The scale of the power draw is also a problem. When I worked in a manufacturing plant, they had standby batteries for power that would power the plant for 15 minutes or so. They had diesel backup generators that were supposed to kick in within a minute that could last days before refueling. These datacenters need their power plant to be built just as backups which would never happen.

It's short sighted too. If they installed a lot of batteries and renewables at the site, at least they would have something of value when the AI bubble bursts and the rest of the site gets scrapped.

Indeed, game studios know about licencing issues and these days often add a "streaming friendly" mode which replaces any licensed music and visuals so that streamers don't get copyright claims.

Also the licence must include an earliest end date, before which the servers cannot be shut off without triggering a full refund.

I've seen clothing with built in cooling in Japan, aimed at people who work outside. A little fan circulates air, and some of pockets for ice packs. Of course, that doesn't work in a space suit.

They never learn, this happens again and again every time some new technology is developed. Photography, fingerprints, DNA, phone call tracing, CCTV, surveillance doorbells, Tasers, pepper spray, zip tie handcuffs, every tool the police get is abused until they have some expensive losses. Not just the US either, it happens in the UK too.

Batteries are probably more practical for this, and can serve as a backup for them too.

Flywheels are used, but a better place to put them is old fossil fuel plants. They already have a lot of the infrastructure. Ireland has converted some, and I'm sure other places too.

I'm sure they have adequate protection for their equipment. The problem is everyone else's. If they switch off a large amount of power consumption suddenly, the generators supplying them are instantly putting too much power into the grid, and need to ramp down. Of course many of them can't ramp down very fast, and even things like batteries can only respond as fast as they can detect the problem happening some distance away, so the voltage goes up and the frequency wonders off.

Brown outs are bad, voltage spikes are much worse.

They aren't going to help the grid stay balanced if they aren't forced to. That would be a cost they could avoid.

The main aim of Stop Killing Games is to ensure the practice of rug-pulling eventually comes to an end. They are not trying to save MMOs, for example.

Moreover they don't demand that every game currently on the market comply with open-sourcing requirements: at a minimum, companies always have the option of simply providing customers with adequate notice before shutdown. Open-sourcing the server would be nice, but it's hardly the only way to protect consumers' interests. Scott has, for example, suggested game boxes being marked with an estimated expiry date for online service functionality.

But most importantly: because this is about future games, not the present, the market has time to change. If studios and publishers are designing their games with a fair EOL in mind, then they can make decisions from the get-go to avoid licensing dependencies that they won't be able to release in a possible 'afterlife' version of the game. As suggested by your example of GameSpy in C&C: Generals, when a commercial dependency is crucial to a game's success, it tends to be a client-side library, but typically the problematic dependencies aren't crucial; they're e.g. add-ons for Unity or Unreal that the studio bought to save time. In a world with SKG laws, the providers of these dependencies aren't going to be a stagnant target either—demand for compliant libraries will motivate development of open-source versions.

Interestingly, the will for doing this does exist among game developers; they just need the institutional support from legislation to twist the arms of the studios and publishers. Ross Scott has talked to a lot of devs who are burnt out from having their projects cancelled, leaving them with huge gaping holes in their resumes and portfolios where they've spent years on unreleased projects that are stuck under NDA. In general they tend to see SKG as a path to ensuring the games that do see the light of day aren't also scrapped, which would erode their work histories even further. (Apparently it also just plain feels bad to have your work erased from history. Shocking, I know.)

The Chinese ones are subsidized, they are hit with tariffs.

EVs have been cheaper to own for a long time in Europe, especially the Chinese ones which are often cheaper to buy in the first place too. The amount you save depends on if you can charge at home, but it's always better than a fossil over any reasonable period of ownership.

Their economic analysis is BS. For example, they discount the cost of "shared" infrastructure, but clearly there is a cost because it has to be built, and scaled to the number of reactors they want to install. At only 300MW each, they will want quite a few of them to make the economics better.

The increased cost of waste handling and refuelling is not properly accounted for either.

Sodium is a rather nasty medium to use as coolant. It corrodes, and spontaneously catches fire on contact with air. Attempts have been made in the past, ending in expensive failures.

For what investment in GPUs?

Typically when rent seeking, the rent is a fraction of the cost of the asset. Some assets appreciate like houses, some depreciate like GPUs.