alt Hacker NewsYeah I guess I'm not the target audience for this because I assumed that "the power problem" was "massive increase in electricity costs for people despite virtually unchanged usage on their part", not "AI companies have to wait too long to be able to start using even more power than they already are":
> Nicole Pastore, who has lived in her large stone home near Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University campus for 18 years, said her utility bills over the past year jumped by 50%. “You look at that and think, ‘Oh my god,’” she said. She has now become the kind of mom who walks around her home turning off lights and unplugging her daughter’s cellphone chargers.
> And because Pastore is a judge who rules on rental disputes in Baltimore City District Court, she regularly sees poor people struggling with their own power bills. “It’s utilities versus rent,” she said. “They want to stay in their home, but they also want to keep their lights on.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-elec...
I understand the instinct but if people seriously think that they are solving any problem by unplugging cell phone chargers, they are simply bad at math. Human time is easily worth more than that, even when working at minimum wage.
That said, it obviously sucks that utility prices are rising for people who can not effortlessly cover that (not to speak of the local pollution, if that's an issue). Maybe some special tax to offset that cost to society towards hyper scalers would be a reasonable way to soften the blow, but I have not done the math.