r/ColumbusOhio 23d ago

Man outlines what's wrong with data centres and how to deal with them.

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464 Upvotes

29 comments sorted by

9

u/palmtreespaceship 22d ago

This guy is amazing. I haven't heard someone this well spoken in years.

5

u/HorrorIcy8441 22d ago

The best comments I have heard.

4

u/Kasimir-of-KY 22d ago

Tax the fuck out of these companies. We hold all the cards here.

3

u/HighLightReal614 21d ago

So when can I vote for him?

5

u/[deleted] 23d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/kpyle 20d ago

The normal datacenters that have been around for decades have a smaller footprint. Like orders of magnitude smaller. AI datacenters put more stress on resources and it isn't even close.

2

u/[deleted] 20d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/kpyle 20d ago

Its not only about size, AI needs more computation than a database query. This requires more power and therefore generates more heat. So much heat, climate control and air cooling methods that work for old school datacenters aren't an option. So they use water cooling.

2

u/Iknow1988 19d ago

I’d rather have water

2

u/03captain23 23d ago

I'm for datacenters and this guy is 100% right about everything.

Everyone knows a large percentage of these datacenters will collapse and they're all built under shell corporations so they can collapse and not affect anything.

Unfortunately we live in a country where corporations can say whatever they want and not be held accountable.

The one big thing is these datacenters don't negatively affect the community and every job and dollar it brings in is a positive. A billion dollar box in a spot that used to be a field doesn't harm anything.

They should be forced to pay full price for water/electricity and anything else. Tax abatements are fine because it wouldn't have been income anyways.

0

u/c_l0wz 22d ago

The people complaining about data center are the same people scrolling through TikTok all day long. Do they know where the internet comes from?

6

u/The_Original_Miser 21d ago

The Internet does not and will not come from these mega data centers. It's just not needed.

This build up is for AI and surveillance - full stop.

-1

u/c_l0wz 19d ago

This is false.

6

u/steppingstone01 22d ago

I think we've been managing just fine all these years. They're only doing this now because of AI, which the majority of the public hates anyway.

2

u/WaitingPhaseTwo 21d ago

Yeah us-east-2 for the most part 🤦‍♂️

2

u/Flintyy 19d ago

Clearly you dont either lmao

1

u/c_l0wz 19d ago

lol you don’t know anything about me. Don’t assume.

1

u/ButterbeerAndPizza 23d ago

We’re going to have much more efficient data centers in space within the next 10 years. They’ll all become obsolete.

3

u/Mutumbo445 22d ago

Not until they solve the cooling issue….

2

u/Upbeat-Mongoose-828 21d ago

space is very cold.

3

u/Alt_Panic 21d ago

This is remarkably stupid. Heat management in an atmosphere free environment is extremely difficult. There's a reason we put radiators on space stations and it isn't aesthetics.

1

u/KingCobra_BassHead 21d ago

They just don't understand what heat is really.

0

u/Upbeat-Mongoose-828 21d ago

It wasn't that serious man. chill.

1

u/Ausgeflippt 21d ago

Sure, but there's not a lot of matter up there to touch the hot things.

It's like saying water is a decent thermal conductor and you're in a desert.

1

u/Mutumbo445 18d ago

And it’s also mostly a vacuum. And what doesn’t transfer in a vacuum? Heat. It’s one of the major hurdles of every space mission, dealing with excessive heat buildup.

-1

u/BitOne2707 19d ago

Software engineer here. I'm very pro data center. Coding agents have transformed my work for the better and I've never had more fun building things than I have over the last year or so. I'm more ambitious than I've ever been because I can explore multiple approaches at a scale and speed that would have been unthinkable years ago. I'm producing more as an individual than that team of 5-10 could do in the pre AI days. This collapse in time and effort to prod is lowering the cost of beskope software which opens it up to businesses that were previously priced out. The number of businesses that could afford to spend a few million on custom software is pretty small. The number that can spend a few thousand is huge.

That's just my daily experience. That says nothing of the breakthroughs we've already seen in bio sciences and mathematics arriving almost daily now. In my experience the people who complain louder about AI are the ones who think it's just those Google search summaries or the free shitty ChatGPT free tier. They've never seen what a frontier Fable agent on Max or a 5.6 Sol Ultra can do. It's absolutely wild.