"From each according to his means, to each according to their need" is that ... pretty much what you're talking about?

What's your "fair share" of taxes, btw? Do you think someone earning $3/day in Mogadishu would agree that you're paying your "fair share"? Should we tax those unrealized 401k benefits you have sitting in an account somewhere? They're just as tangible 'wealth' as (most) of the $billion/$trillion class's 'wealth' you know? 20%? 25%? that should clean you out of that 'excess unjustifiable wealth' in a few years yeah?

And are we allowed to collectively decide on our priorities any more? My understanding that a fair number of things that are democratically unpopular have become law/reality "for our own good" per our betters in Washington DC? (Both GOP and Dems, to be clear)

"And as bad as the cold and flu can be, there are kids who are going into debt with their school over getting breakfast." The US govt spent something like $4.6trn on COVID. You're saying that should have been spent on school lunch programs instead? It certainly would be enough to feed those kids!

Indeed, solar and wind have taken great strides.

I'm not happy about much of that being driven by tax breaks and subsidies BUT I'd also very much like those tax breaks & subsidies to be pulled from fossil fuels as well (including the indirect subsidies they both get).
Let the systems genuinely compete.

Anyway: Solar and wind may be growing hugely but that's largely a factor of a tiny starting point. To see the IMPACT, we have to look at it the other direction:
In 1995, 77.1% of global energy was provided by fossil fuels.
The latest year I could find solid numbers for, 2024, that's down to....76.4%.

0.7 in three decades isn't meaningful; it's practically a rounding error.
I would be happy to embrace new nuke techs as it feels like it would be faster than waiting on solar/wind+batteries.

... I'm sure the executive that championed it has certainly been fired just as promptly without any sort of golden goodbye package.

Obviously?

There's also this lawsuit:

https://www.syracuse.com/micro...

"A national advocacy group and some Central New York residents filed an 11th-hour lawsuit today seeking to block Micron Technologyâ(TM)s development of chip fabs in the town of Clay, arguing that the environmental review of the massive project was inadequate.

The lawsuit was filed the same day that state and federal officials joined Micron leaders for a long-awaited ground-breaking at the site.

The litigation was filed in state Supreme Court in Albany by Jobs to Move America, a national nonprofit, and Neighbors for a Better Micron, an informal group represented by Clay resident Bonita Siegel.

The lawsuit claims that the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency failed to adequately consider the environmental impacts of the massive project before approving it in November."

Apparently "Jobs to Move America" is based out of California... so this seems to most closely match the OP's claim that "1 guy and 9 out-of-State activists shut down a planned Micron fab in New York."

However... the fab is still planned for construction, they've just de prioritized it in favor of fabs in Idaho, where presumably there are fewer encumbrances to getting shovels in the ground.

https://www.techpowerup.com/34...

"Micron has announced a significant revision to the schedule for its semiconductor campus near Clay, New York, with initial production now set to begin at the end of 2030. According to company filings and permit documents, the construction timeline for the first manufacturing facility has been extended from three years to four, and regulators have approved this adjusted schedule. Additionally, Micron has amended its $6.1 billion CHIPS Act agreement to reallocate approximately $1.2 billion from the Clay project to expedite expansion in Boise, Idaho, allowing the Idaho site to become operational well before the New York facility. This is part of Micron's strategy to maintain at least 40% of its DRAM manufacturing operations in the U.S.

The revised schedule significantly delays the following phases of the Clay campus and changes the project's long-term outlook. According to the new plan, the second fab is now set to begin in mid-2030 and is expected to be completed around 2034. Similar delays have affected the third and fourth fabs. As a result, the completion of the entire four-fab campus has been pushed from the original target of 2040 to closer to 2045. This delay also affects the introduction of community support initiatives, such as childcare, housing, and transit improvements, which are intended to benefit the campus workforce. Local officials attribute the slowdown primarily to labor shortages and extended construction cycles."

BTW, for those who want to know, the lawsuit was settled:

https://cnycentral.com/news/lo...

