r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 26d ago
Artificial Intelligence Amazon secretly circumvents community vote for massive AI data center using 45-year-old rules — Gilroy residents locked out of public comment window
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/amazon-secretly-circumvents-community-vote-for-massive-ai-data-center-45-year-old-rules-lock-gilroy-residents-out-of-public-comment-window4.3k
u/TheFatalOneTypes 26d ago
Lets see how upset people really are, then :)
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u/elmatador12 26d ago
Everyone talking about not shopping at amazon and my first thought was that the residents of gilroy would somehow sabotage the actual data center. 😂
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u/Beatlepoint 26d ago edited 26d ago
I bet if they put their heads together they could come up with a🔥idea.
Edit: stop upvoting this I'm gonna get put on a list.
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u/FlyingPig_Grip 26d ago
Has anyone seen Earnest Goes to Camp?
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u/ProbablyDustin 26d ago
Best Supporting Actor: Golf Cart
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u/RobinGoodfell 26d ago
I don't remember that one, but I'm always open to inspiration.
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u/FlyingPig_Grip 26d ago edited 26d ago
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u/HenryDorsettCase47 26d ago
lol. It’s hilarious to me that people are talking about civil disobedience and direct action and of all films your mind immediately goes to this scene in Ernest Goes To Camp. Did you watch it recently or does that scene just randomly pop into your head?
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u/FlyingPig_Grip 26d ago
For a silly movie, it's super 90's woke. Like it totally appropriates Native American culture in a probably incorrect and possibly offensive way but it is so earnest (no pun intended) that it becomes endearing. The corporation is trying to take the Native American land for mining purposes so the group of misfits led by Ernest commit acts of terrorism on the evil corporation. Direct violent action was encouraged.
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u/Sororita 26d ago
That's like how Captain Planet was very much in favor of direct action against polluting corporations. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an episode where Doctor Blight was trying to build a data center, honestly.
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u/Danbarber82 26d ago
Fun Fact, the actor who played the Chief was Iron Eyes Cody, who was known for playing Native roles for decades and did the famous "Crying Indian" ad against littering. It came out in the 90s that his Native American heritage was 100% fake and he was actually Italian.
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u/RichardCrapper 26d ago
After that Lineage Cold Storage fire in Los Angeles, it made me realize how vulnerable these massive and expensive buildings are to threats from above.
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u/MelangeBot 26d ago
I am not much of a keyboard reddit warrior so I am not going to type out something edgy and revolutionary. I am off the opinion that it's best to just listen to the authorities and never destroy anything or cause unrest. This keeps your family safe and is best for society.
Next to that I do have some cool hobbies.
But that's unrelated to what we are talking about :-) if you know what I mean.
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u/VisualBoysenberry718 26d ago
Wait til you upgrade to potassium perchlorate...
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u/Divine_Entity_ 26d ago
The 2 ingredients for thermite are pretty much everywhere and uncontrolled, its less explosive but making a puddle of molten iron and aluminumoxide is useful for many applications.
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u/bareback_cowboy 26d ago
Read the article. Amazon is generously donating one MILLION dollars so they can buy a new FIRE TRUCK! it's like they read your mind! Brilliant idea!
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u/Clair_Osbcurious 26d ago
I bet the 5th of November could be a good day to do something. Just saying.
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u/Canadian_Poltergeist 26d ago
If everyone turns every tap on at once it might cause enough negative pressure in the city's water system to force an overheat shutdown
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u/ActuallyItsSumnus 26d ago edited 26d ago
Shopping at Amazon is a drop in an ocean of their revenue these days. The majority of their income is AWS now.
Like, if it makes you feel better, go for it. But it's negligible to them.
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u/pewpewpewbang 26d ago
no, it matters. there are thousands of people that support each product group category and thousands of people who support each individual amazon labeled product. we review and scrutinize sales numbers on a weekly basis. amazon cares about the pennies and it drives business decisions. it's why amazon basics will steal the idea of a random product that maybe sees an overall net revenue of five figures. if my biz group sees a consistently occurring YOY reduction in sales you can bet that the group's senior leadership would be sweating.
