Why the Internet Is Running Out of Electricity

[@berniemacs]

Lived next door to one and this one security man got on me for walking my dog along the fence line of our apartment. Not my fault it’s the only grass we have for miles!

[@circleinforthecube5170]

american urban planning moment

[@anguswett]

@@circleinforthecube5170not much grass in Prague 1 either

[@SAMPLETEXT285]

As long as you're outside their property line there's nothing they can legally do

[@zerotheliger]

@@SAMPLETEXT285 doesnt matter they control the laws. thell just legally illegally arrest you and claim you had intent and good luck fighting their lawyers.

[@SAMPLETEXT285]

@@zerotheliger wouldn't need to fight it the case (if there even would be one) would immediately get thrown out and charges dropped by any judge even the ones who lack common sense. And besides a security guard doesn't have the authority to conduct any arrest

[@rcoder01]

Nuclear. The answer is nuclear energy. Data centers are the most reliable, predictable energy loads in the world. Nuclear fits this power profile perfectly.

[@abhishuoza9992]

The answer is always nuclear energy.

[@tonysu8860]

Doesn't have to be. California is ahead of schedule transitioning to Green without any nuclear except for the delayed shutdown of El Diablo.

[@ChineseKiwi]

@@abhishuoza9992incorrect. The real answer if you actually know grid economics and aren’t just a fanboy is you build stuff where it is geographically the most suitable and thus the generation cost is the cheapest.

[@chop098]

No. Storage and solar are so cheap now that in the US, nuclear doesn't make economical sense at all.

[@ChineseKiwi]

@@chop098 the nuclear fanbois will ignore this despite the IEA and even the damn World Nuclear Association saying the dodgy economics in an high interest environment

[@Esona]

Can confirm, working in a data center (being inside one) isn't really all that that it seems to be. It's loud, so you're walking around listening to music in noise cancelling headphones. It's hot, and it's cold (depending on where you're walking). And it's a lot of blinky lights.

[@bigta1982]

This is all true.

[@kpena21]

Do you have any recommendations for noise cancelling headphones? I have a friend that works at one and they just lost their headphones.

[@tor94]

Can further confirm this statement, and add people forgetting to scan badges and setting off alarms

[@friendly0]

screaming fans, hot and cold and super dry air to dry your eyes and skin out, hearing stuffed from the noise, not realising youre ever sweating because the air is so dry you always leave extremely dehydrated. not fit for human life is what i tell people lol

[@FLPhotoCatcher]

@@friendly0 Neither is the data that enables living in a virtual world.

[@seapanda-117]

This is not the price of running the internet. This is the price of tracking and storing everything you can about everyone who uses the internet.

[@nathanahubbard1975]

There's a is lot more to it than that. Sure, companies are storing data on you, but they also need to maintain their own data. Where did you think all those games you download come from?

[@ERECTED_MONUMENT]

@@nathanahubbard1975 From a russian man connected to a peer-to-peer network. Well, sometimes they're vietnamese.

[@Chasetor22]

but also running the internet

[@koboldsage9112]

It takes no energy to store data, it takes tremendous energy for large data model AIs to pour over the data over and over again to make predictions. So you're right, this is not the price of the old gangly internet, but this new ravenous intenet full of AIs predictively creating everything is a horrifying new beast to feed.

[@nathanahubbard1975]

@@koboldsage9112 It takes energy to store data. Nobody has a tape library anymore.

[@4bSix86f61]

Most of this data is advertisements, user telemetry and highly unnecessary data collected on users.

[@kilburnvideos]

Exactly.

[@nwogamesalert]

Make that two thirds.

[@nobbyfirefly57]

Governments should put regulations in place but we all know that companies will just lobby for the responsibility and consequences to go towards the regular people instead. That’s what happened with recycling.

[@valdivia1234567]

But it's all monetized.

[@TBonerton]

Garbage data, 90% of it. We aren't leaving behind hieroglyphs for the next Civilization to dexifwr, we are creating a delectable society

[@cyrilio]

I find it fascinating how Google has over 180 GB on data on me (Total size of documents when I do GDPR data request). But I'm still on 13 GB in my email inbox and Google Photos.

[@The_main_andrew]

That’s wild

[@hamaljay]

It's because you delete things it doesn't.

[@bumkinboi5956]

That data is profitable they can sell that data

[@ronaldckrausejr7762]

Actually it’s more like 450GB And that’s for starter. That’s the amount of data they have on someone who just turned eighteen years of age. It only gets added to from there

[@mactep1]

Im also in the EU, how do you request it?

[@juanamillo]

Nathan, the host of the video, calls this place Ashburn, VA. We, the developers, call it US East 1.

[@dicemaster1996]

lol NA-East-1 at my job

[@sanador2826]

Wow you are so cool

[@DisgruntledSpam]

@@sanador2826I hope you find a way to be happy.

[@slaydon3]

​@@sanador2826I'm not religious but I still feel compelled to pray for you

[@abatall]

the data centers are so bad i hate them one of my classes are literally right next to a datacenter

[@crytocc]

It's worth noting (as someone who works in the tech industry) that users _don't_ really demand more data storage, and that the amount of data generated by users hasn't really changed much over the past decade, with the one exception of more video calls (but that's usually transient data that doesn't need to be stored long-term). Where the increased demand for data and computing _actually_ primarily comes from, is companies trying to collect more and more data _on_ people for the company's benefit, as well as increased advertising infrastructure. This has very little to do with the end user, and they don't really see any benefits from this. (Also, datacenter security is nowhere near as good as datacenters like to imply. It's pretty trivial to get into one, if you know how the industry works.) Edit: to clarify, it is correct that generative AI has significantly increased datacenter computing requirements. But I am not counting this in "end user usage" because aside from a small handful of tech people, the overwhelming view of such "AI" systems by the general public has been disinterested or outright negative. In other words, their power consumption is genuinely a problem, but they're not really doing anything that people actually need; it's a rich techie's toy.

[@Praisethesunson]

Excellent and highly understated point. All this extra electricity and resource demand is for nothing useful to the public. It's for mega conglomerates to harvest our digital footprints to sell to anyone buying.