"CLAY, N.Y. â" The Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency on Thursday approved a settlement to pay Azalia King of Clay nearly $3 million to move out of her Caughdenoy Road home.

King's home is on land that tech giant Micron will need for its chip fabrication plant in the Town of Clay and so is a 6-acre parcel of land she owns across the street.

"There was no circumstance that we could have Mrs. King on that property and have Micron built around her," explained County Executive Ryan McMahon. He said the deal with King needed to get done, or the project could've been at risk."

Is this what you're referring to?

https://www.wired.com/story/mi...

"Micron Megafab Project Faces a New Hurdle as Activists Seek a Benefits Deal
Activists are demanding a way to hold the memory-chip maker accountable to its promises to protect the environment and embrace communities of color in central New York."

Or this?

https://www.wired.com/story/mi...

"Legal Battle

Across the US, governments reserve the power of eminent domain to seize real estate and redeploy it for a greater purpose in exchange for fair compensation to owners. Comprehensive data on how often it is used is lacking, but King has been a target more than perhaps most Americans.

Around 1965, Onondaga County used the threat of seizure to force King and her husband, Glenn, out of their farm to make way for a power station, according to court papers. Thatâ(TM)s how King ended up at her current residence on Caughdenoy Road, along the western border of Micronâ(TM)s project.

During the dotcom boom, the couple faced seven years of additional county pressure to sell their land to allow for a semiconductor fab, court papers show. In 2005, they relented. The Kings sold their 47-acre property to the county in exchange for $330,750 and a license to live tax-free on 3.61 acres of the land until both of them were dead. The envisioned fab never materialized. Kingâ(TM)s husband died in 2015.

Micron announced its New York project in October 2022, a megafab that would surpass the much-touted TSMC chip complex in Arizona. Current plans call for the first chips to ship in late 2030, about two years behind schedule. Displacing King has been a prerequisite. Her land is set to house parking garages and rain basins, project documents show.

In recent months, Onondaga County turned to state eviction and eminent domain laws to try to kick King out of her house no later than mid-January, under the threat of fines. Last Monday, King sued the county development agency in state court, contending that any forced move would upend her life and violate her lifetime contract.

King âoemerely wishes to live out her remaining years in her home, a place where she feels safe, comfortable and can have her family visit,â the lawsuit states, noting she has three dozen grandchildren or great-grandchildren. âoeDefendant is attempting to back out of the agreement ⦠simply because plaintiff has lived longer than defendant anticipated ⦠and the agreement has become inconvenient.â"

Neither of these stories indicates that the fab is dead... just delayed.

Who says they're not expanding?

https://www.benzinga.com/tradi...

"Micron expects fiscal fourth-quarter capital expenditures of around $10 billion, bringing total fiscal 2026 capital spending to approximately $27 billion. The investment pace isnâ(TM)t expected to slow anytime soon.

Chief Financial Officer Mark Murphy said the company expects quarterly capital expenditures in fiscal 2027 to exceed fiscal fourth-quarter levels as Micron accelerates construction of new clean-room capacity to meet long-term AI demand.

âoeWe expect quarterly CAPEX in fiscal 2027 to be above fiscal Q4 levels,â Murphy said, adding that more than half of the increase next year will come from construction spending as the company expands manufacturing capacity.

The investments include leading-edge DRAM fabs in Idaho and New York, continued expansion in Taiwan and Singapore, and additional advanced packaging capacity aimed at supporting next-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM) products that power AI servers."

https://www.trendforce.com/new...

"[News] SK hynix Advances DRAM and NAND Roadmap, Targets 3x Wafer Output by 2034, 375-Layer NAND at Year-End

Nikkei reports that SK hynix is building four semiconductor fabs in Yongin, with the first facility expected to begin operations in early 2027. The original schedule had stretched to 2045, but the timeline has been pulled forward by roughly a decade, according to the report. Chairman Chey Tae-won added that demand is rising so rapidly that even the accelerated expansion may still fall short.

