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

Yandex data center in Finland loses power due to contract termination

datacenterdynamics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 347 posts

Re: Yandex data center in Finland loses power due to contract termination

#201

Post by jollybean »

wara23arish wrote: post #191
jollybean wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The things that I have seen over the last two months (a lot of social media coming out of Russia, street interviews, phone calls, public statements) make me believe that Russia is completely different than elsewhere in the West. The number of people who'd be easily willing to just murder a bunch of people for an invented reason is much greater than elsewhere. Americans can get 'nationalist' but they are absolutely no…

Americans are gregarious and positive but they simply do not know about what goes on abroad. Either they do not know or do not care. That signals that they too miss a pretty basic level of empathy. The number of countries ravaged/destroyed by americans and their decisions is countless.

The lack of empathy for the destruction of some places wrought by American power is evident, yes, but on the whole there's almost always a positive impetus.

"number of countries ravaged/destroyed by americans and their decisions is countless. " - this is rubbish. The argument could be made for Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, but even then, those are uneven arguments and motivations were righteous if flawed. In Afghanistan for example, did not actually spend much time at all bombing Afghanistan infrastructure proper, there are no 'cities levelled' by Americans and there are layers of bureaucracy to try to avoid civilian damage if necessary, they have operating procedures for it, there is even some transparency though it's never perfect. They didn't consistently destroy strategic facilities like 'Oil Refineries' or 'Factories, they spent 10's of Billions investing in Afghanistan, trying to build infrastructure, schools, trying desperately to get little girls to be able to attend schools, trying desperately for some semblance of basic civility. The indifference, lack of basic civil foundation, mass corruption (Afghan leaders funnelling billions into Dubai etc.) made it an impossible task even over 20 years, though plausible with a few more decades. Despite that, there's overwhelming goodwill otherwise.

Re: Yandex data center in Finland loses power due to contract termination

#202

Post by obsrvatlarge »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #3

I would like to know why Yandex though that opening data centers in western counties would be a good idea. Surely they knew that, as a Russian company, if their government ever becomes aggressive, they'll also be targeted by sanctions.

I'd guess that at Yandex they did not believe Russian leaders to make a mistake this bad. They were as surprised by the open attack as the western companies that lost their investments in Russia.

Finland was always intended to be the weak member of EU when it comes to dealing with RU. There was the historical evidence of Finlandizierung to support this belief. Somehow Putin managed the impossible and united people from extreme right to far left in supporting Finland to join the NATO.

Very recently Finland (actually private company Fennovoima) cancelled the joint Fennovoima & Rosatom project to build a new nuclear power plant in Finland. This decision to cut Rosatom off the project was on a much larger economical scale and was widely greeted with welcome.

Re: Yandex data center in Finland loses power due to contract termination

#203

Post by cdot2 »

fulafel wrote: post #23
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #3

I would like to know why Yandex though that opening data centers in western counties would be a good idea. Surely they knew that, as a Russian company, if their government ever becomes aggressive, they'll also be targeted by sanctions.

Russia and Europe spent a lot of time and invested a lot of faith to building commerce, in both Europe and Russia the prevailing idea was that the interdependency is a force for peace and stability and it seemed to be mostly working for a while. (Also Russia is also a very risky business environment, so hedging...) (Also^2 Yandex is not under sanctions, the current outage doesn't seem to be about sanctions according…

"the prevailing idea was that the interdependency is a force for peace and stability"

It seems like this was a common idea globally in the past sixty years but I don't think I've actually seen it work out anywhere.

Re: Yandex data center in Finland loses power due to contract termination

#204

Post by jeroenhd »

obsrvatlarge wrote: post #150

Maybe it is a question of money or actually currency. Here in Finland electricity is paid for with euros. Good luck for Yandex trying to find a supplier in Finland willing to accept Russian roubles these days.

It should be said that the European Yandex probably uses euros as well, though I'm not sure if their European income is significant. You can visit their tax evasion office over at Schiphol Boulevard 165, 1118 BG Schiphol, The Netherlands, right next to Schiphol Airport.

If their European counterpart isn't profitable or their tax evasion setup routes all funds through Russia then they may have trouble paying, but I think it's more likely that the political situation of the war itself is to blame.

Re: Yandex data center in Finland loses power due to contract termination

#205

Post by paganel »

mda wrote: post #186
paganel wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US as a lot of leverage over Germany, France and most of the EU, Yes, that's exactly what I meant when talking about US's hegemonic power. > Whereas western EU countries have more leverage over Russian companies without fearing much retaliation. Some parts of the Russian political elites really believed (maybe they still do) that Europe's industrial heartland (or what's left of it, anyways) depended on cheap Ru…

I don't understand, why would there be a risk that Germany be allied with Russia in 10-15 years time? To get cheap energy? That doesn't make any sense.

> To get cheap energy? That doesn't make any sense.

Why doesn't that make sense? The US did start several wars (plus a wrongfully deposed government or two) in the Persian Gulf for exactly that reason (that was until their shale gas revolution took off in the late '00s). Plus, a des-industrialised Germany (which is what this war will most probably mean for them) means a poorer Germany, means a more politically restless Germany, hence a higher risk of them getting rid of "principles" (or morals, as Martin Wolf pontificates about) and start looking at the bigger picture, at what's good for Germany and for the Germans.

