What bugs me is that is really shouldn’t be legal for tech companies to just unilaterally decide that the local residents are going to subsidize their power costs.
But we’re in America, where every single douchy thing a capitalist can do will absolutely be done, and both of our ruling parties will just shrug and keep collecting their bribes in the interim.
Good on the people for waking up to this and fighting back.
Tangentially relevant: Benn Jordan posted a video about problems with data centers yesterday.
Oh. One nice thing to hear, which is a rarity to me. Thank you for posting this :)
“It’s time to build communities, not data centers,” said one local activist.
A wonderful motto.
This is going to be a huge thing going forward. They are investing hundreds of billions into Ai the coming year and part of that is building many huge data centers that will drive energy prices and water prices up almost certainly.
This is what bugs me about capitalism, they don’t keep to their corner, they basically stand back and look for the most opportunistic land and steal it from people that want nothing to do with capitalism.
I wish we could encapsulate all that in one region so it would become obvious it doesn’t make things better.
Good job NJ. Glad to see my state will do the right thing sometimes.
Sacramento (the state-side of it) is entertaining plans going in the opposite direction of New Jersey. A recent deal wants to let Meta in here on the promise: they’ll build some affordable housing, they’ll refurbish some old state buildings (for Meta use), and something for the local college. The reaction here is {bear looking sideways meme}.
Bets on where the surprise ai data center will be?
But will they fund upgrades to the electrical system?
Why the fuck are they putting Sac State housing in the Capitol Mall area??? It’s like 3 miles from the school… The light rail is nearby, but still, the Sac State Station is a few blocks from the edge of a pretty large campus.
Theory. Meta will pre fill-up their housings with overseas students\programmers. Try and get them to play and spend their money in downtown.
High chance it flops. Rich kids live and go where they please. At the first sign of boredom, they’ll fiip, sublet, or AirB&B it just to not be in downtown.
sacremento if they dont oppose this, they will se increased utility prices.
Imagine it… a SMUD+ subscription, pay extra to opt-out of more rolling blackouts; because the server farms will be evermore thirsty.
So it’ll be built somewhere else. Data moves around quite easily.
There’s some very important transatlantic cables that come ashore in New Jersey; data centres built there will have excellent links to both the Eastern US and a lot of Europe, making it quite a desirable location.
Data centres have a few constraints on their locations. Network connections, of course, and power and water for cooling. Their margins are also a bit dubious (Ed Zitron did an excellent investigation in a recent article) but they benefit from low taxes and sweetheart deals with the local municipalities. Doesn’t take much to make that deal look shaky and be rid of the DC. Well done though NJ, keep it up!
And that’s bad for the harm it will cause to people who are bound to be in a poorer locale, right Facedeer?
Depends entirely on the circumstances of where it does end up being built. I’m not sure what “gotcha” you think you’re making here? That Reddit comment is just me pointing out that when a business uses electricity they pay for it.
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Stupid
