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Discussion (45 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
The shift was especially pronounced among people who said they had voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race.
The results reflect the scope of the challenge facing the industry and its supporters as the rapid buildout of data centers brings the issue home to voters ahead of the November midterms. More than 200 data centers are going up in dozens of competitive House districts, a recent POLITICO analysis found.
“It’s rare to see political attitudes change this fast in an era where they are often quite static and partisan,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First.
People get annoyed at being inconvenienced so that others, elsewhere can make money.
How would you know what "most people" think? Broad generalizations and opinion stated as fact.
On the contrary - these mass political crazes are like flash-floods these days.
What the Unabomber, Steve Bannon’s tech guy, and Bernie Sanders taught me about the great data center backlash of 2026 - https://www.wired.com/story/how-data-centers-broke-american-...
Data center approvals in Texas halted until audits completed, Gov. Greg Abbott says - https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/03/texas-data-center-pr...
DeSantis lambastes White House over possibility of blocking state-level AI laws - https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/4605403...
New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium - https://www.reuters.com/world/new-york-becomes-first-state-i...
Libertarian Ohio governor candidate calls for ‘immediate moratorium’ on new data centers -https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/08/ohio-governor-candida...
Oregonians want data center moratorium and no more tax breaks, poll finds - https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2026/08/oregonians...
Virginia state senators call for data center moratorium - https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/northern-virginia/v...
Tucker Carlson, Kevin O’Leary have testy exchange over Utah data center issues - https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-kevin-oleary-...
A real meeting of the minds.
BYO power. BYO water. BYO pipes & sewage. OK, you are good. Now build!
Instead they are look like parasites invading the heartland and sucking resources (true or not), and owners pretend to be surprised when they are getting voted down.
Utility planning is one tiny part of approving a building permit. You still need to look at storm water runoff, fire safety, environmental impact etc…
I’m also not even sure what bring your own water even looks like.
And even if they are providing their own wastewater treatment, that requires an even closer look than hooking up to municipal sewage. It also requires at least occasional long term inspection because these kinds of systems fail at insanely high rates.
Like 26 gas turbines that make a ton of noise and pollution?
> BYO water
What? How does one BYO water?
> BYO pipes & sewage
Pipes and sewage to where? There's an implied common ground at the end of those.
It falls from the sky
Septic tank
The heat problem has demonstrable solutions that people who are physics challenged can't seem to get themselves to accept.
Only if you ignore the cost of getting in there
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_cooling
You don't in fact have viable solutions to this problem when orbital launch prices are above like 100USD per ton, probably needs to be closer to 20USD per ton.
If datacenters in space become a thing, you'll hear your neighbor talking about how rockets poison the air.
I'd also wonder if the folks who don't want to live within 3 miles of a data center are OK with the data center flying over their head
They stand in the way of a nearly limitless number of positive outcomes from this technology and directly have blood on their hands that they wipe away with thought terminating cliches like "precautionary principle"
Are people there also opposed to data centers?
Not because of the "socialism" per-se, but because I have to watch as the very same crowd who 20 years ago was celebrating piracy and copyright abolitionism cozy up to the very copyright trolls they claimed to hate, all because they see their own poorly paid/exploitive creative jobs being automated away.
I get gell-mann amnesia'd by statements that Bernie, AoC, Warren et al say about AI/Tech on a weekly basis.
It's insane that the very technology that could viable implement something approaching "actual socialism" is scapegoated, villified, etc. I unironically believe that Chinese labs continuing to open source their models is being done because the CEOs believe that it's unironically part of the "actual communism" way of doing AI.
Why don't I see the anarchist/left-wing crowd protesting for OpenAI/Anthropic to release/open-weights their models? That's what you should be doing, and if you don't and instead deploy the same rhetoric to go full butlerian jihad, I know your movement is intellectually bankrupt, disingenuous, and ontologically evil.
Actually both fit into the same category of "defending individuals from massive conglomerates". Either being sued into oblivion for sharing content or having your personal IP ripped off by companies with enough lawyers for them to get away with it.
Protections for individuals, restrictions on big business. Seems to align greatly with the modern socialist M.O.
It does NOT change with scale.
You ignored my part about how all socialists should call for the immediate open-sourcing of all closed models.
Standing in the way of mass proliferation and dissemination of this technology is about as anti-socialist as it gets. Gatekeepers deserve no room for justification.
If using AI (open source or otherwise) is going to require stealing water from or increasing energy demand on already stretched communities then AI isn't worth it.
No AI until it serves everyone equally and without sacrifices.
To me that's a more consistent stance than yours.
Because the bigger problem is the existence of these companies altogether, the violent neo-reactionary Christian dominionist cult that runs them and their connections to Western imperialism, genocide and the MIC. Do you really think that they would ever release/open-weight their models if doing so presented even a modicum of threat to their power?
The reason the anarchists/leftists are protesting AI as a technology is because AI as a technology is a capitalist/colonialist project. No one is buying your "singularity is near and it's good" rationale because Star Trek isn't real and to most people you're just saying "but what if it is, are you stupid?"
Instead of just assuming everyone who disagrees with you is "intellectually bankrupt, disingenuous, and ontologically evil" (which is a disturbingly fascistic thing for a "hardcore progressive" to state) maybe you should question your priors and attempt to see the other side (ostensibly your side) in good faith.
Also, I mean... you saying you refuse to vote for any leftist candidate, ostensibly being willing to abandon the entire moral argument for leftism, for anti-racism and anti-fascism, and to throw all of your indigenous, non-white and non-hetero friends under the bus (assuming you have them,) and describing all of your ostensible allies as basically subhuman because they don't support open weight AI models? And you have the nerve to call anyone else intellectually bankrupt? At least the leftists who refused to vote for Kamala Harris because she refused to stand against genocide had an understandble (if, IMHO, politically naive) point.
"We have to assume our role as the Demiurge. Those who oppose its creation get what they deserve." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48998130)
Like, seriously? You think this is a reasonable, sensible and sane position to have?
With friends like you we don't need enemies.
By all accounts, it's completely blown out of proportion. If people genuinely, actually care about energy costs, they can vocally support when calls for setting your thermostat at 78F in summertime go out.
Now China does it.