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[–] 15 points 2 months ago (6 children)

This is all so easily avoidable if they would spend a little more money to make them quieter, water efficient, and pay for their own energy. The technology exists. We could engineer a solution.

But I guess it's cheaper to bribe a few councilmen.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    My company does exactly these and more.

    Top-of-the line ultra-quiet low sulfur generators used only for utility outages.

    Closed-loop water cooling means the toilets use more water in a day than the cooling does in a year.

    Paying for the construction of the local infrastructure needed for twice our usage of electricity. We leave things better after we build.

    We do these every day. No one notices because bad news leads. There are certainly bad actors. And no one cares to think any further than that. Subtlety and nuance in understanding technology is dead.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 months ago

    I feel like this is less a subtly and nuance thing and moreso a quite a few data centers particularly AI ones are built and maintained like shit. Frankly this is moreso a discussion of corporate malfeasance and lack of regulations on certain industries than a technology discussion, though obviously a lot of it is wrapped up in the AI shit because it's the current fuckfest of a nothing tech that's causing problems but I do remember similar issues building up during the crypto shit it's just now with AI.

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  • [–] -4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    They'll get protested anyway since those aren't the real motive behind the protests to begin with.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    Environmental concerns are certainly among the genuine reasons people are protesting, though there are also other reasons.

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  • [–] -4 points 2 months ago

    Except that the environmental impact of AI data centers is actually quite small compared to tons of other things that they could be protesting.

    It's quite ironic, there's an old golf course near my home town that's likely going to be replaced with a data center in the near future (it's shutting down and being rezoned, that's enough to get the protests started) but golf courses are way more water-hungry than data centers are.

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