A lot to unpack with your post as usual. I am just going to try to avoid the usual deep thread with novella length posts and just point that:

seems to be at odds with TFA. Part of the whole point is that five years ago, the additional power that these AI centers demand was not on the radar. We also do not know if that demand will still be there five years from now. The chips could double or triple in power efficiency. The algorithms? Those could become hundreds or thousands of times more efficient. The whole thing could turn out to just be the latest economic bubble (note, when I say "could", I mean that it will since we already know that with almost 100% certainty) which could collapse (of course, there are other uses for additional electric power if we electrify more things that traditionally burn things for power instead, the data centers could migrate away from where the power can practically be delivered, etc. So, generally, that statement by you does not fit in very well at all with TFA.

I have and, while we seem to agree that it is often a horrible, mangled mess, I am not sure we will see eye to eye on the causes. One of them certainly is from people who don't really understand the issues that the law deals with due to those people who think that language like "no bullshit hypotheticals" is clear and concise. What those people need to understand is whatever they may think a "bullshit hypothetical" is may very well be disagreed with, including by people who are experts in the field with a great track record of actually being right about their hypotheses.

I am pretty sure they neither negate, nor do they typically stack (you can put enhancers on sarcasm and, for example, be extremely sarcastic or scorchingly sarcastic, etc. but the way I read it, it doesn't multiply by itself to get anything other than itself, kind of like the number 1).

Vaguely worded legislation like, for example, "no bullshit hypotheticals"?

Look, I'm all for clearly worded legislation, but my point is that, if you actually want it to be clear, then you need to do a better job of being specific yourself. What specific things do you want people's standing to sue to be taken away for? As it stands, the courts seem to find way too often that people don't have standing to sue when, for example, one of their fundamental rights is being taken away, but the specific victim is not them. It is like the courts seem to completely forget most of the time that they work in a common law system where legal precedents become part of the law and affect everyone, even if those other people are not explicitly having that right violated right now.

So, yeah, if you want to take people's rights away, it really would be better if you would be explicit about the reasons. Just hand waving with a term that basically means "whatever my opinion on the matter happens to be" is not sufficient.

Bitcoin relies entirely on SHA256 ASIC's for hashing and they typically need replacing every year or two because more efficient models come out making the old ones unprofitable, especially at halvings. Due to the RoI and first-mover advantage the profitable ones are very expensive.

If you want to heat your home with proof-of-work, use a coin that uses RandomX or some other deliberately ASIC-resistant algorithm (usually CPU mining).

You can pool mine on an old CPU and still get a few pennies for your efforts, though if you want to invest in an EPYC and have other uses for it (maybe you have work jobs to run during the day and want more heat on cold nights) it could actually be profitable.

Resistive electric heating is still a very expensive way to heat, though some people don't have better options. There's a development near where I am that was built shortly after Nixon announced Project Independence and every house (cold climate) has wall-to-wall electric baseboard heating.

This has nothing to do with my post. The only risks or concerns I considered were the ones investors would have about whether they would get a return on their investment.

Ah yes. No "bullshit hypotheticals". Clear and concise legal language every legal scholar can get behind. (for those immune to irony, put a big mental sarcasm tag around that)

So, that would be 676 kilocalories (also known as a capital C Calorie, the kind that are confusingly used to measure energy in food). That is enough energy to heat a liter of water by 676 degrees Celsius. In other terms, it is enough energy to completely vaporize about 1.09 liters of water. Obviously you don't normally have to completely vaporize water to cook things (in most cases, anyway). So, this assumes high efficiency, which is another matter, but you could certainly heat an 800 ml family size can of condensed soup mixed with 800 ml of water for 1.6 liters to boiling point with that. None of this is a realistic model of course, including the idea that someone in that situation would be having a can of soup for their meal. It's just to point out that there actually is enough energy there.

I am not even going to go into your weird first-world centric questions from the second paragraph. Actually, they look very specifically UK-centric, but anyway.

Well, I think if you append "...to live a modern lifestyle" onto that first sentence, it becomes a pretty dubious proposition for some people. Not everyone. There are plenty of people who could generate their own electricity and be able to use modern electrical appliances without the grid, but there are also plenty who can not. Cities are a prime example of this. City dwellers in apartments, condos, rented houses, cramped ground footprint, etc. are often not able to live off grid due to practical limitations, and a lot of people may not live in cities. Now, you may simply argue that they should not live in cities. Without arguing that either way, I will just point out that you should have mentioned that in your comment.
Basically, while there might be many ways to live, many of those many ways to live are simply not practically available to vast sectors of the population for a variety of reasons. We might not need a grid (and indeed, there are many, many people who actually could live without it), but there would need to be drastic changes to do without it. This, btw, is coming from someone who strongly encourages everyone who can to get a solar power system and battery backup to be as grid-independent as possible.

