Comment by bigbadfeline

10 hours ago

> The childish behavior is disagreeing with how datacenters are being deployed and reducing that to "more is bad"

Why is that childish? Bubble data-center economics is bad, we have the history to prove it, this isn't the first bubble. Do you have real arguments against it besides calling it "childish" which is itself childish?

> I'm begging the collective here to consider what they are really asking for, because our society, from the government down, is built on the cloud.

You're begging "the collective" to stop worrying and learn to love the bubble... or else? OK, or else what? If everything is already "built on the cloud" there's already enough cloud to go around, built at a normal pace, without bubbles and without incurring huge debts, deficits, circular financing and what not. See, the how can be done better.

> Finding a healthy way to provide compute is important, and "data center bad" doesn't get us there.

That's a strawman, which you sneaked in here: 'reducing that to "more is bad" and then ... to "data centers bad"'

The issue is, and always has been - the bubble way of doing it as bad - slow down and do it properly. Either way the public isn't going to get the benefits of the build-out, at least try to reduce the negative externalities to an acceptable level.

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bigbadfeline

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rpdillon  9 hours ago

You're assuming a bubble. I get it.

But do you really think we have more datacenters now, or even an equal number, to what we'll have in the future?

It's like power consumption: it's going to scale, so we need to control how it scales. I don't know where the conversation goes when folks just talk about how useless it is and how compute is bad.

Take two steps back: do you really think we're at peak compute? If not, shouldn't we focus on how to scale in a sustainable way? The rhetoric doesn't foster that inquiry. That's my issue here.

Every single critique has said "slow down to do it right". That's similar to the DEI fallback of "Do the work". It's not that the goal is wrong, it's that it takes no effort to demand something vague like that, because it requires no thought. What forwards the discussion when implementation matters is the specifics: what do we want folks to do differently. If gas turbines in data centers are causing noise pollution that affects quality-of-life (which is absolutely appears they do - it's really bad), that's not a call to ban the idea, but rather the implementation. I see that distinction too often being dismissed in these discussions.

  • curt15  3 hours ago

    > It's like power consumption: it's going to scale, so we need to control how it scales.

    I don't think your premise is obvious at all. Developed countries have stagnant or shrinking populations, and there is a general trend toward greater power efficiency over time. So why should total power consumption be expected to keep increasing?