Exposing The Dark Side of America's AI Data Center Explosion | View From Above | Business Insider

What Hacker News said

Strong rec e40 · 2026-01 · on “Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers”

What? A 5 minute drive is miles, and that's plenty far enough. They are currently being built within 100 meters of homes. It's absolutely insane. EDIT: [this video] Just watch that and not get hoppin' mad.

Recommends e40 · 2026-05 · on “Why We've Filed a Referendum”

Watch these [LINK] [this video] [LINK] Then, tell me if you want to live anywhere near those. Then, tell me of a nuclear power plant that has that bad a repo.

Recommends xavdid · 2026-06 · on “'Cost Me the Election': Data Centers Trigger Voter Backlash”

> People will claim real harms but the connections are spotty at best. This is a wild claim because it's trivially provable. There's been tons of reporting around the effect they have on the immediate vicinity, and that's without even getting into the unknown long-term effects. Here's a decent piece, but there's plenty more out there if you look at all: [this video] Is every single mad person doing investigative reporting and / or living next to a data center? No. But something doesn't have to personally affect me to know it's harmful.

Cites zx10rse · 2025-11 · on “AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering”

Drinking water does not magically appears in the water cycle the next day. [0] - "And what we found is is that up to 43% of data centers, and this is our largest data centers, are located in areas of high or extremely high water stress. And that's really shocking because data centers require huge amount of drinking water to be able to cool their servers." [0]- Business Insider | Exposing The Dark Side of America's AI Data Center Explosion - [this video]

Cites Joel_Mckay · 2025-11 · on “Blocking LLM crawlers without JavaScript”

Too late, some suggest 50% of www content is now content farmed slop: [LINK] The odd part is communities unknowingly still subsidize the GPU data centers draw of fresh water and electrical capacity: [this video] Fun times =3

Critical Joel_Mckay · 2025-11 · on “OpenAI needs to raise at least $207B by 2030”

Except the 7 firms make up >30% of all market growth, and move more capital than entire countries. Yes, they are hemorrhaging cash with every new customer, and burdening taxpayers by eating community electrical and water infrastructure. In terms of business, it is not sustainable: [this video] The hype-cycle is nothing new =3 "Memoirs of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds" (Charles Mackay, 1852) [LINK]

Critical Joel_Mckay · 2025-12 · on “Is it a bubble?”

LLM slop doesn't have aspirations at all, its just click bait nonsense. [LINK] Drives people insane: [LINK] And LLM are economically and technologically unsustainable: [this video] These have already proven it will be unconstrained if AGI ever emerges. [LINK] The LLM bubble will pass, as it is already losing money with every new user. =3

Critical Joel_Mckay · 2026-01 · on “The No Fakes Act Has a "Fingerprinting" Trap That Kills Open Source”

These firms can do what they like if and only if they pay for every $7B reactor, the 30k year waste stewardship, and disconnect from community resources people paid for with taxes. However, currently the unethical burden cities with the endless bill for resources, contribute no actual value, and one may spot the data center waste heat signatures and industrial run-off from space. Consider most "AI" firms lost on average $4.50 for every new user, rely on overt piracy, and delusional boards sand-bagging for time... these LLM businesses are simply unsustainable fictions. Many problems don't have simple answers, but one may merely profit by their predictable nature. I would recommend volunteerin