This is the real tragedy of the modern data center. In the rush to be number one, they’ve captured the government at the top and use their influence to bypass environmental regulation and pollute at a grand scale just to save a dollar and some construction time. We could have had datacenters running on solar+batteries that could easily make money powering the grid as well, but no, we need to feed the oil machine and we let them run burner turbines unregulated. We could have had datacenters running closed-loop cooling, but no, we let them draw water directly for their cooling systems and dump it unfiltered back into the environment, further polluting it with heavy metals.
As long as one man desires to have more riches than another, this will never be solveable, I’m afraid. The shame.
slapped with pocket chance
Yeah, a real slap in the face that is…
Fines do nothing. Blow up the data center.
Every bomb dropped on a data center is one less bomb for israel to drop on a Palestinian school.
“One two thousand pound bamb could blow up this whole data center.”
Not “slapped with”, more like “charged for”. Just the cost of doing business, The business of poisoning your community
The article states that this thing costs $17 BILLION to build. A $1 million fine is less than a drop in a bucket here, that’s just giving the finger to the people.
That’s like paying a 15 money fine while building a 250000 money house.
Depends on whether they look at the fine emotionally or logically. Logically it makes no difference. Emotionally so many billionaires HATE giving up any money that isn’t going to work for them.
Emotionally so many billionaires HATE giving up any money that isn’t going to work for them.
And even more see the fine as a cost of doing business, and has already been accounted for.
Until we start jailing these fucks and charging them double digit percent of gross revenue (not profit, straight up what they take in), they won’t learn anything more than to keep planning for the few bucks (comparatively) they have to pay to make 10000x that.
They would like it less if it was $1m per day but even that if a tiny amount compared with the cost of the data centre.
One million is life changing for a petty human, but the cost of doing business for a data center.
Each of those 62 unpermitted has generators probably cost more than that.
I opened the article see if the fine per generator or just a whoopsie fee. Oh. MY. god. They dont have to stop operating? Somehow inspectors missed 62 generator and pressure was needed for this? Its a midterm election this should be all over the local politics but thanks to oligarchy it’s going to be forgotten by monday.
The fine should be much bigger, the generators should be confiscated and any executives that approved it should be in jail.
Nothing but (temporal) confiscation of land and hardware would frighten them enough.
And loss of freedom through jail time and fines to the people personally in charge
Nothing says »AI will build a cleaner, smarter future« quite like powering it with 62 unpermitted gas generators next to homes and schools. Microsoft gets the compute, DataOne gets a $1.07 million fine, and the neighbors get the exhaust. 🤷
