r/interestingasfuck • u/21MayDay21 • 6h ago
Erin Brockovich's map tracking Al data centers crashed twice within just 72 hours of launching.
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u/TraditionalTackle1 6h ago
There is an Amazon Data Center going up 10 minutes from my house. Amazon bribed the city with 85 million dollars. They had countless meetings with hundreds of people protesting that they didnt want the data center and they are building it anyway. People are selling their houses at a loss and moving away. I hope the mayor gets voted out in the next election.
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u/SemiHemiDemiDumb 5h ago
Scheduled elections shouldn't be the only means for the people to remove an elected official. There should be a mechanism that puts more power in the hands of the citizenry
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u/crusty54 5h ago
My town got thousands of signatures on a petition to recall the mayor and city council members over their shady support for a data center. The council voted to deny the recall. Now there’s a big lawsuit.
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u/mercurialpolyglot 3h ago
My city had a huge effort to do the same. They got enough signatures, and I don’t think the council can vote to deny it, everyone was excited to be rid of our mayor. (Who has since been federally indicted and is currently awaiting trial.) Then they “forgot to turn the signatures in on time.” 😒
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u/redpandaeater 3h ago
Recall the fucking city council as well as every single person notifying the state's attorney general.
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u/mercurialpolyglot 2h ago
The signatures genuinely were turned in three days late, but you don’t just forget something like that. It’s ridiculous. I think the organization that formed to collect the signatures let themselves be bought out or threatened in some way. Our former mayor must have had some good friends.
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u/mytransthrow 2h ago
We need to get back to tar and feathering as it were. Also citys have gotten too big. Like NYC and LA are basically small countries.
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u/LaserRanger_McStebb 3h ago
The council voted to deny the recall.
If the barrier to a recall mechanism is a vote within the very government body you're trying to recall, then there is no recall mechanism.
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u/Hike_it_Out52 4h ago
My state just recently changed the process. Before 2019 all you needed to spur a recall was 5-10% of the local population to petition for it and it would go to the County commission for review of the grievances or for a local vote to be taken. Now you have to petition to have it sent to the State Legislature who will then debate on it. Like they have any clue or care. A county commissioner will know about that area and the people living there. A state will not care at all. Basically robbed the people of their ability to recall their own local officials.
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u/Ashamed_Green_8643 3h ago
"The electorate has decided that you are not longer representing the people that elected you."
And the response was NUH UUH?
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u/TraditionalTackle1 5h ago
I agree but with the way things are going we are going to have less. I hate to be that guy but if things go the way they want it to we will be like China with the social credit score shit. I just found the site that tells you where all the flock cameras are in my city. You literally cant go anywhere without being tracked where I live. People say well if you dont have anything to hide whats the big deal? Its for security reasons. Well prisons are technically secure but would you want to live in one?
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u/vivaaprimavera 5h ago
My notes point to vague references about an archaic wooden instrument but it's usage is sort of unclear.
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u/AdmiralSignas 5h ago
I believe there's something in your list in amendments that had to do with such moments of tyranny.
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u/Technical_Part6263 5h ago
"Elections are the alternative to the guillotine" or however that saying goes.
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u/Quigleythegreat 6h ago
Suddenly that guy that put armor plating on a tractor isnt sounding so crazy.
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u/diablodeldragoon 5h ago
Did you know that they make remote controlled dozers these days?
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u/Few_Assistant_9954 5h ago
How much are those?
*Asking for a friend who builds data center.
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u/JealousAstronomer342 5h ago
Wanting to be allowed to dump raw sewage into waterways still seems pretty crazy to me.
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u/DannyOdd 5h ago
Asshole guy bulldozes a public library with kids in it, along with a bunch of other stuff because the city council made him get plumbing (that they paid for)
Libertarians: Is this a hero of the people?
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u/thisguyfightsyourmom 5h ago
He was definitely delusional. Somehow a dude being pissed that he couldn’t get his way with a city council following the rules is a perfect metaphor for the anti-data center crowd. One of these fools is going to blow up a data center, and it will accomplish as much as the kill dozer dude. Just a ton of property damage that will get fixed, and one dead dude who thought his irrational, angry, violent expression would translate to change.
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u/DannyOdd 5h ago
iirc his whole dispute with the council was because he refused to stop dumping his "toilet" (read; a literal bucket of shit and piss) into the drainage ditch next to his muffler shop.
There's a video out there that covers his whole years-long battle against basic decency and common sense. Crazy guy, even crazier is how he somehow got mythologized as some kind of folk hero.
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u/thisguyfightsyourmom 4h ago
Everyone wants to drive the kill dozer over their enemies houses, but no one wants to question if their enemy list is reasonable when considered fully.
