Rural Ohioans Seek To Ban Data Centers Through Constitutional Amendment 120
Residents in rural Ohio are pushing a constitutional amendment to ban large data centers over 25 megawatts, citing concerns about energy use, water consumption, and lack of transparency around proposed projects. "My biggest concern is because I love Adams County," Nikki Gerber told Cleveland.com. "What it feels like they are doing is just taking advantage of the unzoned rural areas of Ohio, where they can go ahead and put in whatever they want." From the report: Gerber and a handful of residents from Adams and Brown counties gathered about 1,800 signatures in eight days to start the ballot process. They submitted those petitions to the Ohio attorney general's office on Monday. That's the first step before supporters can begin collecting signatures statewide.
State law requires at least 1,000 valid voter signatures to begin the process. The petitions must also include the full text of the proposed amendment and a summary explaining what it would do. Attorney General Dave Yost's office now has 10 days to decide whether the summary fairly and truthfully describes the proposal. If it does, the measure will move to the Ohio Ballot Board. Supporters would then need to gather about 413,000 valid signatures by July to place the amendment before voters this November. The report notes that a 25-megawatt limit "would effectively block most modern data centers from being built in Ohio."
State law requires at least 1,000 valid voter signatures to begin the process. The petitions must also include the full text of the proposed amendment and a summary explaining what it would do. Attorney General Dave Yost's office now has 10 days to decide whether the summary fairly and truthfully describes the proposal. If it does, the measure will move to the Ohio Ballot Board. Supporters would then need to gather about 413,000 valid signatures by July to place the amendment before voters this November. The report notes that a 25-megawatt limit "would effectively block most modern data centers from being built in Ohio."
What Mama Pajama Saw (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What Mama Pajama Saw (Score:5, Insightful)
Are normal residents of Ohio able to call a vote on "regular statute laws" without the legislature? That would be my guess as to why they did it this way, as an end-run around a nonresponsive legislature.
Re:What Mama Pajama Saw (Score:4, Informative)
But I do want to be clear the problem you've pointed out is absolutely real. Case in point, the Texas constitution. But there it is the legislature choosing to make everything a constitutional amendment, of their own choice. Not the citizenry doing it out of necessity.
It is interesting to contemplate, though, the purpose and function of a constitution. If we are to look at constitutions as expressions of the people's will, and also a document to bind officials (legislatures) who might neglect their duty, I don't see how the proposed amendment in Ohio goes against that.
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But arguably constitutions should have the feature they are difficult to amend.
Honestly I think most states have way to lax a process for amending their constitutions, it is to easy and to quick to do.
A Constitution should encode core values and governing principles. Principles would should impose limits on whims of the day, and guard against arguments of necessity, countering them with no generations of citizens have said our society won't do that sort of thing - and we have rules that are binding which ca
Yep. (Score:2)
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Except the legislature is corrupt.
The scumbuckets we elect see these taxpayer bills and say "Sure."
Then they do everything they can to get around the law. The people take them to court and they lose. So they accept the law of the land.... Nope. They wait 10 years, then just overturn the law.
Citizens got tired of these shenangins so now we get state constitutional amendments.
Please note, while the majority of this particular brand of corruption is currently from the Republicans, it can be found amount De
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If it's anything like California, the ballot issue gets passed and then the state refuses to fund it...Effectively nullifying these kinds of ballot initiatives. I wish them the best of luck keeping Big Data out of their backyard.
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If it's anything like California, the ballot issue gets passed and then the state refuses to fund it...Effectively nullifying these kinds of ballot initiatives. I wish them the best of luck keeping Big Data out of their backyard.
California is progressive. Here in SoDak, which is far from progressive, we just have our state politicians take passed ballot measures to the state courts and get them thrown out because, and this is a direct quote from Kristi Noem when she was governor, "The people are too stupid to understand what it is they were voting for." Literally, word for word. Funny how that's not the case when the people elected her stupid ass to the office, but when we passed something she didn't like, we're all idiots.
