Item — HN Reader

> Opposition to data centers is like 90% hatred of Silicon Valley and its obstinate elites. One they amplified by trying to build these things sneakily.

This is utter nonsense, and reeks of a desperate and deep denial. I mean, you might as well rationalize your denial by claiming they don't like you because they don't like you.

Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby doesn't just pop up out of nowhere at ever spot because someone failed to do PR.

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Nah, I back the Abundance movement and have voted for building new housing complexes in my town against groups who claimed it would ruin the character of our town to have a 60 acre plot near an old industrial center turned into neighborhoods.

Even so, given no other data I would default to no for any data center. Too many of them are doing the “move fast and break things” model while not paying for any of their externalities. If they really want to build in my location they can pay for the extra costs up front instead of claiming that somehow miraculously the economics will work out and they will definitely employ the same amount of people to maintain the building as they did to make the building.

Right. A new DC will just be another brownfield in 20-30 years. We don’t need more of those.

New DCs should be built in Quebec next to hydro plants in places absolutely nobody lives. Or next to nuclear power plants.

> Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby

I wouldn’t dismiss the critics as NIMBY. They are closer to fuck it, nowhere.

Some opposition is just anti-AI or misinformed about e.g. water use. But most of them have legitimate complaints about, on one hand, noise and power prices and, on the other hand, the shocking lack of contribution to local employment or taxes from these structures minting—very visibly, they’re not subtle on social media—billionaires at an unprecedented pace.

> because someone failed to do PR

They should have engaged with the whole community and made the commitments needed to ensure they weren’t jacking up residential power prices and e.g. committing to funding the municipal budget in ways locals would champion.

I don’t understand why entry of a large consumer of electric in to an area should result in higher residential electricity prices.

The new large-consumer can pay for the electricity it uses all by itself. If new generating capacity is required to meet the new, higher, demand, that should be factored in to the supply contract with the new large-consumer.

What is the rationale for jacking up residential retail prices? And what is it supposed to achieve?

If the argument is the whole sale price increases because there’s more demand, none of that new demand is coming from the pre-existing residential users, what does it have to do with them?

Here’s how it works:

- New DCs are going up everywhere and it’s in the media how they use a lot of power and try to negotiate cheaper everything

- People’s utility bills keep going up, particularly the transmission etc components that can’t be avoided by just buying from a different supplier

- Power utilities say they have to increase rates due to increasing demand and regulation that requires them to serve new DCs

- I know multiple people who’ve had their power shut off and can’t afford it on an average salary

So when working stiffs making $25 an hour face a $650 power bill that was $325 three years ago… yeah, they’re going to consider DCs the culprit.

Add on top of that plenty of marketing about how AI will leave you unemployed.

> If new generating capacity is required to meet the new, higher, demand, that should be factored in to the supply contract with the new large-consumer

My understanding is this wasn't done.

> What is the rationale for jacking up residential retail prices?

The most understandable explanations I've heard had to do with grid upgrades. Crap the utility owns and controls and has to change to accomodate the new power flows.

More often, however, it looks like local and state government engaging in industrial policy by trying to get residents to subsidise the new datacenters.

Upgrades also take time and may not be a good idea seeing how the current AI buildout is financed. There is a certain amount of capacity right now and AI behemoths have the financial muscle to take what's there. If that leaves too little for everyone else, prices will reflect that as soon as existing contracts allow.

I’ve heard there’s misinformation regarding water use. As far as I’ve heard, these data centers use quite a bit. I imagine they just use them for cooking and spit it back out warmer (though if we’re going to do that, I’d prefer we do it cooling a nuclear power plant, personally…)

Is this not accurate? Are there any good resources that aren’t like… these companies being super honest about how super good they are?

Construction Physics [1] and Hank Green [2] have done good takes. Broadly speaking, most general-use datacenters use evaporative cooling (i.e. open loop) because it's cheap [3]. AI datacenters reject so much heat, however, that even absent public pressure they pretty much need closed loops [4].

The misconception is that while both of these processes use a lot of water, we both have and use tremendously more. That makes their levels tiny compared with plenty of uncontroversial, thoughtless uses. And the increasing efficiency makes this a choke point across medium-term scaling. (And replacing an AI datacenter with a conventional one counterproductive from a water-conservation perspective.)

Power—and with it, noise, air pollution and grid-upgrade costs—is the real and present problem.

[1] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-does-the-us-use-w...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc&t=240s

[3] https://www.fwpcoa.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=859275...

[4] https://axis-intelligence.com/data-center-liquid-cooling-sta...

Thank you very much! Lots of reading to do today :3

The reality is that there are two approaches for water: open loop and closed loop, and you can guess correctly at what they mean. The problem is that's subtle and we can't have subtle conversations about things.

The problem is not that subtle, the only somewhat subtle point is that people don't differentiate between the datacenters of yore that were built sort of well and sustainably and the ones built in the current mad gold rush AI construction frenzy. The former aren't very problematic, often pretty good neighbors even, while the latter are nightmare fuel and will purposely not be built to be quiet and safe and stay within available energy capacity and not deplete struggling water tables, and they have the financial and political clout behind them to get away with pretty much anything. Small wonder no one wants them anywhere near them. Traditional DCs might be able to not be a nuisance despite using evaporative cooling, but no one would build that anywhere where there is a shortage of water, and the amount of heat to be dissipated by such a DC is way smaller.

But giving up a local water table might even be seen as an acceptable sacrifice, it's done for agriculture all the time, if only it wasn't done by and for the immense profit of corporations that aim to destroy all entry level jobs and profess to be scared by what havoc their own creation will wreak, all while creating an unprecedented financing bubble.

Like, that's not very subtle at all. You can pick out some detail and try to make it about subtleties, but the larger context is very much not about subtleties.

>the only somewhat subtle point is that people don't differentiate between the datacenters of yore that were built sort of well and sustainably and the ones built in the current mad gold rush AI construction frenzy

So you're saying that all the rules and laws and best practices that HN has cheered for over the years that apply to new construction and new industry and claim to be about sustainability and environmental protections (among other things) didn't actually do what they were sold as being able to do?

Either the new ones are cleaner (I suspect they are but the difference is probably mostly on paper), or we all got lied to.

DC builders use political means to evade regulations almost every single time. So the regulations are in effect useless.

I have personally observed this with them getting exceptions to fire codes everyone else has to comply with.

I haven't heard of many open-loop cooling systems like that in HPC datacenters. The majority I've seen use closed loop, where the water never leaves the system. Similar to most watercooled gaming PC rigs.

Because people aren't motivated by facts. They make up lies to justify their opposition: "water usage". But when you disprove that superstition with facts and logic, their opinion on water usage doesn't change. Its like as if you had said nothing at all.