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Comment by MrBuddyCasino | Hacker News Reader

This does not bode well for American prosperity. This is going the way of Europe, complacent and non-competitive. The future belongs to China.

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Data centers would be less contentious in the U.S. if energy was plentiful and clean. As it is, it externalizes costs onto the public and strains profit-optimized electrical grids while contributing to local pollution and global warming.

The question isn't whether that's true, the question is the magnitude of the effect.

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.

> If people genuinely, actually care about energy costs, they can vocally support when calls for setting your thermostat at 78F in summertime go out.

Or, we can prefer energy being spent on air conditioning, and not on data centers.

Then people should stop using AI...

Agreed.

The same demographic is against building new power plants, especially in their vicinity. There could have been abundant power if Nixon‘s plan to build out nuclear had been allowed to proceed.

Now China does it.

Yeah, but how badly did Silicon Valley fuck this up to unite Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon in a common crusade?

An 84yr old who doesn't understand the technology and 72yr old political hack? Both of whom are populist and lived in the fringe most of their careers.

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