Wouldn't
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So basically, regardless of which set of politicians is in charge, if they don't like the will of the voters, they just ignore us. And then we re-elect them for it. Sigh.
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An amendment to which constitution? I really wouldn't recommend trying this with the US constitution, as that will definitely take years, and probably decades, even if it gets through all the hoops.
Amending the stat constitution, though...that might be reasonable.
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Regardless of anything else, no one should need a constitutional amendment to do this. This can just be a regular statute law.
If it were a regular law, a state court could potentially invalidate it for violating the state constitution in some way.
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Regardless of anything else, no one should need a constitutional amendment to do this. This can just be a regular statute law. Constitutions are for things like birthright citizenship, or "no unlawful search and seizure", or "thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind".
Some states setup their constitutions as a means of giving citizens the right to enact laws they deem necessary; giving citizens a greater voice in how they are governed and the ability to check what they feel is governmental over reach.
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OH resident here. I'm of two minds on this. I agree that a constitution should be a simple statement of how the government should work along with a statement of human rights. The problem in OH is that it is fairly easy to amend the constitution by popular referendum and so all kinds of silly stuff that really belongs in laws gets added to the constitution. A few years ago, as an example, a group of casino operators put forth an amendment that allowed 4 casinos in the state. The amendment specifically includ
Good luck, Ohio! (Score:2)
More power to you! ;>
NIMBY? (Score:5, Insightful)
To be clear, I support controls on data centre construction which take much more account of what citizens want and what's good for their health. I think citizens should be able to say "Hell no!" and have the government honour their wishes.
In addition to the factors mentioned in TFS, there are some really serious health issues that come with having a data centre in your general vicinity. One of the most insidious is infrasonic emissions which can cause physical and mental health problems over a very large area surrounding the centres. So placing one close to residences and other businesses can be a major health problem for a lot of people.
At the same time, I'm sure these people, like most of us, watch a lot of YouTube, Prime, Netflix, etc. So they want to benefit from data centres - they just don't want them located in their back yards. I sympathize with them, and would likely do what they're doing; but the data centres have to go somewhere, and anyone who uses the internet a lot is on shaky ethical ground when insisting that the negative consequences be someone else's problem.
Sure, a lot of new data centres are being built just to run LLMs. But if AI hadn't come along, they would still be looking for places to build server farms - it would just be happening at a slower rate. There are no easy answers; but a good start would be to take back control of the government from tech broligarchs and other big corporations. That would force a dialog which might yield solutions. Until then, corporations will be predators and average citizens will be victims.
We are way past nimby (Score:3)
When you dump one of these in a state you start having serious problems with having enough water and electricity. Prices are guaranteed to go up in order to force rationing by businesses and individuals not involved with the data center.
These data centers also absolutely ruin water. They want clean drinking water to do their cooling because it's ready to go and doesn't need any processing but they fil
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None of which is unique to datacentres - all sorts of industrial sites use lots of water, power and space, and produce pollution and noise. It shouldn't matter if you're building a datacentre or a widget factory, they should have to comply with the same laws to not ruin the area.
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Does manufacturing need lots of water (and output water contaminated by anti-corrosion chemicals)?
Last factory I worked it, along with the commercial kitchens I worked at (and the science lab I worked at for two years), weren't pumping out pollution.
"Comply with the same laws (as industrial sites)" = they're not zoned industrial, are they? I lived less than a baseball field away from a (former) Electrolux factory, and the noise was barely noticeable, and any airborne pollution (from making freezers) was mu
Re: We are way past nimby (Score:1)
Seems to me the answer to your complaints is that organizations building anything requiring electricity at absurdly high levels (like a datacenter) be required to source their own energy. If that's the the issue, there's the solution...
Just be prepared to see even more massive datacenters to justify the infrastructure cost of self-producing their own electricity...
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Do I dare ask... what is 'Nimby'?
I hate to say it, but without a real-world use (beyond replacing office jobs and being used as chatbot 'friends' and doing kids' homework so the kid can play more Bejewelled or Hero Wars)... maybe like cancer-research (if the LLM-AI is advanced enough), there's really no good purpose to build one of these things.
