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?

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.

Correct. Presumably if your investors don't like the idea of getting diluted by uncle sam, they'll cut off sales once you hit 199M a year.

You'd need to get tangible benefits for letting the government "buy in"... enough that your existing investors and share holding employees would be ok with crossing the 200M cutoff.

Probably a foreign held corporation in Ireland that owns all the IP and gets paid licensing revenue from all the sub 200M companies will serve as the controlling entity.

What's odd is you could accomplish something similar to Bernie's plan by funding AI startups and taking an equity stake. Upon IPO, you sell the stake and then take the money to go incubate more companies. The leftists complain about the massive imbalance of wealth, but are unwilling to go and take the risk that the VC funds are taking by backing a bunch of unproven companies that may never pay off.

Dilution is preferable to paying cash taxes on unrealized gains - the other socialist/progressive "solution" to people being successful. And, one would hope that negotiations would get things closer to a reasonable percentage from 50%, like the 10% the US government took in Intel.

It aligns the interests of the government with the company - you can't pay dividends on a wealth fund based on equity stakes if you take actions (policy or otherwise) that tank the value of the stock.

If anything, having the government as a partner (preferably a silent one) can help boost the stock price. If those shares aren't trading, then they aren't impacting daily price discovery. The only impact is that if the company ever pays dividends, half of the dividends go to uncle sam.

I'm not a proponent of nationalizing companies, but for AI companies to hit max velocity for spend, they need every advantage they can get to clear red tape and public opposition out of the way.

From an October 15th Pew Research report:

https://www.pewresearch.org/gl...

"But many are worried about AIâ(TM)s effects on daily life. A median of 34% of adults say they are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI, while 42% are equally concerned and excited. A median of 16% are more excited than concerned.

Concerns about AI are especially common in the United States, Italy, Australia, Brazil and Greece, where about half of adults say they are more concerned than excited. But as few as 16% in South Korea are mainly concerned about the prospect of AI in their lives."

Contrast this to Biden era view on AI - which was to legislate regulations and restrictions on development which most likely would have been only to the benefit of the largest players. Open source players in this space would remain unaffected, since the metric is 200M in sales.

That Bernie and Trump are talking similar language (US government taking a stake in AI companies) makes this at least a starting point in discussions. People talking about UBI without proposing a mechanism for financing UBI - this is one possible way of financing things.

Nevermind, I was reading the Ars Technica version of the article that leaves out the part where they take stock instead of cash under the 50% haircut, and are proposing to pay dividends based on that fund.

Strangely enough, I don't have any objections to this plan.

Either:

1. AI is a scam, in which case Bernie is proposing they rob the robbers before the public figures out that they're getting taken. Definitely a heist film.

2. AI is the real deal, in which case Bernie is skimming 50% off the top as part of their deal to let AI have their way with the American economy. Notice he's not promising that he won't came back later to take another 50% haircut.

I'm a little weirded out by the fact that you could also just take an non-voting equity stake in these companies, considering that their spending is powering the US economy. Yes, nationalization is bad, but getting in before the IPO sounds like a really smart idea if your goal is to maximize return the US taxpayer.

You got it in one.

Private enterprise wants to come in and upgrade your infrastructure without you having to float bonds, and somehow this is a bad thing.

This reminds me of when the company that built the monorai for Disney offered to put in monorails for the County of Los Angeles at their cost - the funds to be later recouped in fares (five cents per head at the time.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"In 1963, Alweg submitted a proposal to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for a privately funded monorail system in the county. The plan included design, construction, and operation of the system at Alweg's financial risk, with construction costs to be recouped through fare revenue. The proposal was ultimately rejected. Some sources attribute the decision to opposition from automotive and petroleum industry interests, including Standard Oil of California and General Motors.[4][5] Author Ray Bradbury, a supporter of the proposal, later criticized the city's decision to develop a subway system instead.[6][7]"

There are legit criticisms, like datacenters not behaving like good baseload consumers (many system designs will to switch to internal power if grid power goes out of spec, causing grid fluctuations to get much worse), but these can be handled by mandating that they build mechanisms (like batteries) to take over base load during situations like that.

You have to wonder who is behind shit like this. Is it organic mass hysteria (possibly driven by algorithmic influence), or is it manufactured outrage in service of some hidden goal (aka some billionare *cough* *cough* *michael bloomberg*, or a state actor)?

They specifically outlined the trojan horse rationale for denying public contributions. Someone plays the long game by submitting patches and gets privileged access to the project and repository, then turns around and backdoors it on the behalf of a state actor.

Example:

https://www.atlanticcouncil.or...

