A quick glance shows that I’m in the minority. I grabbed a Bosgames M5 with 128GB UMA RAM when I discovered openclaw (at the time claudebot). I’m running Lemonade, which is a wrapper for llama.cpp, sd-cpp, flux, and others. I’m happy to have paid a “mere” $2400 compared to what similar systems cost now, and now I’m toying with fine tuning my own models. Though, I primarily run Hermes Agent paired with Qwen3.6 35b A3B (using a heretic ablitieration for 0 refusals).
Hermes Agent does a lot of random stuff for me right now. It manages my calendar and to-do list in nextcloud via MCP server. It created and maintains an llm-wiki based on my Obsidian Vault. Then it creates a report every morning about both and the weather.
The server has tailscale installed, so yes I can access it anywhere.
Hi. I live in Loudoun County and work for a hyperscaler data center. I want to clear up a lot of misinformation. Amaa. I do have to respect my NDA.
First, data centers absolutely employ hundreds of people. It depends on the kind of data center. An edge site that is for interconnects only needs a couple of people, but a core site with between 20 to 100 megawatts absolutely has around 100 employees once you include breakfix/smart hands technicians, critical environment techs, cable techs, electrical engineers, managers, and other support staff. AI data centers fall in or exceed that range.
Another issue is the taxes are usually on the computers themselves as property taxes. This is actually gargantuan, and make up about 45% of Loudoun County’s operating budget. Usually, there are no taxes on the building or property itself since the computers are worth more and are taxed at a higher rate. That said, then COVID happened, and decommissions and procurement grinded to a halt. Computers are depreciating assets, so as they sharply dropped in value but stayed in production, the county had a budget shortfall for '21 snd '22.
Another parroted point that is related is that “taxes aren’t getting reduced for residents”. This is actually untrue. The tax rate has dropped from $1.20 to $0.80 over the last decade, but the issue is that property values have skyrocketed. In addition, one of the VA colleges found no link between data centers’ proximity to residential properties and those properties decreasing in value in NoVA.
Now, it may seem that I’m “pro-data center”. I am not. I’ve worked in them for 7 years. There are many things they could do to be better neighbors with everyone. However, a lot of the anti-data center sentiment is manufactured outrage. Dominion Power doesn’t want to spend money on infrastructure and preventative maintenance; I’ve watched 4 transformers on my street and neighboring street blow in the last year. News companies fear AI and search engines replacing clicks and ad revenue. Golf courses don’t want to have their water use compared to data centers, cause its not even close to the same ballpark.
Is air and noise pollution an issue? Yes. However, perhaps Dominion Power should make good on its promises and hook up Vantage 2; the data center in Sterling that runs off of its own gas turbines because Dominion told them they can’t have any power after they completed the data center. It’s not like data centers are built with no promise of utilities; contracts were signed beforehand… Up to 10 years beforehand. Or when the substation in Leesburg caught fire, causing the 5 Microsoft data centers to run generators for a month while NOVEC failed to source transformer components after promising that they would be back up and running in 48 hours. The SCC then fined Microsoft millions for breaking a rule they wouldn’t have to if the power companies didn’t overpromise and underdeliver. Forget a moratorium, there’s no more power in LoCo.
I put my money where my mouth is. I bought 30 solar panels and a battery system. Dominion Power tried to steal from residents already, trying to change the net metering rate from 1:1 to 1:0.15. This would mean that they would pay me 15% of what I pay them for each kilowatt generated and sent back to the grid. Thankfully, the SCC shot that down.
And they are pursuing a merger with NextEra Energy to form the largest regulated utility in the world… A company that large wouldn’t be regulated anymore.
GenAI is a whole new ballgame.