Now, if for the few seconds or whatever that each CPU/GPU combo is idle, it kicks over to mining BTC or something, and that amount gets sent to the residents of the
In town or reclamation bond. (Score:3)
The rust belt, which includes Ohio, is full of abandoned industrial sites most of which already have decent power supplies and other utilities. Put the data centers there.
If they absolutely insist on a green field project then at the very least require a reclamation bond to pay for demolition and cleanup of the site when it gets abandoned in a few years.
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The rust belt, which includes Ohio, is full of abandoned industrial sites most of which already have decent power supplies and other utilities. Put the data centers there.
Brilliant!
If they absolutely insist on a green field project then at the very least require a reclamation bond to pay for demolition and cleanup of the site when it gets abandoned in a few years.
I think the reclamation bond might make the project economically unfeasible. If I'm right, then that's VERY telling regarding voodoo-economics-level cost externalization that's going on.
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Tough... I suspect the company can afford it. And, make it a requirement that they have to use the unused buildings first, before buying Farmer John's land is even considered.
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To be fair this is the correct play.
Most of those communities are used to the noise from a steel mill and would welcome any tax revenue even if it's low. Electric grid is either already in place or worse case needs to be refurbished rather than completely built and rezoned for large line runs, Truck and Rail lines are usually available for large scale shipping if necessary and most brownfields are close to a water source such as a river or municipal plant which can be further filtered if necessary.
The Young
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This... so much!
Farmer John should get to keep his family's land... now that manufacturing is out-sourced, the empty buildings should be required to be reused before offering low-bids for Farmer John's land (and, the farmer's land should sell for like twice market value or something) for something (instead of bulldozing just to build something the same size there)... pretty sure OpenAI or whoever could get a million sq. ft. former factory for cheap (we've got one here in town... 1.3 million sq. ft.).
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I'm an Ohioian in Columbus, and this is far beyond NIMBY, this is what most people consider a fringe extremists group moving their goalposts and overly misrepresenting the situation.
Firstly, this group operates out of Cleveland, one of the three biggest cities in Ohio.
It got that way by expanding city limits outward.
Yes, sometimes by buying rural farm land, but mostly what once was farm land that has been passed down a family until recent generations that have no interest in farming, and so sell the unused
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Why NIMBY instead of NAA (Not-At-All)?
Have you wondered if we actually need any of this fucking stupidly insane growth in datacentres? We've just finished a previous bubble that resulted in millions of electronics sitting around doing math to attempt to create money out of nothing, and now we're building a shitton of datacentres for the purpose of doing some AI bullshit that is being largely shoved down our throats without our concent or desire to use (why does every Google search cause a datacentre somewhe
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From the article, "Ten years ago, a 30-megawatt data center was considered large, according to an analysis from McKinsey & Company. Today, facilities using 200 megawatts or more are becoming common, driven by the rapid growth of artificial intelligence."
So it appears as if those services would still be possible by existing/new DC's that are of similar size. What seems t
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It'll create a few hundred jobs to build the thing, and once it's done, they're back to looking for something; they'll only have like a couple guys a shift stationed to keep an eye on things, and keep an eye on the slow-cooking side of pork (using the waste heat).
As far as adding to the revenue, at best, it'll be a few million (if that). After the power and water subsidies, and the property tax breaks they'll get for building the thing,
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True, my bad for undercutting the jobs temporarily created.
Only 500MW? There's already discussion about like 1-2GW (and upwards) DCs on the project list... I wanna see the solar fields for that sum'*itch (because, Green/renewable power is the answer! (and, burning natural gas to generate power doesn't pollute at all!)). Once they "perfect" the production runs for the GPU (can you really even call them that?), they're gonna cram/ram the new, faster card in every one of the DCs... might take more power, pro
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To be clear, I support controls on data centre construction which take much more account of what citizens want and what's good for their health. I think citizens should be able to say "Hell no!" and have the government honour their wishes.
Sure. And normally that's handled through zoning laws. From the fine summary, I take it that swaths of Ohio don't have any zoning laws.
