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by sidewndr46 2 days ago
What I find interesting is that having lived in the southeast US for decades now, there is never any shortage of a story where someone buys a house near a race track. Not long after that, they complain that the race track is loud for several days in the week. Generally what follows is lots of posturing by local politicians and judges. Inevitably the race track shuts down within a year or so, usually because it isn't worth the legal battle.

Yet somehow data centers that apparently make awful noises 24/7, local lawmakers are suspiciously unable to do anything about.
2 comments
ryandrake 2 days ago
Same with regional airports. People who knowingly bought houses near a critical small local airport can band together and get it shut down because it's loud, but somehow doing it to a data center is a bridge too far??
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ElevenLathe 2 days ago
A race track is a normal business trying to make money, so its operators rationally fold rather than almost certainly losing money even if they win in court.

An AI (or crypto mining) datacenter is fundamentally a financial fraud (or most charitably, in Mr. Greenspan's immortal phrasing, a result of "irrational exuberance") that has taken physical form. Nothing about it is rational, and their operators are happy to waste millions fighting even doomed legal battles to keep the music playing so they don't have to grab a chair.

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protocolture 2 days ago
>An AI (or crypto mining) datacenter is fundamentally a financial fraud (or most charitably, in Mr. Greenspan's immortal phrasing, a result of "irrational exuberance") that has taken physical form.

I really dislike the modern trend of trying to recategorise things when you dont like them.

A datacenter is in the business of providing power and rackspace to a customer. The customer is in the business of providing compute to AI users or a crypto network. That you are vociferously opposed to those pursuits does not invalidate them in any way.

>and their operators are happy to waste millions fighting even doomed legal battles to keep the music playing so they don't have to grab a chair.

What does that even mean.

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