The Near Death Experience
Once upon a time, you could put a bank data centre on the eighth floor of an office tower. You needed access to the roof; you needed some extra water, some extra power, but it was doable. You'd have a couple of mainframes, an extensive tape library (reels, then cartridges), a bunch of peripherals and a hundred staff. The finance geeks could manage the gear, rent, and utilities, then allocate those costs by application (mortgages, bank accounts, VISA, etc.). Call that the seventies and the eighties.
When small standalone servers became cost effective, suddenly big corporations like mine didn't have to pay IBM millions to create a modern-looking customer interface. Cell phones had become ubiquitous, and that 80 x 24 green screen experience (above) wasn't blowing wind up anyone's kilt. They wanted graphics, animation and virtual-signaling photographs dammit! They needed little purpose built applications that college kids with rings in their eyebrows could create and support. Fraud detection, staff attendance, the pop fund (inside joke), those sorts of things. So, these servers started showing up. First a few, then scores, then hundreds! They needed power (lots of it). Cooling (lots of it). They also did not fit any chargeback model. What do you charge for what looked like a black pizza box sitting on a rack with five other pizza boxes, all doing different things? You could figure a square footage charge, but they drew power and cooling all out of whack with the rest of the floor? So for the first decade, they kind of got a free ride. When something gets a free ride, bank executives (not the brightest bunch) treat it like it IS free. Funny that? You also begin to see articles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The mainframe is dead.
Thirty-five years later, the mainframe is still very much alive. Why? Because the Alt-Control-Delete solution pack offered by Bill Gates and company for the last three decades just won't cut it when it comes to your chequing account balance! Don't get me wrong, modern bank data centers have thousands of servers these days but they are for what I like to call fluffy content. Those old mainframe applications (IMS, DB2 and CICS) are still the ultimate arbiter of whether your checking account balance is $4323.17 or $4323.18 I will not suggest it will alswasy be that way, but for now, this hybrid model persists.
So why are AI data centres in the news every day? Because they do not run on mainframes. These new sites are planning to house five, ten, twenty thousand servers. Each location will need millions of gallons of fresh water monthly or gigantic poisonous ammonia plants to cool them. That is not something your town is going to want next to a anything that harbours life. You will need eye watering improvements to get power to them. They have their very own line of transmission towers going into a five data center build in the U.S. Your local utility will need to increase your generation capacity by orders of magnitute unheard of in decades. Who is going to pay that?
Unless things have changed, it will not be the owners of the AI data centres. Not up front and not on the back end. In fact, quite the opposite. They will promise an enormous construction project. The mayor and city councilors will all be there for the groundbreaking ... silver shovels in hand. The owners will fail to mention that almost no staff will live or work at that location. Local trades will be cut out of most engineering contracts. The company will source sundry stationery, cleaning supplies, and hardware from national contracts. They will point to their footprint and demand the very best property tax rates. They will be given amazingly low rates on water. Their rate per KwH on a seven figure monthly hydro bill would make most homeowners cry. The municipality will fund those infrastructure needs with municipal bonds. Discounts that they offered to secure the facility will be recovered in your utility bills and property taxes. Just like no one knew how to fund the influx of servers to data centers thirty years ago, no one today has a model to pay for these new gigantic server farms in your town. They will use the old model. The buxx today is that hundreds of thousands of people are about to lose their jobs to AI. Corporate profits will explode (again). Funding this monumental change to our middle class way of life ... will be you and me and our children.