(And, IMHO, good for them. I'm not a huge fan of zoning. But I don't live in Ohio so it's none of my business.)
So, and hear me out, perhaps pass some zoning laws first?
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Why not pack datacenters into really empty states - I was thinking the Northern slopes of Alaska. For one thing, there will be plenty of ambient cooling, and for another, one could build a power generation station in the vicinity to supply them their power year around
Their internet connection could either be via satellite, or have submarines running cables around the Alaska coastline to Anchorage, and from there, to Vancouver, Seattle, and from there, to the rest of the country
Next Ohio Governor Ramaswamy Will Ignore This (Score:3)
As a Trump disciple Ohio's next governor simply ignore any restriction on Data Centers. So any Ohioans better not vote for him regardless of the tens millions of ad buys he has already purchased to fool the public into voting against their interests (much like Kansas) and will increase his buy to $50 million to scare Ohioans into voting for him.
However, there is a glimmer of hope [newsweek.com] that the baffle them with lies tactic won't work this time. Trump has hopefully, taught everyone that by now.
After all according to the pentagon any person in a boat with a rocket launcher or mine can sink an entire oil tanker. That is why Obama made a deal about nuclear enrichment. Trump, as usual, did not do the homework. Just like with tariffs.
BTW, Why won't any prediction markets [wikipedia.org] accept my bet that Trump will lie today?
It's seems like the best bet to get rich.
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>Why won't any prediction markets [wikipedia.org] accept my bet that Trump will lie today?
I'm sure someone will... but it's like betting on sunrise; I'd expect the odds to be set at 0:1.
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A week after the discussion's done, you post that barely coherent slop in reply to an off topic post, that I have to assume was due to a compulsive need to defend Trump.
Wow. That's just so... sad.
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Now that is actually on the table now. I can't believe I'm saying this but actual constitutional amendments that are crystal clear could potentially be struck down by the state supreme court using whatever insane justification they have to write in order to get the checks from the billionaires.
But make no mistake if the courts do that it's a constitutional crisis. The same goes for if the governor ign
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With the next election cycle being 6 YEARS away - that's way too late. Massive data centers with polluting generators, massive noise pollution that literally sickens you, massive increases in electricity and water prices. Way too late. Oh, just vote them out! Yeah right, *after* everything is built.
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As a Trump disciple Ohio's next governor simply ignore any restriction on Data Centers.
However, there is a glimmer of hope that the baffle them with lies tactic won't work this time. Trump has hopefully, taught everyone that by now.
I hope so, the thought of an AI chatbot holding political office is scary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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This is someone not in the pocket of big tech, if one reads his books. If one doesn't want Ohio to be littered w/ datacenters, he is the guy to vote for. His (D) opponent is more likely to be bought by the likes of Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, et al
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Oh... I see it's the right time of day for your crew to leave the classrooms.
What does he have to do with this conversation? Unless I'm mistaken, this has to with Ohio (unless you have proof that somehow, he is controlling all this).
So, it should be legal to put a data center anyplace? Do you mind rationing you power usage until the magical "Green Energy" solution works? How about when they want to buy your backyard to put up a wind turbine? Or, buy your third-generation family farm for cents on the hec
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So, it should be legal to put a data center anyplace? Do you mind rationing you power usage until the magical "Green Energy" solution works? How about when they want to buy your backyard to put up a wind turbine? Or, buy your third-generation family farm for cents on the hectare?
Farmers are paid rent for installing wind turbines.
If a Data Center installed nearby is going to a Musk gas turbine or some other fossil or nuclear powered that will will raise locals electrical costs or pollute the area, I'd absolutely like it not to be there.
BTW, Farmers can negotiated paid rent or a percentage of sales for installing wind turbines or sometimes solar panels in their fields that are connected to the grid. That income can preserve "family farms."
"Green" energy works great! Just ask Norway, [lowcarbonpower.org]
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Why would the company pay rent, when 'eminent domain' is going to be the new hotness for building these things?
