The thief cries “catch the thief!”

It always happens that all those super correct and honest politicians get corrupted by corrupt and evil Brussels. Happened to the former interior minister of Austria as well, as soon as he became an MEP. /s

Odense data center in Denmark https://datacenter.munters.com/resources/case-studies/harnessing-heat-from-odense-data-center-for-reuse-in-district-heating/

That’s why I said it is not the same as in gas power stations. It is perfectly possible though, the cooling loop doesn’t have to have the temperature of domestic hot water. That is what heat pumps are for. They have built data centers doing it already in 2017.

Data centers can be built in a responsible way, but the big ones aren’t, instead they are built with the dirtiest and most resource consuming means possible because that is the only way to build them as fast as possible.

Responsibly built data centers of the future should be obliged not only to use closed loop systems but also actually use their huge amounts of heat instead of merely wasting it. Feeding distributed heating systems (or alternative ways of productively using that heat) should be obligatory. I know the situation is not the same as with gas power plants for example but it is incredibly wasteful not to use all that heat for something productive. We are talking about many MW here. For reference, the fairly sizeable waste incinerator plant Spittelau in Vienna has a capacity of 400 MW. There are currently data centers being built in the US with capacities higher than that and absolutely nothing productive is done with the waste heat.

Strict regulation is needed but not only that. Those gas turbines would be actually already illegal today. Laws are not enforced anymore for the oligarchs in the US. In other countries that nonsense would not fly already today.

Well, to begin with. That isn’t made sure and making it sure will delay the delayed projects considerably… which I am all for and is functionally similar to said moratorium. As this isn’t happening we see huge data centers being illegally built with incredibly dirty emergency gas turbines designed for emergency scenarios.

The main issue is that the data centers are built with monopoly money, which enabled them to suck up all resources, pricing out the real economy from critical materials, and services (especially construction, electricity, cooling, IT infrastructure …). This alone should make you understand why this wave of datacenters is bad, even if you don’t care one bit about the environment but at least a tiny bit about the economy.

Liberux Nexx sounds cool but also a bit like vapourware. I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

Personally, I am giving Sailfish OS a chance. After all, that isn’t a “dumb phone” OS as such. They appear to dumb it down for the Callback. It is not dumbed down for the Jolla Phone. If things work out, we should get real units into our hands at the launch event in July.

Paris and Vienna certainly had a lot going on in this regard since 2009. (Brussels too) I am not talking about the odd pedestrianisation.

A lot of streets have been redesigned, that has often benefitted both, pedestrians and cyclists and added more greenery and trees.

Regarding pedestrian infrastructure. That is just outright false, at least for Austria. Pedestrian infrastructure in big cities has improved substantially and even in rural regions many communities have made improvements. Many of these projects happened also after 2009.

That said, the rise of oversized trucks is likely the bigger factor here. When I was visiting the US in 2010, it was not half as bad as it appears to be now.

I thought that water cooled server gpus have been around for a while now, maybe I am mistaken.

That I can agree to.

Wow, they invented closed loop cooling.

I guess they will be completely blown away when they find out, that one can actually link data centers to distributed heating networks and thereby actually use the primary output of those premium priced electrical heating plants, instead of just wasting it and lots of water while doing so. Of course, for doing so one would have to properly plan those data centers and need more time developing them etc. And then it would take longer than this bubble might last so that is not an option.

Not gonna argue about the lobbying. That doesn’t mean though that emission regulations were bad, not what was required was bad, what was exempted from that regulation was terrible. They allowed loopholes so huge, you could drive the entire car industry through it.

There are studies that link hood height to higher threat to pedestrians. But honestly, how could it not be that way. If you are hit by a vertical wall or by something at the height of your knees that throws you onto a hood, those two scenarios are not the same. Try it out some day, it really isn’t. Add to that that high hoods negatively impact visibility, substantially and I don’t need a study for simple facts of geometry.

Halari et al., 2026 (doi.org/10.1080/15389588.2025.2516717): “Compared to car impacts, pedestrians struck by high hood edge vehicles were more likely to be runover.”

It is straining for everyone but yes, some can handle the strain better than others. It just takes so much more mental energy to handle. Most can’t handle it well though, which is why those technologies never manage to break out of their niche.

I do agree however that it is quite different from NFT and other scams. It is a really fascinating technology with real use cases but just some foundational issues that prevent it from leaving their niche.

Big Trucks and SUVs are much deadlier than proper cars in case of accidents. Pedestrian infrastructure does not exist in most parts of the US or is very dangerous to use and those parts of the US that do are often unaffordable for regular people to live in. People also do not expect pedestrians even if there is infrastructure of that kind. Roads in the US are designed to maximise the danger to pedestrians even if there is pedestrian infrastructure because of car first regulations …

Yes, mass production feature phones. This won’t be a mass production product. You’d be surprised how much that increases costs. The question is of course, if one can make a product under those circumstances that people are still ready to buy. In other words, it has to offer something (can also be non-material) that differentiates it from those mass production feature phones.

That I can agree with. But in this concrete case, the regulation on cars was not what was off, it was the lack of extension of that regulation on oversized personal vehicles, ie private SUVs and pickup trucks. That is a key difference.

3D stuff has the fundamental issue that VR and 3D views are just incredibly straining on the human user. Folding phones have no such issue and their durability is also good enough to be competitive (yet clearly worse than regular smart phones). They are really not comparable to 3D monitors and VR.

I don’t think they are for me but I honestly would not include them in that list above. First of all, there is no investment bubble around them and secondly some people seem to like them and are ready to pay for them. They also do have legitimate benefits (but also downsides)