TFA cites "Each project requires thousands of skilled workers during the two to six year construction period (nearly 10,000 in Mount Pleasant)" so maybe it's not totally fiction (at least during build time).

To me that's not sustainable. It just brings in outside workers, distorts the economy in bad way for locals through increased costs, distorts their daily life in a bad way and then it all goes away leaving a void in its wake. Like the olympics.

My sister dates a guy who works on these kinds of projects. He’s based out of Chicago, and goes to remote places like Idaho or Ohio to build them. They put him up in cheap temporary housing, I guess that generates some local money, but he’s very quickly moving on to the next job. They’re not hiring locals for these tasks, they don’t have the skills. The people who are benefitting are mostly local landlords.

That's inside the DC, right? I'd think that even with current generation GPUs the noise of the fans won't be audible outside the building but the cooling infra that is outside the building plus (backup) power generation through gas or diesel generators.

EDIT: recently I read about (I guess on HN) a new planned Amazon datacenter that was super environment-friendly. So in fact it might eventually be possible to create silent DCs but we'll see how this turns out.

"the term biodegradable used by manufacturers and distributors can be somewhat misleading for the final consumer" https://www.beease.com.hk/post/how-long-does-pla-take-to-dec...

This is also misleading. PLA plastic degrades slowly in the environment because it's highly crystalline and mechanically robust.

But once it's fragmented, it's rapidly degraded. So it doesn't contribute to persistent microplastics.

It also does not take 80 years in normal environmnets.

Well, my source (quoting some "Federal Environment Agency") says it does contribute to microplastics. Some googling seems to confirm this.

It depends on what you mean by "contribute". Multiple studies put half-life of PLA microplastics at a range between weeks to a month (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02697... ), so they can't create a persistent hazard.

It is likely a fraction of a fraction of an already small fraction. Textiles, tires and food packaging are the biggest contributors. It has yet to be proven that microplastics are directly linked to any harm, it is mostly unknown.

If you care about that kind of stuff the best thing you could do is stop driving.

Interesting. I will do more research on this, thanks. But at the end of the day, even though it's tough for us to see the PLA poop, etc from our prints (I still generally don't like it), my point is that hobbyist plastic waste is basically negligible and making nearly zero difference.

I don't want people to see plastic waste from 3D printing and be discouraged to try it out as a hobby. I just got my first 3d printer 6 months ago (and I did all this biodegradable research mostly so my wife would feel comfortable with it). But the benefits of rewiring your brain in a manufacturing mindset, having the ability to create things, solve custom problems, etc, far outweigh the negligible (in the grand scheme of things) amount of waste compared to all the other plastic shit (toys, etc) the masses buy on amazon. That was my main point.

But it's good to know that it could still take 80 years, and is not as quickly biodegradable as originally thought.

Have you tried PHA? Supposedly it's truly biodegradable and a viable alternative to PLA in many cases.

It is plastic, nothing else.

When the ratio is almost 1:1 it is a bit more than a nit.

I am torn because on one hand now I have the superpowers to actually implement more complex projects, say a Gameboy emulator, on the other hand I lost the desire to do so because what's the point? As a consumer of software and blogs it is similar because a new BASIC for games just no longer is that interesting when I could vibe code it up myself. It's a bit schizophrenic, I guess ... for instance when you see the clearly formatted README files that's supposed to be a good thing and it certainly is but it is also a bit of a turn-off.

How did you diagnose the cancer?

There's nothing subtle about cancer in rats, especially the females. They're terribly prone to breast cancer and female rat has a lot of breasts. You'll see golf ball sized things in no time unless you're willing to pay for removals. Very common and any vet will spot it.

When they get a 'lump' it grows real quick. They make lovely, interactive pets, and very intelligent but they will break your heart and die too soon.

How will the seller know you opted out for that particular reason?

Because a studio that spends $2 billion on a game is also spending several million to track online sentiment about their games.

in a perfect world, they look at their sales and notice that the games that are only available with no physical media are selling poorly

I have a hard time believing that even in a perfect world this would work because for that particular game A you have no reference. How will you compare it to sales of game B that also ships a a physical medium. Granted they can figure this out, next is the question of how much loss in sales they are willing to take for the benefit of not producing a medium (no sleeve design, no production, no distribution).

but as you acknowledge in your choice of words, that's not how it's gonna work. Thus ends capitalism. The fungibility of a dollar is how capitalism washes all evil. If I made a dollar by being evil, but I turn around and give those dollars to an orphanage, those dollars are accepted, the same as if those dollars were from an honest days work. The concept of blood money is one we don't embrace too hard. We wash the sins away with another transaction. There is more to life to money, but it's a poor life without it.

Maybe it narrows down if you need to bring the right mindset.

It would be better to say this upfront. I am not blaming you in any way but this would prevent responses such as the parent's (hopefully).