A lot of the uptick is probably at least blamed on the need for infrastructure upgrades. These “benefit everyone” even though they are caused by basically one client, so the price increase to cover the upgrades is applied to everyone.
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 9 hours ago
Can anyone ELI5 why the cost gets passed on?
KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
No, neither of you understand how this works or why a data center might cause local electricity bills to go up.
Your bill might go up because the electric company doesn’t give two shits who they sell their electricity to and companies like Google, Meta, etc. are all capable of far outspending actual families and peoples in these local markets. So, the peon’s prices go up.
It’s like, really simply supply/demand economics… it isn’t some grand conspiracy.
Idk why everyone has fucking surprise pikachu face at this sort of thing, big tech made out like a bandit with literally everyone’s money in the 2010s and has been sitting on it since. Everyone has memory like a goldfish though and doesn’t seem to understand exactly the scale of wealth these companies have. If they didn’t dump it all into LLMs and AI they would’ve found other vanity projects to fund.
The problem here isn’t the data centers or AI, it’s that we willingly handed over the keys to the city! Blaming morally neutral things like infrastructure is what they want you to do because then you won’t focus on doing actually effective activism and resistance to their stranglehold on the economy. 80% aren’t some clever sleuths who “really realize what’s going on,” you’re all being fooled and it is surprisingly easy to do. I’ve been on the other side before, I’ve seen it. They know what they’re doing. We collectively don’t. Simple as, to borrow from across the pond.
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
we willingly handed over the keys to the city
I’ve been screaming that the power and water and cost issues are failures of our local governments. No, it’s not capitalism, socialists can be bought and paid for as well. No, the feds need do nothing, city and state governments should handle their unique issues. Yes, we need to vote out or city and county councilmen who allow this horseshit.
OK, I could easily argue for the state taxing the snot out of these data centers. Seems a no-brainer.
jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
seems like this community really doesn’t like hearing the truth that changing these things are down to their action or inaction as individuals and a group. having a victim complex feels really popular nowadays.
wow, who could’ve predicted that sitting and consuming tiktok slop brainrot for 15 years rendered most people dumb as rocks??
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 8 hours ago
neither of you understand how this works
Was it the “ELI5” part that gave it away, Einstein?
jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours ago
For the OC that’s fair - but I’m not replying to them, I’m replying to the person confidently responding to the ELI5 with conjecture that has no basis in reality. ELI5 doesn’t mean “take random stabs in the dark even if you know nothing about what you’re talking about,” fuckface.
Fermion@mander.xyz 3 hours ago
The supply side of power generation is coordinated by a bid system. So the cheapest sources are activated first. As demand goes up increasingly expensive forms of power generation are turned on.
For daily and seasonal variation, this is fine. The amount of time that really expensive generation is active is only a small portion and the base rate can stay low. However, if you add a bunch of baseload without adding equivalent generation, your utility will be stuck buying at the top end of the capacity market auction. The datacenter will have negotiated a discoubted rate though because constant demand is good for the utility in the long run.
Source: none given, but the capacity auction is a real thing, and the predicted behaviour of such a system can be reasoned.