As previously reported by The Elec, SK hynix is targeting a significant ramp in DRAM output, lifting monthly wafer capacity from around 550,000 wafers today to roughly 1 million wafers by 2030. Much of the expansion is centered on the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, where the first fab alone is expected to add about 360,000 wafers per month of DRAM capacity in the first half of 2030, according to the report."

https://www.datacenterdynamics...

"Memory chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix are reportedly scaling up production of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in order to meet growing demand from AI customers.

According to Korean news outlets, Samsung is looking to expand its production capacity by around 50 percent in 2026, while SK Hynix has announced plans to increase its investment in infrastructure by more than four times the figure previously announced.
Server memory
â" Thinkstock / NorGal

Both companies are currently constructing new fabs in South Korea to support these ambitions. Samsungâ(TM)s P5 facility in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi, is expected to be operational by 2028, with SK Hynixâ(TM)s M15X facility slated for utilization by mid-2027."

There's more than enough demand that not expanding production is just leaving tons of money on the table. You may legit be pissed that they're prioritizing HBM over DDR5 or DDR6, but money talks, and that's where the demand is.

We're not facing an OPEC situation... at least not with the manufacturers. Maybe with the distributors and the speculators who bought up all the ram and are ransoming it back to us a piece at a time at nosebleed prices?

I mean... this is just like farmers selling some of their yet to be harvested crop on the futures markets.

Sure, they could hold out for more, but something unexpected like a drought or a storm that damages their crops (or a war that shuts down the Hormuz strait) could happen.

In other words... it's risk management. Just like Southwest did for years with fuel hedging. They paid more up front to lock in prices for longer, and it paid off when oil spiked.

The customers want to guarantee a minimum supply even if prices go higher and are willing to lock in contracts to guarantee it. Micron gets money even if something unexpected happens (for example, China bans import of HBM to prop up their own domestic ram manufacturers, or the current administration bans sales of HBM to Chinese companies.)

I wouldn't read anything into this other than Micron's management seems to be acting rationally.

"which generates electricity without carbon emissions"

Ehh... Until they do resource extraction for uranium without fossil fuels, that's not quite true.

Still better than coal and natural gas fired plants, although all three generation types still require steam turbines.

Speaking of open vs. closed loop systems... how much water does a power plant (nuclear, coal, or otherwise) consume vs. a data center, during normal operation?

If an LLM attorney is smart enough to actually check that the cases they reference actually exist, we can be confident than they're better than a certain percent of human lawyers.

Let's keep our focus on the people behind these projects, shall we? Not the caterers, the electricians, the plumbers, or the company that mows their lawn. They're just trying to pay the bills man.

Yes, I get it, if it's your holy mission to oppose AI datacenters sure, you go right ahead and chain yourself to the front gate. But the fact is that most people don't have the luxury to morally evaluate their job for nuances of "whatever is bothering reddit today".

"... football-field-long ovens for drying layers of material that have been dissolved in solvents..."

Hyperbolic language meant to spur some sort of emotional reaction, I guess?
This process : deposition of a dissolved solid and then the solvents being driven of by a long, gentle drying process, is pretty common in industry as a method. For example just about every self adhesive product uses this process for its release coating.

Did you miss my second to last sentence entirely?

Perhaps you could crawl out of your side-bias and recognize that BOTH OF THEM ARE SHIT.

Oh look, more evidence of the ideological capture of slashdot.
A call to murder the president, +5 informative.

I mean you guys have tried what, 4x now? It's always ultimately about murder when the leftist nursery school doesn't get its way.

I listened to a radio interview with Bernie... apparently he wants this so that "citizens can block harmful policies". So that probably explains the 50% - they want voting shares in order to control the boards.

This is a bit more than just taking a stake in companies in order to give taxpayers an opportunity to share in the gains... this is basically nationalization without taking over the entire company.

So I guess I was wrong about where this was coming from. Too bad, since if the tech bros are right and this leads to the ultimate infinite money glitch, having a resource wealth fund that pays dividends would have been one way of softening the massive dislocation in labor allocation for both white and blue collar work.