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Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

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

#181

Post by tokai »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #165
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…

The concern is that the sellers can ratchet up their asking price if a deep pocketed buyer is known. Walt Disney used a bunch of shell companies to buy up land in Florida. If property owners knew he was buying, they'd ask for much more.

But the price should be ratchet up if the demand is there to support it.

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

#182

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

briffle wrote: post #72
janice1999 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data centers don't create local jobs once construction is complete. 40 people, most remote, can run a data center. The F-35 program claims to have over 250,000 people employed in its supply chain in the US and has large factories with high paying, often unionised jobs.

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.

How big is the business?

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

#183

Post by MattSteelblade »

simianwords wrote: post #94
MattSteelblade wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is hardly betting on it; they are exploring the feasibility of it and are frank about the engineering challenges: > significant engineering challenges remain, such as thermal management, high-bandwidth ground communications, and on-orbit system reliability.[1] [1] https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalabl...

why do you think this changes what i said? I know it has constraints but the fact is that Google is serious about it. Enough to publicly speak about it many times and invest enormous amounts of R&D. You are saying they are "hardly betting on it". This is grossly false and I wonder why you would write that? Its clearly a serious bet, with lots of people working on it. > Google CEO Sundar Pichai says we’re just a decad…

I never said Google wasn't serious; I said they are hardly betting on it relative to their other capital expenditures. Google rightfully describes this as a "moonshot." To date, the only public hardware commitment is two prototype satellites in 2027 for a feasibility study. Compared to the billions pouring into Waymo, DeepMind, and terrestrial data centers, this doesn't yet qualify as an "enormous" financial bet, even if the engineering intent is serious.

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

#184

Post by gosub100 »

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.

I find it strange that when there is a housing crisis, they can't seem to build enough, frequently because of building permit refusals. But when a data centers get secrecy and fast tracked before anyone can oppose them.

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

#185

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

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…

it's worrying that they would consider something without knowing who they were dealing with, economics be damned.

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

#186

Post by tokai »

simianwords wrote: post #113
snarf21 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: If you are so sure that this is a big payday, have you put all your net worth into SpaceX? Seems like a no brainer if you fully believe it. The reason for this "data centers in space" is the same as the "sustained human colony on Mars". It is all pie in the sky ideas to drive valuation and increase Musk's wealth. Just a small sampling of previous failed Musk promises: - demonstration drive of full a…

I have put as much money as I believe in it (risk adjusted). And same goes for Google, Spacex, Blue Origin and other companies. This trope > It is all pie in the sky ideas to drive valuation and increase Musk's wealth. Really needs to stop. This is based on a naive interpretation of how wealth gets created. Musk has an amazing reputation getting things done and making things that people like. Whether you like him as…

>Musk has an amazing reputation getting things done and making things that people like

Are you trolling?

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

#187

Post by coredog64 »

gosub100 wrote: post #122
jandrewrogers wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> use too much ground water Data centers use little water. Less than using the same land for anything involving agriculture, for example. The idea that a data center uses too much water is recently invented propaganda that is readily verifiable as fiction. Cui bono?

"Less than agriculture " isn't the limit on what is too much. not sure how you decided that. Western states in particular struggle with their water supply and should not be wasting it on cooling transistors for people who are too lazy to think.

Wisconsin (the state FTA) is bounded by two of the Great Lakes and doesn't generally have water problems.

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

#188

Post by bespokedevelopr »

GoatInGrey wrote: post #177
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…

This article is written by a Wisconsin publication about data centers in Wisconsin. My comments are specific to Wisconsin. Like I said in my comment, some states aren’t well equipped to handle new manufacturing/dc.

I cannot take your comment very serious when so much of it is plainly wrong. You fall into the later category of what I described in my original comment. Outside of reddit-sphere people do not take these flippant and short-sighted comments seriously.

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

#189

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

state_less wrote: post #130
infecto wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is always left unclear in these anti data center articles is how much the public is left in the dark? It’s not out of the normal for large developments to be kept under NDA until hitting a threshold of certainty, usually that does not mean the residents are left out of voicing their opinions before ground breaks.

Obviously data center bidders would prefer their activity to be kept in the dark, but does that make for good outcomes for anyone else except the bidders. First, the community would like to weigh in on whether they want a data center or not, often they don't. Then if they do, they'd rather have a bidding war than some NDA backroom deal with a single entity. All this does is serve Big Tech and Big Capital, and they do…

I feel like the term "community" is leading intuitions astray here. The actual decision at question here is whether the local government provides the necessary approvals for a company to build what they want on their private property.

It's good and proper for the government to consider the impacts on a local community before approving a big construction project. That process will need to involve some amount of open community consultation, and reasonable minds can differ on when and how that needs to start. The article describes a concrete proposal at the end, where NDAs would be allowed for the due diligence phase but not once the formal approval process begins; that seems fine.

It's not good and improper for the government to selectively withhold approval for politically disfavored industries, or to host a "bidding war" where anyone seeking approvals must out-bribe their competitors.

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

#190

Post by simianwords »

MattSteelblade wrote: post #183
simianwords wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do you think this changes what i said? I know it has constraints but the fact is that Google is serious about it. Enough to publicly speak about it many times and invest enormous amounts of R&D. You are saying they are "hardly betting on it". This is grossly false and I wonder why you would write that? Its clearly a serious bet, with lots of people working on it. > Google CEO Sundar Pichai says we’re just a decad…

I never said Google wasn't serious; I said they are hardly betting on it relative to their other capital expenditures. Google rightfully describes this as a "moonshot." To date, the only public hardware commitment is two prototype satellites in 2027 for a feasibility study. Compared to the billions pouring into Waymo, DeepMind, and terrestrial data centers, this doesn't yet qualify as an "enormous" financial bet, eve…

i agree with you then. lets agree that the intent is serious.
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