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Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

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Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#181

Post by JuniperMesos »

y1n0 wrote: post #154
JuniperMesos wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes have relatively little to do with how good schools are, that is dominated by the quality of the students who live close enough to attend the schools.

I can't believe you blame students for bad schools.

A school is fundamentally a social environment - children are legally compelled to be there, and the specific educational structure is centered around being forced to be in classrooms with large numbers of similarly-aged kids, for large portions of the day. Much of what one learns in school is social acculturation to the specific segment of society represented by the other kids there, rather than the contents of classroom learning.

How good a school is - which we can expand into more detailed definitions like "how much do children learn there?", "how much does any individual kid like or hate it?", "is this a good use of a child's time?" - is dominated by what the other kids they are in a shared social setting are like, and not by how expensive the facilities are or how well the teachers are paid.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#182

Post by CPLX »

tptacek wrote: post #170
CPLX wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is just factually incorrect. Data centers absolutely are loud and they're disruptive. They're not good for the environment. They consume large quantities of water, typically, and huge, absolutely staggering amounts of energy, which typically has the effect of raising rates for everybody else by driving up demand and causing capital infrastructure needs that are financed by everybody, not just the d…

They do not in fact consume large quantities of water, and "they consume lots of water" is a pretty good shibboleth for "this isn't going to be a productive discussion". Golf courses in the US consume more than 8x the water of all data centers combined. Obviously, that's my response to your polling claims as well: people getting polled thing data centers are consuming all the water.

You guys really don't get it, do you?

You've got these people going on TV and doing interviews saying that this new technology will be capable of replacing huge amounts of jobs.

The people that say that most jobs will be eliminated by AI are making direct threats of violence against the families of millions of people. Telling someone that they will no longer have any way of feeding their children is telling them that you're going to kill their family.

I'm not saying this to convince you that that's true. You could make some counter-arguments to that, and I'm sure people will come along and do that. The point is to understand it that that's how it's perceived by the people hearing it.

And then to add insult to injury, they want to come do it in your town.

They want to pitch a giant "development" project. But remember nobody ever wants “development” except for the fact that it might bring jobs and economic growth, to them, not you living somewhere else.

Meanwhile, you've already told them that the reason we need so many more data centers all of a sudden is specifically so that we can eliminate whatever jobs are left that we didn't get a chance to eliminate over the last several decades when we exported most of the jobs we could to different countries.

By the way we're the same assholes who said "trust us" last time, and pitched the idea that it would lead to a prosperous future for everyone. Instead you made money off sending the jobs to china, capturing all excess value with software, and addicting our children to opioids.

And your next exciting offer for us is a giant windowless building that will take up open land, nature, and yes, water and electricity, and employ almost nobody.

People don't feel like they control a whole lot, but they do have some ability to complain about this thing happening where they live.

The actions of people opposing these data centers are completely rational. If I'm trying to make one point, that's it.

The actually interesting part of this back and forth on HN is that Silicon Valley (aka "tech") culture has grown so fundamentally rotten at its core that not only do people not have values that place humans first, they can't even recognize when other people do.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#183

Post by Scroll_Swe »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #180
Scroll_Swe wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of agree but I live in a city in Sweden. Should I not be able to use youtube or order online because we don't have a DC right next door?

Sweden has a bunch of data centers. Doubt any of them consume coal based electricity though.

Yup exactly :)

It is all about how you plan, build etc how good you are.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#184

Post by tptacek »

CPLX wrote: post #182
tptacek wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do not in fact consume large quantities of water, and "they consume lots of water" is a pretty good shibboleth for "this isn't going to be a productive discussion". Golf courses in the US consume more than 8x the water of all data centers combined. Obviously, that's my response to your polling claims as well: people getting polled thing data centers are consuming all the water.

You guys really don't get it, do you? You've got these people going on TV and doing interviews saying that this new technology will be capable of replacing huge amounts of jobs. The people that say that most jobs will be eliminated by AI are making direct threats of violence against the families of millions of people. Telling someone that they will no longer have any way of feeding their children is telling them that…

You could just say "I concede the point on water but stand by the rest of what I wrote". Instead, all this.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#185

Post by LogicFailsMe »

At what point was this datacenter going to benefit the residents beyond a trifling number of jobs in exchange for draining local resources for pennies on the dollar Microsoft should have paid? If the tech companies can't make these things into genuine win/win scenarios, then don't let them build anything, they're currently as useless to local communities as stadiums except you don't even get to watch games in them.

Absolutely 100% force them to make a genuine case for them and to sign contracts demanding they live up to their obligations. Otherwise, it's more evidence why billionaires need to write and sign some reality checks on their dragon piles.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#186

Post by CPLX »

tptacek wrote: post #184
CPLX wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys really don't get it, do you? You've got these people going on TV and doing interviews saying that this new technology will be capable of replacing huge amounts of jobs. The people that say that most jobs will be eliminated by AI are making direct threats of violence against the families of millions of people. Telling someone that they will no longer have any way of feeding their children is telling them that…

You could just say "I concede the point on water but stand by the rest of what I wrote". Instead, all this.

My original post that started this discussion did not mention water:

> The ratio of jobs and taxes to local resources tied up has to be one of the worst possible trade-offs of any industrial use that you can envision. That is precisely why data centers are proving to be profoundly unpopular.

Nonetheless I can see that fixating on this instead of my obviously correct point which is that people absolutely hate data centers and the sociopathic tech billionaires behind them for rational reasons is a good dodge.