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u/twentyThree59 26d ago
Their AWS business is separate. If you kill their online store by boycotting, they will still build data centers for AWS.
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u/Bloggledoo 26d ago
It still has a really negative effect on local business.
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u/ActuallyItsSumnus 26d ago
I never claimed it doesn't. I'm merely trying to get people to have a better grasp on where the battle they're fighting is actually taking place.
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u/WillArrr 26d ago
At this point that's probably more realistic than getting a critical mass of people to stop using Amazon.
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u/MrFyr 26d ago
Great time of year to plant some bamboo
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u/Foxymaniac 26d ago
lets not start an enviromental disaster since bamboo is invavise and near impossible to get rid of. But i have heard sugar really is great for keeping concrete from hardening
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u/DontAskAboutMyButt 26d ago
I’ve heard a nice pudding recipe is one pound of sugar mixed with up to 2 tons of wet concrete
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u/Joeness84 26d ago
Im no material engineer but Id imagine being 0.001% sugar is going to have no effect.
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u/DontAskAboutMyButt 26d ago
I got the numbers wrong- it looks like about 40-50 pounds of sugar to one ton of concrete:
A typical load of concrete has about 4000 to 5000 lbs of cement. 1% of that is 40lbs to 50 lbs that's 8 bags of sugar to ruin a load.
You don't have to ruin every truck just a few and a whole placement is ruined. If you have 1 bad load in a wall placement it can't support weight and is completely ruined.
If you know what you're doing you could make it impossible to construct anything with like 15 bags of sugar a day. That's like $20-$30 where I live. It is a completely legitimate strategy.
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u/RogerMexicosBalls 26d ago
If bamboo did anything the way people who post these comments think it does, Southeast Asia wouldn't have any buildings in it.
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u/vialabo 26d ago
Doesn't Bamboo have a whole community of herbivores, insects, fungi, pathogens, and competitors that stop it from being invasive there?
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u/Kentaiga 26d ago
No one is gonna go anything and that’s the problem with this country. They could bulldoze your home and 99% of people would do jack about it. We have literally zero initiative.
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u/sten45 26d ago
The more they take from us, the more likely someone’s gonna be so desperate, and with nothing to lose because Americans think they have a lot to lose, and the billionaires are pushing us to the point where we’re gonna have nothing left to lose
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u/HenryDorsettCase47 26d ago
Yeah. People are definitely willing to overlook at lot, frogs in boiling water kinda thing. But they will eventually snap when shit goes too far and they’ll do something about it.
I think anyone who says Americans are too complacent or lazy or will put up with too much think all prior uprisings happened at the drop of a dime. They don’t put anything into historical context because they read about a revolution and think “those people were willing and eager for change.” It doesn’t occur to them that the cause of those revolutions were often decades in the making. Literal generations of suffering before one thing was the spark that lit the powder and kicked shit off.
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u/SeattlesWinest 26d ago
Plus it’s already happening. The United CEO, that guy that burned down the warehouse he worked at, mass shootings. The People are lashing out. Those are not the actions of a healthy society.
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u/cyanescens_burn 26d ago
Maybe, but if we look at history from a sociopolitical perspective, we can see how they can use small steps to make what are eventually huge, catastrophic changes without the general public doing much at all.
This excerpt explains it well, and is about a much more consequential and horrific set of policies that lead to genocide:
“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty.
If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33.
But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.”
— They Thought They Were Free: The Germans
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u/-ReadingBug- 26d ago
Or is it fear? Americans are so fearful and play nice I'm not sure a big furnace and a long line would cause panic. You'd all politically correct yourselves right up the ramp.
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u/RogerMexicosBalls 26d ago
"Ooooh I can't wait for November! I'm gonna vote so hard against this incinerator I'm about to be shoved into!"
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u/DigNitty 26d ago
My community was cohesively and vehemently against Walmart setting up a store 10 years ago.
It made it to a ballot vote.
A year later someone noticed Walmart had job postings on their website in our general area. Some people did some sleuthing and realized an old Kmart that had gone out of business was halfway complete to being a Walmart. There were no Walmart signs, trucks and scaffolding hid the colors of the building. Walmart had bought the building which still had the old store’s business license and took it over so they wouldn’t have to apply for a new one. The process for renewing a business license is different than getting it in the first place.
