Meta steals a tactic from Tesla and builds data centers in tents (opens in new tab)

The reason is because permitting and building a natgas generator is the easiest among the energy production methods in the US. Datacenters need to be close-ish to Internet Exchanges to be cost competitive when lighting up network capacity. Solar cells are expensive (Chinese tariffs or domestic production) and permitting is tough. Nuclear is still a permitting and cost nightmare. Wind requires a lot of land. Hydroelectric is considered an environmental dead end after the ecological effects of the Hoover Dam. Geothermal is still unproven. Transmission lines moving power between generation and consumption is a permitting nightmare.

In that world, natural gas just makes the most sense. The US hasn't build generation capacity in any meaningful way in decades. We've deindustrialized over time so it's been relatively okay, until a new form of industry (datacenters) starts putting pressure on the whole thing.

Your language is ambiguous — your horror is in reference to natural gas turbine generators (used at these installations) and not gasoline generators (like in a home context)?

Why the horror? I'd prefer the gas remain in the ground, but given the gassy production of US shale oil, I guess I'd rather it be used for this than just flared. I am frustrated that pollutant emissions aren't being policed, and also that the sudden turbine demand plus supply chain issues mean using aeroderivative turbines that are quite a bit less efficient than more complex combined cycle turbines.

https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/how-gas-turbine-power-plants-wor...

It's not supposed to be permanent, but it also allows them to not waste time waiting on physical locations to be built. Given how highly competitive this all is, I'm not surprised at all.

How did you want to power them? You know the gas generators are the largest power generation source in the US right?

Illegal gas turbines, should be noted...

there are polls where a sample of people say they hate ai. on the other hand, there are a billion+ weekly active users.

from a business perspective, which of those two statistics would you give more weight?

The public is against it for hypocritical reasons that they're not afraid to inflict on someone else. They're against the water and electricity use but they also angrily demand more semiconductor production that require building whole new reservoirs in Tainan, irrigation channels from the Han river, and coal plants in Anhui, as well as restarting Fukushima. Then when those companies come build plants in Arizona and New York, suddenly the reality of how the cow is butchered hits them and it stalls in permitting for years.

You don't move up the Cyberdyne Systems org chart by caring what the stupid little meatbags think.

Yeah but the public is against progress. The public cries for material needs like medicare for all, universal childcare, a jobs program? These are all clearly foreign actors that want to prevent American progress on AI! They must be Chinese agents for all we know, what sort of American wants to provide healthcare for their family over proudly paying higher utility rates to ensure a new batch of tech bros become billionaires?

The public hates ai but also uses ai in mass quantities.

Capitalism abides by your dollars not your voice.

So people can decry ai all they want but if they keep using it, it won't go away.

Even then it's probable that AI is a big enough productivity boost for certain industries that even if no consumers used AI, businesses would still prop AI up enough for it to live on.

> this is such a limiter on the ground that SpaceX is pursuing AI satellites in space

What is your source for this claim? It sounds like conjecture to me.

Neither power nor construction is easier in space than it is on Earth. Higher power means higher heat dissipation, which means higher-cost satellites or downsized AI hardware. Construction is monumentally more expensive when you have to ship GPUs and their associated infrastructure away from the planet where they're manufactured.

SpaceX's orbital compute will not compete against any ground-based AI capacity. It will most likely be used for edge processing of Starlink sensor data, either as an SAR solution, multiband jamming apparatus, or any other SDR applications used at the orbital scale. There is no other justification that I am aware of that necessitates space-based AI inference. The commercial space-based AI line is a glaringly obvious coverup.

The only thing SpaceX is pursuing is dumb money.

This is not a video game.

It's easier to get datacenters approved than homeless housing projects.

The real unlock, the homeless can shelter for warm next to the gpus, and they can recruit some for some fent if they need workers.

Heck, call it public housing and bringing jobs into the community.

They'll be bulldozed and all those servers will lose their ids and medications.

Microsoft had a neat trick here in the Netherlands: instead of opening a new site they decided to make a their existing site higher by adding a few floors.

Ofcourse that only works once the Dutch borg adapts!

Homeless encampments or mountaineering base camps

Those look like sprung structures's tents. They can get real fancy: https://www.sprung.com/

Yeah, my immediate picture was a blue hobo tent with some extenders sticking out of it.

I'm not sure why they even call them tents. Those are called fabric buildings. Fabric buildings have a lifespan of over 20 years[1] and this is limited by the PVC membranes, the actual steel structure can last a lot longer.

[1] https://www.rubbusa.com/approach/quality/

Several gates at Santa Rosa airport are in a fancy tent. You don’t even notice at first.

This is what happens when people with big money succumb to AI psychosis.

Our parents aren't getting enough AI generated patriotic calls to action! roll out the bulldozers!!

Better than most businesses. Most data center campuses I've seen, regardless of construction, were behind a substantial permitter fence and had some on-premise guard force. Like razor blades, they would be better to intercept GPUs or other equipment when in transit though there have been decades of rumors that such goods are usually done by trucking companies with ties to organized crime.

Imagine a drone dropping incendiary payload. I dub thee ransomhardware.

I'm waiting for the first drone attack.

I would guess the real problem is contractors are bottle-necked in good times, but not stupid enough to expand - knowing that bad times will come and they have to pay for all the expansion. (humans can be laid off, but you still need to make the payment on the bulldozer)

They also tested out sinking data center modules in shallow water to reduce the difficulties surrounding both cooling and land use. I wonder if anyone has revisited that idea in light of present market conditions?

Why not ask someone that can do astrology to do your stock picks and sports bets for you?

You know and I know that The Product is at best nowt more than 'astrology'. The Product does do search engine things though, and it could be scaled down to fit in a phone or even a watch, to be good enough for 'the pub quiz' or for writing a gormless email.

As for the article, META does very little for the vastness of the corporation. They have gazillions of developers yet Facebook and Instagram are as boring as ever, Threads and the Metaverse are just lame and what else do they do, apart from serve ads?

When I left at the start of 2025, they were already building the tent.

The difference between Meta and tesla is that meta has done it many times before and in loads of countries.