What good is the family farm when you can't plant on the fields that used to be the "farm"... can you plant and harvest underneath a solar panel (does your tractor fit?), can't plant near the turbine's mast (concrete pad).
Negotiate? "I want $5,000 per hectare" "We're prepared to offer you $100 per field" "Okay, $4,000 per hectare" "We'll offer you $50 now"... if you take it, you owe 2/3 of that
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Why would the company pay rent, when 'eminent domain' is going to be the new hotness for building these things?
What good is the family farm when you can't plant on the fields that used to be the "farm"... can you plant and harvest underneath a solar panel (does your tractor fit?), can't plant near the turbine's mast (concrete pad).
Negotiate? "I want $5,000 per hectare" "We're prepared to offer you $100 per field" "Okay, $4,000 per hectare" "We'll offer you $50 now"... if you take it, you owe 2/3 of that profit as taxes, and lost the rest and more for the deeds and everything... if you refuse, they'll just come back with a Writ of Eminent Domain (because they have someone in the Federal government on speed dial just for this situation), and give you a few days (if you're lucky) to get your stuff out before they bulldoze the house.
"Eminent Domain" is an action of government. Not competitors. Can you lose your farm if you don't pay your taxes? Sure. That's the American Way.
There are many farms making a better near term return on their land [google.com] by planting under solar panels.
You seem conservative, but appear to not like, love or embrace capitalism. It's now you use what you have to beat the competition. Not, just expecting that the game will never change. The game will always change.
Particularly, with the US being run by the biggest Boss H [wikipedia.org]
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If the government wants these precious "LLM-AI data centers" (and, I very specifically use the LLM-AI tag because all the things available are just LLMs... and, they do the same thing as your cell phone's predictive text when texting someone) (and, that's regardless of whose a$$ fills the chair), rules *can* be bent... what're you gonna do?
LLMs are just one possible front end on the core neural nets that provide an interface for an AI.
Recommended reading Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI - By Karen Hao. An Instant New York Times Bestseller Named a Best Book of the Year by Smithsonian, Scientific American, and Elle.
"Eminent Domain" can be slipped into any bill (especially one that will definitely get passed, just in case Farmer Joe says "No" to the buy-out)
If it's your farm, you could try a Tiananmen Square... there's a lot of directions they could bring the bulldozers in from, and I doubt one person can block every one of them.
So, as I said, this requires legislative and execute branch action to make happen.
Big Business doesn't care what you want... they want to make millions a month or whatever, and they don't care who they step on.
Yes, there is a conservative conspiracy that was restarted in the 1970s with Nixon and his SCOTUS appointments [wikipedia.org] But it has
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Sorry, I messed up the link to the book.
Recommended reading Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI - By Karen Hao. [goodreads.com] An Instant New York Times Bestseller Named a Best Book of the Year by Smithsonian, Scientific American, and Elle.
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Are you hinting at the legendary brain-computer interface? That'll be friggin' awesome! Browse the internet while I sleep, internally play peaceful music, download my brain to a computer that can read everything (wish you the best of luck with that).
Nope. Kurzweil [wikipedia.org] will die like the rest of us.
And any 2-way brain to computer interface with influence the interfaced brain more than the computer. If you thought the two-way interface of social media was dystopian, it is, you'll love the brain computer interface [wikipedia.org]. You'll have AI answers, hallucinations and crazy available to you 24/7 without any of the skills to validate that information. You'll just be an extension of unreliable information without judgement or muscle memory to properly apply those portions
Data centres is just headline catching (Score:2)
It shouldn't be that the residents are fighting data centre builds, it should be fighting anything that impacts a healthy life balance.
If a construction now, or in the future starts to impact life, then it's operation should be shut down until it ceases to affect life. Data centres are built too quickly for people to get a handle on the situation, then it's just taken as status quo. If this were a warehouse or car park that operated the same way and polluted the water, or made the area more liable to flash
Build ten adjacent 25 MW data centers. (Score:2)
If they limit the consumption per data center to 25 MW, they'll just spread it across multiple data centers. While there are some advantages to doing it all in one building (lower electricity waste, lower water use, lower environmental impact, slightly lower cost), it isn't as though that's a showstopper.