Just absolutely shit human behavior. Many people who don’t live here knew full well Walmart was not welcome and gamed the rules to sneak it in against everyone’s wishes. I’ve never shopped there. But predictably many people couldn’t help themselves and now that parking lot is always half full. A couple local businesses have closed down in the last few years. Hard not to blame shit like Walmarts actions for that.
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u/notquitedeadyetman 26d ago
This is a perfect example of one of the ways that law in general is handled bothers me.
If the agreement is "we don't want a Walmart here," then a Walmart can't be there. The legal loophole shouldn't exist. If I'm standing in the spot where we said there wouldn't be a Walmart, and I'm looking at a walmart, something is wrong.
And I know there are layers and considerations to these things that make it much more complicated, and doing it my way would probably break something else, but sometimes I wish we could pull some of the layers back and make things plain and simple.
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u/kalidoscopiclyso 26d ago
The point is to abide by the constitution. Problem is the constitution protects the right to petition, but doesn’t require the government to care or respond or take the opinions into account
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u/BoyGeorgous 26d ago
So I knew about this project before and have been following it for awhile, and then read this article. I’m honestly not sure where AWS or the City did anything unusual here. They did a full Environmental Impact Report, had public meetings gathered public comment (I made one), the permit then has to go before the City Council, the approval was appealable, etc. The scrutiny from the City and public was real.
So my take is people weren’t paying attention, missed all their previous and in my opinion extensive opportunities to oppose this project…and are just now getting pissed because they’re seeing construction.
I’m as leery of these data centers as anyone, and I don’t blame the community for being angry…but to act as of this was approved somehow through a corrupt circumventing of the normal government process is not correct.
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u/ParsnipResponsible86 26d ago
Yea, the majority has a complaint, but is too busy, lazy or can't be bothered to take action. They just point their fingers at their neighbors.
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u/Dubious_Odor 26d ago
Most legal process are decades old, some older, some are centuries old. The age of the statue is irrelevant. The article is using framing to force a specific perspective without saying anything blatantly false. Another way to read it is Amazon submitted a project proposal to the city 6 years ago following the cities development statutes, which apply to all developments. The article state it did go through the public notice period which closed in 2024, 4 YEARS after the project was submitted. It went through the normal tug of war all developments go through and was then approved. This is literally how all cities function. The differences now are the sensationalizing of data centers and the publics lack of understanding of how things get built. Data centers have been built for decades and no one cared, as illustrated by this article. The publics choosing to be engaged now is good, hopefully people will gain a better understanding of these processes and how they work. But just because no one cared for 4 years and now they do doesnt mean you get a do over or the project is not legitamate. The article implying some vaguely nefarious activety is disingenuous and irresponsible.
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u/Danger_Danger 26d ago
They're not. People still purchase all this shit from Amazon, been doing it for years now and they're not gonna stop.
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u/djprofitt 26d ago
Once again, the actions of individuals are not the issue. Prime is one of the smallest revenue earners for Amazon, fully eclipsed by AWS (like it’s not even close). This is the ‘plastic straw’ argument all over again.
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u/RollingMeteors 26d ago
This is the ‘plastic straw’ argument all over again.
We went from plastic straws wrapped in paper to paper straws wrapped in plastic.
¡The planet is saved!
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u/Danger_Danger 26d ago
Yeah, first they sell you capitalism, then they hook you on materialsm, and then they own you with fascism.
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u/makemeking706 26d ago
Master, the serfs are revolting.
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u/Meowakin 26d ago
Rude. I know they aren’t the most pleasant to look at, but you can’t just go around calling them revolting!
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u/beachfrontprod 26d ago
It's almost as if that "dying brick and mortar" mantra that surfaced during Amazon's rise wasn't particularly true ... And if you don't live in the US, don't support us products. The faster other countries detach from their reliance on US companies the better.
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u/Danger_Danger 26d ago
Absolutely.
