• waigl@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    Attempted electrical substation sabotage is an easy way to fix your loneliness forever. And also all of your other problems.

  • Ibaudia@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    I, personally, prefer to sabotage major data centers, such as the Switch data center in Vegas. Their HVAC units are a particular weak point since they entirely lie on the outside of the buildings they cool. Plus the facility is so big, they’ll never even know you were there!

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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      27 days ago

      Lmao that place looks like a supervillain fortress complete with ominous red glow and super high walls with aggressively angled wrought iron.

      It also has fully kitted out paramilitary-looking security that don’t screw around. They don’t just have like, one sad Securitas agent dinging the perimeter while catching up on How I Met Your Mother lol.

      But seriously, chances are a lot of good data goes through there too. Don’t shut off our connection to the outside world it kinda sucks here. :( :( :(

      I seriously wonder what kinda data flows through there though. Boggles the mind to fathom.

    • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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      27 days ago

      You are posting this on a website. How do you think that works? The internet relies on data centres around the world. Unless you actually know what’s being hosted on that data center, this is an unfathomably stupid move.

  • SandbagTiara2816@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    28 days ago

    No please! Electric substations are necessary to transmit power, and we actually need more of them if we’re going to build the amount of renewables we need.

    If you’re looking for parts of the electrical system that I feel less positively about, that would include data centers (especially for AI and crypto mining) and coal-fired power plants.

    Of course, industrial sabotage is a crime, and with all the high voltage and current going around, it’s a particularly dangerous one at that. Would not recommend

    • magic_smoke@links.hackliberty.org
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      28 days ago

      Datacenters aren’t the issue, like it or not they’re required for modern society. The issue is data centers powered by unclean power sources.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          28 days ago

          Unfortunately, poor people are also supported by those same unclean power sources.

          What you want to do is first add new, clean power sources.

          I know it’s less fun to fight the revolution by building things, but in the long term it’s more effective than smashing things.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      28 days ago

      It’s so funny to me that people will unironically bitch about data centers while posting to a website from their computer or phone. You do know that data centers do literally everything in your modern life, they aren’t just used exclusively used for one stupid type of generative AI you dislike.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      28 days ago

      Until they’re replaced by other generators, those coal-fired power plants are supporting everyone just like the substations are.

      • SandbagTiara2816@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        26 days ago

        I hear that, but I think we need to be phasing out coal as fast as possible. Nuclear for base load and renewables plus storage for the rest is our best path forward to decarbonize ASAP

    • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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      27 days ago

      You rely on data centres to post this message.

      I have legit had people arguing that because it’s decentralised that it doesn’t need a data centre. Not realising that many lemmy instances are hosted on public cloud, and that all of them need network infrastructure housed in data centers.

      • eleitl@lemm.ee
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        27 days ago

        P2P architectures run on a routed mesh mostly on network edge don’t really need DC server farms. Switching packets, especially minus porn and cat videos don’t take much DC space or power either. Lemmy isn’t that different from Usenet via uucp on dialup, even considering today’s scale.

        • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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          27 days ago

          Lemmy isn’t P2P though. If it was our clients would connect directly to each other instead of to an instance like how bittorrent works. The Usenet analogy is a lot better, but you are forgetting that modern Usenet is still hosted on large server networks inside data farms. It being decentralised doesn’t actually reduce the computer power needed at all. If anything it actually makes things more complicated. Sure individual instance servers can be smaller, but once you add together all instances it will add up to the same. Some instances like mine require multiple servers working together to host them, and it’s not even the largest instance out there on a relatively niche platform.

          • eleitl@lemm.ee
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            27 days ago

            The point is that even Lemmy instances not optimized for a P2P distribution model can be run on an embedded footprint on domestic fiber broadband. Which is going beyond 10G in some locations. Though symmetric 1G fiber is quite enough.

            The aggregate network crossection and compute plus storage on network edge up to on-prem is already more than sufficient for the purposes without requring significant DC footprint. Even factoring in porn and cat videos.

