All these bans on building data centers on Earth are starting to make this wild proposition seem a little more rational.

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Octoth0rpe a day ago | parent | next [-]

Only a little, not a lot. It seems like the easy answer is still terrestrial with a heck of a lot more giving back. For example:

- offering to pay some nominal subsidy for all households electricity bills in the region.

- committing to only closed loop cooling

- if the location is amenable, then providing free heating to neighboring buildings.

- only building in blighted locations with no current economic value

Other random ideas: I wonder if anyone is considering building server racks directly into offshore windfarms. Replacing failed hardware is annoying, but surely more economical than in space where IIUC, there _is_ no plan to ever maintain hardware at all, just deorbit and replace. All the water is right there for cooling (though I'm sure saltwater has its own problems with corrosion). While the current US administration is clearly anti windmill, that might work nicely in Europe.

	▲	flatline a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Every time there is an economic boom like this, you get unscrupulous actors coming in and extracting as much value as they can before the regulatory environment catches up. Yes, datacenters should be doing all these things, but that costs money, so they won't until there are local statutes and federal regulations that require them to do so. I expect the current situation to continue at a huge social cost for at least the next 5-10 years unless the bottom falls out of the AI boom before then.
	▲	Zigurd a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Microsoft IIRC sank a small server farm into the ocean and found that it worked pretty well. Surely there is fiber alongside the electrical cable from offshore windmills, so that's not a totally crazy idea, but it's never going to happen with SpaceX because Elon still craves Trump's approval, and Trump is anti-windmill.

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Zigurd a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Space data centers are so absurd they are the most Elizabeth Holmes Theranos part of SpaceX. IOW this is the part of the story where everyone with a jot of sense can't be fooled, and all your left with are the willingly hornswoggled.