Other counties need to do the mature thing and punish the US. We need massive US goods boycotts
Stop buying our products. This country did NOT learn the correct lesson from 9/11. I'm not saying violence needs to be used, hopefully. I think hard-line trade embargos on US goods and services is needed.
Problem is a lot of your politicians and powerful elites reaaaaallly like what's happing over here.
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u/Hopeful_Hornet4460 26d ago
My biggest issue with this take every time it comes up with any major corporation right now is "where else would I go?"
For a large chunks of America, our alternative is Amazon or Walmart or (pick any other fucked uo corporations thats equally fucked up)
Thats the point. Thats what these fuckheads have been pushing for since before most of us were born. For many our options are fascist bastard light blue and carboard aesthetic or fascist bastard dark blue and plastic aesthetic. Local grocers have been wiped out in these areas for decades. Dollar general as an alternative? (Oh look, fascist bastardsnin yellow and claustrophobic aesthetic).
For most of us its literally "pick the color of fascism you want or starve"
Plant my own food? Thats people who own real estate level money and most of us never had a chance at having that level of money.
Not saying to do your best to try and be independent of this orphan crushing machine. I make my own bread from cultures and keep a tiny garden inside the house (not enough to sustain anybody, but if I had the space I could get enough seeds going quick enough to be sustainable in a year or two)
Most of us never stood a chance to not be caught up in it like this. Our only option was to choose parents that lived somewhere else before we were born.
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u/TheFotty 26d ago
Reddit uses AWS. AWS brings in more income to Amazon than their storefront does. AWS is what is going in that data center...
Everyone needs to stop using websites powered by AWS then too right?
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u/ailish 26d ago
Consumers can't help who uses AWS. A large portion of the internet uses it.
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u/Impossible_Guitar235 26d ago
Joke's on you, I haven't shopped at Amazon all year.
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u/Vahuo89 26d ago edited 26d ago
Because some folks can't afford to shop anywhere else l
Walmart caused the same thing. Went to lower income areas, fought against the local shops who couldn't competr, drove em out of business and then the only place left was Walmart.
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u/General-Purpose2942 26d ago
No, they're too lazy to shop anywhere else. Amazon doesn't have the best price available anymore and why should they? They know laziness tops everything.
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u/epicause 26d ago
Yep, mostly a ripoff. Product search is garbage. Mostly filled with re-sellers now with randomized characters for brand names.
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u/Radiant_Safe1228 26d ago
Not that much. Nobody ever stops consuming.
The amount of looks I get when I tell people I don't use Amazon is alarming.
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u/AvailableReporter484 26d ago
It’s a shame that there are no severe consequences for politicians and corporations that deceive and undermine the general public. I feel like France had some good ideas on this topic back in the day 🤔
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u/knockingatthegate 26d ago
Bippity boppity / Time for the choppity
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u/Electrical-Trash-712 26d ago
Haven’t heard this rhyme before and it got a good chuckle out of me. Thank you
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u/ZootSuitRiot33801 26d ago edited 26d ago
Unrelated: As the wealthy and their sycophants seek to plunge us all further into authoritarian surveillance states, it reminds me of some movies that are based on true stories. Not all of them are 1 to 1 accurate in their recounting of history, but they're quite inspiring nonetheless, seeing how some actions worked and where things go wrong, conjuring up questions like "If it or similar were to take place now, how would it be adapted, in addition to taking modern technology into account?" I'd like to share them here. Why? No particular reason, but watch them if you can:
- Army of Crime (2011)
- Defiance (2008)
- Edelweiss Pirates (2004)
- Deacons for Defense (2003)
- Free State of Jones (2016)
- The 24th (2020)
- Matewan (1987)
- An American Story (1992)
- Michael Collins (1996)
- Winter of Fire (2015)
Also unrelated, people with no need to depend on oppressive systems to provide daily necessities tend to achieve a lot of meaningful actions. They have real supportive community-based foundations present for alternatives that provide relative safety, which many common folk can fall back on, to commit to any effective action be they short or long term.
There's a post of suggestions HERE that could possibly prove to be of some help to anyone looking into getting started ASAP.
