely around very optimistic projections of growth of datacenters, not how much they are using today)
by rcxdude - Carbon taxes are a tough sell, but I bet a carbon tax specifically on data centers would pass.by skybrian
- I think a lot of people out there are being manipulated about things that they don't understand.
I saw some comments from people against a proposed data center at the site of an old power plant. I pointed out that it was a mile from anything. Someone replied saying that that was still too close, and that they wouldn't want to live 50 miles from a data center.
We are 20 miles from Ashburn.