[@nicokent3882]

Yea, sure, thats why tiktok has such shitty quality, because users dont generate a lot.

[@Praisethesunson]

@@crytocc excellent and understated point. I'd expand but it gets auto deleted cause corporate censorship

[@neociber24]

Can you provide sources? I find hard to believe the amount of data users generate is not impactful at all, for example KZbin there is more and more video content generated here and most of that content is never watched. About generative AI I agree, but I still see generative AI as an R&D project a lot of money is being throw because the potential but we don't know the endgame, some says is AGI.

[@Titleknown]

I will say wrt the AI stuff, in regards to AI art (Which is... controversial amongst artists, but which I think can harmoniously be integrated into existing indie artistic ecosystems) the normies like it a lot in a way I'd say makes it probably the most likely to survive the inevitable AI crash. And the reason why I bring it up is, of all the AI stuff I've seen and from what I've seen of the data, due to the nature of diffusion models, it's probably the least power-intensive despite being the one people use the most. Like, you can legit run Stable Diffusion on a higher-end normie-accessible gaming PC with the right chips, a basic gen is actually relatively low-energy to use, and IDK I just think it's interesting that the most normie-popular use of AI is one of the less energy-intensive compared to; say; ChatGPT or Google's Cuil-But-More-Expensive shenanigans that're driving this gargantuan power sink.

[@mikeiver]

Spent a week working in a data center, security was pretty tight. Logging in at the desk, surrendering my license for a badge, biometric check (finger print and retinal scan) in the man trap. Cameras everywhere. It was work to simply get in and out.

[@Nova-m8d]

1:35 That black metal fence is low for a reason. If the fence is touched, security knows the exact GPS coordinates and height from the ground that the fence was touched.

[@Lightning613]

because, the fence also works as an antenna for someone outside the building.

[@brianpdaniels]

Please 😂. I work at a data center. Town employees cut a hole in our fence to deer hunt on the property. They were here for months until someone saw their blind.

[@arevolvingdoor3836]

I have a family member who works at one of the listed data center companies. I will add a bit more info to what he has said so far in regards to why they wouldn't let you tour. I think it is also important to understand that aside from security concerns, these companies have no set plan on how to give you a tour. No one wants a tour, because it looks exactly like you think it would inside, a bunch of server racks. Secondly most data centers might be the size of an amazon fulfillment center, but only employ about 20 people. Granted these are higher skill and therefore higher paying jobs, but they require the people to be working around the clock. They aren't the people who will give you a tour, that would be the marketing team, which is likely not in Loudoun county, but another major US city.

[@leonmeyers7009]

👍

[@concernedcitizen2031]

As someone who has worked in a datacenter, depending on the type of clients IE if the yare co-locating from 1000 miles away etc. Sometimes the only employees in the facility aren't even the companies own. I worked in a big datacenter here in Houston, not as an employee of the datacenter, but as an employee of a company that co-located and was also based in Houston. I worked 3p to 12a, multiple companies had leased office space in the building I was in, however after about 5pm aside from security and a janitor on occasion, I was the only person in the facility until midnight.

[@250lmferrari]

yeah, honestly just google some pictures inside a data center, then imagine multiple Costcos of that over and over all hooked together with a bunch of electric infrastructure, and a handful of offices.

[@michaell1603]

As someone who has never seen a large data center, and has no family members working in it, thank you for this obvious information revelation of server racks and large spaces with small staff, and nothing to really see, and how marketing and public affairs and media relations would be the one to give a tour. 👍 it was very very eye opening.

[@concernedcitizen2031]

@@michaell1603 I can send you some pictures from the cages I worked in. But that’s about all I can show you. On one side of us was a cray supercomputer and in the other side was a cage full of Netflix servers

[@250lmferrari]

I've been building/working in data centers for 7 years now -Most of the permanent jobs are security guards, but they have contractors working there pretty much indefinitely. -They are a much better neighbor then a saw mill or a chemical plant or something like that (no weird smells or loud equipment running) -They use a callosal amount of electricity. -A lot of times they will have agreements to get out of the tax bill.

[@raven4k998]

wait wait wait hold on one second if the internet is running out of electricity what does that mean for the future of ev's?🤔

[@tdexter4959]

Please elaborate on the last point. And thank you for the information.

[@tdexter4959]

@@raven4k998 The Powers that Be never cared about EVs, not for use by average people anyway. If you are mobile, you're much, much harder to control. And whether your mobility comes from gas or electricity doesn't change the equation.

[@raven4k998]

@@tdexter4959 meh just harness the power of farts they are flammable you can use them to run a generator to power those data centers and save the environment at the same time🤣🤣

[@Inkling777]

Data centers aren't being good neighbors if they demand so much power that electrical rates go up for everyone. And as he notes in this video, they provide very few stable jobs for the amount of power they consume.

[@Barquevious_Jackson]

I hate the internet, all my enemies live in my computer.

[@TurboLoveTrain]

noticer

[@SilverGamingFI]

that is true, I live behind he crome tab

[@moneykingmm9298]

.

[@tonnypedersen5915]

something about what you wrote does not make sense, is the enemy in you computer or is it online.

[@Saltiumine]

@@tonnypedersen5915 he has a jinn living in his device from an electronically activated gold sigil which allows the spirit to harvest his energy from the computers light it just has to shine on his face and it also secretly activates the camera to watch him.

[@joelrobert4053]

I live 5 minutes from Ashburn and the government was trying to get everyone to get solar panels to generate more electricity for more data centers 😂

[@dknowles60]

and who is going to pay for then solar Panels that fail on very cold winter days

[@TheodoreChin-ih7xz]

@@dknowles60 we're not going to have to worry about seeing snow anymore in a few years thanks to people with this line of thought

[@dknowles60]

@@TheodoreChin-ih7xz nice lie its the snow and very cold that has been Causing The TVA Problems

[@Pernection]

So why don't the centers have panels?