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u/TeaAndS0da 26d ago
The only one I’ve seen of these is Winter on Fire. Definitely checking out the rest and this comment is meant to save that list so thank you.
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u/AvailableReporter484 26d ago
I like to think of myself as a principled person who believes that certain kinds of acts and punishments are unethical and immoral and should never be used, but then I think about how pain and destruction the wealthy elite and their cronies cause and it makes me rethink just how much I can stick to those principles.
All I know is that these narcissists and sycophants aren’t going to suddenly stop doing what they’re doing. That kind of disdain for the human race is a disease that’s been bred in their upper class for centuries. Asking the rich to stop killing people for profit is like asking a dog to stop licking its asshole: They don’t know why they do it they just know that they and their kind cannot and will never stop doing it
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u/SEND_ME_FAKE_NEWS 26d ago
Do you really think we’re heading for severe consequences?
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u/AvailableReporter484 26d ago
No. Of course not. Certainly not while half the country is too scared to leave their homes at night because of the threat of trans babies.
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u/Outrageous_Desk8966 26d ago
Idk, i think we're really hitting our tipping point. Just a few more online comments about it and surely someone else will take action.
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u/AvailableReporter484 26d ago
Just keep upvoting my politically brilliant opinions and it’s bound to happen
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u/zeolus123 26d ago
Oh there absolutely could be. But giving details would get me banned on Reddit.
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u/AvailableReporter484 26d ago
I think most of us are intelligent enough to pick up what we’re putting down. The simple fact of the matter is that things aren’t bad enough for the kind of “justice” we seek.
Whenever I hear about some crazed mass shooting now days I just wonder why they couldn’t take it out on those more deserving than classrooms full of children. I’m certainly not saying that it would be good and that those individuals would be heralded for their bout of radical violent insanity. I would never insinuate that, but if I had to pick between a mass shooting at the bilderberg group or George Washington elementary school, I think it’s a safe pick lmfao
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u/carlotta4th 26d ago
Depends on how severe you mean. When Utah politicians were pushing for the data center and ignoring what the public wanted several of the most prominent supporters ended up losing their races. That may not be a "severe" consequence--but to the politicians themselves it probably feels like one.
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u/AvailableReporter484 26d ago
In this case I would consider a “severe” punishment a punishment that leaves the offender unwilling or unable to commit such acts again. Losing the race doesn’t prevent the people who are actively destroying the environment or lives from accomplishing either.
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u/jswissle 26d ago
I wouldn’t blink an eye if it happened live-streamed in broad daylight
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u/chubbysumo 26d ago
amazon came in and did the legal stuff 2 years ago as quietly as possible, and likely paid the town mayor to shut his mouth until they start building. thats what they tried here, and it likely worked. the datacenter lawyers came in here quietly and tried to get approval to build a 400 acre hyperscale datacenter. They got the zoning changed, and the plans approved, but "pulled back" when public pressure mounted. THey still have their approvals, which are valid here for 18 months. they can start clearing the land they were given by the city any time, but just haven't.
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u/MisfitPotatoReborn 26d ago
The article doesn't say they got the zoning changed. As the headline suggests, these rules are 45 years old.
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u/uuhson 26d ago
I don't understand the point of this article, should we not follow laws if they get too old or something? Is 45 years too old of a law?
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u/LazySilverSquid 26d ago
The US supreme justices were recently looking at 200+yo laws on whether a drunk (heavy drinker of alcohol) can legally own a firearm to decide if a person, in the modern day, who smokes marijuana can have a gun. (They judged that they can BTW)
Unless a law gets changed or repealed, it shouldn't matter how old the law is. Yes, some laws are incredibly outdated & either need to be changed, repealed or are just not enforced (there was one where you couldn't walk down a public street with an ice cream cone in your back pocket in some province or state), but until then, especially for things like laws relating to zoning, they should probably keep being enforced.
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u/DM_ME_KUL_TIRAN_FEET 26d ago
The zoning wasn’t changed. That’s why it didn’t get a public consultation. It was already zoned appropriately. This article is extremely sensationalised. I live in gilroy so I have read extensively about this.
