Comment by 🚀 stack

Got to have a reason for government and private fools to write big checks. That's capitalism for you.

But they will disappear a decade or two after everyone realizes they can train AIs in a homelab or just order from China.

I doubt they will ruin our lives more than, say, electric cars.

Oct 24 · 2 months ago

14 Later Comments ↓

I'm looking forward to cheap servers flooding the second hand market after it all goes bust.

And cheap electric power from all the new power plants they are building to power all these datacenters

cracks me up with the whole green agenda. we must lower emissions to save the planet. also, let's replace perfectly good cars with EVs with their own environmental issues and mass roll out AI data centres massively increasing the need for power generation and water consumption. governmental fuckwits.

My biggest problem with renewable energy was the idea of displacing fossil energy. Not in the ways you think. Its that humanity has increased the energy available to it to power society over time. Never before have we consumed less energy than what was available. By making more energy available we have found new ways to use it. Why would we turn that back and abandon energy that is available? We won't. The end. Efficiency doesn't lower energy use, it just frees it up for other new things. Cars were a lot smaller when they got 15 mpg. Now people just buy huge trucks that get 15 mpg. (American centric POV here.)

Energy consumption is literally the burn rate of our society. It was cranked up when we moved from burning sticks and whales to coal, and again when we switched to oil.

You can see very clearly how things are going by oil prices and volume. For instance there is an amazing contango in the oil markets today, and a few years from now the financial press will probably say we had a recession in 2025/26... What passes for economics these days is just total crap.

If energy ever becomes free, we will burn ourselves in an instant fireball. Expensive and somewhat harmful is a better alternative.

Also, we had all those ~50MPG cars back in 1970/80s... The tax deductible SUVs and cheap oil really changed the US car markets. But replacing working cars with new unfixeable ones made of plastic and exotic magnets and lithium is the most pollution you can cause.

The 70s and 80s is often referred to as the "malaise era" of cars. When you think classic car, you think gas guzzling Mustang (11 mpg) more than you think VW Rabbit Diesel (55 mpg.)

Unfixable plastic extends to conventional drive trains. Throw in a hybrid system and there's the magnets and lithium. But it has always been worse to replace a functional car with a new one just because. My grandfather would replace his vehicle yearly.

I know, my car is 11 yrs old and has quite a bit of plastic as I found out when I had to remove the entire front without unscrewing a single bolt... The bumper is just for show.

But I can't imagine buying a new car with cameras and asswarmers that lock out if I don't pay the manufacturer monthly...

My favorite 80s car was Pontiac fiero, 50mpg, steel frame with clip-on body panels that are easily replaced.

I still don't get EV sometimes, not helping that Teslas and Cybertrucks suddenly bursting into flames don't calm my nerves either, I rather have a 5 year old car at that point.

Here's how it makes sense: fewer moving parts. Change tires, brakes, and windshield wipers. Fuel up at home. If you have solar panels you're also producing your own fuel. (Excludes apartment dwellers and people who park on street.)

The fire risk is overblown in my opinion. Any vehicle has a fire risk with Ford recalling 700,000 vehicles 6 days ago, BMW recalling 200,000 vehicles last month, GM recalling 60,000 back in June, etc etc etc. There's tons of these every year, so many that my advise to avoid a car fire is to ride a bike.

Fire risk is actually greatly understated, because: capitalism. A large number of NYC fire-related deaths stems from people charging scooters at home. Lithium batteries ignite often with no warning and within seconds thick toxic smoke fills the contained space killing you. In a car, if the electric lock does not unlock, you have maybe 10 seconds left for a prayer.

The car may ignite spontaneously months after hitting a speed bump too fast and creating an invisible crack in the battery casing. Air ignites lithium.

The fire cannot be put out with conventional means as lithium burns in water (and underwater). After extinguishing the flames, the car needs to be kept in a special area as it will often reignite. Most fire departments lack equipment and training to fight lithium fires

Gasoline fires are terrible, but nothing like lithium fires.

I would never, ever buy a lithium car and try not to park near one.

Also, who in their right mind wants to fund Elon? Or move the ignition of hydrocarbons to an area where poor people live, so you can pretend to be green? A gasoline car contains a power plant, while an electric car is split so you don't see the stack spewing crap into the atmosphere, and generally ignore that the battery efficiency is far from 100% especially when it's cold.

It is a perfect lie for people who want to feel good about polluting.

The scientist in me just wants to correct one little point: lithium does not ignite in air. The danger from the lithium nickel manganese cobalt batteries is in the electrolyte, which produces hydrogen gas in the event of a short, either through dendrite formation or puncture. This is what creates swollen batteries and why they must be carefully disposed of, which is a lot harder when it is the size of a car and several tons.

Lithium metal will oxidize in air but not combust.

There's a new saying based on an old one. It is about how many hours of your wage you spend on making someone else wealthy. How long did you spend enriching a billionaire this year? I think of it when Elon is mentioned now.

I'm now wishing there's air powered cars, or even nuclear powered cars.

I recall there was something about compressed air cars. They recharged via electricity powering an air compressor.

Provlem is, the power output decreases as pressure decreases. This effect is minor in EVs and nonexistent in fossil vehicles. Plus the whole compressed air thing, which is scary.

Nuclear would be dangerous too. The "safest" is a thermoelectric generator powered by heat from isotopic decay. The Soviets used TEGs first for kerosene radios in rural areas and later for nuclear light houses in extremely remote areas. NASA uses them for deep space probes. They don't generate much power though. Maybe a few hundred watts. You'd still need a battery, but maybe you could manage with a lower capacity lead acid battery.

Thank you for the correction. I thought it was maybe the moisture in the air, but hydrogen makes a lot more sense.

Original Post

Datacenters may ruin our lives — [https link]