It's not like those major social media sites don't have some kind of data center (or rent one) in every "major" (population wise) timezone they operate in. Your other arguments still hold true, but I think even then it would be better for all of us if those websites went down every now and then.

Or the printed copy!

Yeah, that's surely gonna work. As if the people dying from the heat right now aren't too many already. I'm somewhat sure you're not being serious, and while I see where you're coming from, that would be treating symptoms at best. As long as society doesn't fundamentally change, other "high consumers" would emerge again, and we'd be back where we started

That's also what's so frustrating to me. The world could be so much better, people just seem to not care. Summer really sucks currently, now I don't just have winter depression, but also summer... anxiety? Haven't thought of a good term yet. I've had this post open in a tab the last two days, and I do intend to write something, I just haven't found the time yet, as I'm quite sure the length of the comment will get out of hand. Just know that you're not alone with those thoughts.

Then I misunderstood that, but I still don't agree. The "surplus energy" of the renewables is not really there. Granted, in some regions (not really sure about the USA, though, I don't have data on that), renewables can provide > 100% of the required electricity for a few hours per day, but that's not really a lot of surplus energy. If it was, they wouldn't have to build power plants just for the data centers.

You even kind of mention that with

because this demand is outstripping even the excess supply

Electricity price definitely is a factor for data centers, but having electricity 24/7 is even more important to them. Also, what made AI feasible was the usage of GPUs or even more specialized hardware, that is tailored to those tasks. Machine learning as a concept has been around since the 1980s or even earlier, not just the last 20 years. Paradoxically, that increase in efficiency caused a drastic increase in total power consumption for AI.

Germany 1923.

Now that it’s not completely unfeasable thanks to renewable energy

Are we living in the same reality? Renewable energy has nothing to do with machine learning or especially LLMs being feasible. The data centers used/being built for AI use some of the dirtiest form of energy you can use, because it's cheaper or easier available.

Point in case: Data centers are being built off-grid using gas turbines. In fact, the planned amount of gas-powered data centers use more electricity than Germany.

Also, they are not even using proper gas power plants for that, mostly just gas turbines, which are cheaper and faster to install, but way less efficient.

They don't care about the power use of their data centers, and especially not whether they are renewable.

Würde mich interessieren, was genau der Anwendungsfall von solchen Messgeräten ist. UV-Strahlung ist jetzt nichts sonderlich lokales, wofür man ein eigenes Messgerät braucht, das BfS stellt die Daten der Messstationen online zur Verfügung (Hier die Übersichtskarte mit auswählbaren Messstationen und hier z.B. Berlin).

Und es ist auch nicht so, als würde sich die UV-Strahlung von Tag zu Tag stark ändern, das Wetter sorgt ja höchstens dafür, dass die Strahlung niedriger als erwartet ist.

Naja gut, etwas Eigenverantwortung würde ich bei Betrachtung der Werte dann doch erwarten. Die meisten Messstationen haben sogar eine "Clear Sky" Prognose (also die maximale UV-Belastung bei wolkenfreiem Himmel), und selbst wenn nicht, kann man den etwaigen Verlauf aus vergangenen Tagen gut abschätzen. Wenn dann die näheste Messstation einen Wert angibt, der sehr niedrig ist, aber bei einem selbst die Sonne runterbrennt, dann könnte man eventuell selbst erahnen, dass das nicht ganz passt.

An sich spricht ja nichts dagegen, dass alle gut aufgeklärt über die UV-Belastung sind, aber bei solchen Geräten denke ich mir, das ist halt wieder ein Stück Elektroschrott mehr, das dann - im Besten Fall - irgendwann ungenutzt rumliegt.

Don't blame everything on the data centers. Everything else is doing its part in contributing to climate change.

Apart from that data centers, at the scale at which we seem them pop up now, are way too young to have a considerable effect on the current heat wave. Which doesn't mean that they won't in the future. Climate change is, after all, a decades long project

In case you are being serious, there are ways around faulty RAM sticks, usually just a few cells/rows are affected. In case anyone needs to know this, here is a pretty good summary on stackoverflow on how to deal with this on linux. In general, look for "memmap".

Keep your hardware running as long as possible! Iirc newer RAM is unfortunately somewhat more susceptible to failing. My DDR3 is still working fine.

Good on them for... immediately going back to eating meat the first second the month is over?

Yeah, he did go vegetarian afterwards, but...

Completely agree, saying that solar is heat sensitive when talking about not being able to power ACs is pretty far out there.

Adding to what you said, ambient temperature only has a slight impact on solar's efficiency. Solar's efficiency usually mainly goes down due to self-heating which is due to higher irradiance. So in some sense they are less efficient because they generate more power.

However your example numbers are way off, solar panels generate much more peak power during summer than during winter, they aren't close to being similar (depending on lattitude, but I guess that's a given when talking about "summer" and "winter").

^[Source]

And the other part that should not be overlooked is that there tends to be some correlation between hot weather and long sunshine, which can also be seen in the plot. So not only is peak power of solar higher during the time when heatwaves are more likely, they also generate power longer.

The low level of the Rhine could have economic consequences for several of Germany's industries, such as the chemicals and steel, which depend on the river to transport large quantities of goods.

Cynicism aside, in the last few years, when there was another new record low, some "Hungersteine (hunger stones)" showed up in the rivers. The future's looking bright.

That is the part that pains me to admit - running local LLMs is not a solution to the RAMpocalypse. In that case we'd just have more GPUs and RAM idling for ~90% of the time in someones basement, without being shared. As bad as it sounds, having data centers for AI stuff is actually the more ecological solution. I can't believe I said that. Excuse me, I have to take a shower now *shudder*

Der Plot oben ist einfach nur die absolute Differenz zwischen den Prozentpunkten "hohe Bildung" minus "einfache Bildung"? Wer zum Teufel dachte, das ist eine gute Methode, das zu visualisieren? Damit ist der Unterschied bei kleinen Parteien zwangsläufig kleiner.

That's a fairly reductionist take from your side.

Did you even look at the article? I'm not trying to defend AI, but it's currently somewhere between 0.31% (2023) and 0.98% (projected for 2030) of freshwater use in the USA. Animal agriculture is at 40.60%. Plants for immediate human consumption are at 23%.

Combined with the fact, that meat is less efficient in converting farmed area or water to calories (In the USA 72% of calories are provided by plants, the remaining 28% are some form of animal product), this should also give you the answer for "why not go into any of the other water intensive crops we grow in the wrong place", which you asked in this thread.

Put all this together with the rising per capita meat consumption world wide and you see why we have a problem. In the USA most aquifers are drying up, including some very important ones for agriculture. And that problem has existed before data centers sprung up everywhere.

And yes, we could and should change agriculture to reduce water consumption - by reducing animal farming. In the best case getting rid of it. Even with people that can't survive on a plant based diet, which I would expect to be very few, we could reduce animal agriculture to close to 0 compared to our current level.

And this is only talking about the water usage of animal products.

And the best part - it doesn't cost anything. On the contrary, it would be cheaper. It doesn't even require new technologies! Going vegan is degrowth in action.

Probably. Anecdotally I can say that I have an Eastpak backpack that served me well for the last 15 years, and still does. However I've recently been shown this beautiful website, which I think fits this community pretty well:

https://www.worseonpurpose.com/...

Granted, they even kind of say, that Eastpak is still good, and I also couldn't recommend other brands.

Are you guys even reading the article? Saying "it's both" when there is a factor of 130 between the two is just disregarding the actual problem.

Looking quite good for now. Let's see where those flags are going 🤨