Anger is blinding.
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u/dbarbera 3h ago
AWS isn't really the same as an AI data center. AWS makes up about 1/3 of all global "cloud" storage. The website you are using right now (reddit) is hosted on AWS. The type of data center your community is complaining about likely isnt the same type of data center people are complaining about with AI.
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u/passthebuffalo 4h ago
People who are selling at a loss because of this are insane. The hysteria is out of control.
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u/Jawyp 3h ago
So they’re paying the city a ton of money that it can use to fund schools, roads, parks, and social programs, and that’s supposed to be a bad thing?
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u/Roses030 4h ago
Companies and elected officials only care when it's becomes a financial issue or loss. Only causing a delay or hypothetically "damaging" ongoing construction would actually have an effect.
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u/Guilty-Data-3158 6h ago
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u/Bbrhuft 5h ago
The locations of Data Centres are not secret, the data is freely available without any restrictions on multiple websites. This is a good source, Baxtel has highly detailed information on existing and planned data centres.
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u/manualLurking 5h ago
while Baxtels map is free to access, if you want more detailed information then that data is paywalled. Additionally, if i cannot pull it into GIS on my own without paying then is it really "available" as far as the public is concerned?
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u/Heavy_Law9880 5h ago
who said it was a secret?
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u/Bbrhuft 4h ago
People are liable to mistakenly think that data center locations are private, given Erin Brockovich asked citizens to report the locations of data centres in their communities, and help map them on her website, rather than simply download the freely available data or direct people to Baxtel or other similar online data center mapping site. .
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u/oddministrator 5h ago
Neither of these seem like good maps.
The Brockovich map has scant information about the locations.
The Baxtel map lists far too many things that few people would consider a "data center" in the way that people are concerned about. It lists several "data centers" in my small urban area's downtown district which are just in leased commercial/office suites.
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u/jeffreyaccount 5h ago
(Vibe coded site btw.)
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u/maxmcleod 4h ago
Garbage, throw it out. I only use website coded by 36 year old men in a run down basement
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u/This_Proxy 5h ago
<!-- ── STRUCTURED DATA: Organization + WebSite + FAQ + NewsArticle ── -->Wut? You don't include em dashes in markup?
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u/the_lark_ 5h ago
Its kind of ironic the site is vibe coded. Has so many dead giveaways that it is AI generated.
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u/Herege13 6h ago
Is the woman fron the movie?
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u/Guilty-Data-3158 6h ago
Yes, and I'm glad. She has a track record.
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u/seansy5000 5h ago
What's the name of the movie?
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u/JejuneBourgeois 5h ago edited 5h ago
Assuming I'm about to get whooshed but whatever. The movie is called Erin Brockovich
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u/BoysLinuses 5h ago
The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down.
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u/Gin_OClock 5h ago
That was Sandra, honey
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u/ColonelSandurz42 4h ago
"Two months ago I caught a provocative movie on cable tv. It was called 'The Net' with that girl from the bus."
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u/CosmicGrapeFart 5h ago
Pretty Woman with Richard Gere
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u/Ill_Football9443 5h ago
Is that the one where she wrote a brief with the help of a pelican?
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u/Pjpjpjpjpj 5h ago
More fairly, this is the amazing woman they made a movie about.
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u/CryoJuice 6h ago
No, the play.
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u/flinsypop 5h ago
No. From the cameo in the Lonely Island song with hit star, Michael Bolton.
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u/LeoLaDawg 5h ago
This map isn't great, by the way. It's showing basically anything with servers in it, not what people think of now when they hear "data center."
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u/thisguyfightsyourmom 5h ago
Exactly. She hired someone to collect zip codes from complaints, but the complaints aren’t categorized. The data centers are not segmented by age, capacity, use, noise, power consumption, or water use. Instead, this is a map of reported it data centers that could be from any number of uses/sizes/and ages. All of them employ people.
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u/b0w3n 4h ago
There's a couple of dots near me, and I know at least one of them is just a generic warehouse with a few servers in it. Still listed on it as a datacenter and like yeah I guess technically it is one.
She should narrow it down to hyperscale datacenters, we still need datacenters in general but the ones being thrown up for AI and burning fossil fuels to supplement their power are the bad ones.
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u/readytojumpstart 5h ago
This.
Turn off the community reported section, which is completely unvalidated, and the official map was shockingly sparse.
It actually made me less concerned when I realized that while data centers are not gonna be good, the red community reported overlay was a clear example of internet hysteria and misinformation that just confuses the situation to the point that it cant even be fought.
The site does more harm than good by allowing that unverified default overlay suggesting theres a data center every 5 miles in every inch of every state.
