Data center proponents generally argue that the facilities will provide jobs and sustain the American lead in the global AI race. Opponents, meanwhile, urge that the infrastructure projects are associated with dangerous pollution, spiking energy costs, and loss of natural land. And then, of course, there’s the noise.
“We don’t need a data center in a community, let alone two hyperscale data centers in a community of less than a population of 12,000 people,”
There’s like 5 people working in a data center at any given time. It is NOT a job creator people! It’s literally machines running software designed to replace people, how dumb can they be!
Don’t forget the dumber argument “but the construction jobs!”
Like construction requires locals when experienced crews will bring their own out of town experts
Seriously. How many random small town plumbers know anything about industrial-scale computer liquid cooling installation? How many local electricians know anything about data center electrical systems? It makes no sense to use local labor. The skills required are just too specialized.
Or the fact that there’s a serious affordable housing shortage and public infrastructure is falling apart, and addressing those things would mean construction jobs.
But no. You don’t get to have a house. You get to live in a slum next to a screaming data center.
But the local politicians will somehow get a home renovation, a new truck, and a vacay they feel they deserve if they approve it.
There’s employment for a handful of cable monkeys, remote eyes, ears and hands. They work for staffing companies, not the parent company and get shitty to no benefits. Entry level, not much training. They tell you “we’ll hire you after your contract, 1-2 years.” Then they fire you and move to the next cable monkey. The pay is ok but nothing to write home about. I feel like if more people knew, they’d be more outraged about the pollution and noise, not to mention tax subsidies, in exchange for a handful of these kinds of jobs. Also, when they develop robots that can reliably use cables, these jobs will vanish overnight.
👏Data👏centers👏do👏not👏bring👏permanent👏jobs👏
Well, the “permanent jobs” are like two dozen — for security, mainly. But yeah, once construction is done, it goes from several dozens to one or two.
And for building it’s not like they’re going to use the local hardware store a lot.
That’s the thing. Boomer politicians going “gee that’s a big building, it will be able to hold a lot of highly skilled taxpaying workers.” But if said politicians looked at other cases they’d see, that the most skilled workers are the 6 or so guys, who showed just enough cognitive abilities to be trusted, to go to aisle X, find rack Y and replace the faulty drive with the red light on shelf Z.
Data centers probably won’t even hire local electricians or AC techs, because they’ll be brought in with knowledge of data center operations.
Even those are being replaced with robot dogs piloted by outsourced employment to save on cost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai_IEHLmhDU
And a Benn Jordan video for fun
They picked your community because you only had 12,000 people. Because they’re bullying you and expect you to cave.
And cheap land. If there’s no existing infrastructure nearby, the land is almost always cheap as hell.
As the news station notes, a data center of that size would consume the equivalent of 560,000 average homes.
literally cannibalising communities
Paid for by the taxpayer and the unfortunate locals stuck with with skyrocketing electric and water bills.
i was more thinking about how the article says the data centres are literally eating houses, but yeah that too
I’m perfectly fine with losing the AI race.
We don’t even know what winning or losing would look like and even the fucking loonies pushing this shit can’t take a guess. “Bro, you should start hitting your dick with a hammer now if you ever want to win the Under Armor Cock Abuse Challenge. Bro, you’re going to lose the Under Armor Cock Abuse Challenge! Do you want China to win? Because that’s what will happen if you don’t hit your dick with a hammer. I use a small sledge daily. Yeah, I’m up to a sledge now.”
Yeah, I’ll wait for third generation. After free local models are available that have been trained on exclusively copyleft materials.
I’ll wait.
We could be building useful infrastructure. Mass transit. Renewable energy. Housing.
Fuck these data centers and their enablers.
The former is public money, the latter private. There’s no comparison to those two money buckets.
Private money should be forced to serve public interests.
#ChangeMyMind
It’s not your mind that needs changing.
“We don’t need a data center in a community, let alone two hyperscale data centers in a community of less than a population of 12,000 people,”
This means they expect you to leave. This is their town now.
the cost to ‘buy’ the county was probably less than the ‘cost’ of a single vote by a single house rep in washington.
Data center proponents generally argue that the facilities will provide jobs
This is the biggest bullshit lie they keep repeating everywhere they are planning to build these monstrosities.
The fact is it will create a few hundred, 400ish Construction worker jobs for the build of the site, which is finite maybe 2 years. Not a stable long term job and the people building it probably are contractors that would be building somewhere else if that build didn’t exist.
Afterwards the data center only provides less than 50 full-time high paid jobs, because the operational demands are very low.
This in no way compares to a new steel mill or other large scale factory that will provide hundreds and hundreds of jobs for multiple generations.
This shit is just lining already rich and upper-class pockets with more money they don’t need. Not providing the lower or middle-class, who need jobs the most, with a decent stable income that can carry to retirement.
This is basically your local government saying, fuck you I want mine. Well tricking the working class. The people who are suffering from unemployment brought on by the very same assholes. They are trying to give hollow promises, for a yes vote. Fucking puppets with a corporate hand up their ass.
And yet it’s always “we don’t have the money for that” when it comes to fixing outdated infrastructure.
There’s always millions of dollars available to rip out existing infrastructure that benefits the public. Or to install anti-homeless architecture. But never any to build affordable housing and solve homelessness.
When the public’s taxpayer dollars are being handed to these corporations to actively make their lives worse, it’s “creating jobs.” When we ask for better sidewalks or efficiency apartments, it’s “there’s no money for that.”
Where did our tax dollars go then, huh?
I’ll give you a hint: look at any big tech company’s quarterly earnings report.
Clicked the link, was happy with the results.
Let’s just say half a dozen men could easily make it so no construction worker would set foot on that site.
Fucking bomb these data centers already. Fuck them. Fuck AI.
Got a report on this comment. “Call to violence”
Whatever it is, it’s not calling for violence. “Lock the AI boosters in a data center and bomb it” would be calling for violence. It’s calling for felony destruction of property, yes. And I don’t advocate for that either. But nothing about this says anything about bodily harm to me.
Second, it’s hyperbole. Which on its own also wouldn’t excuse a call for violence. But stacked up along with it not being a call for violence, it feels like a “no mod action required” situation to me.
Data centers aren’t brown people overseas
Or brown fisherman just trying to feed their families
We must make them look like Muslims 🙃
What will future people think of us? These data centers? Will they think of them like temples? Were temples pre-historic data centers? Hm, “this silicon god is heartless and soulless.”
They’ll probably think of us the same way we think of all the Romans other than Nero who watched him play the fiddle while Rome burned. Metaphorically in that case, but we’re actually engaging in silly, entertaining distractions which are burning the world, instead of putting out the fire.
Actually, maybe they’ll think of us as an entire society of Neros.
Data centers mark the modern day Valley of Ashes locations.