Get your placards, get your whistles, get your gas masks (lol). Get ready to protest. Ask every politician who comes to your door what their plan is? You do not have to stop data centre builds or expansion products. What you have to do is ensure that new aquifer, related pump stations, road construction, wind farm, Natural Gas plant, nuclear reactor and upgrades to the distribution network all get paid for up front, by the billionaires who want to build in your town. We are seeing two strategies in the states. Some (West Texas Stargate Project, Fermi America in Amarillo, Colossus 1 in Memphis) will build their own gas generation plants and supply their own power. Good on them. Others (Wisconsin Rapids, Meta's Kuna Centre in Idaho, PJM in Pennsylvania are cozying up to existing hydroelectric facilities. They are what is being called "behind the meter" sites. These are disastrous for those regions. They will get the special rates I have been talking about. They will use up years of future capacity growth that was planned for your community. When they run out, who do you think will pay for upgrades? Watch the Melania movie? No really! Take a sharpened pencil in case you have to gouge your eyes out as a last resort. Jeff Bezos paid a 75 million dollar bribe to the Trump administration for a vanity project piece of crap documentary, on how a Balkan whore can rise to First Lady ... and he didn't blink an eyelash. That amount of money to him is a rounding error. It was the flooring contract for his new yacht! When he comes to your town with a new data centre designed t0o ensure that your kids never have meaningful employment, make sure you are not paying his hydro bill!
Our Optimum Week
Did you earn 100,000 points last week? It is only February 5th and we are at 48,311 points on a $173 grocery spend! It was all there for you if you spent the entire $295 from our list last week. We just can't stuff any more groceries into this house. I may try and live out of our larder / freezer for a month and document the drawdown? Hmmm. You will also see some changes to the chart this week. Setting up for The Loop which is a shop the perimeter concept that I saw someone speaking about many years ago. It will also satisfy one of the re-branding suggestions (DS) that I received. OK flyer but very quiet on the Offers front, last week was a blowout! Bonus Redemption at Zehr', here is your list:
I Have Questions?
The Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena will not be ready to host Olympic hockey games. I guess they didn't know when they were going to start ... four years ago?
The Trump Kennedy Center will close for two years "for renovations". Or ... because nobody will contract to perform if it is going to be hosted by a fascist dictator who is shooting his own citizens in the streets. It's not clear which version of events is true?
In 2019, to great fanfare, Trump announced we would be back on the moon by 2024. I didn't believe it at the time and three years later (2022) in one of my first newsletters, I called bullshit. By then, the date had slipped to 2026. I think I offered to bet anyone, any amount of money that this would also ... not happen. Last year, I suggested that China might get back to the moon before the U.S. Shortly thereafter, they stranded the two person test crew on the ISS for eight months when the Starliner capsule barely limped in to space dock. No one would get back in it so they had to send it down empty. 😔 So, the goalposts moved again. "In 2026, we will orbit the moon with a crew." That slipped the moon landing to 2027. Last week, they rolled the refurbished package out to Pad 51B and filled it with gas for a February launch. It's leaking? How does March sound? May anyone?
The Guardian posted their Melania review - "Feels like pure endless hell"
They also ordered a software change to their print editing package. Apparently they can set the graphic below the movie review caption for one, two, three, four or five stars. There was no option envisioned for giving zero stars. The fix is coming.
We Are Watching
Fall Guy on Prime - OK, you've got two of the hottest leads in Hollywood (Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling) and what I think was a pretty good idea for a move. Stunt man doubles for Hollywood icon, gets framed for the murder he committed. You call it Fall Guy and they give you 130 million to make it. What could go wrong? Well, pretty much everything. Vapid, inane and a time waster. Two stars.
The Outfit on Netflix - Panned by critics, I suppose you need thirty million in special effects these days. It's twice the move that Fall Guy was and they did it without the all that cash. It takes place in a single location, with solid acting, from a lesser known cast. A wonderful little film. Four stars.
Shetland (Season 10) - I honestly thought the show would never survive the exit of Doug Henshall and they did struggle a bit in Season 9, but Ashley Jensen and Alison O'Donnell as the new leads have figured it out. Perhaps the best script since Season 4 and they are magical together. Four stars.
... and finally
When I wrote last week about how far the U.S. had fallen in global ranking since Trump took office, I did not realize that the news this week would give me an excuse to show you one of my favourite YouTube videos. This was the Kennedy Center one year before the orange dickhead took office: