Residents furious as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan | Hacker News Reader

Residents furious as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan

theguardian.com

70 pointspzxc37 comments

These are projects designed to serve the US military in it's future wars against China and other "threats". Note that "other threats" includes the American citizenry. You'll be - probably already are - targets of continual AI propaganda and manipulation to keep you compliant and keep paying your taxes to support this waste.

When AI takes all jobs, how are the taxes gonna be paid?

They aren't. Nobody in power is so dumb they haven't thought of this yet - the scary idea is that those people in power don't think this is a problem, which implies the normal folk like us are either on our own or actively exterminated.

If the billionaire class doesn't think they need taxes or a workforce then what does that look like? If the population goes from 8B to like 5K + robots for the drudgery then all the problems go away - no more war, no more climate change, no famine, no large logistics problems.

I continually worry that these people in power see the rest of us as a nuisance to optimize away.

Why can't this happen now without AI?

- Certainly the current population level isn't needed to support the current number of billionaires. Isn't there about 1000 right now? I probably eat more than 2 or 3 of them.

- What happens in 100 years when the billionaires have kids and their kids have kids?

Yeah I don't think AI is required for above, it just pushes the question of what's going to happen if huge swaths of jobs go away. Parent asked who is going to pay taxes in that world. I'm simply saying there's a version of this where "they" don't care because there is no intention to keep the current social order of a large tax paying lower and middle class.

> Certainly the current population level isn't needed to support the current number of billionaires. Isn't there about 1000 right now? I probably eat more than 2 or 3 of them.

That's a good attitude, if we all set out to eat more than 2 or 3 billionaires they'll be in our stomachs and out of our hair before you know it!

If AI does all the work, why even collect taxes?

Why are we still keeping these useless "citizens" around?

Once they're fully depreciated we can use our ICE gulags to turn them into dog food. A big savings for imperial shareholders!

Same way it always has for empires throughout history - expropriating land and resources from the weak and giving it to the strong. And of course, borrowing money to finance more looting and pillaging.

The data center project is by Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary and will consume 9GW, more power than the entire State of Utah currently consumes

It's not going to consume 9GW because it won't actually be built. There is no financing. The entire project is a scam.

https://youtu.be/RWoV0EXxa7c

It may still be built by someone else. Many PE firms are starting to built land portfolios for where a data center can be easily built. So the current owners of the project could just resell it to those with financing.

>The entire project is a scam.

OP said that already when they mentioned Kevin O'Leary.

Ah, when your write things like that, do you really think they'll come true?

If no: why do you write them?

Yes, I really think the data center will consume that much power because that's the design

Yes, I really think that it will get built, because the people building data centers are throwing money/favors at politicians to get them approved

The size of the building applied for is generally weakly related to the effort required for the application.

If you have some land, getting approval to build six buildings is often not much more work than getting approval to build one. So why not apply for six even if you only have a tenant for one. If it's the same amount of paperwork and the land is cheap (maybe you can lease the land to the farmer you bought it from).

This doesn't apply in places where land is expensive, of course. Central Amsterdam, downtown Manhattan, etc. In places like that you'd want to use your building permits PDQ.

"O’Leary said the extra electricity demand won’t raise residents’ energy bills as new gas-fired generation will power the facility."

I really, really doubt this.

So it will raise their gas bills, not their electricity bills. That's not much of an improvement...

This feels insane. Does this feel insane to others?

when i imagined huge data centers i was thinking the size of a football stadium, one like that for each AI business. twice the size of manhattan goes way beyond i ever imagined. the scene of skynet coming online flashed before my eyes when i read about the size.

Previously:

Utah greenlights 9GW AI campus using over twice state electricity

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47932941

Utah data center: Projected daily heat equivalent to 23 atomic bombs

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48058221

They should be furious. These tech companies are doing whatever they want, without a care for how it impacts others. SpaceX does it by polluting night skies. The others do it by polluting the planet. Things like light pollution and noise pollution really do matter. But it’s also a lot more direct than that, like people whose water supply loses pressure (https://www.gadgetreview.com/data-center-drains-30-million-g...) or turns brown (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48111599) after a data center is built near them.

Entirely fake. Or rather, the water issue is caused by there being /a construction project/, not because it's a data center.

heres a FAQ re:the site:

https://www.boxeldercountyut.gov/647/Stratos-Project-Fact-Sh...

heres a site mapfromthe FAQ:

https://www.boxeldercountyut.gov/644/Stratos-Project-Map

it strikes me that a swath of the salt ridge adjacent to the salt lake bed is desired.

the proximity to current naturalgas distribution infra, suggests a mulligan,made out of natural gas welling.

if there is a large salt dome and gas deposit, theres the revenue and free utilities.

That URL makes me shudder: an entire county full of Box Elder bugs!

All this wasted resource for ads and erotica...

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