County With 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to ‘Conserve Electricity’
Henrico County is a major hub for data centers in Virginia. Its officials said it expects a 25% rise in electricity costs next year, and advised workers to close the blinds and turn off their computers to make up for it.
https://www.404media.co/henrico-virginia-datacenter-energy-cost-email/Open linkView original on piefed.social
77 replies
We all see this coming, but the billionaires and our state/county/city leaders assure us everything will be fair and fine.
Same deal with water. It will be 100 degrees and data centers will be draining local water supplies, while residents will be told not to water their flowers or take too many showers.
Fuck all this.
I love that their solution is to not use the thing that the data centers are supposed to be for.
Oh don't worry, people in Silicon Valley won't feel the restrictions and will be running their OpenClaw-type chained agents all night long doing absolutely nothing of worth.
I'll be so sad when the CEOs get Luigi'd.
People will be sacked for turning up to work smelling of sweat. Such fun times.
Wasn't this already the case like 2 years ago in Texas? Except I remember the governor telling people to drink less water and shower together when possible to save water for the data centers.
In Virginia during the fifa World Cup there are a lot of pro data center ads funded by a group that was created for this purpose called Virginia Connects.
It’s the usual shitbags lying to the public to make it sound like data centers are good
Are they in cahoots with the PACs that support pro AI candidates? (Are they the same groups? I really don't know.)
In Virginia ads are still running about not leaving rural Virginians behind by banning data centers. Claiming that they will bring jobs to the rural community but those nasty politicians are banning the progress of data centers.
California: 80% of water use is agricultural and industrial but who do they lean on in drought years? Jimmy fucking John and minute showers. Corporations will not budge without force so state goes after the soft target.
Same play here.
California also has the stupidest water rights with “use it or lose” it clauses that counters any incentives to become more efficient. A couple families control a ridiculous amount of water rights.
The problem is that data centers don't need water, they need cooling, and water is suitable for that because it's the cheapest. They could do the cooling in many other ways, but it costs money
The other ways cost money, make noise, and consume more power.
You mean cost more money. It's not like water is free but it is very cheap to use. But those other ways to cool it cost quite a bit more electricity and aren't nearly as efficient.
That's what I meant, sorry, english is not my native language, but yes, water is the cheapest of all solutions
That's typically how the government operates as well. No incentive to use funding wisely and decrease spending
So it's official now. AI comes before schools, and before children. Welp. So much for thinking about the children.
The children only matter in election cycles
and before they're born.
The perception that children matter only exists in election cycles.
They never really matter.
And on their private islands
And when it comes to starting moral panics to strip away rights.
The children only matter when they can't speak for themselves.
That way they can't disagree. It's why they put so much emphasis on the unborn. Once they can speak their own opinion, they're worthless.
Why spend all that money and resources cultivating actual intelligence?
Because actual intelligence doesn't vote conservative.
Here comes Abbot's elementary comedy series, where they build a big stadium, but they can't afford to fix the lights in the school.
Get your passport while you still can
We need Anonymous to do something about data centers.
I prefer calling them clanker lairs
Wretched hives of scum and villAIny
Don't wait for others to save us.
While I agree, theres nothing I can actually do. Besides inform people of the damage they cause by using big tech, which has gotten me nowhere so far.
If everyone today quit using meta and google products and openai (and voted on laws to keep data centers out, and voted on laws against monopolies) , the entire industry would crumble.
First of all, thank you for (trying) to inform people.
It is really important that we do not see ourselves as passive, waiting for other more skilled people to solve the current problems. Everyone of us can do something. Although sometimes it doesn't turn out as we had hoped, but not trying would bring is nowhere.
I don't exactly know about the organization of anonymous, but for most groups there are a lot of possibilities to support. Legal support, social media and website support, giving interviews, food and material, logistics as a few examples.
You could also join other local groups against datacenters. I think there is a lot of campaigning going on.
I just have no idea how to do it. I mean theres a fb group (ironiiiic) for us against data centers in our state. But that gets us nowhere. I'm afraid something real, physical, is going to actually be needed. they know we won't do anything, and we are too scared of the fascist paramilitary at their disposal.
