Actual ECB post

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2026/html/ecb.blog20260817~754a8a4418.cs.html

I think that these days centres should absolutely not be built. They are on a scale we can’t justify economically or ecologically and the technology they support are national security threats.

These are not the AWS-like data centres that “host the internet”. These are compute only. They’re for AI and big-data. Centralisation of the world computation into a few locations under the control of a few billionaires.

So point 1. Destroying these does not harm the internet. It preserves it. The 90s internet was one where anyone could put up a web-server and serve whatever they wanted. Sure, it might get given a hug-of-death when a site became popular, but it was only that one site that was affected. The internet was distributed and not centralised.

Then came the cloud.

Point 2. This is centralising information. I suspect we are already past the point where people are asking chatbots “who should I vote for?”. That alone places millions of votes under the control of whoever trains the LLM model they ask.

The owners become the owners of all information. It’s so handy. Why read a book? In fact let’s destroy books to create the machine. Now you can ask it anything. How do I make a cake? How do I fix my car? Is there a war in Palestien Ba-sing-se?

Point 3. The cost is too high. The American stock market is teetering on the edge of a huge crash. Bigger than 2008, it threatens to take out several of the world’s most valuable companies. If the damage was limited to them, I wouldn’t worry. Sadly, the banks and investment funds we all use are invested in them. This is Enron x4 plus the banking failure of 2008 in a dot.com bubble wrapper. All whilst the economy in all other sectors is shrinking.

Wall street knows it’s a bubble, but they all want to ride the upside of the bubble, thinking it won’t be them left holding when the crash comes. They could calmly unwind their positions and avoid the crash, but ego and hubris don’t allow that.

All in pursuit of an impossible goal

Then there’s the ecological cost. Lake Mead, on the Colorado river, is at it’s lowest level since it was created by the Hoover Dam being constructed. Drought and water use in the south-western states have steadily drained it for years …and they want to add a water guzzlers on the scale of an additional cities. Now I know this one is in Texas, and not in the Colorado river basin, but this isn’t the only one and I’m sure Texas rivers have their own issues.

Then you have the power supply. Whilst the rest of us are trying to move away from fossil fuels, these guys run towards them. Natural gas turbines (which can’t be built to schedule) belching out CO2 whilst heatwaves, drought, and wild fires are happening across the globe. I guess it gives the fossil fuel companies a reason to keep going though.

So yes, I’m against building these centres. The benefits are low, the societal dangers are huge and…

You’ve seen where they want to build this, right? Heat is not an issue.

So don’t build it. It needs too much power.

I hear jet fuel melts steal beams.

You sound like you acknowledge it’s going to cause huge amounts of environmental damage, but because there’s no other way of powering it… I guess that’s what we’re going to have to do.

Is that a fair take on your position?

Also the younger generation needs to step up and run for office. The disillusionment with politics runs deep, but just staying out of it isn’t an option.

In that movie where that guy kisses his sister. 👉👈

That’s the sequel.

Yes. You’re being a dick.

Elephants aren’t religious (as far as I know) yet even they will gather to say goodbye to a family member. When the day comes, you’ll want to too.

Presumably she’s not allowed because she should know by that age that the sun is always white. It’s just how it appears filtered through the atmosphere. Until she learns this, the playground is off-limits.

If that’s true in the US, then god help you. I know they still exist in the UK.

The 2008 bailout happened because it was the banking sector that was exposed. If the consumer banks fail, everybody’s accounts go up in flames.

Part of getting that bailout was that the banks had to restructure to insulate commercial banking from investment banking. Supposedly the investment arm can now get taken out, and the damage to the commercial arm is limited. I’ll believe that when I see it. The big question at the moment is “how exposed are the banks?”.

Oracle, Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic are all massively exposed. Nvidia and Microsoft might be big enough for a decimated version of themselves to come out the other side. Everyone else is going to the wall. No need to bail them out though. That’s a contained explosion.

If the bank are making loans of hundreds of billions thinking they’re sure fire money makers, but actually they’re piles of shit, then it’s 2008 again. That’s when we see if they really protected the commercial arms of their banks.

Well…a condom would let nothing through.

Are you saying you’re a broken condom?

In this case it’s an advantage. If your enemy has a blind spot you exploit it.

A lot of people don’t realise SKG is a foothold in exactly that fight. If you establish precedent on something as “frivolous” as video games you can use it on much higher value thing too.

This is what the GPL was meant to fight against. Having boxes running software that is still under the control of the manufacturer.

Instead people complained that it was hard to use the code at work. YES. THAT’S THE POINT.

My point was that they fabricated a pretense to avoid needing one, just as you said. You’re making the same fucking point.

Did you stop reading at that point?

Not a lawful authority.

He was flight side at the airport. So either:

• …they’re not subject to US law, and it’s fair to search his possessions without a warrant. In which case he’s also not subject to US law so destruction of evidence is fair game.
• …everyone is subject to US law and it’s an illegal search.