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Australia wants more data centres. A disagreement over power sources stands in the way (www.sbs.com.au)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/australianpolitics@aussie.zone
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Anthony Albanese left the door open at a meeting of the nation's leaders on Wednesday to a more "flexible" approach as Queensland and the Northern Territory refused to agree to standards requiring them to use renewables for new data centre developments.

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[–] 2 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

My friend, I do not think you know what you are talking about here

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  • [–] -1 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

    I couldn’t care less what you think.

    Not a single thing mentioned is new. The only things new are purpose built data centres whose goal is to make money on data.

    As for hiring space in these centres for your business, you’d be a dickhead to do it.

    We don’t need them and given what harm they cause, both environmentally and towards society, there isn’t a valid reason to have them in Australia.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    You’ve thoroughly proven you don’t know what you’re typing about, here’s a lollipop 🍭.

    …purpose built data centres whose goal is to make money on data.

    Only the federal government can make money, if anyone else does that, it’s counterfeiting and fraud. What they’re doing is accumulating money, and extracting profit.

    As for hiring space in these centres for your business, you’d be a dickhead to do it.

    A roundabout way of admitting your purchase order has been submitted, but you do you.

    We don’t need them and given what harm they cause, both environmentally and towards society, there isn’t a valid reason to have them in Australia.

    We’ve had them on this island for decades, they’ve been fine until this current fascist perversion tickled the generals of our elected neoliberal ‘representatives’.

    My bar is, like any other infrastructure, that they need to be justifiable, and defensible against any legitimate critical scrutiny levelled against them. The hyper concentration of resource ingestion, consumption, and excretion intrinsic of the implementations currently proposed immediately negates them on this basis.

    I’d prefer a distributed model. Pepper them throughout existing infrastructure (businesses, basements in apartment towers) to dilute their environmental impact. Require closed loop cooling systems, with exhaust heat captured and fed into secondary functions like preheating hot water. Scale can be built from the diverse meshed connections between neighbouring sites, and sites can be scaled back or shut down as required.

    None of that should legitimise the inane push to build ‘AI’ infrastructure. Anyone advocating for that rubbish needs to be summarily dismissed, and ridiculed when they persist.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    You've thoroughly…

    Yeah righto.

    extracting profit

    Yes, making money.

    purchase order

    I was thinking more along the lines of important files that you sign confidentiality clauses on, but you do you.

    we’ve had them on this island for decades

    Yes, and I agree with your bar, and I agree with your position on negation which was really my point.

    Pepper them throughout existing infrastructure

    Well, wasn’t that kind of what we were doing? Everyone hosting their own data servers, without the addition of holding data outside the infrastructure owner?

    AI and LLM infrastructure isn’t just my concern and it isn’t even where my issue came from. It’s data security, the kind of people that tend to own these, what they might do with it and the environmental and social impact.

    Outside this very small echo chamber I’m not alone either. Most of those I know professionally harbour the same concerns I do, and don’t believe they are necessary. I agree with Taleya that a lot of people automatically think AI and LLM. I don’t and neither do most of those I’ve worked and engage with.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago

    extracting profit

    Yes, making money.

    Profit isn’t the origin of money, it’s an accumulation function of currency users. See MMT.

    Pepper them throughout existing infrastructure

    Well, wasn’t that kind of what we were doing? Everyone hosting their own data servers, without the addition of holding data outside the infrastructure owner?

    I’ll rarely advocate for going back to what existed before, but my concept is to build on that distributed deployment, but tie it together with federation and fibre to provide agency, efficiency, and resilience. A distributed data centre for lack of a better term.

    AI and LLM infrastructure isn’t just my concern and it isn’t even where my issue came from. It’s data security, the kind of people that tend to own these, what they might do with it and the environmental and social impact.

    Smaller, intentional, federated sites could address this, it needs a solid model to build a proof of concept upon.

    Outside this very small echo chamber I’m not alone either. Most of those I know professionally harbour the same concerns I do, and don’t believe they are necessary. I agree with Taleya that a lot of people automatically think AI and LLM. I don’t and neither do most of those I’ve worked and engage with.

    I suspect something was lost or omitted in the thread to this point which masked a broader consensus, and I think there’s a lot of potential if our agreements can be realised less violently.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    That isn't what this was about tho. @Taleya was talking about how people are conflating datacenters in general with the overpowered LLM ones. And you exemplified that pretty spectacularly.

    You also seem to be a bit confused one what a server is vs a datacenter given some of your comments

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  • [–] -1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    And Taleya is probably right with that, which is why that wasn’t addressed. I didn’t agree with the underpinning of every aspect of our lives and while I may or may not be accurate with that, my concern isn’t generated by AI or LLMs, nor is it because I confuse the data centres.

    It’s the building of more mass data centres which I don’t believe we necessarily need, and those concerns are based on the data kept, what it’s used for, what is done with data stored against the wishes of the owner and the environmental and social impacts.

    That I may not qualify to work in an IT department doesn’t make any difference to this…I’m not alone with this outside these small echo chambers. Taleya might be right when they say people confuse the data centres but not here.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (1 child)

    so.. You derailed her comment ranting about things you knew nothing about for...what, exactly?

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  • [–] 0 points 2 days ago*

    My issue wasn’t with confusion of data centres, it was that they underpin every aspect of life which is false.

    Most of my hobbies aren’t underpinned by data centres. The relationships I build with people, the outside activities I do…most things I do aren’t underpinned by data centres.

    Bit of an issue getting people to understand that around here though. I guess their lives are.

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