[@dknowles60]

@@Pernection they dont work on very cold winter Days, Just Ask the TVA, jan 14th 2024, the TVA has Solar contracts by others for 2000 megawatts, the TVA only received only 50 Megawatts. that is a 97% failure Rate, Source EIA webb site and TVA webb site

[@steadholderharrington9035]

Can you just imagine how much Data storage and processing power would be freed up if they just deleted all the user usage logs, tracking info and other unnecessary user garbage on people? It'd practically be like a whole new level of speed and efficiency being suddenly discovered.

[@rustyschackleford5800]

How do you know?

[@steadholderharrington9035]

@@rustyschackleford5800 Ever note how much space on your hard drive is taken up by usage logs and cookies and such? Times that by 5 to 6 billion people and times that by how many companies and governments have that data copied and copied again and again and again, and then times that by how ever many weeks or month have gone by since the creation of the internet, and suddenly its not such a small number anymore, is it?

[@icicle_man4971]

11:58 8%?! Lol!! That's rookie numbers. Here in Ireland, data centres use 21% of all the electricity produced in the entire country. 😅😅

[@er...]

You don't see the flaw in your premise? ...like size and population...

[@zoetje9817]

@@er...no? That’s how % works. It’s not like each country has a static demand for cloud storage.

[@er...]

@@zoetje9817 the percentage they refer to would be relative to energy needed vis-a-vis population size. Think about it.

[@zoetje9817]

@@er... Yes, smaller populations generally consume less energy. Partially because they also don’t need as many data centres to store that funny cat GIFs.

[@er...]

@@zoetje9817 Yes, but in reference to data storage specifically, the original post claims 21% for the smaller population. The amount of energy relative to population size is more, but the actual overall energy is less, so comparing the two figures is asinine.

[@1Rab]

When I started out in Online ads, I was very confused why most traffic came from that city in Virginia. People's responses were simply, "data centers" Please don't nuke this city.

[@anguswett]

An emp would go crazy

[@kv4648]

So you're saying I have an easy way to delete all the information that these companies are collecting on me

[@brettfoster6453]

​@kv4648 backups everywhere. Multiple data centers run in parallel for lower latency. So depending on area you may be getting data from a data center in Colorado, while the data you send goes to VA, Co, ca, and various other places. Then there's backups as in hdd storage offsite. If something goes wrong they need a backup. Then each data center will have raid arrays for data integrity. So there will be multiple live centers with the same data, each center with have multiple raid arrays, and each data center will have offsite backups.

[@kv4648]

@@brettfoster6453 noooooooooooooooo. I've been out-zucked

[@mrsmith1097]

Why are there so many data centres in VA?

[@jbird4478]

I wonder how much of that data we actually need. For starters, there probably is a metric shitton of duplicate files being stored somewhere in the cloud. And then there's the gigantic amount of consumer data that nobody really wants companies to keep taking. I clean up my harddrive every now and then, but this of course does not happen in datacentres because it's not their own data.

[@OmegaSoulReaper]

Well, look how much data are in youtube videos. Where do you think this video and every other video is stored at?

[@threepe0]

Leaves sheriff's office, follows you... back to sheriff's office. Big brain move, nice haha

[@Ryan-093]

must be a lot of data centers in Virginia because it's close to Maryland, the NSA HQ 😂

[@studentaccount4354]

There are more being built in other spots in Virginia. AWS is building another one south of there in another county bordering Fredericksburg, VA.

[@m1dos391]

The NSA doesn’t have nearly much data as the tech giants. No reason to do so

[@1Rab]

​@m1dos391 No, NSA's data center is massive, but it is located in Utah. You can google "NSA Data Center". NSA was ahead of the game. They created their own Google and AI years ago. Their Google and AI is for searching through all user data every done on the Internet and on phones. It's called XKeyscore and is what Snowden had revealed. This was made in response of 9/11. Once again, 9/11 changed everything

[@l00tur]

@@m1dos391you’ve missed the point being made here. The NSA has a direct connection to all of these data centers, and the close proximity allows them a quick response to a potential attack. The other locations of data centers are duplicates of these main data centers. It’s almost guarantee the cutting edge of processing data is down in VA, not across the country, those locations are secondary to the primary.

[@ccc3]

Most Gov agencies are close to DC for efficiency. Gov needs their own isolated data centers, so it would make sense to build them in proximity. But the main reason is that Virginia is also a major tech and internet hub and competent workforce is available. There's also little natural disaster risk + cheap energy and land, so there's a lot of pragmatic reasons why you'd pick that spot apart from the conspiracy ones

[@DeFreture]

So the "Cloud" is just a nice word to cover all of this

[@boneappletee6416]

Cloud is just a term meaning 'someone else's server'

[@nnov_tech_chan7891]

There is no cloud, it's someone elses computer

[@velandrii]

Always has been😊

[@mattdukeshire3837]

@squibbelsmcjohnson this works if your a bootstrap puller from Texas but if you’re working with real, meaningful data - you’ll make the taxpayers go broke by using hard storage

[@gratisgratos]

erm that's how basically the cloud works, where do you think the data is stored?

[@Freedom_Half_Off]

The Googele data center in Alabama is one of 11 global centers . They bought a coal fired electric plant that had been recently shut down . All the water they could want ... was already wired into the electric grid with TVA ... and they got it dirt cheap with no protest or lawsuits to slow them down . It is in a rural area but sits midway between Atlanta , Birmingham and Nashville

[@dknowles60]

You know the TVA is in a hard fight to Build more power Plants and has built some since jan 2023 , The TVA had rolling Blackouts on Dec 23 dec 24 2022, i know i went 1/2 hour with out electricity , I like to know if that Data center went with out power for 1/2 hour

[@Freedom_Half_Off]

@@dknowles60 The answer is no . Don't worry about rolling blackouts. Worry about the problems you have with your own power supply . You will be happier with the results .

[@dknowles60]

@@Freedom_Half_Off Must be nice to be in the Upper 1%

[@Freedom_Half_Off]

@@dknowles60 I guess it would depend on what 1% that is . The TVA wanting more generating capacity is just the TVA playing catch up like most goverment bueracracies . There was an article in the Wall Street Journal spelling out the coming shortages expected nationwide because of AI centers and electric cars raising consumption . And they were talking 2025 . Whatever the actual reasons are doesn't matter . Chanting slogans and memes in the dark won't warm up a can of beans .