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u/threegigs 26d ago
amazon came in and did the legal stuff 2 years ago as quietly as possible,
Six years ago, this started in 2020.
and likely paid the town mayor to shut his mouth until they start building
Dunno why because the permit application was public for 3 years, apparently. Where are you getting this information?
came in here quietly and tried to get approval
Came in, followed the normal procedures, which are no more quiet or otherwise, apparently, and there is no 'try', they got approval.
They got the zoning changed
No zoning change was made, where did you get this information? The site has been commercial/industrial for a rather long time.
The headline of this post is wholly misleading, and doesn't bear much resemblance to reality. Back in 2024 when it was still open for comment, no one cared, which was pretty much the status quo. I see no evidence of 'secretly' and I see nothing that looks like circumvention. The linked article explicitly states they followed the rules for the entire years-long process.
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u/cidvard 26d ago
I don't know if I'd say it explained it well, but from my read they cut off public comments on it because there had been previous meetings about this issue since 2020 and nobody really expressed interest over what was then probably viewed as a boring zoning request nobody pays attention to, and they technically didn't have to allow further public comment after a set amount of time (the article says 2024).
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u/DrProfSrRyan 26d ago
They circumvented it by “adhering to local zoning rules set 45 years ago.”
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u/Opulent-tortoise 26d ago
Yeah the reason people can’t submit comments is… because the process for approval and public comment ended 2 years ago, which was 4 years after the initial public proposal. Garbage clickbait headline
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u/MisfitPotatoReborn 26d ago
What a clickbait headline lol. Industrial district allows data centers by-right, so Amazon builds a data-center by-right.
People are so used to community meetings they think every single building needs special approval from the city with 3 input rounds from the public, but that's the exception not the norm.
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u/brianwski 26d ago
People ... they think every single building needs special approval from the city
It is so true. Somewhere along the way, a culture was created in California where people decided zoning wasn't "enough", and laws weren't "enough", and permits weren't "enough", and that any one person in California should be able to stop a multi-million dollar construction project at any time if the governor hasn't met with them personally and explained it won't affect them.
There is nothing so "California" as stopping a 6 year old permitted project like this (which was conceived of and permitted before "AI" was a thing) by claiming it hasn't been discussed enough yet, or a study needs to be done, or we need more public hearings. I think it is one of the main pastimes for people who live in California.
Here is how funny it is: people would move to the state of California, then attempt to block construction of housing and commercial buildings that were green-lit years before they ever set foot in California. LOL.
Source: I used to live a bit north of Gilroy in California (I'm from Oregon originally and moved there for work).
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u/preferablyno 26d ago
The article suggests it complies with zoning and doesn’t need many other approvals. They really didn’t circumvent anything
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u/That_Jicama2024 26d ago
Interesting. They're not locked out of burning it down and sabotaging it for its entire existence though, are they?
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u/Cum_Quat 26d ago
hey careful, I got a 3 day ban on my account for posting something similar
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u/SuckMeOffMrWalton 26d ago
They’ve been handing bans out like candy😭
I saw some people mentioning how well bamboo grows anywhere though…
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u/erty3125 26d ago
You don't have to introduce invasive plants to fight data centers, there's always a local plant that destroys concrete just as well
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u/chaospudding 26d ago
Please don't plant invasive plants for any reason. Use native plants to achieve the same ends.
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u/Unusual-Layer-8965 26d ago
Hope it doesn't affect the garlic farming industry. (For those who don't know, the Gilroy area is a major supplier of garlic.)
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u/rg4rg 26d ago
The vampires want the data center built in Gilroy to destroy the garlic farms! 🤔🧐
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u/randynumbergenerator 26d ago
That made me think of the villain from the first Blade movie who's a l33t hacker-vampire... Deacon Frost? He must be behind this.
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u/thechervil 26d ago
Drove through there a few times on my way from the Central Coast up to the Bay area.
You could smell it in the air miles before you actually hit town. It was surreal.
Good thing I like garlic!
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u/chubbysumo 26d ago
it will, water will skyrocket in price there, as will electricity.
