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falkensmaize 7 hours ago [-]
It seems like there’s very little upside to allowing one in your state. They don’t bring in large amounts of new jobs once construction is done, they leech power and water like vampires increasing costs and depleting resources, they add noise and light pollution to nearby areas, they’re ugly. They only seem to benefit large tech companies.
ecshafer 6 hours ago [-]
The US has been dragging its feet in increasing power capacity and modernizing the grid. Data Centers (and one day EVs) are the kind of push we need to get the complacent monopolies to do the work.
The water concerns are absolutely overblown, the paper that everyone draws their numbers from had to be ammended because they had a 1000x water usage error.
When a poor town has an empty lot get converted to a data center, they are getting some jobs. 20 jobs of remote hands, plumbers, and security guards is better than zero. And there is increased tax revenue (this point I disagree with, because property tax is wrong and we need a land value tax).
Long term these changes are good.
pylua 5 hours ago [-]
I’m not against data centers, but they need to come with their own clean power supply, and export minimal pollution to its neighbors .
If you can’t provide that it’s not worth the downsides for the community.
pylua 5 hours ago [-]
I agree with this, and it really exposes how two faced and scandalous these companies are.
They all love green energy, but will they use that for their data centers in your backyard?
Rules for the and not for me !
polski-g 4 hours ago [-]
This is sort of retarded comment I'd see on Reddit. It's a shame that it's on HN.
They don't leech water, they use less than a single restaurant uses per year. And the datacenter would of course bring jobs in from secondary effects: like new power plants to generate the power that you said would be consumed. And they bring in a gargantuan amount of property tax revenue; Loudon county residents would be paying 40% more if not for DC property taxes.
resfirestar 5 hours ago [-]
I have several friends who used to lament the loss of manufacturing jobs as a ticket to the middle class, but now say they're going to protest a proposed data center, which feels a bit ironic. None really link it to AI's social impact like Gizmodo does here, the argument always starts with "I don't understand what they need a data center for" (often genuinely wanting me to explain it since I work with computers) and then goes into noise, water use, or loss of farmland. I'd probably not want to live near the noise pollution of a data center or any other kind of noisy industry either, so their views aren't incomprehensible or anything (though the farmland one makes zero sense to me), but it does seem like an instance of the revealed preference that many Americans are just deeply skeptical of anything more intensive than an Amazon warehouse going on in their area, even if they enjoy a fantasy version of the country where (usually other) people have a nice union job in a widget factory. It's good to remember when political extremists try to claim there's some easy fix that will make America an industrial powerhouse again; in reality, most of us don't want anything close to that.
vitally3643 5 hours ago [-]
Datacenters don't create jobs and drain local resources.
It takes a couple dozen people to fully staff a datacenter. That's literally a rounding error in employment statistics.
Framing it as an argument against American manufacturing or jobs is complete nonsense.
WarOnPrivacy 4 hours ago [-]
> Datacenters don't create jobs and drain local resources.
Recap
DATACENTERS DON'T CREATE JOBS
DATACENTERS DRAIN LOCAL RESOURCES
DATACENTERS DRIVE UP PRICES Of CRITICAL COMPONENTS 5-FOLD
[there are countless more lines but you get the idea]
Datacenters are the greatest epic tragedy since car culture/trespassing culture mass-murdered childhood.
resfirestar 4 hours ago [-]
>Framing it as an argument against American manufacturing or jobs is complete nonsense.
It is a strong argument against those things in at least three ways: (1) if you want to mandate that high tech manufacturing come back to America (e.g. "just make iPhones here" which seems to be a common sentiment in my circles), it would be foolish to suppress an industry creating insatiable demand for high tech components and ensuring that it goes offshore at a time when other countries are also trying to build more local manufacturing. To say nothing of components and construction materials that are already manufactured here. (2) there are very few types of industry that would create less local environmental impact than a data center, no chance if you think data centers use too much water you'd be okay with the toxic chemicals that chip fabs work with. (3) since America is a high wage country with a lot of R&D strength, any factories we build are naturally going to be much more automated than they are in low wage countries. Being against entire industries because individual facilities don't create enough jobs would probably be quite limiting in the types of manufacturing you'd approve of as well.
yoyohello13 4 hours ago [-]
How are data centers creating manufacturing jobs?
pfannkuchen 7 hours ago [-]
Media: "X is horrible!"
<6 months later>
Media: "Americans Don't Like X"
WarOnPrivacy 5 hours ago [-]
It's true that folks are unhappy when media does it's actual damn job and explains the things that bring harm.
However, a useless media is also a thing and it exists right along side of worthwhile media.
News Media: [Lockstep silence on Gov surveillance before 2013. Mostly silent on Gov/Corp surveillance after. Rarely reports on pols trading campaign cash for law/power]
<2026> Surveillance Is Everywhere and is being deployed against everyone possible.
Public: Increasingly exploited. Seemingly conditioned. Many are giddy after voting for a lying, grifting autocrat. Most don't give a thought to reelecting pols funded by career bribery.
I prefer the news media
that honors it's 1A protections
by actually informing the public.
5 hours ago [-]
mycall 7 hours ago [-]
Yet they still love ordering from Amazon.
r_lee 6 hours ago [-]
Amazon seemed to work just fine before this AI datacenter boom
The water concerns are absolutely overblown, the paper that everyone draws their numbers from had to be ammended because they had a 1000x water usage error.
When a poor town has an empty lot get converted to a data center, they are getting some jobs. 20 jobs of remote hands, plumbers, and security guards is better than zero. And there is increased tax revenue (this point I disagree with, because property tax is wrong and we need a land value tax).
Long term these changes are good.
If you can’t provide that it’s not worth the downsides for the community.
They all love green energy, but will they use that for their data centers in your backyard?
Rules for the and not for me !
They don't leech water, they use less than a single restaurant uses per year. And the datacenter would of course bring jobs in from secondary effects: like new power plants to generate the power that you said would be consumed. And they bring in a gargantuan amount of property tax revenue; Loudon county residents would be paying 40% more if not for DC property taxes.
It takes a couple dozen people to fully staff a datacenter. That's literally a rounding error in employment statistics.
Framing it as an argument against American manufacturing or jobs is complete nonsense.
Recap
Datacenters are the greatest epic tragedy since car culture/trespassing culture mass-murdered childhood.It is a strong argument against those things in at least three ways: (1) if you want to mandate that high tech manufacturing come back to America (e.g. "just make iPhones here" which seems to be a common sentiment in my circles), it would be foolish to suppress an industry creating insatiable demand for high tech components and ensuring that it goes offshore at a time when other countries are also trying to build more local manufacturing. To say nothing of components and construction materials that are already manufactured here. (2) there are very few types of industry that would create less local environmental impact than a data center, no chance if you think data centers use too much water you'd be okay with the toxic chemicals that chip fabs work with. (3) since America is a high wage country with a lot of R&D strength, any factories we build are naturally going to be much more automated than they are in low wage countries. Being against entire industries because individual facilities don't create enough jobs would probably be quite limiting in the types of manufacturing you'd approve of as well.
<6 months later>
Media: "Americans Don't Like X"
However, a useless media is also a thing and it exists right along side of worthwhile media.
News Media: [Lockstep silence on Gov surveillance before 2013. Mostly silent on Gov/Corp surveillance after. Rarely reports on pols trading campaign cash for law/power]
<2026> Surveillance Is Everywhere and is being deployed against everyone possible.
Public: Increasingly exploited. Seemingly conditioned. Many are giddy after voting for a lying, grifting autocrat. Most don't give a thought to reelecting pols funded by career bribery.