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#data#more#datacenters#need#centers#power#tax#where#building#build
Discussion (95 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
what if the market was hard to enter?
What if the inputs aren't available?
What if the costs of the inputs rises?
What if the capital for expansion isn't available?
What if the manufacturers don't expect demand to persist?
What if there's a shortage of skilled labour?
What if it takes years to expand supply?
What if there wasn't effective competition?
I'm not sure it's as certain as you seem to claim.
There is no real effort being put towards maximizing the amount of resources you can get out of hardware, the game for the entire duration of our industry has been throwing more money to buy more hardware.
Now that there are actual limits happening, there still isn't any major motivation to truly rewrite things to be better or more efficient. What they're trying to do instead is force the US government to bail them out via corporate welfare or to threaten allies into buying their wares.
When Elon did his thing, it was way more than just firing federal workers. They dismantled key parts of the regulatory system. The SEC was purged, the lawyers were chased out of DoJ, and contracts that were key to external/industry groups like FINRA were terminated — they purged most of their staff.
AI and crypto is just the means of the grift. The corruption vig being applied to the markets is distorting everything. We see it with memory and food.
People know Kevin O'Leary isn't a real businessman, and the crypto bros pivoting to AI data centers are scammers. The incentives, especially property tax concessions, all look like corporate welfare. Who in the right mind would support Larry Ellison getting a tax break?
As Kevin O'Leary said to the interviewer recently, when asked why he is getting subsidized by the tax payers: "You don't understand how free markets work..."
You can't make this up.
Arming the dumbest among us with smartphones aka portable TV studios was one of the biggest mistakes we made as a society.
Not that it matters. A building is a building and has to meet local zoning regulations.
Your elected representatives are approving them left and right and issuing variances.
We need more locally-sourced, sustainable datacenters?
Arming the dumbest among us...
Conveniently leaving yourself out of that group, I'm sure.
I implore you to continue with this strategy.
Cryptocurrency was mildly annoying, then AI said "hold my beer...".
Budget phones are a category are getting fucked, and there's a pretty good chance the next iPhone is gonna cost even more than it does now.
Honestly, I think we should just ban "AI" of all forms and get it over with. Rip the bandage off before the wound underneath turns into gangrene
ELIZA was "AI". But it didn't have the same level of societal damage. HAL 9000 was "AI". Games have "AI" for decades. But "AI" today has been coopted by corporations who seek to lock people into their AIaaS. Local LLMs exist, and I have a few models on my computer for fun. Those models still probably used more power than I would like to be generated. But I will never, ever, ever use cloud AI to even so much as ask a question. If there is a long-term future in AI, it's in local models
Too late. The vampires have tasted blood and they will not be stopped.
Anger towards DCs are pertinent from a politics-in-rich-country angle, but it has no relevance on the overall trajectory of where we are heading.
If DCs get banned in the US, there are still many middle income countries who want them in their special industrial zones, due to the FDI and employment opportunities they bring, and these countries provide generous tax breaks to hyper scalers to compete for their business.
Malaysia and India are recent examples of this policymaking. The new US funded DC zone in Philippines is another example.
There's an interesting geopolitics (emphases on "geo") angle to this if these critical assets are going to increasingly be built overseas.
How about the middle ground of ok, you can build the datacenter, but it's owned by the locality. They can lease it back to the builder for the privilege of being able to operate on their ground. And the lease is steep. No more second homes on the cape, or private italian schools for the kids.
No despicable data center apologist has ever suggested that communities shouldn't negotiate the best deal they can get to compensate for the incurred costs and externalities.
Why do you feel justified defining what terms a community can agree to when considering hosting a data center? Do you not believe the democratic right for them to self-govern.
the 5-7 people they employ during normal operation. High skilled engineers get flown in for setup and major changes/operations.
They add little local economic value.
The handwriting was on the wall with this issue since the O'Bama administration: he had been convinced that putting all health care records in one central repository i.e. server famrs, and then unleash AI-systems on all that data, would come up with a cure for cancer. And at that time, there was an electricity shortage problem.
