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Comment by bradishungry | Hacker News Reader

Benn Jordan has a video about the issues data centers can pose to their local communities. The xAI data centers are actively polluting their communities right now and there are several credible articles about it. Ruining normal people’s lives and the environment for “progress” against another country is extremely short sighted.

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Seems to be working well for China. They do all the “undesirables” that we can’t possibly have in our country. Primarily to push products we can’t live without.

They are getting wealthy off absorbing those externalities that come from production of consumer goods while we watch “Oww! My balls!” and drink Brawndo!

So are they (China) shortsighted? Or are they slowly winning in global influence?

You need to remember one is investing heavily in clean energy and expanding its capacity rapidly and the other one is not.

and the xAI data centers are uniquely dirty and polluting because they don't have sufficient grid connectivity and are running on generator 24x7.

This isn't a problem for the vast majority of datacenters, and won't become a larger problem unless the anti-civilization mindset blocks infrastructure investment that's eventually needed even if the datacenter isn't built.

As far as I can tell the xAI data centers are the absolute worst data centers for local impact and pollution.

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