Again, not sure how looking at this chart [1] from that same FT piece can make the Americans believe that the Europeans (or, more precisely, the Germans) can suck it up for the foreseeable future, all in the name of "democracy". This is a de-facto lighter version of the Morgenthau plan.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/Ald39GG

Re: Yandex data center in Finland loses power due to contract termination

#206

Post by skissane »

jollybean wrote: post #160
skissane wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3) Cultural Chauvinism A very common thing for humans to have. US, UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Japan, China – to list just a few countries which have a lengthy history of it, there are many more–and some will question whether some of the countries I have listed have really moved beyond it. (I'll even say my own country, Australia, has a decent amount of it – even if the form i…

The things that I have seen over the last two months (a lot of social media coming out of Russia, street interviews, phone calls, public statements) make me believe that Russia is completely different than elsewhere in the West. The number of people who'd be easily willing to just murder a bunch of people for an invented reason is much greater than elsewhere. Americans can get 'nationalist' but they are absolutely no…

> The number of people who'd be easily willing to just murder a bunch of people for an invented reason is much greater than elsewhere.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq? Quite popular in the US at first (opinion polls at the time of the invasion showed over 70% support); people who opposed it were frequently belittled, shunned, harassed, boycotted (remember the controversy over the Dixie Chicks?). The reasons for the war were essentially invented – weapons of mass destruction which could never be found, attempts to link the Iraqi government to the 9/11 terrorist attacks despite the fact that there was no evidence the Iraqi government had any involvement. Many thousands died in the initial invasion, and hundreds of thousands in the ensuing war which the invasion began – all due to a war based on lies. Sure, Saddam Hussein was an evil man, but the world is full of evil men who do evil things – many of which the US is happy to call its friends (such as the Saudi regime) – but was removing that man from power worth all the ensuing death and destruction and chaos, especially when so many other equally evil regimes were left in place? Most of the worst things he'd done (such as genocidal massacres of ethnic minorities) were in the past, and more limited international interventions (such as the no-fly zones) appeared to be succeeding at preventing further such atrocities.

I'm not saying what Putin is doing to Ukraine is the same thing as what the US did to Iraq – Volodymyr Zelenskyy is no Saddam Hussein, and certainly not the Adolf Hitler which Russian propaganda presents him as being – only that Russians are not quite as different from Americans (among others) as you are suggesting they are.

Re: Yandex data center in Finland loses power due to contract termination

#207

Post by julius_deane »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #154
can16358p wrote: post #75

> at a current price of €2.175 per 1 liter What? €2175 per liter of diesel? Am I missing something? /edit: nvm I misinterpreted decimal point as a thousands seperator.

Out of all places, Hacker News misunderstanding the meaning on `.` in a number? :) Every single programming language uses a dot as a floating-point separator.

Not only that, but 2k for a litter of gas is somehow a reasonable price to cause confusion over just assuming the dot is being used as a separator in place of comma.

Re: Yandex data center in Finland loses power due to contract termination

#208

Post by nicce »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #176
b112 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder. Every contract I've ever signed, has clauses about "unless legally compelled". EG, if it is an NDA, it often talks about the NDA being void, if compelled to testify etc etc Most supply contracts should have the same concept. That is, "this contract isn't enforcable, if a party is legally compelled to do thing $x".

This doesn't need to be written into the contract inside the EU. Law is stronger than contracts, legislators and courts can pre-empt contracts in part or in whole.

I wonder how often these pre-empt cases can be handled privately. E.g. what is the likelihood that it has happened in this case without public knowledge.

Re: Yandex data center in Finland loses power due to contract termination

#209

Post by julius_deane »

vardump wrote: post #93
can16358p wrote: post #75

> at a current price of €2.175 per 1 liter What? €2175 per liter of diesel? Am I missing something? /edit: nvm I misinterpreted decimal point as a thousands seperator.

A very reasonable misunderstanding, because that's exactly how 2.175 would be interpret in Finland. As 2175. In Finland, comma is the decimal separator.

How is it a "_very_ reasonable misunderstanding" when the difference is literally 1000 times?

Re: Yandex data center in Finland loses power due to contract termination

#210

Post by yetihehe »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #151
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't happen unless software buyers were ready to pay for more development time. That abstraction layer and total-ass quality is frequently the only way to meet the deadline and budget. If people were ready to pay some upfront costs, it would be possible to lower long-term costs, but that's CAPEX vs OPEX decision that is not in the hands of the software developers.

If one is aware of the basics of performance optimization, you can often find low hanging fruit even in Python. Basic profiling can often find bottlenecks that are easy to fix, usually just a result of a simple oversight. No one is asking for every piece of software to be rewritten in Assembly whilst taking advantage of every possible algorithmic improvement.

> Basic profiling can often find bottlenecks that are easy to fix, usually just a result of a simple oversight.

But it requires already scarce developers to spend even more time on one task. Those same developers which aready have two missed deadlines in their task queue. What should be done is always nice, but typically doesn't match reality.

Post reply on HN