[@firefox39693]

Here in Canada, we have more than 160 gigawatts of untapped hydroelectric potential, more than 36 gigawatts of tidal energy potential, and plenty of wind energy. Build them here.

[@erichollar5503]

And a lot of cold air at times too.

[@redsquirrelftw]

Will need less cooling too. My home server room is just passively cooled. I have central air for the summer months so that helps, but no dedicated AC for that room. A well planned out data centre here would only really need active cooling in the summer months. The slight extra latency is a small compromise. I guess one issue here is our internet is not that great. Not many ISPs provide connections that even allow to run servers let alone a whole data centre.

[@seanthe100]

Meanwhile Canadas hydroelectric energy significantly decreased this year. It's importing electricity from the US to make up the difference.

[@firefox39693]

@@seanthe100 ...Because there's a lack of installed capacity, hence why I mentioned 160 gigawatts of *untapped* hydropower.

[@seanthe100]

@@firefox39693 it was because of drought not capacity

[@Shelem304]

Great video. Very well put together. Thanks for the knowledge!

[@BiggestCorvid]

12:53 another fun quirk of underwater data centers is that they experienced less data loss from cosmic ray strikes. These high energy particles (basically a proton moving at ~98% the speed of light) corrupt data when they strike, which does happen, especially with large data centers. Water is dense enough to stop them though.

[@jaxcoop10]

I’ve been living in Ashburn for 20 years, and the amount of data centers built in the last 5 is absurd. They are a complete eye sore and have reeked havoc on local communities and ecosystems. I hate it

[@PeterS3316]

What have they done to harm the ecosystem

[@abatall]

@@PeterS3316big concrete things everywhere come here and drive around you will see all the concrete

[@mudPuddlePanda]

@@abatalldetours , air pollution , doesnt really benefit the community

[@PeterS3316]

@@abatall I live near Loudoun I know what they look like. Concrete isn’t bad for the environment 😭

[@PeterS3316]

@@mudPuddlePanda what exactly do they pollute the air with?

[@hillgamingofficial]

My Dad used to work with companies such as JP Morgan, Metro Bank, The Body Shop, Gala Coral Group, Legal and General, AWS, ect. He mentioned that on the otherside of the pond London at the moment is current expirencing brown outs due to data centre electicity usage at the moment purely from a lack of infrastructure alone and a single AI query was around 20-30 more energy intensive than a google search so you could do 30 google searches per AI query.

[@dknowles60]

the Uk never produce much electricity the Uk only produce 54k megawatts, Texas produces over 84k megawatts

[@DanielsPolitics1]

We are not having brownouts

[@Kaboomnz]

@@dknowles60 Texas has 30m population, the UK has 67m. Where the hell is the power going in Texas?

[@dknowles60]

@@Kaboomnz that is because the Uk dont do much of any thing, Texas does a lot and has a lot of heat pumps, heat pumps use a lot of electricity when you drop to 20 drg f

[@hillgamingofficial]

@@dknowles60 ln UK and Germany we tend to use natural boilers (furnaces) as we already have the preexisting infrastructure in place unlike our grid network which has been lacking but that's a separate issue caused by certain policies back in the 80s. Also Texas produces a lot of its electricity from solar and gas for when there isn't much solar available. Texas also has quite a large land area for quite a small population relative to the UK so only in very populated areas with preexisting gas infrastructure does it make any sense to have a gas furnace. And your gas often is cheaper as you don't have to import most of it as in the UK our north sea oil and gas reserves are operated by the private sector where it's sold on the open market instead of directly to the UK so we have to compete with other countries to be able to buy Natural Gas.

[@OregonBacon]

I know Google built on in Hood River, Oregon near the Bonneville Power Dam on the Columbia River years ago because the power was cheap and it was next to a major water source. Yesterday on the news, they were talking about how Oregon is running out of power. and now I know why. These data centers probably get great deals on power and us residential users pick up the difference on our bills.

[@ZippyDooDa435]

There's tons of DCs along the Columbia in Dalles, Herndon, Umatilla, Boardman.

[@Korvanick]

Calling it "Data Center Alley" seems like a complete miss from just calling it "Data Center"

[@miovome]

Data center’s aren’t all just huge warehouse building. Some are in places not many people would consider to be a data center. There are tons of high rise buildings that can house several data centers at once. Here in Atlanta i’ve been in Digital Reality at 56 Marietta, CyberWurk at 55 Marietta, Digital Reality and Evocative at 250 Williams Street and a 2 small data centers just outside of Atlanta, directly across the street from the Braves stadium Truist Part. Being in this industry is kinda crazy!

[@SanchoPanza-wg5xf]

Mind the apostrophe in your first sentence. Interesting to know that the jobs haven't already been totally automated. It seems that the tech community are eager to put themselves out of a job in exchange for a temporary paycheque.

[@TheodoreChin-ih7xz]

@@SanchoPanza-wg5xf its a highly physical job, you cant automate Datacenter technicians out of the picture. Youll have an easier time automating construction work.

[@autohmae]

My guess is, most of those are carrier hotel or carrier neutral co-location datacenters, because that's where the different companies and other organizations connect with each other.

[@SanchoPanza-wg5xf]

@@TheodoreChin-ih7xz I won't argue with you. The fact that an enormous multi-million dollar facility runs with a handful of security staff and technicians is the point I was making.

[@bigta1982]

Some of our data centers look like houses due to zoning laws.

[@justmeajah]

Waiting for Dan Toomey's version 😂

[@mobiusfanblade]

Can Dan Toomey make it from NYC to Virginia?

[@Pr0toPoTaT0]

I used to work for a company called data clean and we cleaned data centers. They're cool for 10 minutes until you realize knocking a cord could be your job.

[@SanchoPanza-wg5xf]

Knocking the wrong cable might cost you your job,. That's a better way to put it. Here's hoping you improve your station in life.

[@yoplait3256]

"Used to" I'm sorry to hear you bumped a cable.

[@craigsymington5401]

yeah, it's better to strike a chord and join a band...

[@Pr0toPoTaT0]

@@yoplait3256 lmao yeah I wish that would've been more exciting of a way to leave

[@nleem3361]

Are they really noisy? If so, how loud? Did you have to wear ear protection?

