• SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    37
    ·
    1 day ago

    Remember when we were told to conserve energy with energy efficient appliances and such? We were told to conserve water with low flow showers and toilets? Guess where those savings all went.

    • GardenGeek@europe.pub
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      24 hours ago

      Silver lining: It’s a bubble and not sustainable…even from an economical view. Many of those data centers will be ruins before the end of the decade because there never was an actual use for them to begin with.

    • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      23 hours ago

      Like my stupid Creative T40 computer speakers that auto shut off after a few minutes of silence to save a handful of millijoules, then annoyingly take 4 seconds to power back up.

      No way to turn off that “feature”.

  • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    54
    ·
    2 days ago

    Worse yet, for residents, it’s already likely too late to do anything against the data center expansion.

    “The only chance to stop something like this is to do it at the very, very, very beginning of the process — before the permit is issued — through the public participation process,” former Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) staffer James Doty told Wired.

    Oh I can think of a couple ways they can do something about it

  • ape_arms@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    110
    ·
    2 days ago

    I keep seeing it framed as the data centers using too much water. They need the water for the excessive HEAT they produce, with all the ELECTRICITY generated by (in mist cases) FOSSIL FUELS.

    • cecilkorik@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      82
      ·
      2 days ago

      Yeah that’s a red herring on purpose to distract you from the fact that these data centers are literally running on hundreds of 24/7/365 jet engines being used as generators. It’s so obscene I kind of wonder if a lot of this AI hype and the wars aren’t being driven by the oil industry to prop up their dying business model.

    • But… But… MY model isn’t run at a data center, it’s all run from my own computer! Oh how did it get trained and refined to the point where I could run it on my computer? Uhhhhhh… Look over there! A distraction!

      The only ethical LLM is MY LLM.

      /s, just in case someone needs it.

    • Broadfern@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      There are some out there, yes.

      You’d be surprised at the proportion of the (at least US) population that is disgusted by it and avoids it wherever possible.

      • AshMan85@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        2 days ago

        im on a sub community of people that hate Ai, and you think ill be surprised to find out there are others that also hate it?

        • Broadfern@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 days ago

          Lemmy can usually be considered “niche,” and some folks mentally separate the user base from “normies” or the wider general populace. ¯\(ツ)

  • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    21
    ·
    2 days ago

    Data centers for the unspecified purpose of “we need them”. These idiots are throwing tremendous force behind building these things almost overnight and everywhere. AI alone does not need all these . When this bubble pops it’s going to put us all in the poorhouse but… I bet there will be some cheap ram and hard drives when it goes.

    • Malyca@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 day ago

      They’re for the surveillance state. Flock cameras, age verification, other surveillance apparatus, all of it goes through astronomical data. These centers are for that.

      • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        17 hours ago

        I believe you are right. That’s why they’re trying to jam 1800 let state in as fast as possible before the backlash.

    • Druid@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      24 hours ago

      Consumer RAM will likely lag behind in falling prices since that’s not what these centers use. Server equipment would likely plummet in price tho

      • coolman@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 day ago

        Does that mean you’re ceding your claim to the cheap server grade HDDs? Sounds good to me, I’ve got an apocalypse grade media server to fill

      • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        2 days ago

        I think you’re going to see (like with the new mobos that have gone back to ddr4 in production) a lot of niche market adapters and odd bastard mobos and some new ones made to capitalize on the market.

  • weps@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    2 days ago

    I’ve been working in data centers since 2008.

    What happened? What changed? They used to be incredible.

    I haven’t been in a data center in a couple of years.

    • Platypus@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      2 days ago

      Companies are exploiting regulatory loopholes as they construct new facilities powered by pollutant-spewing onsite gas plants.

      The grid can’t handle the buildout, so new data centers are operating unregulated gray-market power plants.

      • Majoran@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        23 hours ago

        Does that effectively also mean that the real energy consumption might not be measured accurately?

    • trackball_fetish@lemmy.wtf
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      What changed is that they’re now GPU and RAID farms for enslaving humanity. Remember what the NSA did? It’s x100 worse.

  • I_Jedi@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 days ago

    All we need is some AsH3, BeO, and CdO pollution and the data center pollution problem will solve itself.

    • LePoisson@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 day ago

      I was unsure what this comment is saying … Then I read what those compounds are and I was like … Oh yeah because of all the death. Perfect.