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u/Wyciorek 26d ago
There is good reason why Flock and Palantir are making bank
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u/GenTenStation 26d ago
It’s crazy how flock cameras are falling down and running away all on their own too
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u/chubbysumo 26d ago
6 pounds of sugar will prevent 50000 pounds of concrete from ever curing.
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u/ZootSuitRiot33801 26d ago
To achieve anything meaningful, people are going to need real supportive community-based foundations for alternatives that provide relative safety, which many common folk can fall back on, to commit to any effective resistant action.
There's a post of suggestions HERE that could possibly prove to be of some help to anyone interested in getting started ASAP.
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u/Economy_Fan_8808 26d ago
It is well known that they contain several kilograms of gold and copper.
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u/mmcmonster 26d ago
That's because the Flock Cameras have a significant amount of gold in them. People are breaking into them and stealing the gold and other precious metals.
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u/Dudeincar434 26d ago
We’re approaching a time where a certain percentage of people will have nothing left to lose and the idea of going to prison where you receive a roof over your head, food on the table and basic health care for free does not seem too bad a deal.
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u/DrProfSrRyan 26d ago
I honestly hate when articles try to use the age of a law as some sort of claim to its illegitimacy. If it’s a bad, outdated law, it will be because it’s outdated, not because it’s old. The Constitution is old.
In this case, „this specific site avoided scrutiny by adhering to local zoning rules set 45 years ago.“.
I’m not a fan of all of these data centers, but what do you want them to do? Not adhere to the local zoning laws?
It’s not like they dusted off some barely relevant, entirely forgotten loophole like the title implies.
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u/Wallawalla1522 26d ago
Reporter is able to write sensationalist headline by utilizing a 238 year old loophole that has gone unchanged since the founding of the nation
Will generate a lot more clicks than
Reporter exercises their freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.
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u/PluginAlong 26d ago
Exactly, Amazon and the city did everything they were supposed to do and if the project were started today, they'd do the same things all over again. The only difference is that the project started before all of the data center hate did and at the time no one was as opposed to it as they are now. They had their public comment period and people had the opportunity to object. They didn't and so the project moved forward.
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u/apple_tech_admin 26d ago
Dear America, November matters.
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u/becauseiloveyou 26d ago edited 26d ago
It's not just November. There's an election happening practically every Tuesday somewhere across the country. Bernie Sanders won the seat of mayor to Burlington, VT by just ten votes in a March (not November) 1981 election. And it wasn't even his first time running. One has to ask, where were progressive-left voters that day? Imagine what modern political discourse looks like if any ten of those individuals decided not to participate?
Voting has always mattered. Hell, my former city councilman was almost elected VICE PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES. He was my city's mayor, my state's governor, and now serves on the U.S. Senate representing Virginia. Some of you may know and remember Senator Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's running mate, by name.
People need to stop only showing up when things seem bad. It's when we participate consistently that we get representation that actually reflects our values.
Edited to fix some mistakes when I quickly typed this up earlier.
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u/Hug_The_NSA 26d ago
45 years old doesn't actually seem very old for laws to me. I'm pretty sure we have a lot of laws that are older. The bill of rights is hundreds of years old. I'm not defending Amazon here, but the title including "45 year old rules!!!!" like its some sort of gotcha is kinda silly.
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u/PluginAlong 26d ago
Exactly, the age of a law is irrelevant. A law can be just as good/bad if it was written 100 years ago as if it were written yesterday.
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u/Necessary-Eye5319 26d ago
Food distribution and a damned data center are not the same at all. Bozzo is a bozo!!!! 🤬🤬🤬🤬
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u/redditobserverone 26d ago
One is life-sustaining and pro-human and the other is extractive and pro-profit.
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u/MajorFuckingDick 26d ago
Upon actually reading the article I'm extremely confused by the headline. "this specific site avoided scrutiny by adhering to local zoning rules set 45 years ago." So you mean they bought land designated for exactly this then went through a 5 year process where public comment was open but no one cared because it was 2024 and people didn't know anything. "The company and the city didn’t exactly keep the project secret when it started its application in 2020. In fact, there were disagreements between the tech giant and the city government during the process."
