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Comment by RandallBrown | Hacker News Reader

> That's the unfortunate thing about the current climate around datacenters

I always get a chuckle when I see people complaining about datacenters on the Internet.

You can advocate for changes to a system while living and existing within the system. In fact, that's probably required to actually make any changes. No one is going to listen to some crazy kook in a cabin in Montana

You can't without making an effort to reduce your dependence on it. The most anti DC people I see are chronically online blasting their shit all over social media. Typically influencers, who make a living using said DCs, all day long. Social media directly supports what they are against. There are other ways to spread your message and when they choose the one method that directly goes against the message they are trying to put out, I'm not going to take them seriously, and will also assume they don't know what they're talking about.

The most anti DC people are not chronically online, if at all. Just because Youtube influencers exist doesn't mean they're anything close to the average concerned citizen.

See also, how many people here in France were jailed for sabotaging 5G antennas during their buildout.

Not using AI is already making you 0% dependent on these particular DCs that are shoddily built with no regard for the people around them.

These new datacenters aren’t for powering social media. All this extra capacity is for slop generators actively making the world worse.

> You can advocate for changes to a system while living and existing within the system.

I see very little advocating for change and a whole lot of knee-jerk reactions to shut it down.

The data center protests near me tried to complain about noise as one of their points, even though the DC was in the middle of nowhere

Other AI DCs can be heard from over a kilometer away.

This data center site was so far away they had to organize bus transport to the area.

Nobody was going to hear it unless they drove to it for the purposes of hearing it.

So what? It's good to have people question the status quo. Shut the stupid AI craze down before it finishes destroying whatever's left of our planet.

Or are you not concerned that AI companies are now the n°1 fossil fuel lobbyists in EU/USA? That they are consuming insane amounts of concrete and electricity for 0 gains for citizens (but enormous gains for the elites)?

> Shut the stupid AI craze down before it finishes destroying whatever's left of our planet.

I think a lot of the protestors are using data center protests as a proxy for some other belief like this. They think slowing down a data center is going to stop the future from occurring, which is an illogical fantasy on many different levels.

I like having my garbage picked up at the curb, but I wouldn't want to live downwind from a landfill.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

I think that’s how DCs mark an exponential growth in NIMBYism and its acceptance - we’re already seeing city-wide, county-wide, even state-wide bans, even in states where much of the state is very low density. If this kind of NIMBYism becomes accepted, I expect to see similar broader bans against multi-family housing, mass-transit, etc.

Based on what? Slippery slope fallacy? There are real reasons why people don’t want their community to have a DC, which are wildly different than the entitled NIMBYism that isn’t against multi-family housing and mass transit.

Put a data center in Atherton and I’ll change my mind.

> which are wildly different

Many of the same reasons used against dense housing, mass transit, and solar/wind turbines are used against DCs -

such as claims:

* That it would be too much for the existing grid to handle

* That it would be too much for existing other utilities to handle

* That it would be too close to x other thing (zoo, etc)

* Some say it won't be visually appealing

* That it would change the nature of the existing area

* That there isn't enough groundwater

* etc.

> Put a data center in Atherton and I’ll change my mind.

Wouldn't the complaints then be that a DC there would spoil the area's natural beauty (and would be too much for the electric grid there, etc)? Or if the DC were located similarly to how this one is, there would be the same complaints as OP case - see the photo at the very top of the OP article - it shows a very low-density area. If someone was expecting to see urban-type density, it isn’t in the location shown in the photo.

>> even state-wide bans, even in states where much of the state is very low density

> Put a data center in Atherton and I’ll change my mind.

1. You say you would change your mind in that particular place, but are you arguing that others wouldn't NIMBY against Atherton if one were proposed there? Everyone has different ideas about where they believe should be NIMBYd, including because people have different 'backyards'? And I presume your 'backyard' is tens, hundreds, or thousands of miles from the OP DC location?

2. With state-level bans already existing in states where much of the state is very low-density, the evidence seems to show the opposite of your claim that if a very low-density area were picked then it wouldn't face a ban.

>we’re already seeing city-wide, county-wide, even state-wide bans, even in states where much of the state is very low density

Are we actually though? I bet you heard about the Maine datacenter moratorium that passed our state legislature. It generated tons of conversation here on HN.

Did you also hear that our Democrat governor vetoed it, and it did not become law?

How many of these moratoriums are actually getting into the law?

New York also enacted a moratorium, and in recent days Texas stopped any new data center from being connected to the grid (the Texas one was done through the governor’s power over the grid).

The Internet we are talking on didn't require the current unsustainable data center build-out. This is like saying that people complain about companies dumping toxic waste when they themselves poop. Scale matters.

Oh come on. 95% of new data centers are obviously for LLMs not communications

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