[zitterbewegung]

Would be interesting long term if this sways public opinion about data centers in Malta. I do support though AI literacy in general and this is a good step. Would wonder about the deal in how much this is actually costing Malta if at all.

[purrcat259]

Unlikely. Other than the telcos there's only one proper commercial datacentre here. Space is very constrained and the electricity supply stability + summer heat aren't a fun combination

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

As a complete layman, I do wonder why you would bother building a datacenter at a place that everyone agrees is going to be basically underwater in the next 50-100 years.

[rileymat2]

Wouldn’t 45 to 95 years of use be plenty of time for ROI?

[IncreasePosts]

You're thinking of the maldives.

[fragmede]

although, Microsoft did a whole experiment with underwater data centers, so maybe there's lessons from there that could be applied.

[purrcat259]

The coasts will definitely be wiped in 100 years but underwater is a bit of an overstatement

[tomwojcik]

Malta makes money with igaming and money laundering. There's literally no other businesses there, other than basic necessities, and even these barely work. It's only focused on entertainment.

They import food and water. Malta is very hot during the summer. There's AC unit everywhere and it's a default cooling unit as well, as there's no "European winter" there. Everyone collects rain water and stores it on the roof.

They are one tsunami away from being decimated.

There's one company renting servers and it's full of online casinos, just so the companies meet the regulatory requirement.

Malta is the worst place on earth to have a data center I can think of.

[chm02]

Most of your comments have nothing to do with operating a data center, and seems like you have some ill feelings towards Malta. Tourism, manufacturing, financial services are all other industries apart from igaming. Parts of your phone are likely to be made in Malta.

Presumably what you refer to as "money laundering" is the impression that Malta attracts foreign investments by offering regulation for poorly regulated industries and tax incentives. Which is essential to maintain competitiveness as a small state. You'd be surprised to hear that most money laundering in Malta is not tied to the igaming industry at all.

Malta is not a good place for a data center because real-estate is expensive and cooling is expensive.

[ashirviskas]

What does Malta manufacture?

[purrcat259]

Some amount of micro-electronics. https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/about/manufacturing-at-...

[purrcat259]

Literally no one I know in the 30+ years I have been here collects rainwater on their roof. Whats your source, r/malta?

[thenthenthen]

Up until 2026 you could also buy a eu passport in Malta for ~690k euro.

[vasco]

You forgot tourism which is their largest money maker.

[tomwojcik]

Tourism is relatively big there but only relatively to the population numbers. I'd argue gambling contributes more to the GDP, while tourism only keeps the light on on the economy. Tourism allows the citizens to make money but it's a small country so it doesn't scale. Gambling scales globally.

I have no numbers to back this up.

[chrisandchris]

But the internet does, and it is 12% for gambling, against 15-25% for tourism (whichever source you believe).

[1] https://timesofmalta.com/article/the-15-billion-question-is-...

[2] https://www.emcs.com.mt/emcs-tourism-malta-economy/

[vasco]

Tourism scales globally in the same way unless you mean the island would be at 100% occupancy rate already. Also my point is it's hard to trust you when you ignore the top export while talking about exports.

[preisschild]

OpenAI is inherently incentivized to sell as much LLM compute as possible, that is not neutral "AI literacy". You don't let tobacco companies make anti smoking education either.

[charcircuit]

>You don't let tobacco companies make anti smoking education either.

Many jurisdictions literally force them to put education on the boxes.

[zamadatix]

Education written by the government about the risks, not the tobacco company about why cigarettes are great. Hence why the tobacco companies weren't keen on it.

[Yokohiii]

What has this to do with AI literacy?

[emsign]

Data centers in a country that has barely enough water and electricity for its citizens? That is utterly ridiculous. This AI hype is going crazy, it's all an insane joke, right?