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perbu | on: Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork
First and foremost, China isn't energy-limited like the US is. A modern grid, lost of cheap power coming online every day. The worlds most advance ultra-high voltage transport links are tying the deserts in the west to the cities in the south.

It probably sucks for you if the proposed powerline goes through your house, but the need of the many come first.

Having cheap and plentiful power is a huge market advantage. It was one of the factors driving Norway out of poverty 100 years ago.

seanmcdirmid | parent | next
I think this is really a rosy image of China’s electrify situation. They have huge needs in the east and green energy in the west, they can’t build their UHV links fast enough. They are doing ok at keeping up, but there isn’t a surplus of cheap electricity lying around in the same places where you have cheap water as well.
victorbjorklund | root | parent
What is stopping them from just building their data centers in the west where they have energy surplus? Not like you need to locate a data center inside a city.
seanmcdirmid | root | parent
Water. The west is really dry. We could throw in data lines as well but it’s really bottlenecked by water. Actually the only place in China with water in abundance is southeast China.

Also they really don’t have the chips to supply those data centers, and the government isn’t so crazy to go that aggressive on AI, they have lots of other priorities as well.

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dalemhurley | parent | next
There is economic benefits of the cost per a lumen continuously coming down.
hobofan | parent | next
The US also isn't energy-limited. They'll just price out all humans living there from buying any electricity.

EDIT: This was obviously meant to be facetious with the intent to highlight the negative effects on the general population that datacenter buildout has in the US.

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Mashimo | root | parent | next
> The US also isn't energy-limited.

I have not looked into it, but I have heard a lot of new data center have to run on site gas turbine on trailers to have enough power.

If the US is not energy limited, why they do that?

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wickedsight | parent
> but the need of the many come first.

The need of the rich, you mean. In these kinds of situations it's never about the many, if it was about them different choices would be made.