Another server farm is the one that the NSA built in Utah where the local power grid has been unable to keep powered-up. That's the one purported to have the backdoor on everyone's internet traffic kept. But some people prefer I go away with my foil hat.
How?
This just sounds like 'no' but with extra indirection.
Most large scale protests are in fact because democracy failed to give the people a voice, and decisions were made without the input of the people.
Build the future, sure. But don’t sneak it past the people who have to live next to it. If you have to sneak it like that, then maybe it is not worth having.
Get sick of all the shady behaviour and lying. These companies, owners, and CEOs need to be taken down a peg.
I ran the numbers based on some averages, and property tax revenue at a 50% discount would bring in about a billion dollars a year for a city of around 23k people.
I just am not sure why the city cannot be transparent about data centers offsetting property taxes. They also do not make it clear on their website that there is no water capacity issue. People are going to be mad no matter what though. I think for some this is a proxy issue, and what really is driving them is distrust of big tech and wealth inequality.
I also suspect some of the social media backlash may be an astroturfing campaign. Accounts idle for years all of a sudden posting daily the same talking points.
Those are staggering numbers. In my town a single family home pays about $12K/year in property taxes. To collect a billion in property taxes would be 85,000 homes!
I suspect they might also be a little bit mad (whether they admit it or not) that they are being subjected to all this to make a few people unbelievably wealthy.
These people aren't simple peasants - they are as aware of how the system works as well as the rest of us. Lenox is just a short distance from Flint, where they know all about how a city and its population can be left behind by an industry.
The problem is that all of a sudden they are being made to pay the price in quality of life, instead of some other group of people they could care less about or even dislike.
If this truly matters to them, and it's not just a negotiating tactic for a piece of the pie, they should consider making common cause with other groups affected by this in other areas and look past their traditional tribal alliances. Otherwise, no little municipality stands a chance against the power of capital that effectively controls government.
They will pay the minimum tax and that will then be pocketed by the local politicians who pushed for the DC. The town gets a pittance compared to the profit produced from these DCs.
One of the incentives to build in these areas are that they can pay low tax in the first place.
https://wjla.com/news/local/loudoun-county-virginia-taxes-da...
> In January, Loudoun County estimated about $895 million in data center real and personal property tax revenue, and the county’s entire operating budget was projected to be $940 million, according to County Supervisor Mike Turner (D-Ashburn).
> Loudoun County’s next budget will spend $4.7 billion in the next fiscal year which includes funding for LCPS, according to the county.
…
> Loudoun County Public Schools will be getting $111.8 million more than last year, and county employee compensation will increase, according to the county.
They’re getting lots of money from data centers and spending it on things like employees and schools, while lowering residents’ taxes slightly.
Apparently you believe differently but where did you learn that?
Aren't there only a handful of companies need compute and can build datacenters? This isn't aws building more regions is it?
Also recently I was surprised and not surprised to find people are making anti ai like their identity now. Like there's a reddit community dedicated to this
So my guess is that what is driving the need is that (speculated) 100x the next major models.
There's only so many companies involved as far as I can tell,but these datacenter stories seem everywhere?
The big providers lease capacity in addition to their own capital investments. It helps them hedge risk. When the merry go round stops on AI, these will all go bankrupt, and H100s will be like a circa 2001 Aeron chair.
That’s not to say there aren’t downsides, but they vary quite a bit depending on location and grid capacity.
I actually expect there will be major progress made on the energy efficiency and performance of LLM models using novel hardware. So, the buildout may overshoot by quite a bit… If so I hope we can find a use for all those racks…
Datacenters do not have to be noisy. Datacenters do not have to cheap out on cooling solutions. Datacenters do not need to be powered by mobile gas turbines left on trailers to pretend they're not permanently installed to avoid having to get permits.
Those corners being cut is not what make AI datacenters possible or competitive. That race is purely chip supply.