Besides, it's easy to build a data center with net power consumption less than 25 MW. You just throw batteries at the problem, and build a massive solar farm on-site.
To me, this is basically workers thro
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Besides, it's easy to build a data center with net power consumption less than 25 MW. You just throw batteries at the problem, and build a massive solar farm on-site.
If they did this in the first place, this likely wouldn't even be in the early stages of a ballot initiative. Of course, that solution cost the company money, where as how they do things now shifts the costs onto the public instead. You can't blame the residents of Ohio for not wanting a major user of electricity from coming in and driving up rates. Life cost enough as it is.
It's even worse if these are "AI" data centers, as their entire point is to put us all out of work one day. Given we believe you must
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Besides, it's easy to build a data center with net power consumption less than 25 MW. You just throw batteries at the problem, and build a massive solar farm on-site.
If they did this in the first place, this likely wouldn't even be in the early stages of a ballot initiative.
Sure it would. Most of the big companies building data centers do exactly that. It's only the small startups that use ridiculous amounts of grid power and try to find a place that's willing to connect them. The big companies provide their own generation so that they can hook up wherever they want, because while it might save money to rely on the grid, it wastes months or years trying to get the permits, and every extra month puts them at a disadvantage. And a lot of the data centers being built are pret
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" And Garcia, at the SELC, says that while xAI waits for more power to become available, they’ve turned to non-legal measures to sate their demand, by installing gas combustion turbines on the site that they are operating without a permit. Garcia says the SELC has observed the installation of 18
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So curious, would you consider xai small or large?
Tiny. They're a startup, and they've only been around since 2023.
Because they were so anxious to put their memphis operation they did install their own gen's to supplement the 50mw limit memphis could provide. Some quotes,
" And Garcia, at the SELC, says that while xAI waits for more power to become available, they’ve turned to non-legal measures to sate their demand, by installing gas combustion turbines on the site that they are operating without a permit.
That would be Elon Musk. He thinks the law doesn't apply to him because he has money. Sadly, he is probably correct.
Garcia says the SELC has observed the installation of 18 such turbines, which have the capacity to emit 130 tons of harmful nitrogen oxides per year. "
Their belief was that because they were temporary turbines on trucks, they were exempt, in much the same way that buying ten thousand gasoline generators would arguably be exempt. The courts concluded otherwise. Musk cuts corners and skirts the law. Always has, and probably always will until he ends up in jail for it.
But th
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Yeah... batteries solve the problem until it's cloudy.
So... let's say a 1GW DC... so, 1 billion watts divided by 500 (hopeful output of the panels under ideal conditions... depends on what panels you get) = 2 million panels (add 10% just in case a panel fails... that powers it during the day... you need a second field (add some just to be sure it charges the UPS)... and, you have to make sure all the batteries are healthy, and replace as needed, which is all waste. Same with wind turbines.
What about windle
Adams County (Score:2)
Know what else is happening in Adams County now? https://www.wcpo.com/news/loca... [wcpo.com]
Lemon Pound Cake is a catchy song https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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That's a rather strange trial. If that's the residence of this guy, then obviously these are his monitoring cameras, so it is his copyright.
Is there an expectation of privacy from me in my home?
Smart and the only way to do it (Score:2, Interesting)
Once you get down to the state level then it's a lot more manageable to buy off the state senators.
It's trivial to buy off a county election or city election but there's just too many of them so it's not pract.
This is what they mean when they say government small enough to drown in a bathtub.
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Don't forget the state legislature gets to more or less decide the state's budget. So even if the voters do pass a ballot initiative, the politicians can just decide to not fund it. California did this when we passed a ballot initiative that rolled back the retail theft limit from $900 back to I think $500. There was some other language in there as well, but ultimately, California politicians decided they would just not fund this, since they don't want to increase the prison population anyway. Better to jus
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You voters are not likely competent enough. You don't want to spent on prisons, welfare, housing reform, mental health, and everything else to address the problems. Instead you demand they punish more and be tougher but without any support to do it-- plus the simpleton solutions the masses go for and vote for -- don't work. trusting experts is hard for simpletons. and the group has few who are informed, as a mass group; unless forced to actually think, will functionally be simpletons. A distracted populac
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I live in California. 5th largest economy in the world. I'll let the readers pass judgement on the politicians here. We all have our own opinions on the matter.
