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Mega Comrade posted:Data centre power use 'to surge six-fold in 10 years' As an Irish resident, its upset quite a lot of people here. Being told by our Green party to heat their homes less, drive less, eat less meat etc - ie engage in real day to day quality of life impacting efforts - while at the same time any gains from people doing all of that have been more than wiped out by the rapid expansion of energy use by the international data centers. Data centers that employ very few local people, and contribute little to the economy, at that. They're nowhere near as valuable to the economy as tech offices full of actual employees.
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Mar 26, 2024 17:55
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Blut posted:As an Irish resident, its upset quite a lot of people here. Being told by our Green party to heat their homes less, drive less, eat less meat etc - ie engage in real day to day quality of life impacting efforts - while at the same time any gains from people doing all of that have been more than wiped out by the rapid expansion of energy use by the international data centers. Thanks for sharing the on-the-ground experience. I imagine these data centers pay a lot of rent on land that otherwise wouldn't be nearly as valuable because of distance from major population centers, so the benefits to the economy are really localized to a few stakeholders - ideal scenario for lobbying.
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Mar 26, 2024 18:35
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Civilized Fishbot posted:Thanks for sharing the on-the-ground experience. As far as I'm aware its not the very limited number of landowners who benefit from the land use that are the major reason for the government approving the rapid data center expansion, its tech firms using their sizable EMEA offices here as lobbying leverage. Alphabet employ the guts of 10,000 people in Dublin for example, and they've been not so subtley hinting that if they aren't allowed to build data centers in the countryside it might impact their (largely unrelated in reality) office employment numbers/plans.
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Mar 26, 2024 19:36
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Seems like it'd be pretty good to host data centers in your country? The only issue is the Irish grid seems kind of poo poo and relying a lot on gas and coal, so maybe make them pay for renewable
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Mar 26, 2024 19:54
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I love it when corporations can hold countries hostage with the threat of investment.. or not. Sure is great how corporations seem to have all the power these days over infrastructure.
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Mar 26, 2024 20:05
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mobby_6kl posted:Seems like it'd be pretty good to host data centers in your country? The only issue is the Irish grid seems kind of poo poo and relying a lot on gas and coal, so maybe make them pay for renewable Well there are multiple issues - 1) Telling ordinary people to cut their consumption of electricity, and make lifestyle sacrifices to do so, for the benefit of the environment while at the same time any gains made from them doing so are being more than outweighed by the increased data center usage. People are rightfully asking why the poorest in society are being forced to pay ever increasing carbon taxes, for example, to reduce their consumption in this scenario. 2) The extremely rapid growth rate of the power usage of the data centers. Building new power capacity at a national level is extremely slow and costly, its not keeping up with the increases. 3) Data centers actually add very little economically. They don't create many jobs or pay much in tax. There is talk of insisting on new data centers using renewables but I don't know how practically viable that is. Solar (in Ireland especially) and wind are too intermittant to allow for the always on uptime that data centers require. My non-expert understanding of it is theres no way to keep them from using the fossil fuel grid unless the tech firms invest prohibitively large amounts in battery storage. Which they aren't going to do.
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Mar 26, 2024 20:17
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mobby_6kl posted:Seems like it'd be pretty good to host data centers in your country? The only issue is the Irish grid seems kind of poo poo and relying a lot on gas and coal, so maybe make them pay for renewable
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Mar 26, 2024 21:07
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Data centers are a good source of economic activity. There’s a ton of construction and maintenance work needed, it’s all local and it’s much less likely to relocate than many other industries. The alternative isn’t usually a more productive use of land; they tend to be situated in pretty crappy areas. The environmental impact is pretty large, for sure. For a while Singapore had a moratorium on building them, then lifted the ban and imposed heftier efficiency standards instead. It’s probably a thing you can fix by regulation and taxation, if your state is halfway competent.
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Mar 26, 2024 21:20
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Vegetable posted:Data centers are a good source of economic activity. There’s a ton of construction and maintenance work needed, it’s all local and it’s much less likely to relocate than many other industries. In 2021 datacentres were using up to 18% of Ireland's metered electricity, the same amount as every urban household in Ireland combined. And its only grown since then. And for all of that they were providing only about 16,000 jobs to a country of 5.28 million people in 2023. Thats not a good ratio of resource use to economic activity.
