If datacerters are forced on communities, they should be forced to provide free heating/access to those communities.
I'd prefer we don't datacenter to the gills, but if we're destined to do it anyway, they should offer free Heat/data services to the communities they're thrust upon, and the agreement should be on the datacenter licensing so they can't reorg out of it.
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This is why they build them in under-resourced communities, no one has enough time/money to fight back.
It'll only bite them in the ass after the bubble pops, and ideally its someone else's problem then.
Anecdotal, but I researched something similar for a job I had almost 10 years ago. Next to the office we had a pretty big datacenter, which I know had ”district cooling”, so I wondered if this was fed back into the district heating network somehow?
Turn out no, mainly because the local thermal power plant is already fed into the district heating network, and that already produces was more east heat than nessecary to provide heating in the city.
Eventually they did an expansion and I was told the district cooling was scrapped in favor of local ”free cooling” units. Basically just dumping the waste heat directly to the air (This works in the right climate, so like not in Arizona or Texas)
Alright alright, let’s sit down and have a talk.
Ok look, capitalism…
I do not want to be reliant on some datacenter for my heat and data services...
that's step 1 to being reliant on them for everything. just tax the fuck out of them and use that money for government services like it's SUPPOSED to be.
And not just tax their cooked books. Ohh we didn't make anything because we sold all that service to out shell company for pennies on the dollar. Tax their expected income based on their power/water utilization.
Hell, I'd be satisfied if they just paid their own way. Pay for the system upgrades for power and water, pay full rate for power and water consumption, pay for any other infrastructure upgrades needed and pay normal property tax on your multi-billion dollar facility.
yeah we have some local ones going it, they did a robocall to find out what would make people feel better about it.
How would you feel if they setup a green solution to recycle their water?
How would you feel if they increased jobs in the area?
How would you feel if they paid for their own electricity and water?
Like fuck you guys, how about you setup enough solar to offset your power needs all together AND recycle your water. oddly that selection was missing from the IVR tree.
They provide free copper wire, RAM, and GPUs, when a large enough contingent of locals show up to help themselves.
Data centres only employ half a dozen people when operating. They can't stop us all.
I work at AWS data centers as a third party vendor, their security is a joke.
True. They can't. But most of these systems have high voltage AC pumping into them, so folks should be aware that it's 415/480V AC or 800V DC bus until you get to the internal bus bar.
Definitely now play thing voltages on most of the exposed wiring.
Yeah when I was diagnosing Linux based servers being built grounding was always a serious thing, but the ESD vests you'd wear were really to save someone who makes an oops from well dying really. Massive multimillion dollar racks being connected/disconnected and running liquid cooling through the racks leaves you coming close to the power sources fairly often. The best way to run the power is above and then have them snap on at the top so people aren't tripping over them, but the main issue with that is safety doesn't come before profit, so instead of having dedicated breaker boxes at eye level one uses a metal pole with a hook and reaches up to turn on/off all the breakers when moving in/out racks you are working on. Large metal pole... High voltage/amps...
This is what property taxes are supposed to be for. If a data center is putting a load on a community, tax them based on what money is needed to pay for what's needed to counter that load.
Money is much more flexible than barter anyway. Imagine if instead of a data center it was an abbatoir, would you compensate the community for its troubles by giving them huge amounts of free raw meat?
This is different. The raw meat of an abattoir is its product, while heat is the byproduct of a datacenter. It's even something they do their best not to have. Distributing that to the community would be a great positive.
You should probably ask other people; my decision there is going to be a wildly unpopular hell yes. :)
If they pay you money then you can exchange that money for huge amounts of raw meat, if that's what you really want. :)
Lol data centers aren't being built for our benefit.
yeah, that's kind of my point, let's demand they are :)
Or, hear me out, we dig a massive pit in the desert and fling every AI executive into it.
I'd much rather we put them in submarines ;)
I've just talked to a friend who is working on this. A few new apartment buildings will be created and a data center. They will share a Fernwärmenetz to use the warm water from the data center for heating. Won't be free, of course, but cheaper than having to get 100% of the energy from heat pumps.
Man, I was a weird kid, I always wanted to live at a data center, like Quasimodo, like the new version of an apartment over a restaurant
I've had a few jobs that weren't far off that.
Sleeping in a wind tunnel is possible but it gets old.
They're super comfortable when you're moving, if you stop for long periods of time most of them will freeze you to death.
The ones I was in were dry enough to be uncomfortable.
The only warmth I want from a data center is it's open flames.