F Ohio! (Score:2)
They voted for this. A couple gold bricks and they've been sold out by their Orange Jesus.
I would rather these data centers get built in states with less corruption and less gullible voters who are not as easily suckered by their political hacks who are for sale.
Having NDAs with public officials should be criminal, and if your official signs it that should be an end to their career as a politician... but the voters are incompetent... sell them on some idiotic lies about immigrants or the trans that hardly e
It's the NDA's that bother me (Score:5, Insightful)
"Gerger was also frustrated by the proliferation of non-disclosure agreements between big tech companies and local officials"
There should never be a situation where local officials can hide their negotiations behind NDA's. They are PUBLIC officials and the public has the right to know what decisions they are making on behalf of the community (as opposed to the officials enriching themselves or pocketing huge campaign donations).
Something different (Score:2)
backwards rules (Score:1)
Simple answer... (Score:1)
Nikki Gerber told Cleveland.com. "What it feels like they are doing is just taking advantage of the unzoned rural areas of Ohio, where they can go ahead and put in whatever they want."
Simple answer, zone all the unzoned areas in Ohio! A state-wide, default zoning ordinance shouldn't be that hard - just require approval for any development that creates so many thousands of square feet of impervious ground cover by a local governing board (city, county, state)...
Plenty of reasons to not want... (Score:2)
There are plenty of reasons to not want datacenters in the vicinity of one's home. Noise is a big one for sure. Power/electricity may be, especially if the datacenters don't build their own generation. But water...water is a stupid argument. Modern Datacenters use closed-loop cooling systems. Yes, there is a negligible amount of loss/replenishment, but for practical purposes the amount of water used is only enough to initially charge the system. It's not like there's an in/out usage thing similar to wha
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Re:Voters are dumb. FTFY (Score:2)
Actually, the concerns are real. These really use all that much power, and they use water and pollute the environment. Adding capacity to the grid to power these data centers should be entirely denied. It's not because of other dumb rules that other dumb voters have supported in the past. Any attempt to create a problem by new development is completely nonsensical.
Re: Voters are dumb. FTFY (Score:2)
The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 is a new CPU that comes with its own memory and motherboard meant for machine learning inference workloads. It's about 10x faster then my consumer based AMD GPU for these tasks. It also uses 1/10th of the power. In fact it does this using less power than when I'm gaming. It's also only about $2500 for the entire machine.
Even the nerds on slashdot are so out of step with the technology that it's bordering on absurdity at this point. I see constant misinformation thrown around on bot
Re: Voters are dumb. FTFY (Score:2)
No one cares about your shitty art dude. I'm too busy building home automations. Things like having the AI analyze the best time to water the vegetation in my yard based on observed local weather conditions and when to turn on the AC for the lowest energy usage. It even automatically know when to not run things because they will be a waste. Things like don't turn the heat on when the temp is only 5 degrees lower while I'm sleeping. I've already in the past year alone saved hundreds in energy costs just by r
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See, this is the kind of retarded bullshit you idiots say, and then you expect me to take you seriously.
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I know... everyplace has an extra 2 GW just laying around untapped. And, these data centers don't use any water for cooling (I want to know what they use)... and, the water used for cooling 'doesn't have any anti-corrosion chemicals added' that drain into a creek.
Does the fourth generation farmer deserve $50,000 for his entire land so he can lose his house that his great-grandfather hand-built just to make way for a data center so "Clod" can help flood everything with LLM-AI spam?
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2GW is basically nothing. The entire grid is something like 1,200GW so you'd need to add a fraction of a percent to cover a very large data center. The fact that people claim this is beyond our capability is preposterous.
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Ok, but we should still be able to add that to the grid. In reality, it is much easier and cheaper to build a 1GW power plant than it is to build a 1GW datacenter.
