I think that these days centres should absolutely not be built. They are on a scale we can’t justify economically or ecologically and the technology they support are national security threats.

These are not the AWS-like data centres that “host the internet”. These are compute only. They’re for AI and big-data. Centralisation of the world computation into a few locations under the control of a few billionaires.

So point 1. Destroying these does not harm the internet. It preserves it. The 90s internet was one where anyone could put up a web-server and serve whatever they wanted. Sure, it might get given a hug-of-death when a site became popular, but it was only that one site that was affected. The internet was distributed and not centralised.

Then came the cloud.

Point 2. This is centralising information. I suspect we are already past the point where people are asking chatbots “who should I vote for?”. That alone places millions of votes under the control of whoever trains the LLM model they ask.

The owners become the owners of all information. It’s so handy. Why read a book? In fact let’s destroy books to create the machine. Now you can ask it anything. How do I make a cake? How do I fix my car? Is there a war in Palestien Ba-sing-se?

Point 3. The cost is too high. The American stock market is teetering on the edge of a huge crash. Bigger than 2008, it threatens to take out several of the world’s most valuable companies. If the damage was limited to them, I wouldn’t worry. Sadly, the banks and investment funds we all use are invested in them. This is Enron x4 plus the banking failure of 2008 in a dot.com bubble wrapper. All whilst the economy in all other sectors is shrinking.

Wall street knows it’s a bubble, but they all want to ride the upside of the bubble, thinking it won’t be them left holding when the crash comes. They could calmly unwind their positions and avoid the crash, but ego and hubris don’t allow that.

All in pursuit of an impossible goal

Then there’s the ecological cost. Lake Mead, on the Colorado river, is at it’s lowest level since it was created by the Hoover Dam being constructed. Drought and water use in the south-western states have steadily drained it for years …and they want to add a water guzzlers on the scale of an additional cities. Now I know this one is in Texas, and not in the Colorado river basin, but this isn’t the only one and I’m sure Texas rivers have their own issues.

Then you have the power supply. Whilst the rest of us are trying to move away from fossil fuels, these guys run towards them. Natural gas turbines (which can’t be built to schedule) belching out CO2 whilst heatwaves, drought, and wild fires are happening across the globe. I guess it gives the fossil fuel companies a reason to keep going though.

So yes, I’m against building these centres. The benefits are low, the societal dangers are huge and…

You sound like you acknowledge it’s going to cause huge amounts of environmental damage, but because there’s no other way of powering it… I guess that’s what we’re going to have to do.

Is that a fair take on your position?

Well, more fool them. None of the people they’ve trained to be shit have survived.

I think we’re better going back to cash.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the high rates of inflation, especially on food and other groceries that don’t really seem to be reflected in headline rates, happened around the same time that we went cashless. It’s enabled people to ignore how the numbers went up,

There’s something about handling over cash that makes you feel the price you’re paying.

The risk associated with being on a public forum has changed massively. Yes the data was always out there, but the ability to turn it into personally identifying information was not.

People are still grappling with that change.

Scanning people’s entire history for political leanings, etc? That’s some deeply dystopian stuff right there.

Yep. It’s Cambridge Analytica and Palantir level shit.

That would be bad if true.

And the US / Israel is the aggressor in the war he’s commenting on. Ukraine and Iran are both the victim unprovoked attacks, despite being on opposing sides in the global theatre. That’s why the question is pertinent.

You could argue that the Arab states are innocent bystanders, and that’s why I think Zylenskyy dealing with them on defensive technologies is fine. However he needs to stay away from the main US / Israel <-> Iran conflict. If he’s seen as backing Israel it will hurt Ukraine.

They’re normally EU wide as the free movement of goods applies to things you buy. Sure the postage might go up a little if it’s the other side of the continent, but there should be no restrictions.

If no data reaches the US (because it’s self hosted) and no money goes to the US (because it’s open source), does it matter that the developers are in the US?

That sucks, but could you buy in a neighbouring country. If you save enough it could be financially worth it.

Obviously UK would be of no use. Stearing wheel in the wrong place.

France went all in on nuclear in the 80s and 90s. They’re upping their production now to replace their aging stations that are needing to be decommissioned. Their power generation has been 90+% nuclear for a looong time. That was a good time to do it. Renewables weren’t practical like today.

You seem to think that renewables only help when we have enough for 100%, but that’s not true. Take the UK for example. It currently has about 32GW of installed capacity. Of course the wind doesn’t always blow, but over the last year it generated about 10.5GW on average. That’s all fossil fuels not being burnt. CO2 not being emitted. Today.

For comparison: That’s 6-10 nuclear reactors worth. Modern ones. And it’s mainly happened in the time period that the UK has been building one 3.2GW nuclear site (2 reactors) that had an opening date of 2025. If they’d not invested in wind, and just gone nuclear, starting 10 or so reactors around the country, we’d have been burning fossil fuels at full rate for the last 15 years and only now be able to switch off coal and a bunch of gas. Going from 6-700g of CO2 per kWh to todays 125g.

This image wouldn’t be a transition, it would be a sharp step to the left at the end. (From here)

Unfortunately that nuclear site is delayed 5 years to 2030. So we’d still be burning fossil fuels. No reduction. By that time it’s planned that 50GW of wind will be installed, so about 15-16 GW on average. Another 4-5 reactors worth, but that doesn’t stop the reductions we have today.

Don’t buy new. The second hand market for EVs is great. 3-4 year old cars with over 200 miles range for £12-15k, and lots of them.

It can, and I’m not anti-nuclear for all use cases. I just don’t think it stops us burning stuff soon enough.

There’s no option. Transitioning to nuclear will keep you burning stuff for 10-15 years whilst they’re built. Even SMRs will be 5-10. Renewables come online with a much smoother transition curve. You reduce burning stuff sooner, and we need whatever is quickest.

You’re forgetting that those batteries are super useful in case of power outages

1. The last power outage I had was over 10 years ago.
2. Batteries only work in that case if the inverter isn’t “grid-following”. Most inverters are, and so when the grid goes down, so do your batteries.

Storing a ton is easy. It’s storing gigatons that’s hard.

You know nuclear isn’t self-sustainable? Uranium is mined in only a few places.

The US likes to make it sound like Mexico is South American. It’s very much not.

Start being politically active. Start the US down a road towards being a trade partner that can be trusted.

There are vital elections later this year. Find out who the candidates are in the local areas. Offer your help to the one that you think will make the most change.