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Mar 26, 2024 22:07
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Ireland could tax them more and more tightly regulate their efficiency & greenness. It’s not a binary choice between a ban and laissez-faire capitalism. Also, 16,000 jobs is more than twice as many jobs as Google and Meta’s total headcount in the country. It’s a large number of good jobs. It’s really cavalier to say get rid of them without exploring the range of policy options, as other jurisdictions have.
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Mar 26, 2024 22:21
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But they're paying for the electricity and the taxes on it? The potential problem here seems more environmental and not economic. You could just make more electricity literally out of thin air.
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Mar 26, 2024 22:22
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Vegetable posted:Data centers are a good source of economic activity. There’s a ton of construction and maintenance work needed, it’s all local and it’s much less likely to relocate than many other industries. As far as I'm aware, studies generally show that data centers' long-term impact on employment is minimal. All that construction work is just for building the data center, and is inherently temporary. Once the place is built, only a handful of people are needed to keep its day-to-day operations running, and companies generally fly in specialists temporarily when something happens that requires more manpower. Vegetable posted:Ireland could tax them more and more tightly regulate their efficiency & greenness. It’s not a binary choice between a ban and laissez-faire capitalism. "Twice as many jobs as Google and Meta's total headcount in the country" doesn't make any real sense as a metric of comparison. First of all, you're comparing the employment of the entire datacenter industry to just two companies, neither of which have any particular reason to have a large amount of manpower in Ireland. There are currently ~2.7 million people employed in the Republic of Ireland right now. In other words, those 16,000 datacenter-related jobs make up 0.5% of Ireland's total employment...while making up nearly 20% of Ireland's total national power consumption. You can't say that 0.5% of total national employment is a big deal while handwaving away one-fifth of the country's power consumption as just something that needs a bit more green thinking. That's not something you can fix with just more efficiency regulations - the data center industry is just fundamentally based around employing very few people and consuming utterly enormous amounts of electricity. And given that these data centers are being built in Ireland largely because of low corporate taxes and generous corporate regulations, Ireland can't even hope for much tax money from it all. If Ireland regulates them more, companies will start building data centers elsewhere instead.
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Mar 26, 2024 22:47
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Germany has the second-most number of data centers and just passed a sweeping new law on data center sustainability, including requirements on using renewable energy. I don’t have anything to add except that plenty of countries are grappling with the exact same problem and everyone has reached a more nuanced solution than “get rid of 16,000 jobs.” It’s nuts to plump for the solution that kills the most livelihoods.
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Mar 26, 2024 23:09
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Vegetable posted:Ireland could tax them more and more tightly regulate their efficiency & greenness. It’s not a binary choice between a ban and laissez-faire capitalism. Again, its not an issue of the question being jobs in isolation. Yes, some jobs are better than no jobs. But the amount of jobs created for the amount of resources used, is the problem. As Main Paineframe points out - approx 0.5% of jobs for 20% of electricity usage is just a horrendous ratio. This is in a country with completely full employment bear in mind, and which is projected to remain at so for years to come. If every single datacenter employee lost their jobs tomorrow they'd be employed very quickly. Theres no need to commit 20% currently, and 70% (!!) by 2030 according to projections, of Irish power generation to such a low economic reward industry. mobby_6kl posted:But they're paying for the electricity and the taxes on it? The potential problem here seems more environmental and not economic. You could just make more electricity literally out of thin air. The problem isn't just environmental. They're driving up the unit cost of electricity for residential users. And they're also removing any spare capacity in the Irish grid - there have been multiple amber alerts for the Irish grid in recent years due to the increased strain, with warnings of potential blackouts. Thats also ignoring the substantial environmental issue given 60% of Irish electricity generation was from fossil fuels last year. And its also a quality of life issue. Why are Irish people being asked to pay higher carbon taxes every year, and make lifestyle sacrifices, to reduce our national emissions, when datacenter expansion is more than completely counteracting that reduction?
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Mar 26, 2024 23:16
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Vegetable posted:Germany has the second-most number of data centers and just passed a sweeping new law on data center sustainability, including requirements on using renewable energy. Germany has 522 data centers for a population of 83 million. Ireland has 82 data centers currently for a population of 5.2 million, with 14 more under construction, 40 with planning permission granted to begin construction imminently, and 12 more with planning applications filed. Thats not "the exact same problem". Its a much much more severe impact on the power grid relative to its size.