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It's 'something' if the local grid doesn't have that available 24/7.
Are you assuming only Canton, Ohio (or someplace bigger)? What about the rest of the area that is connected to the grid there? Do people need lights and charging for their EVs and cooking? Would 2 GW affect them?
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It uses exactly the amount of power I think it does, because I can read the specs and they say how much power these things use, which is not very much.
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It sounds like a good way to tank the economy forever, but ok.
Re: Voters are dumb. (Score:3)
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How are data centers going to improve the economy?
By making lots of money for very, very few people, making electricity more expensive, making water more expensive, causing massive amounts of noise pollution, and, if everything goes according to plan, wiping out entire job sectors as they spin them up.
Stop being so selfish. Think of the poor billionaires that want to be trillionaires. Don't they deserve to have their dreams come true?
Re: Voters are dumb. (Score:2)
30 years ago you'd be clamoring for new data centers so you can get a tech job running them. Now you tell big daddy government to ban job growth. It's actually hilarious. Northeast / Midwest states are such shit holes. Thankfully I left. You can take your always full of pot holes, never funded shit holes, and you can shove it. We're gonna be building the future while you shovel snow or whatever the fuck they do in Ohio.
Re: Voters are dumb. (Score:1)
Datacenters generate revenue, taxable revenue, that would be paid to local/state governments. Datacenters also have the added bonus of not requiring and significant infrastructure upgrades, aside from power and water (no highways, off-ramps, service roads, etc).
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That's assuming there isn't loopholes they use to avoid paying tax (donate 3/4 of their profits to a charity they own which have a bank account off-shore)... that way, they only pay taxes on a small percentage.
Of course, this only works until the regular people spend all their money on the Chinese-made AI-produced junk (cheap knockoff stuff that lasts one use)... once we're all broke, nobody will be buying anything (I believe they called this a "Great Depression"... it happened at some point last century if
Re: Voters are dumb. (Score:2)
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There might be some be some complaints over the anti-corrosion chemicals added to the cooling water... 'cause gotta keep your precious "Clod" running and available.
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In what way?
The excessively large data centers thing is causing major problems with electricity supplies and prices. In at least one case Musk built an excessively large one (for AI, obviously) and used a bunch of polluting temporary generators to power it, causing problems for downwind residents.
If the legislature would intervene, there would be no emergency. If the industry would act responsibly, there would be no emergency. But both have left ordinary residents with literally no choice if they want to be
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Instead of calling everyone stupid lizard-brained morons, make use of an AI data center near you, and ask your favorite LLM to evaluate this statement of yours:
We'll wait.
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How much do the weasels in Silicon Valley pay you for your posts?
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Mobile generators don't produce any more pollution than regular power plants.
What, exactly, is a "regular" power plant? Coal? Gas-to-steam? Gas-direct? IGCC? How big is this "regular" power plant? What's your basis for "more" or "less" polluting? Noise? Particulate? SOx/NOx? CO2? Overall efficiency?
By the way, Xai does have stationary permits for them now
So what if they have a permit? That doesn't negate the problems they are causing for the residents.
All this anti-datacenter nonsense is entirely unfounded in reality
You're entitled to your opinion.
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Before emissions controls, they'd try to disperse soot and ash over wide area to minimize the impact to individuals, but natural gas burns a lot cleaner than coal, and doesn't really produce soot or ash, so it's not really a concern.
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The only thing that article says about it is that the local government did a study and concluded that it wasn't an environmental hazard.
Think about it this way: why would a gas turbine mounted on a trailer emit more pollution than a fixed facility? It's burning the same fuel, with the same emissions controls.
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How about flip the whole thing 180` (degrees)... make it illegal country-wide to build the data centers without a state-wide (or county or regional, if you prefer) vote in favor of the thing, and the proposal on the ballot has to list the requirements and potential location(s) of the thing... maybe add in a thing if the voters (on this ballot) feel it's even necessarily wanted/needed.
Voting to block it is only going to push it a foot over the county-line or whatever.