First, I would like to say that you're both very pretty. I think this argument might be doomed to go around in circles thought because it does not look like either of you are characterizing the other's position quite right. It does not look like RossCWilliams is advocating for ditching the grid entirely, or even ditching grids at the local level. It seems more like the argument is that you can have a grid, but not everything needs to be connected to, or at least reliant on one central grid. If houses or entire communities can manage to operate entirely off grid, there should not be artificial barriers to that. More broadly, highly centralized power sources like one giant power plant might not always make sense.

Honestly, I think all you two are arguing over is the actual mix of off-grid to on-grid applications. The problem is that your arguments just keep getting seen by the other as an absolute. I would suggest that you each elaborate more of what kind of mix you envision. You may still not agree on the precise details, but then you will both be arguing over something that you actually truly disagree on.

It probably makes more sense given their scale for them to have their own power generation -- solar, wind, and battery storage, maybe gas turbines for extended periods of low renewable availability.

In fact, you could take it further. You could designate town-sized areas for multiple companies' data centers, served by an electricity source (possibly nuclear) and water reclamation and recycling centers providing zero carbon emissions and minimal environmental impact. It would be served by a compact, robust, and completely sepate electrical grid of its own, reducing costs for the data centers and isolating residential customers from the impact of their elecrical use. It would also economically concentrate data centers for businesses providing services they need,reducing costs and increasing profits all around.

We have, but I should point out that if the great pyramid of Giza was broken down to its approximately 2.3 million blocks, 100 million people could relatively easily pick them up and carry them around. There are some logistical constraints with getting that many people working within such a small area, but if you ignore those and consider the construction of the great pyramid in terms of work units, moving and stacking blocks 100 million people could do all the actual physical labor in a day. So, the question becomes how many people are taking part in an endeavor and how much time is each person spending on it.

In this context, it seems pretty clear that "they" does not refer to the "cable guy", but to the cable company. "They" is the correct pronoun there because we are talking about a collection of people. Sure, there might have been one specific spokesperson who contacted you, but the language in question is just clearly treating the cable company as an entity. Now, maybe the cable guy did contact you directly, but that is pretty atypical. Even then though, this is a general scenario, not a specific scenario, so they would probably still be a "they" even if, for some reason, every single cable installer in existence were male, which is not the case.

Or, in other words. Try not to be a nutcase. Not every use of pronouns is an evil LGTBQ conspiracy against you.

Slight correction: "If revenue is rising ..." Even at the same price per KWh, utilities are better off if their systems are loaded right up to 100% capacity, 7x24. Residential and most business customers don't do this. Industrial customers and data centers come closer.

What _WILL_ cause our prices to go through the roof is when all these AI services fold and close up shop. Then, all the grid investments will have to be paid for by somebody. And that somebody will be the last person to unplug their toaster. See Whoops.

A metaphor is like a simile.

"Hey Mr Businessman! I just bought this brand new PC/Tablet/Cell phone and I'd like to buy that really expensive product I saw on your web site. Of course you can't track me. Because I only just turned on this brand new machine this morning."

Do you really think they'll turn you down? Once the credit card has been approved and the transaction completed, I'll just spin up a clean copy of the VM running my browser. And then next week: "Hey Mr Businessman! I just bought this brand new PC/Tablet/Cell phone ..."

On the other hand, my bank does this. It's a good idea in that they can catch unrecognized machines trying to log on as me. And make me step through some additional authentication steps. It's a bad idea because they only recognize one machine per user account. Switch between my office (home) machine and the kitchen laptop and I get the whole third degree interrogation again.

While you can go ahead and criticize the headline for not being specific, the summary and article are pretty clear that they mean "electrical power" demand and not just power demand. There is a distinction between primary power and electrical power.

So, your case against solar power is... that hurricanes can tear apart houses? I mean you do realize that, aside from not having solar panels any more, the people who lived in the houses they came from also don't have a house either? You might as well advocate for not making houses out of shoddy materials and construction techniques too... Well, actually, you really should advocate for that for houses built in disaster prone areas.