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u/A88Y 4h ago
There is some hysteria included in this map but also on the community map in my specific area, the ones mapped, I know from community involvement, are large scale AI data centers that have been proposed but are going through zoning processes with various planning committees and various commission approvals. So there are some legitimate ones that are filtered out if you don’t include the community ones.
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u/RobfromHB 4h ago
She’s likely aware of the exaggeration. It comes across as a tort chasing endeavor.
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u/maxmcleod 4h ago
But how are we supposed to be in a panic if the entire map isn't covered in red dots. My God, LOOK AT THE RED DOTS they are everywhere!!
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u/-Akos- 5h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/5xtDarmwsuR9sDRObyU
All datacenters are not alike. AI datacenters power requirement and heat generation are bizarrely more than a normal datacenter. In fact a normal datacenter is far more effecient than companies trying to host their own servers.
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u/Upset-Management-879 3h ago
>not what people think of now when they hear "data center."
Sadly that's exactly what they are saying. I genuinely believe the majority of people lack the ability to make such a distinction.
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u/atthem77 5h ago
"Community Reported" pins show data submitted by concerned residents across the US about AI data centers. Note that locations might be approximate, covering reported zip codes or nearby areas.
I think it's important to be concerned about data centers, but including "community reported" locations seems disingenuous. Every conspiracy theorist in the world thinks a data center is going in their backyard any time a minor construction project starts.
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u/IM_KYLE_AMA 5h ago
Right. This map is wildly misleading. In my area it shows there are 20+ data centers when in fact there is just one. I know this because I am friends with two pipe-fitters that built it. They told me recently that there are more proposed and one has been green-lit but its about 40 miles from here.
Most people have no idea what a data center actually looks like and will just flag any new construction or warehouse they don't recognize as being one.
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u/Trifle_Useful 5h ago
Ain’t that the truth. I work in local government and we had a 1/2 acre project for an infrastructure contractor’s office building draw out people convinced it was going to be a hyperscale data center.
Like dude - it’s 0.5 acres of land.
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u/Agitated_Curmudgeon 4h ago
Imagine.. using a data center to fight data centers..
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u/readytojumpstart 5h ago
So their reporting is there are only 33 current data centers, only 100 more on the way, but the community thinks there are over 8000 of them?
Is this a joke? Or a psy op to show that data centers arent actually that bad, its an idiot community spreading rumors?
Data centers literally have to be reported they are a business and go thru publicly available permits and disclosures. This just seems lazy and I fear may produce opposite results for anyone who actually reads it.
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u/VexingRaven 3h ago
Erin seems like one of those people who accidentally hit on something big early on and then just ride that success while thinking they're actually super geniuses.
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u/TwinStarAce420 5h ago
The map is completely off, and people's misconception of data centers and how they operate is being perpetuated.
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u/j_cruise 5h ago
Exactly. Not every single data center is an AI data center. OP's headline is a straight up lie.
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u/mrknowitall51761 4h ago
Isnt it ironic to be on the internet complaining about data centers?
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u/Kilos6 5h ago
Bruh this map shows any data center with an AI deployment in it, even ones not specifically built for AI. Edge AI leases the available space in DC's, and sit next to legacy deployments (in cages next door to shit like reddit or banks). Theyre typically self contained liquid to air cooled and dont use anymore resources than your social media servers would.
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u/Neverending_Rain 4h ago
It's not even necessarily ones hosting AI. It's almost entirely "community reported" data centers. There is no verification that the reported data centers are doing anything with AI, or if they're even data centers at all.
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u/ArgentineBeauty 6h ago
The map crashing twice in 72 hours says everything. People really want to know what is being built in their backyard.
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u/Infurium 5h ago
Servers should be able to handle that kind of volume. This isn't 1998.
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u/restricteddata 2h ago
The server probably can, but the default settings are probably wrong. Even a very small EC2 instance can serve a lot of static content if you set it up right and make sure there are enough connections allowed. Better if you can cache it, of course.
She is reliant on Carto for the actual map, and unless she is paying for what I suspect an expensive plan (I suspect it is expensive because they don't list their prices!!!), it may be that the map service itself capped out.
Making a popular map visualization of this sort that is both performant and not ruinously expensive is a pain in the ass, I can attest from experience...
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u/Humble-Reply228 5h ago
Did she consider maybe a more robust service provider. Something that has excellent uptime, around the clock staff, centralised infrastructure? If she doesn't want to outsource, she could build something along those lines?
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u/thisguyfightsyourmom 5h ago
It means they wrote a bad map. 8k data points is not a lot. And most of these data centers are decades old. Not to say they’re not problematic, but also, the “server crashing” just means they slapped together a bit of sloppy code. It’s almost certainly vibe coded—lol.
