I think the difference is that many data centers are being built as cheaply as possible, with no regards for noise prevention, their effect on the energy grid, etc. Data centers have been located near people for decades, but most of them are completely inconspicuous because they are designed to mitigate their effect on their surroundings.
This smacks of sensationalism - we are talking very local temperatures, not like, the metro area went from 100 highs in summer to 116 because of a DC. And the “16” number was one specific DC in one study, and we don’t know what were the conditions before. We already knew 30 years ago that paved built areas are heat islands so if a green field is a data center with cooling fans it’s not scary or surprising that it emits heat that can be detected. It’s like any factory.
But I don’t see how local temperatures on the site of the DC itself is somehow an existential threat to people in the area unless their house is 50’ away from it.
At the end of the day NIMBYs always have their opinions about everything from views to noise to traffic, but there’s a limit to how much rights one has to control the property beyond one’s own land.
My challenge has been trying to manage my higher-level context. I've gotten a pretty good setup where I have project-level orchestrator agents that can spin up workers to implement tasks with minimal oversight, and the resulting work is usually quite good (especially after I give it the mandatory "make the comments less verbose" refining, etc.). But that means I'm doing even more context-switching. I've gotten to the point where I have a half-dozen draft PRs that just need my review before I tag my colleagues, and trying to dig up the context from all of those tasks can be paralyzing.
This is one of the main reasons that Amazon is my default online merchant, despite all of my reservations with them: a purchase won't increase the amount of marketing email I receive. I don't know how much spam they send to new accounts, but I must have my preferences tweaked to eliminate most of it. Contrast that to every merchant that thinks that since I bought a product from them once, they should spam me multiple times per week, oftentimes even when I've unchecked the "receive marketing emails" box.
My Framework Desktop with 128GB was about half that. I did luck out by buying before RAM prices went crazy, though.
I'm looking forward to the fallout when the data center bubble bursts. There's a good possibility we'll see a glut of hardware, either on the used market or from manufacturers that no longer have massive orders from OpenAI and the like.
It's not just giving a shit: it's also the capacity to act on giving a shit. I'm exhausted at the end of the day after getting the kids to bed, and I'm fortunate to be in a stable marriage, live in a large home that my wife and I own, and work a well-paying WFH job. I can only imagine how tiring it must be to not have those advantages.
There are the parents doing heroics that I can hardly imagine, and they should be celebrated. But we need to design a system that provides a sufficient level of support for those families that only have an average level of capacity.
> I can only imagine how tiring it must be to not have those advantages
Yes, you can only “imagine” what it’s like for people who are less comfortable than you. But that cuts both ways. It could be that you’re also “imagining” the barriers you think exist to people accessing charter schools. In particular, I suspect you’re incorrectly assuming that people work as much as you do, just for less money.
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