Nothing was secret, nothing was circumvented, people just didn't care until it was too late. That's exactly why the mayor is pissed and I agree with him. I ask most people who tell me about politics a single question before I let them continue; "Who is your representative/MP." Someone who can't answer that is not someone you should engage in politics with. For reference, I don't know mine.
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u/PM_MY_OTHER_ACCOUNT 26d ago
This is probably the most rational comment in this thread. Based on what you're saying, Amazon followed all the rules and the process started 6 years ago. The citizens had an opportunity to voice their opinions and couldn't be bothered. Now they suddenly have a problem with it because it's part of a hot issue of the moment and they suddenly became aware of the consequences of the thing they ignored for 6 years.
On one hand, the people complaining had their chance and it's their own fault for being apathetic, passive, lazy, and willfully ignorant. On the other hand, elected officials are supposed to be representing the people who elected them and they are supposed to act in the best interest of the citizens, the town, the county, district, state, or country they represent. Many people in the local community probably felt like they didn't have to be all that involved in the local government because that's what they elected people to handle. They might have trusted the mayor, city council, or whatever to consider all the negative consequences of having a huge data center nearby and reject the proposal. Now they're mad because the mayor failed them.
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u/SAugsburger 26d ago
I think the reality is most non AI data centers never got a ton of complaints. Many AI data centers between the breakneck construction pace and size don't have sufficient local power infrastructure so run gas generators 24x7. That is a huge difference in noise and pollution. I know of some data centers that are across the street from residential areas and have been for years. Based upon the original application this was probably intended to be just another AWS data center as opposed to anything to do with AI. Not saying that there aren't issues with traditional data centers, but think the association is going to make it harder to build data centers even those that aren't running 24x7 gas generators.
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u/Possible-Tangelo9344 26d ago
The article says this project has been in the works since 2020. Kinda feel like these people just weren't paying attention early enough.
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u/ebf6 26d ago
From the article--the only mention of the community feedback issue: "[W]hen Gilroy resident Rosa Rodriguez wanted to state her concern about the damage a data center can do to a region suffering from drought, she was told that the comment period had already lapsed in 2024, long before data centers became a hot topic across the country."
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u/0O00OO0OO0O0O00O0O0O 26d ago
Correct. They also didn't "secretly circumvent" anything. They wanted to build an industrial project in an an industrial zone, which doesn't require a public process. This is completely normal and how nearly all cities and counties operate (at least in CA)
Reading through the fact sheet available on the city's website and looking at Google Maps, it's completely ridiculous that there would be any "outrage" about this project.
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u/groovyinutah 26d ago
It's going to turn into a "All they had to do is pay us enough to live" scenario...
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u/williamgman 26d ago
It's interesting to see the very different headlines posted on this same story on Reddit today.
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u/-ReadingBug- 26d ago
I love how the article doesn't actually talk details of the 45-year old loophole. Genius.
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u/hung-games 26d ago
Lame ass article. They reference the 45 year old rules as a tease but never explain what those rules are and how they avoided more modern rules (and what they are).
Instead, this is just another people don’t like Data Centers meets local politics article. And we’ve all read plenty of those
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u/CoBr2 26d ago
I understand the frustration, but it doesn't feel like they're circumventing anything here. The data center was approved over 2 years ago. The residents had the same opportunity for public comment on this project as they do on every other project.
Amazon following the "45-year-old rules" is just the age of the relevant zoning laws and not them playing a fast one.
There are a lot of problems with data centers getting forced through and public commentary being ignored, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The issue here is that no one cared about data centers in 2024 when it was approved, but they care now when it's being built.
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u/tanstaafl90 26d ago
AI data center backlash is right now, not 2 years ago. If public hearing were planned, announced and held according to established rules and standards, no different than any other project, then one doesn't get to hold another once the project is approved and under way.
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u/Zephensis 26d ago
"Gilroy City Mayor Greg Bozzo said that other industrial projects that had a similar scale to the Amazon data center have previously been approved without resistance.
“It didn’t bother them that a food-distribution center came to Gilroy without their engagement, but now it bothers them that a data center is coming to Gilroy without them having the possibility of engagement,” Bozzo said."
The actual straight disdain elected officials have for citizens in America is insane.