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Mar 26, 2024 23:20
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Blut posted:In 2021 datacentres were using up to 18% of Ireland's metered electricity, the same amount as every urban household in Ireland combined. And its only grown since then. Yeah, Google's just broke ground for a new datacenter an hour and a half away from me, in Skien, Norway. It's estimated that this ONE datacenter will require 5% of the NATIONAL electricity supply. In an age where the cables and deals we made to connect to the EU grid have just upped the electricity bill for us normal residents, because somehow we are now having to pay mainland Europe prices for our self-produced hydropower poo poo. Why? Not a single normal person can understand why we can't continue to pay less, especially since we export so much at killer rates. (it's money, of course, and they use "but we need to import as well, for capacity reasons, at the EU price" as an excuse, even though we import much less than we export). It's a nightmare, we were almost ruined by a $550 bill for January's electricity, when we're used to like $150-200 in winter, $250 at the max (we are not rich). I think they are filling the coffers for the HUGE nationwide grid upgrade we sorely need now because of all the electric cars and... you know, Google, and stuff. But that's something we could actually afford anyway, with some goodwill from the hideously capitalist ruling people.
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Mar 26, 2024 23:31
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Large datacenters are more or less a way for a country to export electricity, which is harder to move long distances than data. Somewhere with lots of datacenters has either very cheap power or big tax incentives.
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Mar 26, 2024 23:41
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Florida has banned children 13 and younger from social media and now requires children 14-15 to require parental consent. Not sure how parental consent is gotten. My initial impression is "haha good." But thinking on it more, it's probably gonna end up being a tech nightmare? Kinda like how some states banned porn for people under 18 by forcing companies to start collecting KYC type info? It's gonna suck if social media is going to start requiring ID verification because (1) it'll be perfectly secure lol and lmao and (2) I don't want to give my ID to Jeffery to shitpost. E: also (3) it'll actually be good for social media companies cause now they'll have my official government id to tie all my cookies and poo poo to. Fun.
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Mar 27, 2024 00:57
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Any religious exemption for Christ-based family-focused social media?
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Mar 27, 2024 01:02
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once one kid figures out how to get around it the rest of them will find out too. same thing with porn bans.
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Mar 27, 2024 01:03
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Boris Galerkin posted:Florida has banned children 13 and younger Good.
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Mar 27, 2024 01:09
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We should just ban social media. We all want to get off it but are afraid to miss out. https://www.nber.org/papers/w31771
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Mar 27, 2024 02:08
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Morrow posted:We should just ban social media. We all want to get off it but are afraid to miss out. We should do a better job of restricting especially pernicious features, certainly. But I don't think you can stop people from being social online (I mean, in a sense, even forums are social media).
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Mar 27, 2024 02:23
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there's actually a recent npr segment i wanted to listen to about a "no social media" moment among some parents. i think its a bad idea, just like no sex education is a bad idea. like we have to teach kids how to do it right.
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Mar 27, 2024 02:36
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But we also don't sell tobacco and booze to minors, or let them gamble. There is some real vice to social media that could benefit from at least some government intervention.
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Mar 27, 2024 02:41
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Giant Metal Robot posted:But we also don't sell tobacco and booze to minors, or let them gamble. There is some real vice to social media that could benefit from at least some government intervention. I agree, kids these days are all a bunch of nerds and dorks, we need the government to subsidize an in-school program to make sure kids are getting smokes and beers from someone wearing a leather jacket, maybe some chains. Some cardboard sheets and cheap tiny dice to teach 'em about winning. Basically a jobs program for rowdy teens looking to make a difference in the next generation by raising them to take no guff. No chaw though, that poo poo's disgusting.
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Mar 27, 2024 04:38
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Zachack posted:Some cardboard sheets and cheap tiny dice to teach 'em about winning. I agree, too many of today's youth haven't faced Strahd
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Mar 27, 2024 04:42
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Xand_Man posted:I agree, too many of today's youth haven't faced Strahd We won’t free the children of technology’s foul reach until they struggle through a campaign on the disaster that is Roll20 and realize that the true way is to retvrn to chucking plastic polyhedrons over a vinyl mat.
