The Atlantic has taken a rather weird turn lately.
Are they now simping for data centers?
The Atlantic is owned by Emerson Collective, which is a venture capitalist firm founded by Laurene Powell Jobs - Steve Jobs’ widow.
They invest in “companies in energy and environment, artificial intelligence, digital health, fintech, education, work and media.”
So clearly biased and hypocritical on the topic of data centers.
Stop wrecking our water, air, quiet, and wildlife!
The Atlantic is owned by Steve Job’s widow…
The Atlantic has a partnership with openai. I cancelled my subscription.
No it isn’t. They are a drain on society. They do not produce any useful gain.
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I wouldn’t go that far. All the websites, apps, and electronic services we use every day are hosted in some datacenter somewhere. I’d say we get value out of that.
They didn’t become a political football until the AI companies drastically increased how much power and cooling each rack used. I don’t think we’re getting enough extra value out of stuffing AI in everything to justify the added environmental cost over more standard, non-AI web services.
Sure and we don’t any new ones. These latest ones are huge inefficient and unoptimized. They are not being built to earn a profit. They are destroying the consumer electronics market and should not be allowed to do so. They are raising prices for electricity and using natural resources especially water. They do not pay their way. They bribe and con clueless politicians into letting them get a free ride at the expanse of citizens.
It’s a general view, we aren’t thinking we need to burn down all the data centers… the fact is they are looking to scale up 5x the current stock in a couple of years. This isn’t like saying “we should never cut down a tree” this is like, “we shouldn’t clean cut the whole rainforest”.
Everything is about quantity.
Sounds like something a datacenter would say…
The Atlantic used to be a great read, I still think about their article on Captain Crunch back in the days and how excited it got me about phreaking again.
Long live the blue box.
But fuck this new editorial direction.
This is the scenario playing out in my head:
Big Tech hotshot: the protests are becoming serious. A general opinion is forming. People really don’t want this. But I want this, my companies need this. And all the government support & funding, yummy!
The Atlantic: Right, and we get some of that sweet moulah. We need to create consent. Lemme see what we can do - hmm, how about roundabout dismissing legitimate concern as being overblown, calling it a panic? Concern trolling basically. Crude, but it has worked before.
The Atlantic: “Watch us put a loaded shotgun in our mouth and tell everyone this is fine.”
