https://www.datacentermap.com/datacenters/
Not being negative. But isn’t there existing highly reliable data that already exists for this?
However, "user reports" on that map clearly conflate the two, also reporting small, established sites in urban areas, etc.
I do think the tech industry would be wise to do more outreach and less sneering, though. Freakouts about AI (which ultimately is what this is) aren't "rational" but they're eminently "reasonable". This isn't like electrification or aviation or the internet or whatnot (technologies that had clear, tangible benefits that everyone could see and understand), there is real discussion happening, by real experts, about essentially all non-physical labor being replaced!
And... what do regular folks get from that? Talking to robots doesn't look like a quality of life improvement!
Basically we in the upper stands here are having a "Let Them Eat Cake" moment, and we should stop. Things are getting ugly.
A lot of the "sneering" I see from everyone who isn't an investor or an executive is a consequence of resistance to outreach. It's very difficult to discuss subjects with people when many now interpret factual explanations as propaganda and reassurance as manipulation.
By the way, plenty of people feared electricity a great deal (and it wasn't exactly implemented safely when it was new). In the 90s, many people also thought the Internet was a temporary fad, a mere novelty that would fade in some years.
When I see a protest over a golf course opening, I'll take data center water use concerns seriously.
The data centers the industry wants are all going to get built. People are being hypnotized by concentrated minority interests in specific spots in the country. The only big picture thing about it is the left-populist sideshow it's created.
Actually it's a completely insane idea that can't be reasonably discussed.
The code is interesting though, it's not minified, it's very readable, and nicely indented with lots of comments.
The curated data center list is just some inline JSON.
The javascript uses var instead of let or const, I'm not sure if this is just style choice, or there is some code post processing.
It doesn't use react, AI seems to almost always opt for react for front end design, unless told otherwise.
The text (especially the "About" section, key concerns, and Erin’s quote) reads like strong AI-generated or heavily AI-edited copy. It has that clean, structured, persuasive style common in tools like Claude, ChatGPT, or Grok. Many observers on Reddit and elsewhere noted it “looks 100% designed by Claude.”
Like I get it looks a lot like apps built with AI but weren't LLMs trained on real website and a metric ton of website templates?
Is it possible they used a template or other UI library?
All noise, no signal.
But at the macro level, it is not really a big number so far. From ~2.48 million in 2023 to ~2.37million now. Or a 5% drop in employment in 3 years.
Fred: All Employees, Computer Systems Design and Related Services (CES6054150001)
For reference: https://www.datacenterjournal.com/data-centers/oregon/portla...
One side effect of higher density is less footprint on the building to exhaust the heat, which is one reason (the main one being efficiency) that cooling towers and indirect evaporative cooling are favoured over air cooled condensers which leads to large amounts of water consumption.
Cooling towers are also much quieter than air cooled condensers which is a significant factor near any residential areas. It would be great to see more use of data center waste heat for process or district heating to save on water consumption.
Another issue with AI training in particular is huge (multi-MW) swings in power consumption at the start and end of each training run which must be a nightmare for the sparkies.
Why are you ok with spending $100 on groceries but not $100 on poison?
I agree with this.
At the same time, all of the data center proposals in my state are in remote locations nowhere near any residences. They’re still the target of protests.
At some point national and state level goals must supercede local control if progress is to ever be made.
Brokovich might not know it. But her web people certainly used AI to build this site. From the Emojis, cards, to the single colored left border.
Why?
So we can destroy as many jobs as possible in as short an amount of time while nuking the environment from orbit and funneling trillions to china for the hardware?
The fact that you position anti-ai as a “left” thing means you’re not engaging with this seriously anyway. The environment isn’t a left-right thing. Jobs aren’t a left-right thing.
Or the offices of ads agencies defacing countless public spaces, injecting noise into every activity and wasting billions of hours combined of everybody's life?
If slop is more expensive to produce, maybe there will be less of it clogging up the digital commons.
In what fairytale land does this describe the US today?
ie it is in the economic interest of the writers to tap into (and foment) the FUD around "data centers."
Maybe they'll seize the means of computing and repurpose it for putting pictures of pillow shams on Pinterest.
I wonder if they think data centers didn't exist before 2025 and the Internet was run as some sort of underground railroad out of broom closets and people's basements.
> I wonder if they think data centers didn't exist before 2025
They of course call them “hyperscalers” because they’re the same size as all the other things. /s
For most people it is just a thing that produces crappy facebook memes, has made certain parts of life more dystopian - like job interviews, and people keep saying is going to take away your job and the jobs of your children. And energy prices keep going up.
If you can't see why AI is unpopular you're just very out of touch.
* if it's serious, what in the world do you eat, to compare farming, with AI datacentres, on equal / comparable footing in terms of necessity and efficiencies -- or call farming a "heritage business"? :->
There's no reason for someone to trust any "reassurance" when there are so many signals indicating they shouldn't.
But this is a conversation about data centers. It would be great if you had the capability of staying even vaguely on topic instead of spinning off into “what about” bullshit.
That seems very untrue - multiple areas have already banned data centers, and senators like Bernie Sanders have proposed stopping data centers nationwide. This is just the next phase of NIMBY-ism. Alternatively, source that the "data centers the industry wants are all going to get built"?
> I've seen fiercer opposition to a 4-story apartment building than to some of these data centers.
I'm guessing you're referring to rather cherry-picked data? I've seen data center opposition making even the national news, but I don't recall any '4-story apartment buildings' opposition doing so? And senators like Bernie Sanders are proposing halting data centers nationwide - are there any similar proposals to similarly outlaw such housing construction nationwide?
> People just like opposing development.… When I see a protest over a golf course opening, I'll take data center water use concerns seriously.
Agreed.
If I had to predict either way, I would guess that it is significantly AI generated, but that isn't the same thing as being sure.
Almost every link submitted to HN has a comment about the content being AI generated, many of which are not, I would rather talk about the "tells" rather than make confident assertions that I can't prove.
Pretty functional design.
But there is also some hype about just how much it will affect you, that is not necessarily true.
Just one random Google result:
I don't live anywhere near SpaceX's methane monstrosity in Memphis, but I still think it shouldn't exist because of the negative impact it has on the people who live near it.
And I still think Anthropic became fully complicit by renting it out.
The power an "AI data center uses" in a single rack used to be, or is still in many cases, the power draw of an entire room or even floor.
Going from a few megawatts to ~10GW.
Failing to invest in datacenters now is going to mean paying more for the same consumption later. IMO it's best to let the hyperscalers take the hit from the initial depreciation. Sure the alternative gets you cheaper wheat or corn or whatever but that's coupled with an absurdly large premium if you're then blending in brand new CPUs and GPUs.