Tech giant Oracle is suing the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin over financial requirements that regulators approved to protect ratepayers as developers build a $15 billion data center campus to expand its AI initiatives.
  • Manjushri@piefed.socialEnglish
    2 days

    Sorry, if your AI data center is likely to default on utility bills, then you need to put down a substantial and burdensome deposit just like the poors are required to do.

  • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2 days

    Paying for utility expansion on a 15 billion dollar datacenter is a line-item at best.

  • giacomo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3 days

    CUB’s expert also noted that the failed energy and commodities firm Enron had an investment-grade rating four days before the company filed for bankruptcy protection.

    lol

    • TronBronson@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 days

      Always a good time to remind people that large scale agriculture basically destoys national waters, soaks up subsidies, and benefits a hand full of rich land owners

        • TronBronson@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1 day

          Ya mostly feed the Chinese soybeans lol, we also make corn ethanol, which we subsidize, even more so since the war with Iran and the fuel shortages. We’ve literally destroyed half the country because its to inconvenient to farm the right way lmfao. Anyway have fun eating those newly legalized pesticides. Now 100% safe in America.

        • TronBronson@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1 day

          diverting water from the California desert to grow $10 a gallon almond milk, for some vegans crying about chicken. Yay

        • feetandballs@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2 days

          It also suppresses people. Food is a human right, the way it is for every other animal. Why do rich assholes get to decide who has access to it? Is wealth a measure of whether or not someone should go hungry?

          We lived happier (if not easier) lives before we begrudgingly adopted stationary agriculture as a response to unpredictable climates following the ice age. Those in power ensured agriculture (lock-and-key agriculture) remained because it was a reliable tool for suppression - its predictable harvest and consistent grain size make it useful for taxation. AND when you get your population hooked on grains you can instill a culture of weaning children earlier using oatmeal, meaning women can have babies more frequently (no longer lactating). The increase in population serves those in power by making their armies bigger and creating an impressionable population that you can further suppress with religion, etc.

  • Anonymous_Leaker@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3 days

    You wonder, do data centers do any good at all? Some using tons of pure drinkable water is also bad.

    • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3 days

      Datacenters? Yes, to an extent. They enable things like the modern internet, public goods like Wikipedia, etc.

      AI datacenters? No.

      • baines@lemmy.cafeEnglish
        3 days

        70% of the modern internet is bots botting for bots

        i’ll take the drinking water

          • baines@lemmy.cafeEnglish
            3 days

            5 years ago sure

            how do you think ai being used today? most ai isnt locally hosted

            • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3 days

              The internet and AI are two different things.

              The internet wasn’t taking your drinking water 5 years ago and it’s not taking it today.

              • baines@lemmy.cafeEnglish
                2 days

                lol the internet is 70% bot traffic today

                wanna bet more and more of that is ai driven?

                • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2 days

                  The things using the internet is irrelevant. The fact remains that the internet itself is not taking your drinking water

                • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyzEnglish
                  2 days

                  You’re missing the point so hard it’s not even funny.

                  The datacenters hosting the internet are not the same datacenters hosting AI.

                  The ones hosting AI are the problem. Eliminate those, and the ones hosting the internet are fine (although could still convert to greener practices like on-site solar and closed-loop/greywater cooling systems, etc.).

                  Eliminate the internet datacenters and the AI corps are still going to destroy the environment, you just won’t have access to wikipedia or the fediverse.

    • criss_cross@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3 days

      Data centers have been around forever. Supercomputers and other large racks of computer hardware have been housed in them for decades. They have done a lot of good for research.

      Even if you didn’t have AWS and the like modern sites/tech products need a lot more hardware than your random desktop computer to work. And that needs to be housed somewhere.

      The AI ones they’re trying to build now to try and stack tech feudal territory? Probably not. I don’t think the demand is gonna be there long term.

      • The_Decryptor@aussie.zoneEnglish
        3 days

        Even if you didn’t have AWS and the like modern sites/tech products need a lot more hardware than your random desktop computer to work. And that needs to be housed somewhere.

        They really don’t, everything is just hideously inefficient these days.

        • stringere@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2 days

          They really don’t, everything is just hideously inefficient these days.

          Because for ~30 years hardware, microchips, memory, and storage kept improving faster than programming best practices. As a result we have bloated applications with poor memory management. In the coming hardware famines I hope to see this trend reverse course.

    • Sabin10@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3 days

      You see, investors sincerely believe that AI has value and more AI has more value. How do you create more AI? More data centers!

      So now you have several hundred multimillionaires and billionaires, with almost zero understanding of what AI is, what it’s useful for and what it’s not useful for, but they believe with all their heart , more data centers makes wealth go up.

      Now they are buying up land, with money they borrowed, to build data centers, with hardware that hasn’t been manufactured yet all to potentially realize financial gains that are backed by nothing but speculation and emotion.

      • 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3 days

        This is what happens when you give the market fomo. Invent something magical that you don’t understand the inner workings of (a literal mechanical Turk).

        The problem was that after the pandemic and crypto, too many investors were itching for a gold rush that would simply just replace the disgusting working class. I mean, they were already but that shit made them extra hungry.