alt Hacker News> I recently read about a city that tried to hide that a third of it's water supply was getting used by a Google datacenter.
I don't get why its suddenly fashionable to hate datacenters?
Did a lot of people really think that their code was running in an actual cloud?
Well I try to avoid running things on the cloud myself, but bear in mind the example here:
Every major datacenter operator has abandoned their carbon neutral pledge since the AI race began, and have claimed disclosure of the public about their water usage is a trade secret to hide the damage from the public. In many cases these datacenters have been built near threatened bodies of water, but they are getting priority access to freshwater before and above residents. The same often happens with electricity, where a significant demand is placed on local infrastructure and taxpayers bear the cost of needed upgrades to the system.
The problem is that these are trillionaire companies because they are subsidized by dozens of taxes on ordinary people. Every transaction we make pays Google in one way or another. Every app we buy pays Google 30%. Every business we patronize is spending like 10% of their operating budget with Google. Our tax dollars are funding their datacenters.
Why is it finally fashionable to hate datacenters? People are finally realizing the costs!