Hardly unexpected when I am posting on the promotional discussion board of a private equity firm responsible for launching many of these sociopaths into society.

My later comment about water usage is both unneeded for that point to stand and trivially proven true.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#187

Post by phil21 »

CPLX wrote: post #182
tptacek wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do not in fact consume large quantities of water, and "they consume lots of water" is a pretty good shibboleth for "this isn't going to be a productive discussion". Golf courses in the US consume more than 8x the water of all data centers combined. Obviously, that's my response to your polling claims as well: people getting polled thing data centers are consuming all the water.

You guys really don't get it, do you? You've got these people going on TV and doing interviews saying that this new technology will be capable of replacing huge amounts of jobs. The people that say that most jobs will be eliminated by AI are making direct threats of violence against the families of millions of people. Telling someone that they will no longer have any way of feeding their children is telling them that…

> But remember nobody ever wants “development” except for the fact that it might bring jobs and economic growth, to them, not you living somewhere else.

This is really the only point that matters. It's held true my whole life, and I expect it will be true until I die. Doesn't matter what you build. I was watching a couple transmission line projects over the past decade that are still in the "lawsuits and community rage" phase - proposed to bring wind farm watts to load centers - and now they will likely be killed since the anti-development folks can pretend they were always due to Datacenters.

Datacenters are just an easy scapegoat for the anti-development crowd. It's been amazing to watch how quickly it's gone, and how folks have such a strong opinion on stuff that otherwise would have been built half a mile from them and they'd never have known any better until they were told to care.

The rest of what you wrote is largely social media driven ragebait in comment form. Kernels of truth, but largely immaterial.

Datacenter land use is the least interesting thing you could possibly discuss. Knocking out some corn fields and building some warehouses off the road no one can see or hear, with almost no traffic to/from them after construction is pretty much the lowest possible bar for local community impact for quite literally any project. It change nothing for anyone, other than the farmers who sold the land and that a few local trades companies have a couple decades of stable highly paid employment.

Therefore, the only way to get communities up in arms about these things is basically lie about it.

It's going to be a real head scratcher to folks when electricity rates continue to march upwards even if they get all AI datacenter construction banned. The green tech crowd who had the datacenter bogeyman land in their lap is playing an exceedingly dangerous game here. What we are largely seeing is the bill coming due for generational lack of investment into the grid.

If your local community can't figure out how to get the money raining down from the skies like it is now to subsidize the build out of your local infrastructure for something as minor as municipal water treatment in Wisconsin You likely will never be building anything at all.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#188

Post by jeffbee »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #179
nixgeek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a datacenter typically employs thousands of people in the trades, often for hundreds or a thousand plus hours, per person, from the start of a big build to the campus being complete. It’s quite literally millions of billable hours in trade labor. Modern datacenters also require very high standards of construction and are complex, so these projects create jobs and also represent a real training, upskilling an…

temporary jobs during construction that don't benefit the town in the long run the tax rebates can extend for decades > these sites are often tremendously lucrative in tax for the county/city as well these datacenters haven't been around long enough to know that; these are _not_ your grandma's datacenters -- they are much more resource-hungry since they do substantially more processing

In a "tax break" (misnomer) situation the developer is paying either a lump sum up front, or a defined annual tax that commences immediately. You don't have to wait to find out. An example of this is the Google Kansas City deal.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#189

Post by CPLX »

phil21 wrote: post #187
CPLX wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys really don't get it, do you? You've got these people going on TV and doing interviews saying that this new technology will be capable of replacing huge amounts of jobs. The people that say that most jobs will be eliminated by AI are making direct threats of violence against the families of millions of people. Telling someone that they will no longer have any way of feeding their children is telling them that…

> But remember nobody ever wants “development” except for the fact that it might bring jobs and economic growth, to them, not you living somewhere else. This is really the only point that matters. It's held true my whole life, and I expect it will be true until I die. Doesn't matter what you build. I was watching a couple transmission line projects over the past decade that are still in the "lawsuits and community ra…

Who's lying about it?

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unempl...

The people who want these data centers are telling us that the reason that they want them is to keep momentum on their plans to destroy our entire way of life.

They just say it. They go on TV and do interviews and say it out loud.

So then everyone who has any ability to stop it in any possible way tries to do that.

What exactly the fuck do you think they're going to do?

And more importantly, what causes you to feel that it's obvious that they are only coming to these opinions through ignorance?

Lumping together anti-data-center sentiment with anti-development sentiment in general is bullshit. Yes, there are certainly impossible to negotiate with NIMBYs who don't like apartment buildings because they cast shadows on a sidewalk corner or something. That has nothing to do with this.

The politics of data centers are completely different. If this was a real, actual job-creating industrial project, people would react differently.

Re: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia (2025)

#190

Post by voakbasda »

dnnddidiej wrote: post #105
nixgeek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s unusual to buy the land and take a gamble on its utility, at least whenever datacenter construction is involved. Purchasing parties are risk averse to this exact scenario and work hard to craft contracts that reduce risk. Often the choices are — 1. Buy land at $/acre that reflects very little premium, based on a short feasibility study, but without any ultimate contingency that permitting will occur. This is you…

2 seems good as the seller can still make money from the land in the meantime. It does make it unsellable to anyone else in that time though.

I would not be willing to let the seller use the land under contract to avoid the risk of something happening that devalues or disqualifies it for its future intended purpose.
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