Discussion · bonfire.cafe

@JulianOliver@mastodon.social · 2 hours ago

The Stratos AI datacenter in Utah got the go-ahead. 2x the size of Manhattan, & at 9GW, it will consume more electricity than Utah itself. It's also likely to directly imperil the Great Lakes, due to the ridiculous amount of water needed for cooling.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/13/utah-approves-datacenter-backlash

If you use BigAI, you are driving up demand for such computational obscenities, projects whose sole purpose is to mal-distribute wealth, power & control to those that already have far too much of it.

To use is to support.

the Guardian

‘Irresponsible’: backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan

Facility would require more power than entire state uses and suck up vast amount of water in drought-stricken area

Felipe :verified420:

@felipeB@hachyderm.io · 1 hour ago

@JulianOliver the new android that was just announced makes the AI use mandatory, the use it's about to skyrocket

Julian Oliver

@JulianOliver@mastodon.social · 59 minutes ago

@felipeB True. A good example of how it is being forced upon hundreds of millions at once.

AI-free aftermarket ROMs like GrapheneOS need to go mainstream!

Julian Oliver

@JulianOliver@mastodon.social · 1 hour ago

9GW indeed seems improbable, impossibly huge. Less so if off-grid, run directly on global warming as this article reckons?

"At full buildout, the campus would reach 9 GW, all produced on-site through a connection to the Ruby Pipeline, a 680-mile interstate natural gas line that crosses northern Utah on its route from Wyoming to Oregon. MIDA executive director Paul Morris told county commissioners that the facility “will not take one electron” from the existing grid"

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/kevin-o-learys-9-gw-utah-data-center-campus-approved

Tom's Hardware

New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved

The 40,000-acre project will run entirely off-grid using natural gas.

Julian Oliver

@JulianOliver@mastodon.social · 4 minutes ago

Looking back it seems there is a pattern with these AI DC announcements where the wattage consumed is itself the investor hook, as they translate it as AI workload capacity.

So while people that care about the wealth gap, water you can drink & not killing planets look at these numbers with disdain, for the oligarchs behind these things bigger numbers are better.

Future Sprog

@futuresprog@mastodon.nzoss.nz · 1 hour ago

Fracking turned the US oil industry into an oil and gas (methane) industry. Gas pipelines have been built to allow methane to be transported rather than flared (or silently leaked) at the well head.

Lots of these new data centres have gas generators burning the “waste gas”. Take a look at the xAI data centre and the NAACP lawsuit against it.

With this threatened build in Utah now the pollution will be in white people’s backyards.

https://naacp.org/articles/naacp-sues-xai-illegal-pollution-data-center-power-plant

@JulianOliver

NAACP

NAACP Sues xAI for Illegal Pollution from Data Center Power Plant

NAACP sued xAI and its subsidiary, MZX Tech, for the tech companies’ unlawful operation of dozens of unpermitted methane gas turbines to power its Colossus 2 data center in South Memphis. The Southern Environmental Law Center and Earthjustice are representing the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and the national NAACP.

Julian Oliver

@JulianOliver@mastodon.social · 1 hour ago

@futuresprog This is a great reference, thank you. I didn't know of the waste gas component.

Future Sprog

@futuresprog@mastodon.nzoss.nz · 54 minutes ago

All good. Check out Henry Hub on Wikipedia and also the linked articles there. LNG export technology is also relatively new and that’s what our government is trying to push.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hub

I’m trying to find an episode from a few years back of 99% Invisible where they discuss the noise and vibration from a data centre near a black community. Perhaps it is this one in Memphis, which means they’ve been subjected to the disturbance for years.

@JulianOliver

Henry Hub - Wikipedia

Ra (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩 (other account)

@freya@social.highenergymagic.net · 2 hours ago

@JulianOliver that's never going to get built. literally, explicitly, never going to get built. there is not enough physical fucking power distribution hardware, power generation hardware, anything, to build a DC like that. source: https://www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/

Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At

Where Are All The Data Centers?

If you liked this piece, please subscribe to my premium newsletter. It’s $70 a year, or $7 a month, and in return you get a weekly newsletter that’s usually anywhere from 5,000 to 18,000 words, including vast, detailed analyses of NVIDIA, Anthropic and OpenAI’s finances,

Julian Oliver

@JulianOliver@mastodon.social · 2 hours ago

@freya I hope you and the source you cite are right

Ra (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩 (other account)

@freya@social.highenergymagic.net · 2 hours ago

@JulianOliver obviously I'm right. do these people fucking understand what 9GW is? There is a literal fucking shortage of copper of the correct grade to build transformers and distribution hardware for this shit. it takes at least 18 months to build a couple undred MW datacenter, and even those are currently stuck in development hell. these projects exist entirely to make investors throw more money in the cycle of stupid to keep it going a little longer. this will not get built. fucking trust me on this one, babes. you've got nothing to worry about. 9GW. honestly. they're just making the number bigger because nobody who makes these decisions knows how power generation and distribution works

Julian Oliver

@JulianOliver@mastodon.social · 1 hour ago

@freya I also wonder often about the copper. 9GW seems beyond the beyond. How many years would the build take, over which time copper continues to dwindle sharply in supply? Not to mention Lithium for the acres of batteries they'll need for UPSs. Diesel for generators, enough to power a whole town? I just don't see how a single customer could secure all that.

It is indeed plausible $massivedatacenter is just investor cocaine for pump and dump market play.

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