            The reasons many people use commercial cloud and DC hosted severs is cost, network quality and convenience. Self-hosting is a PITA but my point it would be adequate for the kind of people that consume resources like lemmy. Though you probably could build a Netflix scale platform on mostly P2P though it would be tough engineering.

            • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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              27 days ago

              I know you can self-host. It’s nowhere near as energy efficient as a modern data center with the setups most people have. They were complaining about the power usage of data centers, not realising they are actually the efficient way of doing things. When people talk about sabotaging data centers they are doing it for environmental reasons. Most self-hosters are using shit like old desktops, laptops, or 10 year old Haswell and Broadwell servers businesses don’t want anymore. An Epyc Bergamo would give you multiple times the capacity for similar power. Even using new hardware it’s normally better to do things at scale as it reduces overhead.

              Self-hosting is actually bad for the environment and for your power bill. It’s great for privacy, practicing sys admin skills and for breaking the law. If you actually asked people who self-host, like me, they would tell you all this. You can get low energy setups, but you will really struggle to compete against data centers in terms of flops per watt especially if your hardware is running near idle all the time. My electricity is fixed rate anyway, so I don’t really care how efficient it is, but I very much know my FX-6300 improvised server is laughable compared to modern server technology.

              Though symmetric 1G fiber is quite enough.

              How many homes have that? Homes are almost always asymmetric, sometimes to an absurd degree. I have near 1 gig download at my current place, but only 80 Mbps upload. Pretending everyone has 1 gig upload available is dumb, and you know it if you’re not an idiot.

              Edit: also all ISPs have routers, switches, and servers somewhere in a data center. That’s also how the internet backbone works. Large interconnection points, maybe a handful of them in a country like mine (UK).

              • eleitl@lemm.ee
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                27 days ago

                You are rude, pointlessly combative and move goalposts. Bye.

                • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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                  27 days ago

                  Where have I done any of that? Maybe I failed to explain properly what I mean the first time, but that isn’t the same as deliberatley moving goalposts. Getting rid of data centers would only make the environmental problems associated with computing worse, which defeats the whole purpose of people wanting to vandalise them. This to me sounds like you picked on someone more knowledgeable than yourself, tried to bamboozle them with tech terms, and when that failed you try this. Be better.

  • swag_money@lemmy.world
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    28 days ago

    don’t fuck with substations. you’ll kill yourself and cause a power outage. this doesn’t help us. it might also put lives in danger like those who are in hospitals.

    • skyspydude1@lemmy.world
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      28 days ago

      Except it’s not, because potentially hundreds of thousands of people, who are most definitely not “the elite”, actually rely on them for, y’know, power? You’re not fucking over “the elite” by fucking with public infrastructure. They have backup generators and batteries and plenty of other ways to run their houses. Not only that, with something like a substation, they’ll probably cry to the government for help with an emergency outage and it’ll just be more public funds going to the.

      • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
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        27 days ago

        Also, lots of electric utilities are not investor owned. Plenty of electric cooperatives and municipal utilities out there that care more about providing affordable power than making huge profits.

        • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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          27 days ago

          LOTS of public utilities are run this way.

          Anyone looking into these utilities will see how often they run close to the wire - staff (even leadership) often don’t make a lot, and their budgets are tight.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        28 days ago

        I tried to make this argument about the economy as a whole during the first couple weeks of the Lockdowns, and was accused of wanting to sacrifice people’s lives to the DOW

      • harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        27 days ago

        Wow. Maybe you should reread my comment.

        I didn’t advocate burning down substations.

        But, hey, you just keep on taking things wrong and ranting.

    • Jolteon@lemmy.zip
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      27 days ago

      All dem illegal immigrants flooding south from across the border, ruinin’ our good country! /s

      • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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        27 days ago

        You should probably look at stats before creating strawmen, since I don’t recall “ONLY illegals commit crime” being a common statement, even though CA has a major problem with crime by illegals.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    27 days ago

    I recently learned that the attacks on substations thing is an idiotic attempt to trigger a race war of some kind in cities, which is “where the [slur] are.”

    I don’t think they’ve ever heard of a cascade failure.

    Edit: fixed typo