Sometimes you have to us big tech to reach more people. Many groups also use Instagram, some also mastodon. But you should certainly not use it for organizing. If they don't have a signal group or similar, I would stay away.
You could look into environmental groups. On the national level, there are climate defiance and scientist rebellion in the US on a national level (and probably a lot more). Maybe they also have local groups that you could join? Or you could support remotely and start building a local group (that's hard but someone has to start).
Please sir...can I have some more....electricity
said the poor school to the billionaires
I guess they could light a data center on fire to keep warm and not run their heaters? Win/win?
(Also I hope it’s very obvious to everyone this is a joke, I’m not trying no to incite or encourage violence in any way at all).
Clearly you were talking about doing this in Minecraft, so its okay.
"Will no one rid me of this turbulent steve?"
I'm just amazed at the grotesquely huge amounts of copper they have in those datacenters.
I also hope that data centers "don't" get burnt down. How "un"satisfying would that be. While I'm at it, I hope no one kills the trillionaire.
Killdozer needs to come back...
Improve the cooling system first. We are talking about Marvin, right?
If you Google the model number their AI will sometimes list the 20 tons of armor as an option like you could just order it that way.
County with 37 datacenters can go fuck itself with a cactus.
here come the brownouts motherfuckers...
Are they keeping profits from data centres away from schools?
Educating the kids would be a waste of taxpayer dollars. The only training they need is how to mow the grass around the data centres.
I actually saw a robotic mower doing that job just a few months ago. I think it was around a school.
Well then we just let them starve and blame them for being homeless.
But also, don't forget to teach AI and use AI in your school!
https://www.vaco.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/HenricoGenerativeAIPreparingForDigitalAge.pdf
I never understood why we’re supposed to need to be ‘taught’ how to use AI if it’s so good at natural language processing. If the reference desk librarian can understand it and give you what you actually want (not necessarily the exact thing you’re asking for), so should anything being touted as AI.
I guess they’re in the FO part of FAFO. I really hope this kind of stuff wakes people up enough to do something about it.
I least they got all that money and jobs (right? I'm pretty sure Facebook skirted that actually)
Yeah, those data centers definitely must have employed like, three site managers each! So come to think about: hundreds and hundreds of (… okay a little over 100) people employed in all those centers combined. And all it took was to raise electricity prices by 25% for 350k people
They also cut the taxes the corporations pay by 50%, at least they didn't have to build homes or anything useless.
Don’t need school if you have chat gpt /s
Well.. duh. Data center makes dollar, schools costs dollar
An interesting one there, how can schools consumption be compared to that of Data centers
Maybe they just want people to waste time pointing spiderman fingers at eachother for not turning off their computers.
No. Next fucking question. I'd rather data centers have brown-outs than schools.
How does closing the blinds conserve electricity? O_o
Less AC needed.
Oh that's right, y'all got AC back there. I forgor.
I know Europe is scant on AC in general, but you guys really don't even use it in schools? That seems wild to me.
No AC in schools. School is out in the summer in general.
May June and September don't have the capability to have hot days in Europe? In 2010 only the newer part of my highschool had AC, but now I believe the whole building does.
We prefer to stick our fingers in our ears, pretend climate change isn't getting worse and torture our kids and teachers instead. At least after the recent heatwave some conversations are starting to happen.
In southern Europe, yes. In northern Europe, generally no need for AC. Remember that Europe is not one country.
Most buildings don't have them. Why would schools be any different? Our secondary school was culturally protected so even if they wanted to install one they probably could not. And the only time heat was an issue was during covid when we got assigned the attic classroom. All the other rooms were alright.
There are a lot of places in the US that don't have AC in schools. The number of days that it would be used just don't happen during the school year enough to justify it.
Won't need ac when we're all forced to live underground in a few years. Hello fellow mole people
Here's an archive link for the few who actually want to read the article.
I wonder if there's any chance of all the tech speculation helping to fund electrical grid upgrades (including grid scale storage for renewables) that actually benefit regular human society after the bubble pops.
Close to zero unless forced. The question is who will do the forcing?
Seems unlikely unless the bubble survives another 5+ years. My guess is power companies are taking AI contracts and cash now, promising to add capacity later, and then when the bubble pops they will shrug, say no more capacity is needed, and give the CEOs a huge bonus.