[@KeeganHughes-mq4un]

I’m working construction in one of these and I was told in the briefing that one of the data center buildings uses the yearly equivalent of 64000 houses

[@sunniestpluto]

Manassas also has a huge amount of data centers. Each center has its own power substation. Most centers have around 10 to 30 massive generators with tens if not hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel underneath the generators in massive tanks.

[@matt.stevick]

This channel continues to impress me. Please keep up the great work. Thx

[@TheCzarsoham]

Absolutely brilliant journalism and great production value. Absolutely 10/10 news source!

[@theexcalibur37]

That's nuts!

[@reezonoce]

I dropped off RACKs for a data centre here in Australia as a part of a temp job I did for a labor firm, it was about 2-3 hours work unboxing, assembling, moving them inside and cleaning up and only about 3-4 people needed to go inside, the rest of us were literally outside guarded by a security guard and centre staff inspecting the racks before they went inside, it took us like 2 hours to get everyone registered to be on site, they took all of our details down, photos, the works, it was worse than applying for a driver license, we got paid for minimum 8 hours, and most of that was in a car traveling to the site(I slept) and waiting around for staff to come collect us and unload the cargo as even though we had fork licenses, they had some other team come in and do it, the work was easy, but the security side of things was probably the most time consuming thing to deal with, bored, waiting around to be called up from the list of 10-ish people, it was certainly "interesting" but I think they would've over payed for us due to the nature of labor firms taking a higher cut than the people they employ actually get, it was a rushed job as they needed them asap, unfortunately, it seems the security for places like this is a very NEEDED thing, due to the nature of the files and data held, all it would take is one slip up, one bad egg and the centre would be compromised so I get it, but as for the power consumed, it makes sense, with more storage, comes more drives, more racks, more processing and power isn't free and space can't be erased so easily.

[@Amylan1]

I worked at a data center in Ashburn but it was so crowded that nearly everyone had to commute in from West Virginia

[@LegIIAVGCA]

Saw an article in San Jose Mercury News in California… that new data centers in Santa Clara (city next to San Jose) now consumes 50% of the grids power! Few employees… just a big building (think of a Costco with wall to wall severs… huge cooling fans or now, direct water cooled processors. Still need to dump the heat. California, during daylight, gets 70% from solar… but we use wind and natural gas at night to make power. Battery backup is very low. Much data center activity has during working hours but spikes when people come home and watch Netflix from 7:00 to 11:00 pm.

[@UncleWalter1]

Appreciate the stop motion animation in the middle

[@kellymoses8566]

at 9:54 every single one of those things on the roof is a evaporation cooler. Those pipes deliver water to them.

[@Erik_Caballero]

It would be interesting to see a data center hooked up to a steam plant --- you wouldn't be able to recapture *all* of the energy you'd be losing to waste heat (if only!), but you might be able to recoup a decent chunk of it if you hook things up right.

[@jakemister10]

This hits home pretty hard. Currently the rural area of maryland is dealing with proposed new high voltage transmission lines being run through thousands of family farms. Destinded for VA. They are threatening using eminent domain to take over the land that they "need".

[@patrickdunn7804]

and how exactly do you think that would be a bad thing?

[@repsajthetig3r390]

Same thing here in western Loudoun. Recently they proposed to run massive power pylons through the historic town of Waterford, which would essentially nullify the years of extensive historic preservation efforts. Sad tbh

[@mushiat6530]

What's depressing is i haven't found any comments on data center water usage and it wasn't mentioned in the video. Data centers use ridiculous amounts of water for evaporative cooling.... Especially in places like Arizona

[@Jigamanx2]

I reside and work in DC Alley. The NIMBY’s are trying to strangle a booming economy because they’re still scared of 3 mile island. Ironically they fail to realize that their skyrocketing property values are completely dependent on the DC industry. The noise and environmental impacts are also completely blown out of proportion.

[@4kMovieTrailers9]

Electricity used by data centers is insane, they need to become more efficient quickly just like CPUs have become over decades.

[@asandax6]

CPUs have become efficiemt but the programs haven't. So CPUs still burn a lot of electricity because the software isn't catching up. Plus security creates the need of doing redundent transformation of data so malicious entities can't use it even if they manage to steal it.

[@admiralkaede]

they have been trying to but its really not that simple sadly

[@bricefleckenstein9666]

The bigger issue is the hard drives - and the in-process transition to SSD drives IS NOT helping that.

[@MegaOS_Ver_NEET]

and they say that cryptomining uses more energy than your typical centers...

[@bricefleckenstein9666]

@@MegaOS_Ver_NEET Depends on the specific TYPE of "data center" and the specific type of cryptocoin mining. ASIC mining like for Bitcoin is capable of being quite a bit more power dense than almost any data center type. GPU mining (on the fairly few existing GPU mineable coins) tends to be less dense than an AI "data center", as they use fewer cards at a lower power level per unit volume. Proof Of Space mining like BURST or CHIA are in the same ballpark AT MOST with actual "store lots of data" centers like the ones Backblaze runs, as in that type of center the primary power usage is for the hard drives - but a lot of BURST and CHIA farmers use LOW POWER cpus to control the drives, like the Raspberry Pi. Proof of Stake "mining" like for Etherium doesn't use significant power at all - it's more like "earning interest on your existing coin" than anything else, there is no actual "mining" involved - the only power usage would be to run your wallet occasionally to check your balance, and for a relatively few core nodes that do the actual coin interactions, which even for Etherium could probably fit easily into ONE data center.

[@aryqpasta]

Rural areas do have higher latency, but lower network congestion, which often results in a net speed increase

[@Jordansklar0698]

Yes i rented a house in the sticks got 5G speeds over 700mbps on tmobile moved to the city when my lease ended cus i didnt want my rent going up lol got 200mbps smh

[@Sieff1]

Not when you are housing this much data and throughput

[@aryqpasta]

@@Sieff1 ok lol

[@aryqpasta]

@@Sieff1 I think I understand what you're trying to say, but no. There are a ton of high-traffic datacenters sprinkled throughout rural USA, all with extremely high throughput.