"The XZ saga began when the original maintainer of XZ Utils was pressured by other contributor accounts into adding user JiaT75 as a maintainer of the project. JiaT75 had been contributing to the XZ Utils community since 2022. A group of accounts and JiaT75 questioned the original maintainerâ(TM)s ability to maintain the XZ Utils project and spent years convincing them to bring JiaT75 on board as an additional maintainer. Once JiaT75 was provided maintainer access, they replaced the original maintainerâ(TM)s contact information with their own on oss-fuzz, a project that scans open source projects for vulnerabilities. After further preparation, they issued commits for XZ Utils versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1, implementing the backdoor into the code. This backdoor had the potential to infect Linux operating systems, but thanks to the keen eye and curiosity of a Microsoft engineer, it was discovered before causing widespread harm. "

"Christopher Robinson (he/him/his), Chairperson, OpenSSF Technical Advisory Council; Director of Security Communications, Intel

âoeThe attack itself is not novel; it strings together a series of social engineering/cyber-bullying tactics, and leverages embedding offline malicious files during the CI/CD stage of publication. What is unique is how well the attacker studied and exploited common community behaviors and norms to penetrate the project and take maintainership that could allow the later actions in secret.â "

So I interpret it as closing off one channel for attack, which isn't taking public pull requests, but shutting off public contributions entirely, and limiting the ecosystem to known, trusted entities only.

I suppose as long as they let you fork, someone can always create a derivative that accepts public contributions, and then they can take the risk of dealing with that particular risk.

I can't find the citation for it, but in at least one case, part of the reported allocation of water for datacenters was due to the water consumed during construction. I would consider this kind of consumption legit if called out as a temporary usage of water, but FUD if just assumed as part of the overall calculation of ongoing water demand.

As for creating/destroying water:

https://www.fwpcoa.org/content...

"Air cooling (water-free): Many smaller or older data centers rely on air conditioning and chilled air circulation to remove heat. These use mechanical chillers or heat exchangers and do not consume water for cooling (aside from minimal water for humidification). Air cooling is common in cooler climates or where water is scarce, but it can require more electricity to run compressors or fans.
Evaporative cooling (open-loop): A majority of large, modern data centers use water-based cooling for better energy efficiency. This often involves cooling towers or evaporative chillers: warm water absorbs heat from servers and is then cooled by evaporation in a tower. As water evaporates into the air, it carries away heat â" dramatically cutting the electrical power needed for cooling. The trade-off is high water consumption. Most big data centers today use some form of evaporative cooling because itâ(TM)s energy-efficient, especially in hot climates, but it directly uses water (often drawn from municipal supply).
Closed-loop water cooling: In closed-loop systems, water circulates in sealed pipes or coils that cool the servers without directly exposing water to air. Because the water isnâ(TM)t evaporated to the environment, losses are minimal â" itâ(TM)s mostly the same water recirculating (with some makeup water added occasionally). These systems can include water-cooled heat exchangers or liquid-to-liquid cooling loops. Closed-loop cooling can reduce freshwater use by up to 70% compared to traditional open evaporative methods. The downside is higher cost and complexity, but they are far more water-efficient since water isnâ(TM)t âoeburned offâ into the air."

"However, a growing number of data centers are now shifting to recycled water. Tech giants have begun partnering with utilities to use treated wastewater (effluent) for cooling instead of fresh drinking water. For instance, Google uses reclaimed or non-potable water at over 25% of its data center campuses (one notable example is its Douglas County, Georgia data center, which runs on recycled municipal wastewater). Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced in 2023 that 20 of its data centers are cooling with purified wastewater instead of potable water. After cycling through the cooling system, this water is sent back to the treatment plant to be cleaned and reused again. These initiatives leave more drinking-quality water for the community and exemplify the industryâ(TM)s trend toward âoestrategic water sourcing.â Still, as of today, reclaimed water use is the exception. Most data centers worldwide are still using fresh water for cooling, although this is slowly changing with new projects and local regulations."

So evaporative cooling "destroys" water. And using treated wastewater (pure enough to use for datacenter usage and probably irrigation, but still too ick for some people to drink directly - aka toilet to tap), if part of their investments were to purify even more water than the municipality was already processing, combined with closed loop usage could be considered "creating" water.

Your guess is as good as mine though, it all sounds like marketing hype in an attempt to combat FUD.

Well written code is self-documenting, specifically because once you start putting documentation somewhere else, you start getting a divergence in truth. And I'm not talking about leaving comments in the code - that's also documentation, as anyone who has had to reconcile business processes with code can attest upon discovering that the comments and the code also don't agree with each other. (This is where I try and sell people on having detailed commit messages, and then realize that they're all going to be lost the next time someone advocates for a squash merge...)

Refactoring is how you refresh your knowledge of the code and remove any accumulated cruft. Stuff like "Oh, we meant to do that in the next release, but we've completely removed that functionality, so this stub can go too.", and "Well shit, this algorithm doesn't work the way we thought it did - and the test suite is missing the test that would tell us that it doesn't work for that last 10% of use cases.", and "Uh... this method doesn't only do that one thing anymore, time to refactor and dry things out."

The moment you start relying on "tribal knowledge" to manage your code, you're fucked. Because very soon, as you have turnover (doesn't have to be layoffs - people can get promoted up or sideways, a bunch of people get hired, some people get transferred to special projects and start forgetting the stuff they maintained), the tribal knowledge distills to one thing: "If it isn't broken, don't touch it - you'll break it."

In other words... If your codebase is in decent shape, AI code bots are not a net negative unless people are blindly approving commits. If your codebase is in shitty shape, you're probably already having issues with diverging truth (and inability to scale), and you're fucked either way.