Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

wpr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 383 posts

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#171

Post by bespokedevelopr »

taco_emoji wrote: post #87
drunner wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason likely here is water. It was the same with foxcon. They want access to Lake Michigan.

I have a feeling the Great Lakes Compact members will have something to say about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact

That only means they have to be built in counties which are part of that compact, or have approved provisions to return the water back to be net-neutral and comply with environmental impact laws (unless your Foxconn or legacy manufacturer or farmer). However, Beaver Dam WI as this article calls out is along a fresh water source and does not require Lake Michigan water.

The other locations like Oracle’s dc in Port Washington or MS in Racine/Kenosha area are located such that they are within the defined boundaries outlined and dc unlike Foxconn are all ‘closed-loop’ which of course isn’t entirely perfect but certainly not on the scale of Foxcon’s 7mil gal/day nonsense.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#172

Post by wat10000 »

eigencoder wrote: post #155
dguest wrote: post #39

I'd like to hear the argument for why this is needed. I can imagine a number of reasons, but this is all I found in the article: > If I’m a company considering making strategic investments... I don’t want my competition to know where I’m going, what I’m doing, what pace I’m doing it at... You want to make sure everything is buttoned up and bow tied before that type of information is put into the public realm. I'm hav…

Let me give you an anecdote that illustrates why it was needed in Eagle Mountain, Utah. One of my friends works for the city there and he told me about how the development went down. When the city council first heard that Facebook wanted to build a data center, they shot it down solely because of Facebook's reputation. A year or two later, Facebook proposed the exact same project to the city council, while keeping th…

I wonder if they ever considered improving their reputations instead.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#173

Post by triceratops »

timmg wrote: post #47

I find it strange how data centers are getting (sorta) vilified. I keep hearing stories on NPR that are kinda subtle fear-mongering. Like data centers are probably the least bad thing to build nearby. They take in power and produce computer. No pollution, no traffic, no chemicals or potential explosions. They do take power. But, like, we know how to generate electricity. And solar is getting really cheap.

> And solar is getting really cheap.

Alas...

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/wind-s...

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#174

Post by lossolo »

simianwords wrote: post #150
lossolo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're joking, but "AI datacenter in space" is the kind of phrase that attracts investors, that's straight from Musk's playbook for keeping the stock trading at ridiculous P/Es, especially now that he is planning SpaceX IPO.

why does it attract investors if it is so obvious that it will fail? it is a ridiculous conspiracy theory you are trying to assert - musk comes up with an absurd idea that captures investor's attention. its not like he wants to make a good product, he just wants to fool investors. not only that, he fools them, gets the money and then puts said money into this venture that obviously won't work. why does he waste his t…

You should ask yourself this, not me, you're the one who blindly believes what Musk says. He also said he was creating a new political party in the US, how's that going? Did you believe him when he talked about landing people on Mars in 2018? It’s 2026. How is boring company going? etc. I think you're overinterpreting what I wrote and projecting. I'm telling you how the physics works, and the physics is simple here: unless you change the physics or discover some exotic, cheap materials, this is 100% not economically viable today or in the near future.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#175

Post by bespokedevelopr »

andruby wrote: post #89
briffle wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear that argument, but a relative has been an elecrtrician that started out working mostly at the original facebook datacenter in 2016 or so. he now owns the business, and his single biggest client is still the facebook datacenter. Constant additions, reconfigurations, etc.

Should still be orders different from a the continuous labor intensive manufacturing of F35's

Which is a straw man no? This thread is about building data centers, not F35s. Microsoft and FB aren’t competing against LM for land or jobs in Beaver Dam WI nor is it a zero-sum outcome, both can exist ie ‘manufacturing hubs’.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#176

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #109
StarterPro wrote: post #92

There is no need for this many data centers. LLMs are a scourge on humanity as they are currently implemented, and what will they do when these are no longer needed? I can't wait until OpenAI, NVIDIA and Microsoft all go belly up.

A scourge? I get some kind of valuable use from it almost every day. This criticism sounds completely out of touch.

Commensurate to the actual cost?

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#177

Post by GoatInGrey »

bespokedevelopr wrote: post #148

I don’t like that county officials are willing to sign NDAs in order to bring data centers to their counties. It should be public, there should be competition if it is so desirable or important to be located in that county. The leaders in these companies love to talk up free-market, but then do everything to Standard Oil their way in. I also don’t understand the vehement push back against data centers in WI. It is a…

There are many poor characterizations here. Besides data centers clearly not employing the average worker, there are real impacts. In Farmington, for instance, has a data center planning to drain 900,000,000 gallons of water per year from the local aquifer. You have instances like Granville, Ohio where electric prices rose by 60% over five years after data centers went in. One proposed data center in Sherburne County is planning to consume 600MW of power alone (typical household uses 1.2 kW). This is also as there are roughly $500 million in state subsidies being drafted for these data centers.

So, essentially, Minnesotans are being asked to subsidize facilities that will employ only a handful of specialists, raise electric bills, strain water resources, produce outputs many residents actively oppose, and accelerate the automation of their jobs...all while the state offers ~$500 million in support to these companies and nothing to offset the costs borne by residents.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#178

Post by bespokedevelopr »

Throaway1982 wrote: post #164
bespokedevelopr wrote: post #148

I don’t like that county officials are willing to sign NDAs in order to bring data centers to their counties. It should be public, there should be competition if it is so desirable or important to be located in that county. The leaders in these companies love to talk up free-market, but then do everything to Standard Oil their way in. I also don’t understand the vehement push back against data centers in WI. It is a…

its mostly about environmental concerns, but data centres dont add nearly the amount of jobs that manufacturing had

So add 0 jobs because people don’t like chatgpt and it won’t create the same amount as 1960’s manufacturing; or add some jobs to rural WI?

You only have to look at Hermiston/Umatilla OR to see how impactful data centers can be on rural communities. There’s a lot more than 40 new jobs there since Amazon started building data centers.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#179

Post by wat10000 »

duped wrote: post #140
dguest wrote: post #39

I'd like to hear the argument for why this is needed. I can imagine a number of reasons, but this is all I found in the article: > If I’m a company considering making strategic investments... I don’t want my competition to know where I’m going, what I’m doing, what pace I’m doing it at... You want to make sure everything is buttoned up and bow tied before that type of information is put into the public realm. I'm hav…

> Whereas everyone here seems to assume it's to avoid NIMBY Literally every data center project that gets announced near me gets protested at council meetings, petitioned, and multiple series of reddit/bluesky posts about the project. It's hard to put into words for HN how deeply locals resent tech companies and AI. You could call it NIMBY, but the hatred is deeper than that. The sentiment is "you have enough money,…

It's pretty wild. People around me are complaining that their electric bill tripled and blaming data centers for it. No, your rates didn't triple in the last year. Your bill went up because you used way more electricity, probably because it's been ass-freezingly cold.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#180

Post by jeffbee »

outside1234 wrote: post #28

Someone is going to have to explain to me why anything at the state or local level should be allowed to be secret like I am two years old because I don't get how this helps citizens.

It helps because the NDA enables a regulatory function of the local government that they otherwise wouldn't have. If there's no state or local statute that says the proponent has to reveal a given fact to the local government, then the local government has no way to demand it. The NDA is a negotiating instrument, they get to know the thing they want to know without having to go pass a law.
Post reply on HN