[@LadonMach]

I don't know much about the issue at all but it sounds like "AI" is just a lot more trouble than it's worth right now. Is all this energy being used really of equivalent value to people getting art without effort and people having to put less work into their essays? I just don't see what it's really doing for us on a productivity front.

[@Gnomezonbacon]

Made getting a job easier for me. Saved me hours of work writing coverletters and resumes and taking those stupid assessment tests.

[@SpencerKaup]

I mean they could stop doing the stupid Google AI where every search I do gives me an answer.

[@mrsmith1097]

Apparently, yes. If it weren't people wouldn't be using the AI tools and there wouldn't be demand for AI.

[@ovencake523]

isnt AI solving problems that were impossible to solve before? like that AI that figured out how proteins fold up (alphafold?) - something that is incredibly difficult to simulate given the myriad complex interactions. (side note: quantum computing could help with those simulations) figuring out protein behavior will lead to so many medical advancements alone, and thats a single, imperfect AI targeting a single problem. the applications of AI feel limitless

[@ceciliagraefe3960]

image generation ai are the biggest issue afaik. it's much less compute intensive to do what is essentially a higher level version of predictive text using scraped articles and texts than it is to generate a terrible image that makes no sense and uses a ton of stolen images to learn from. I believe this is partially bcos language has a lot more clear well defined rules and structures than images do, and also that text is far easier to incorporate into a program than images.

[@LegIIAVGCA]

I am pro nuclear but there is soooo much headwind, it is a tough sell. Many of the 1989’s and 1990’s approved nuclear power plants are still not on line.. and cost over runs 10x the initial price. Some Georgia plants are nearly finished… but at huge costs!

[@BadMonkeyMike]

We wouldn't need all of these data centers if these corporations would stop trying to record everything that everyone is doing... Give us our privacy back and they won't need all of the storage capacity.

[@redsquirrelftw]

So true, most of this compute power is actually for tech that gets used against us like all the spying and surveillance stuff. I personally avoid cloud, apps etc as much as I can and host all my own stuff locally. I'm running a fairly overkill setup for 1 person but I use well under 1kw. My setup could easily serve 10's of people if it was setup that way.

[@elgoog1386]

Imagine the crowdstrike bug happening on an underwater datacenter...

[@vylbird8014]

Not as bad as you'd think. You'd just use the iLO control port or a remote KVM to carry out the reboot and correction. That is why such devices exist.

[@Gnomezonbacon]

@@vylbird8014 I love iLOs. I'm very lazy.

[@Phil-D83]

Get in the submarine and go fix it😅

[@menace8782]

pretty sure the data centers use linux

[@h_beserra]

​@@menace8782but crowdstrike has Linux security tools

[@SamBrown-s6y]

The cost of infrastructure improvements are borne by all ratepayers, not just the data centers. Electricity infrastructure improvements are allocated to ratepayers as a pro rata share (of total consumption) for each category of electricity customer in Virginia. This energy company spokesperson is being misleading. Residential customers will absolutely be required to absorb of a significant portion of this grid expansion for data centers by paying more for their utility bills.

[@mr.dikkens]

I’ve done media productions for several data center companies over the globe, including Digital Realty in Ashburn, security is INSANE. There’s several doors and scans before being able to enter. Every time I have to give my passport and business info. My rental car got registered. And at NO time was I allowed to be alone. The few times it was allowed, there’s hundreds of cameras watching me. It a very uncomfortable environment to film in.

[@mrmotofy]

Well you do look sketchy and always carry cameras soooo LOL

[@Wily_Wendigo]

Culling old data also would help the issue. There are so many dead websites or empty chat rooms that haven’t been used in years, but are still kept around

[@InMooseWeTrust]

Those use relatively small amounts of data and electricity compared to new stuff like AI

[@nightshades7921]

@@InMooseWeTrust Yeah, I agree with you. We need to halt AI for a while until it isn't as demanding; or end it all together if it needs tons of electricity.

[@admiralkaede]

i mean its for everything old data is just always kept for some reason

[@ramonabowie6113]

Thanks for posting. I live in Prince William County. This helps me understand better what the debate is about outside of the environmental effects & traffic (which already truly sucks)

[@WazZawh]

the price of running the internet or the price of running a surveillance state?

[@craigsymington5401]

Can't seem to have one without the other?

[@jeepdog5]

How did you fly a drone down Loudon County Parkway?

[@Football__Junkie]

A data center right outside of Washington DC has a lot of security? Shocker.

[@BHNative]

So happy with the traction the Brew's been getting. You guys are awesome.

[@paulmoffat9306]

Here in Manitoba, the government received a request for a construction permit for a huge 'Data Center'. Upon reviewing the site and requirements, it was reveled that the 'investors' were intending to NOT be a data center, but a Bitcoin 'mining center' and the power requirements would be almost HALF of the Provence's reserve generating capacity. NO Can Do for the building permit!

[@colin8696908]

that is a much more realistic problem then anything this video mentions.

[@missing-user0]

Datacenter ≠ Supercomputer Supercomputer is a large number oft computers interconnected with high speed networks in such a way, that it can act as one huge machine. Typically used for scientific simulations, weather forecasts etc. A datacenter may be much more heterogeneous and focussed on storage, management and parallel data processing. While both involve large computational resources, a supercomputer is optimized for singular, intensive tasks, whereas a datacenter is geared towards handling a diverse array of services and applications simultaneously.

[@redsquirrelftw]

Some of these supercomputers may still be hosted in data centres though. Some data centres will rent out basically empty floor space, and you can build whatever you want, and they provide you with the power and connectivity. So one could possibly build a super computer in one.

[@blobidk]

The power infrastructure needed requires building high voltage lines in untouched areas. Mickie Gordon park in Middleburg is a good example of a park that is being threatened with massive high voltage lines through the park as well as tons of (horse) farms nearby.

[@patrickdunn7804]

and you somehow thiink the useless parks and horse farms are more important?

[@music4toli]

Even before AI's explosion, within small circles there have been conversations about how to make modern programming more energy efficient. It's definitely a long term conversation as the next generation of engineers would likely be the first to be impacted by low energy development languages and patterns.