For reference, I work in an industrial neighborhood where there are quite a few new datacenters from big providers. The buildings are ugly for sure, but unless you're staring at it you'd have no idea it was there. I could try to pay more attention to see if I can hear it if I focus on it, but I suspect the sound of nearby rustling leaves will be too deafening to make out anything.
Very open to being corrected on any of this, it’s just my own understanding but I’m not in the industry.
Indeed, there is some noise from backup generators when tested (or in use), but with a bit of preparation, good palcement and sequential testing you can make that not too disturbing.
The others I agree with, but Im not sure this is true. The US government has proven itself completely incapable of expanding electricity production and grid infrastructure. How exactly are you supposed to power your datacenter when you cant access any electricity?
1. Build your datacenter near supply. If there were consequences to ignoring the rules or being a bad neighbor with municipality, state or federal government baring their teeth, more optimal locations with regards to supply and noise would also end up being the cheapest and safest location for them.
2. Build supply near your datacenter. Solar and wind are both very cheap right now, but requires buying more land, same for a proper gas power plant in its own building with appropriate noise and pollution treatment.
3. Make investment into infrastructure a prerequisite for the project instead of just complaining about it and making into an excuse for cutting corners.
Even if you need to have local supply, "mobile gas turbines left on trailers to pretend they're not permanently installed to avoid having to get permits" is never a necessity.
To answer your question, you build your datacenters where there is capacity or you plan with the utility in the area you want to build. This process takes years.
They are not doing that. They are building them as fast and as cheaply as possible.
As a result they are cutting corners and are leading to all of the complaints.
They are as a result stealing from the future to make a profit today.
The grid does not have gigawatts of extra base load capacity available as that has always been looked upon as wasteful.
AI companies are doing a fine job of driving the resentment all by themselves, they don't need China's help. Whether you're right or wrong is irrelevant, these companies are doing nothing, absolutely nothing, to help the public's view of them. They seem to think that they don't need public support.
There hasn't been any credible reporting on this so far. It's far more likely people are just mad that they have to pay for the AI boom both literally via increased electricity rates and via increased noise, water shortage and construction related pollution caused by the data centers.
They're not. And that should make you go hmmm.
With fiber connectivity it doesn't matter if they are in remote locations.
I'm pretty sure the economics of it for the average citizen takes care of the resentment all by itself. No need for elaborate conspiracy theories.
AI was used by the Israelis to decide what homes in Palestine to bomb.
AI was used by the Trump admin to decide what buildings to target, including a school of ~200 kids.
xAI was deploying numerous gas-turbine trailers at their datacenters in urban areas where they couldn't get enough power. Turbines that pump out huge amounts of NOx and noise...not to mention these DCs are generating so much heat they're raising the temperature of the areas they're in.
In every social group I'm in both IRL and online people hate AI shit.
They hate the monumental waste of energy, water, and land.
They hate the noise and pollution created by gas turbine generators being deployed at DCs because the DC can't get enough power
They hate that DCs consume water treated for DRINKING and pay a fraction of what individual ratepayers pay
They hate that politicians are handing out freebies to these DCs, whether it is tax breaks of infrastructure or discounted utilities or all of the above.
They hate AI phone system 'agents' that routinely get things wrong.
They hate AI "news stories."
They hate AI "agents" they have to deal with to get support for things which somehow manage to be even worse than someone who barely speaks English and has a decision tree in front of them, despite the company clearly being able to train it on much more data and refine it.
They hate it when media outlets use AI for "artwork" and graphics that look idiotic / have basic mistakes and clearly took work away from a photographer, editor, or graphic designer. Or all three.
They hate it when businesses, acquaintances, coworkers, friends reply to them with obviously-written-by-AI responses.
There are endless stories here about how AI is swamping open source projects with garbage bug reports and push requests.
In gaming circles they hate how prices on SSDs and RAM have tripled or more.
The programmers I know see endless slop and people in their field being fired because management thinks AI can do their jobs.
The list goes on. The only people who "like" AI are AI DudeBros and investors.