u/praxiq

TL;DR: The Trump administration has been revoking visas and imprisoning international students who express support for Palestinian rights. Two Cornell students fled the country after being targeted by ICE. Cornell said they'd provide support to the students to finish their PhDs abroad, but now tells them they'll lose their funding unless they return to the US, where they will likely be arrested and imprisoned on arrival.

I'm excited by the prospect of buying a Boox reader and getting out of the Kindle ecosystem. I'm concerned, though, that most Boox models run Android 11, which is 6 years old, and officially reached end-of-life in 2024. Even the brand-new Go 6 Gen 2 runs Android 11.

Many apps already no longer run on Android 11, and that problem is only going to increase with each passing year.

My main concern is that I'll buy the reader, and then in the very near future, my ereader apps will no longer be available for it. I don't want to have to jump through hoops to sideload old versions of apps, just to get them to run on a brand new device that was shipped with an already obsolete OS.

And of course, part of the point of buying a Boox is that it can run more than ereader apps - I don't know yet what else I might want to use it for, so it may be that apps I'd like to run are already not available!

(I want a vaguely kindle-sized black-and-white device. Currently leaning towards the Go 7, since it at least has Android 13, even though I prefer the form factor of the Go 6.)

I ordered tea last week from Hibiki-an, and DHL held the package unless I paid them $28 - on an order of only $70!

I reached out to duty_disputes@dhl.com, as others here have suggested, and they confirmed that the order is not subject to any "import duties and taxes," but that I was instead being charged for "Permits and licenses" that they refused to refund.

It seems the only "permit" required is the FDA's "Prior notice" requirement for importing food. It seems that DHL has decided to charge $28 to do what is presumably a free, automated process for them. And while they're implying that this is because of all the recent tariff chaos, the "prior notice" requirement has been around since 2002, so there's no reason for them to start charging such a high fee now except that they seem to think they can get away with it.

Sadly, it seems the only option is to not order tea internationally from any store that uses DHL. (Or any food, cosmetics, or other FDA-regulated product, even if it's tariff-free.)

Last week I ordered $70 worth of tea from a Japanese company to be shipped to the US. DHL held the package and refused to release it unless I paid a $28 "Import duty payment." I disputed it and pointed out that there are no import duties on this shipment. They confirmed I was correct, but said I still owed them this payment for "OPL (Permits & Licenses)."

I called, but nobody has been able to explain to me what "permits & licenses" are necessary. The only requirement I can find for food shipments is prior notice, which as I understand it should be entirely automated and inexpensive - and has been required for all food shipments for decades, so it shouldn't be an unexpected fee.

When I called, they claimed this was actually a fee being charged to DHL by US Customs, but were unable to tell me the reason for the fee. This contradicts DHL's previous claim that it's an administrative fee to handle the required paperwork.

I haven't even been able to determine whether the $28 is a flat rate, or if it's being charged as a percentage fee on my order. Either way, it seems extremely high. The shipper reports that their shipments usually go out with no additional fees.

Does DHL really charge this huge fee now on all international shipments of food, cosmetics, and other FDA-regulated items? Or might there be something special about this order, even if nobody at DHL seems to be able to tell me what? If the latter, is there any way for me to find the reason for the fee? If it's not valid, what do I need to know or find out to dispute it successfully?

I want to make some fancy truffles, where the brand of the chocolate makes a difference. Shipping chocolate in warm weather seems a bit iffy and probably expensive, plus I'd rather shop local if I can!

I know it's not popular to say these days, but I'm really excited about the potential uses of AI, and the opportunities it can create. I also know that to mitigate the environmental impacts of AI, we need to build new, efficient datacenters, instead of awkwardly retrofitting existing datacenters that were designed for a very different use case, which is an environmental nightmare.

That doesn't mean I support this data center, on this site, built by this company. But when I attended Terawulf's presentation to the Lansing planning board last week, I really wanted to be convinced that they had a good plan.

TL;DR: After seeing Terawulf present their best argument for their datacenter, I am strongly opposed to its construction.

My top concern can be best described by addressing one of the last things they said in the meeting: they promised "compliance with all applicable environmental and operational requirements." Various versions of this claim kept coming up.

Is that supposed to impress us, that they promise not to break the law? That's literally the lowest possible standard they could be held to, but it turns out it's the most they're willing to promise.

Throughout the meeting they kept making vague statements about caring about the community and being a good neighbor, but over and over it was clear that they would only agree not to do things if they aren't allowed to do them anyway. In other words, they plan to do anything they can legally get away with.

The thing is, the laws are a bare minimum standard. They're full of loopholes. We need Terawulf to agree to significantly exceed those minimum standards.

My specific concerns are as follows:

1. Noise levels: Apparently, they're only legally required to ensure that the noise they create is below 60 dB at the property line. But their datacenter buildings are far from the property line. If they're making so much noise that even as far away as the property line it's still 60 dB, then that means, depending on the characteristics of the sound, it could be audible for miles, 24/7. It could also carry across the lake and affect houses on the other side.
2. Infrasound: Infrasound refers to low-frequency vibrations, the kind you can't hear but can feel. Datacenter cooling systems can vibrate at sub-audio frequencies, and those vibrations can carry for miles. Recent research (small but well-designed, double-blinded, placebo-controlled studies) have shown that infrasonic vibrations can cause significant mental and physical health problems - often a general feeling of unease, anxiety or nausea that you can't quite pinpoint.
3. Electricity prices: Terawulf made vague mentions of "investing" in the local power distribution systems, but didn't say how much. It seems likely that NYSEG will have to build new infrastructure to support their power draw, and that we'll all be paying for that in our eletric bills. That means we're basically subsidizing Terawulf's private infrastructure.
4. Water prices: Terawulf will draw up to 700,000 gallons per day of municipal water, which is more than 10% of the total demand. Will that impact water prices? No idea. That wasn't addressed in the meeting at all.

One thing to keep in mind is that their job is to sell the datacenter plan to us, to present their plan as optimistically as possible. Their first obligation is to their investors. So when they say, for example, that they have permission to use 700k gallons of water per day, but only "expect" to use 30k most days, that 30k means absolutely nothing - it's not in a contract and there's no penalty if they go over.

Similarly, they made vague claims about employing locals for construction and operation, but as they've already said otherwise in investor presentations, we have to assume that's not true.

Honestly, even taking a skeptical view of all their claims, the environmental impact seems to be the least concerning. Multiple independent environmental organizations will be required to sign off on their plan before they can build. They chose the site not for the lake access, like many other datacenters, but because as an old power plant it's already connected to high-capacity power lines. They'll be using municipal water and sewer, and won't have permission or infrastructure to use lake water or dump in the lake. (Cayuga Operating Company, their "landlord," already draws some water from the lake for site maintenance and will continue to do so, but Terawulf won't be using it.) And while some datacenters illegally run their own inefficient power plants, the on-site oil-powered emergency generators here will be far too small to contribute meaningfully to datacenter operations.

Another concern raised by the planning board was the economics of the whole thing: Terawulf claims this datacenter will cost $9 million per MW of computing power, which is much lower than other similar projects, even though this site will require significantly more prep than many other similar projects. Terawulf was not able to explain where their cost estimate came from or why it was so optimistic.

What could they do to make the datacenter plan reasonable? Sign a contract with the town agreeing to specific, testable noise restrictions, infrasound restrictions, electrical investment, max annual water use, and so on, with clearly defined, significant penalties for failing to meet agreed-upon targets. Without such a contract, we should strongly oppose this datacenter.

EDIT to add: I regret to inform you that despite my pro-AI stance, this post was written 100% by a human as I don't trust an LLM to speak for me!