[@SomeRandomPiggo]

Maybe stop writing calculator apps in a glorified web browser lol. But seriously, it's really impressive how a low power CPU designed for laptops can barely draw 2 watts and even midrange desktop CPUs can draw over 45x that, with a performance difference of much less than 45x

[@panplayer]

I live in a town with a Google data center. They prey on economically depressed areas, promise local hires, take all kinds of tax breaks, and then all the out of state tags start showing up.

[@MrSurvival2]

Sounds like a sports stadium proposal

[@TheOne-xu5oy]

If you live especially in a state or country that sees a significant amount of sunlight through out the year, get solar panels, back up batteries and if you’re not into solar at least get a back up generator. As I see it, if something isn’t done to upgrade our electricity grid and or build more nuclear power stations, solar farms with back up capacity and other renewable means of generating electricity, we are going to be fucked with rolling blackouts. I lived in a developing country for most of my formative and teen years and we experienced “load shedding” as it was called for sometimes 12-15 hours with no electricity. Y’all don’t want to experience that shit, trust me.

[@derpymcderpello5381]

I 100% agree with you.

[@williambonadurer9750]

Put data centers in the oceans near Florida to keep Manatees warm.

[@Ducotevision]

It’s only noise during the construction phases… it’s essentially zero noise once completed to the outside world… I wouldn’t focus so much on this point because it’s irrelevant for long-term operation… I would focus more on water usage… as far as energy they will be a net plus to the grid as it add stability to the base load and investment into more reliable sources… aka nuclear (soon 🤞🏽)

[@Gnomezonbacon]

Use the waste heat to desalinate seawater by boiling it.

[@Ducotevision]

@@Gnomezonbacon temperatures don’t get that hot and there will be heat lost due to transfer

[@skyisreallyhigh3333]

Strange, many people living near data centers constantly complain about the noise from the cooling systems. But lets go with what you said and ignore everyone else.

[@NovemberIGSnow]

@@Gnomezonbacon One of the difficulties with desalination is that it still produces waste that you need to deal with. Like, if you just dump the salt back into the marine environment, it will kill off the local ecosystem. Desalination is its own engineering and logistic challenge that data centers are ill equipped to handle despite using evaporative cooling.

[@filanfyretracker]

@@NovemberIGSnow run an all stainless steel cooling system and use straight salt water in the loop?

[@butterfish-g9f]

I really wish we would stop looking at large fields and forests and describing it as "empty space". If you want to talk about environmental problems that's probably one of the biggest ones. Feeling like we need to fill all space with farms or buildings.

[@bnalive5077]

Would be awesome to see that area leveled.

[@LycanFerret]

Agreed.

[@aircontrolserviceshotsprin1707]

I worked as a controls contractor at a few data centers like ATT and you explain it perfectly

[@MacyMorningBrew]

absolutely epic video. wish you actually committed to the bit and got arrested though :/

[@VioletEmerald]

You do remember he's a real human being right? Being arrested isn't a joke.

[@MacyMorningBrew]

@@VioletEmerald but more than a human being, he's my coworker, so I'm obviously gonna harass him

[@craigsymington5401]

@@MacyMorningBrew keep him on his toes😏

[@craigsymington5401]

@@VioletEmerald arrested for doing journalism... I sounds like Canada. Next thing he'll be a Rebel😂

[@berniemacs]

you were right outside my old place! The ol’ Blvd area! I learned to drive stick on that road off waxpool rd 😂

[@MsMarmima]

I used to work security in a city datacenter. I don't remember it being loud tho

[@nunyabidness674]

"Loud" is relative. You'd be surprised just how deaf ambient noise leaves you. Not from permanent hearing damage, just from your brain blocking out the ambient noise. Case in point, my neighbor has three air purifiers for her "Bird room". The ambient noise in her house leaves her shouting just carrying on a spoken conversation. Last month her smoke alarm went off. She was out front of her house, couldn't hear it. I'm sitting in my room listening to youtube, and can clearly hear her smoke alarm. She had no clue anything was wrong until I came outside and told her.

[@MrC0MPUT3R]

The guy who said that was a "socio-cultural anthropologist"... I looked him up and apparently he specializes in post-colonial African extractive economies and crypto-mining?

[@snake10566]

It annoys me you have to tell the public what a data center does... because that means the majority of the public hasn't run their own gaming server for their friends to have fun on....

[@viktorjn6039]

Very very cool breakdown of pros and cons of data centers!

[@ben7510]

Of course, a data center needs to be a 30 minute drive to a CIA headquarters, a 40 minute drive to the Pentagon & an hour drive to NSA headquarters. It wouldn't make sense to build data centers on cheaper, vast open lands in Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah & or somewhere in Arizona and New Mexico where Hurricanes won't be a thing to worry about and plenty of potential solar energy source.

[@chazman4461]

They are built where they are do the access of a high speed fiber optic line. It has nothing to do with the federal buildins. Majority of them have nothing to do with any kind of government.

[@LycanFerret]

Good idea. Take up farm land and wildlife reserve land for non-existent assets and things you can't even touch.

[@markrudolph683]

Virginia was picked cause of nuclear power plant and vast water supply

[@nicolasgolden9930]

An aspect that wasn’t discussed is the construction of these data centers. Typically a 1-3 year process depending on scale. The data center site I’m currently working a part of the construction team for in just a few years has had almost a hundred million in renovation conctract. And the construction of each of our builds has required a peak craft work count of over 1000 people (not including the hundreds of office to support them). Data Centers do have a major short term effect on areas, gas, food, shopping in out of the way towns for a few years or if the data company gets a large enough plot of land and energy allotment a decade or more of constant construction.

[@cosmicprisons2733]

Mom: ITS ALL BECAUSE OF THAT DAMN PHONE

[@nathancochran4694]

I've read about a few manufacturing plants and data centers that are looking into building small modular reactors on site to solve their electricity problems.

[@BradleySmith1985]

The cloud is just somebody else's hard drive.