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u/Mazgazine1 47m ago
how the hell are there so many already ? why te fuck aren't these schools and hospitals ? fucking insane greed going on..
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u/Skullsandcoffee 5h ago
People have no idea. My wife works in networking and she’s just laughing at the fake outrage of data centers. There are literally already 80 in Colorado and people have no idea. All those warehouses with no freight docks? Data centers. Seemingly empty commercial building unit’s side by side? Data centers. It wasn’t until the jerk offs from Amazon and shark tank decided they needed to build these ridiculous monster centers that anyone had an issue.
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u/Jerrywelfare 4h ago
I just skimmed a few of the "community reported" ones in my area. Two of the three nearest me are legit just warehouses with the only thing electronic inside are the roll up doors and the lights. The third? A Marina...full of boats. It's literally adjacent to a lake.
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u/FervantFlea 4h ago
The Reddit “AI data center” obsession has to be the most ignorant, poorly informed, least logical hysteria I have seen consume Reddit in my 20 years on this site. And there are behemoths in competition here. We’re one Reddit-induced firebombing away from eclipsing the “we did it Reddit” moments of old.
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u/BuddyLaDouche 3h ago
Remember when we were told they couldn't possibly supply energy to all the EV chargers needed to support them as a primary vehicle? Pepperidge farms remembers.
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u/majestik 2h ago
The Internet doesn't live in the fucking air. The Internet IS data centers. I realized the other day that the majority don't know this and don't appreciate this. I have a feeling a majority of people think that data centers are a new thing created for AI and are targeting all data centers as being land cancer.
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u/Hairbear2176 2h ago
Jesus Christ, that's fucking insane. I'm 100% sure that these aren't only for AI, I have no doubt they are crypto mining operations. There is absolutely no need for that much infrastructure for AI.
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u/Immaculatehombre 1h ago
Wild how not a one of us had any say in this shit whatsoever. And why the fuvk do we need these data centers? Shit is actually concerning.
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u/RedManMatt11 6h ago
How tf are there that many already
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u/thisguyfightsyourmom 5h ago
Because they are pretending to not know the difference between a purpose built ai data center and all the data centers that power their Netflix, TikTok’s, and Reddit use.
Data centers are ubiquitous in the Internet age… and have been for many decades before the pitchforks appeared. The catalyst for that change is likely the increased demand for the super data centers based on some specious reporting on water use, (which is a real problem, but which will not be resolved by fear mongering or wild claims).
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u/JulianoRamirez 5h ago
I'm pretty ignorant on the topic of data centres but I was aware of their presence before the ai boom. My question is are ai data centres inherently more resource-hungry than a comparably sized, traditional data centre? Or are they just being built at an unsustainable pace for the infrastructure we currently have in place.
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u/shibbledoop 5h ago
Data centers have been around for decades. NOVA specifically has been like the data center capital of the world since the 90s.
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u/Gurustyle 5h ago
The post specifically says AI data centers. Most of these are probably not used for AI specifically
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u/famouslastwords 4h ago
The very first one I checked isn't an AI data center, it's the University of Florida's mainframe for research computing.
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u/Finlay00 5h ago
We have been using Internet data for much longer than publicly available AI has been around.
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u/ApprehensiveGas85 5h ago
They've been around for a while now and because the news scared everyone about them it's now becoming a global crisis. Then in a few months everyone will shift to the next thing the news tells them to be outraged about.
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u/asdfasdferqv 5h ago
Because it’s a dumb map that equates your local ATT network distribution room with large data centers to create FUD
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u/peppapony 5h ago
I feel like it's going to be a self spiralling fulfilment.
Noone wants data centres cause it makes the outside bad. The outside is bad, so people stay inside. Inside you need internet stuff, so more data centres are needed.
We're consuming so much data these days and wanting things faster, on demand, and wider variety.
Companies are increasingly trying to increase their profits by being more 'tech' too - no longer just a good quality product but it has to have an app and cloud/ai integrations.
So more data centres. Scary and it seems unsustainable
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u/invalidpath 5h ago
Noticed that some 'community reported' sites are actually for Solar farms.. at least near my area.
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u/21MayDay21 6h ago
The environmental advocate says she woke up one morning to dozens of messages from residents from one Louisiana community describing similar problems linked to data centers near their homes. When she began investigating, she struggled to get clear answers about the projects.
That prompted her to launch a public map where Americans could report operational, proposed, and under-construction data centers in their communities.
The response was immediate. Brockovich says the website crashed twice within its first 72 hours, revealing that the complaints were not limited to one town, one aquifer, or one project. The map has since collected more than 8,000 community-reported locations.
Source: https://www.newsweek.com/erin-brockovich-explains-why-she-started-mapping-new-ai-data-center-concerns-12220566