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Mar 27, 2024 05:45
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Honestly, the biggest dangers that come from children's usage of social media have less to do with social media itself and more to do with a culture built around making it all but illegal for children/teenagers to engage in literally any other form of socialization.
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Mar 27, 2024 12:10
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Boris Galerkin posted:Florida has banned children 13 and younger from social media and now requires children 14-15 to require parental consent. Not sure how parental consent is gotten.
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Mar 27, 2024 14:46
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Pikavangelist posted:Honestly, the biggest dangers that come from children's usage of social media have less to do with social media itself and more to do with a culture built around making it all but illegal for children/teenagers to engage in literally any other form of socialization. 
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Mar 27, 2024 14:46
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F4rt5 posted:Doesn’t COPPA from the Clinton years already technically ban under-13’s from registering any sort of online account? I know it’s not exactly super enforced, but that is still a federal thing, no? Enforcement of these is always going to be either impractical, insanely invasive, or likely both. The only workable solution I could see is government-managed official accounts for each person, which would never fly and parents would let their kids use their accounts anyway.
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Mar 27, 2024 14:58
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Vegetable posted:Ireland could tax them more and more tightly regulate their efficiency & greenness. They could, but Ireland is a tax haven for companies so don't hold your breath on them taxing said companies properly. Morrow posted:We should just ban social media. We all want to get off it but are afraid to miss out. Banning social media sounds like a great way for the people responsible to be voted out of office since one thing that drives people to take political action (both violent and non-violent) is when their QoL is directly and noticeably impacted. Blocking social media in Egypt during the Arab Spring(?) protests caused said protests to grow sigificantly and immediately, iirc. not that it had any long-term good results since the military just used it to purge some groups it didn't like, poo poo blame onto said groups, and reinforce their grip on the country. Giant Metal Robot posted:But we also don't sell tobacco and booze to minors, or let them gamble.  Sure we don't let them gamble (for real money), just play F2P games with loot boxes and other definitely-not-gambling mechanics designed by people who've worked in and studied the casino industry to maximize a game's appeal to gambling impulses.
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Mar 27, 2024 15:22
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Also, I have heard from my teacher friends that many of their kids gamble on sports using siblings or even parent's accounts. I don't think we should ban sports gambling, but there is no way they should be allowed to advertise it. Online sports betting has been wild to watch, especially as a poker player who lost the ability to play online in 2008 thanks to "Click you mouse, lose your house" rhetoric
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Mar 27, 2024 15:56
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Right, like all things digital, we don't let minors gamble if there is a physical interaction, but everything is fine once it's online. It shouldn't be. I have no idea how you really stomp it out while keeping the market open for adults, but maybe it shouldn't be that open for adults either.
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Mar 27, 2024 16:05
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Those games with lootboxes and stuff used to be consistently incredibly dishonest about what they provided too until IIRC the EU made it so that they have to show the odds.
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Mar 27, 2024 16:51
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Twerk from Home posted:Enforcement of these is always going to be either impractical, insanely invasive, or likely both. The only workable solution I could see is government-managed official accounts for each person, which would never fly and parents would let their kids use their accounts anyway.
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Mar 27, 2024 18:08
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F4rt5 posted:Doesn’t COPPA from the Clinton years already technically ban under-13’s from registering any sort of online account? I know it’s not exactly super enforced, but that is still a federal thing, no? No, it requires the service provider to do certain things which is why many ban under-13s because that's easier than doing what the law wants them to do.
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Mar 27, 2024 21:34
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duz posted:No, it requires the service provider to do certain things which is why many ban under-13s because that's easier than doing what the law wants them to do. By "ban" you mean "say that we're banning them but do only the bare minimum necessary to cover our asses in court while not actually trying to stop them from signing up with a fake birth date."
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Mar 29, 2024 12:05
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Clarste posted:By "ban" you mean "say that we're banning them but do only the bare minimum necessary to cover our asses in court while not actually trying to stop them from signing up with a fake birth date." Yes, most websites don't want to collect government ids of all their visitors and likewise the visitors don't want to give over their id to all the websites that they visit. That's what started this discussion.
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Mar 29, 2024 13:15
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