[@yamilsantos6533]

This IS RIDICULOUS THEY NEED TO JUST BUILD UP NOT WIDER BUILD HIGH RISE DATA CENTER LESS LAND EASIER TO BE IN THE CITY DUH

[@julezxbandit6734]

Then stop saving our data and selling it then that seems like a corporate problem and not ours

[@JRTheElectronicGuy]

I’ve done work on the google cloud building in Toronto been places we’re most people haven’t been before. Funny you the have to let roofers in to figure out where your leaks are. So much money is being spent the buildings are set up like jails pretty much identical intake process they have security and rep with you the whole time

[@gurustu4458]

8:13 begs the question if our rates are based on general consumption, what happens when big tech starts using a bunch of local power; Do our rates go up to reflect the increased power grid usage? It would be easy for a company to feign ignorance to the public in this way. At least long enough to make us happy until it’s too late and it’s already affecting us negatively.

[@Nathan15038]

0:24 oh so we’re just gonna ignore AWS

[@FloatyBones77]

AI hasn’t meaningfully contributed to productivity or effective information gathering for companies and users. A good portion of the energy “demand” here is being wasted on generative AI models’ woefully inefficient processing for no real gain for anybody along the chain.

[@sarahlevine776]

By the way, do those things generate enough heat to turn a turbine? If so, maybe we could rig up a cooling system that not only is more efficient, but helps return some of the energy use to the grid.

[@ausika]

It's not hot enough since they want to keep components below 140F. Some data centers do pipe that water into nearby buildings for space heating or agricultural uses.

[@Faladrin]

You can generate electricity off heat without needing to boil water though. Look into Stirling engines.

[@sarahlevine776]

@@ausika Oh that's cool.

[@sarahlevine776]

@@Faladrin Yeah, that seem like an option.

[@ChineseKiwi]

Already done. There are many Data centre heat recycling examples around the world

[@AlbertIsaev-y6i]

I'm already watching your videos for the second time. Very impressive!

[@quilnux]

What we need to consider is self-processing of our data usage where instead of using a cloud service, we would operate some services out of our homes. People don't realize how easy this actually is. If even 1/3 of the US customers were to host their own emails, and internal DNS requests, from there homes, we could have a huge impact on reducing data center needs and might even have a better environmental impact by reducing the need to build more data centers. Legacy data centers can then be used to host new innovations and processing needs.

[@marktaylor9886]

🤡

[@admiralkaede]

not really man that would mean for redundancy is harder and u would need to keep your PC on at all times its not that easy to self host globally

[@quilnux]

@@admiralkaede most Raspberry Pi's can host emails and DNS services. Just doing that would make a huge difference.

[@angelsy1975]

Put them on the moon. Plenty of security there.

[@realrunningdog_5812]

If only there was a form of electricity generation that produced high amounts of energy using little fuel and even less waste that could provide cheaper electric bills to meet the growing demand of new devices and data centers😅😅😅

[@nunyabidness674]

If only there was some form of power generation that didn't require physical infrastructure capable of handling said current... Yeah, Nuclear ticks your boxes, where it falls down is trying to tick mine.

[@KBHeal]

We don't need huge amounts of data centres and don't want them - we do not want the elites and governments controlling our every move

[@hahahahahahahh9830]

If only they didn’t take 20 years to make

[@nunyabidness674]

@@hahahahahahahh9830 I'm right here by Hanford... It honestly doesn't take but about 5 years. They've already done it. Comparably, a gas turbine plant takes 3-5 years. Nuke plant technically can be built relatively near to population centers, but haven't been since the 70's. Gas turbine plants need to be a good couple miles away just because of the noise.

[@hahahahahahahh9830]

@@nunyabidness674 I was saying 20 years because there is a discussion around it here in Australia and the news is saying it will take 20 years to build as nobody has any experience with it in Australia

[@Petrolhead11]

"NOT IN MY BACKYARD" we don't have any of these in our backyard but I very well understand the pain of locals. If they are paying half a billion in taxes, they will create problems worth billions to local communities.

[@jaxcoop10]

I live in ashburn, you can quite literally see a data center in my backyard over our tree line

[@Petrolhead11]

@@jaxcoop10 how does it affect your day to day life?

[@thetruthserum2816]

Let's say 1 rack of computers uses 5000 Watts, then they have to use another 5000 Watts of AC to cool the air that is heated. Instead, if they piped the heat out of the building, then they could reduce the overall consumption significantly. This has been done before with a model data center that used directed ducting that piped the heat out of the building. If instead of wasting the heat, they could use it to power sterling engines, they could capture a percentage of the waste heat as electricity, or to run a companion factory that requires heat. Liquid cooled data centers should also be considered as the thermal conductivity of air is quite low compared to water, so air is incredibly inefficient as a thermal conductor.

[@cooperbeggs]

we could put the underwater ones in old quarries in the midwest. Wind Farms nearby plus they can try to clean up the old quarry waste

[@konradw360]

us-east-1 (N. Virginia) 😂

[@inuendo6365]

Bro please get some sunlight, your arm at 4:50 looks like a raw chicken leg

[@bloab]

You do realise that's just the lightning right? Also some people are just whiter

[@inuendo6365]

@@bloab lightning? He's not in a storm he's just seriously lacking vitamin D

[@adamoliver4094]

Guy shows up to data centers in NSA's backyard wearing that "just stop oil" fit and seems surprised when the black SUVs show up.

[@craigsymington5401]

Smooth 😂😂😂

[@LegIIAVGCA]

These data centers and internet hubs in built up cities (in California, Palo Alto, Mountain View and Santa Clara) have few employees, very high security, and often use old PacBel switching hubs. I think Data Centers now use 12% to 20% of all power generated. Lots and lots of power so my iPhone can stream KZbin videos! AI is going to use 2 to 3x more power!!! I visited some 20 years ago and boy, you really notice the mess of cables and very noisy.

[@Postal268]

My question here is, if they want to use solar, why don't they at least put solar on the roofs and over the parking lots of the data centers? Might not be enough still, but even if it's not they'll need less of them elsewhere and doing it on the land they're already on reduces their overall land needs and bonus is they don't have to worry about the government getting in the way of doing the power lines themselves. Them not doing the most obvious thing to get some solar panels up makes me feel like it's just a greenwashing move and not for actual power.