Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by lossolo » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 4:51 PM UTC

simianwords wrote: post #207

lossolo wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

So you have no clue why he's doing it? He's putting money in a thing that will obviously fail. Either you are way way smarter than him, or he's doing this for some other ulterior motive.

You didn't answer my questions. How is The Boring company going? And in this context, you can also ask: "Is he putting money into something that will obviously fail?"

Also, go back and read how many people who were "smarter than him" there nine years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14223020

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

#232

Post by tdb7893 » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 4:53 PM UTC

timmg wrote: post #196

tdb7893 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You talk about how solar is getting really cheap but electricity costs are actually rising significantly for most people I know (I've had to help friends pay electricity bills recently). I don't know how much of this is data centers but electricity prices are a major worry for a lot of normal people and you can't just handwave it away with "we know how to generate electricity" (there are also other worries like water…

But if electricity prices go up, doesn’t that motivate new generation? Like, it is pretty common to see prices go up, then supply increase, then prices go down.

I'm not an expert but I know that new electric capacity takes a while and often a lot of investment (both in generation but also people forget all the other infrastructure necessary to get it to the right place, new transmission lines especially have been a problem) so both of those factors seem to have kept it high for at least some amount of time and also it's not even guaranteed they will since price increases seem to have been surprisingly sticky across a lot of stuff recently. Also, not to be too glib, but try the "prices will eventually go back down" argument on people who have to make the decision between paying for electricity or food this month and you'll see how well that argument goes over. Financial issues are pretty immediate to the large swaths of American living paycheck-to-paycheck.

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

#233

Post by shagie » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

coredog64 wrote: post #193

its_ethan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Due to the United States Supreme Court ruling in Wisconsin v. Illinois, the State of Illinois is not subject to certain provisions of the compact pertaining to new or increased withdrawals or diversions from the Great Lakes. I mean it seems like there's already avenues to skirt around this compact? Also, from what I can tell, this isn't some sort of ban on using water from the Great Lakes basin, it's just a framewo…

I can understand concerns about moving thousands of acre-feet of water into the desert for cooling, or pumping your aquifer dry for the same thing. But moving water from the Great Lakes a few miles inland? How much water evaporates out of the Great Lakes every day, and what is the percentage increase when used for cooling?

It's which side of the drainage basin is the water moved to? When the water is flushed back into the system, does it drain back into the Great Lakes? or down to the Gulf of Mexico?

On the southern shore of Lake Michigan, that "few miles" changes the watershed that its part of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Basin ( https://www.erbff.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/10.8.25-Gre... for a high resolution map)

As for diversions that go to evaporative cooling, that's a big question for the data center itself and there are many designs. https://www.nrel.gov/computational-science/data-center-cooli... has some cutting edge designs, but they're more expensive to use for pumping waste heat elsewhere.

Sometimes you get data centers that look like https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2021/11/the-dalles... ... and that's not a little bit of water there.

While the Great Lakes are coming off of wet years ( https://water.usace.army.mil/office/lre/docs/waterleveldata/... ) that shouldn't be used as long term prediction of what will be available in another 10 years lest it becomes another Colorado river problem. Currently, the water levels for Lake Michigan are lower than average and not predicted to return to average in the model range. https://water.usace.army.mil/office/lre/docs/mboglwl/MBOGLWL... . You'll note that this isn't at the minimums from the 1960s... and the Great Lakes Compact was signed in 2008.

You can search the database for the authorized diversions of the water. https://www.glslcompactcouncil.org/historical-information/ba...

For example, Nine Mile Point - https://www.glslcompactcouncil.org/historical-information/ba...

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

#234

Post by sensanaty » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

coredog64 wrote: post #193

its_ethan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Due to the United States Supreme Court ruling in Wisconsin v. Illinois, the State of Illinois is not subject to certain provisions of the compact pertaining to new or increased withdrawals or diversions from the Great Lakes. I mean it seems like there's already avenues to skirt around this compact? Also, from what I can tell, this isn't some sort of ban on using water from the Great Lakes basin, it's just a framewo…

I can understand concerns about moving thousands of acre-feet of water into the desert for cooling, or pumping your aquifer dry for the same thing. But moving water from the Great Lakes a few miles inland? How much water evaporates out of the Great Lakes every day, and what is the percentage increase when used for cooling?

But where do we stop with all of this endless expansion? Do the great lakes have to go through an Aral Sea type of situation before we decide it's time to stop? It's not like these AI ghouls are shy about wanting infinite expansion and an ever-growing number of data centers to feed their word generators, do we really think that if we just let them have the water now they're not going to abuse that and that they won't start draining the lakes for all the water they can manage? I'm not so optimistic, myself.

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

#235

Post by bell-cot » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

wat10000 wrote: post #172

eigencoder wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Doing that would fail to align with the company's current priorities. And by the way - you're fired." -Catbert

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

#236

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

delichon wrote: post #18

NIMBY for data centers is opportunity for SpaceX. When they saturate the demand for communication, data processing demand will be ramping up with no apparent ceiling. The merger between SpaceX and xAI positions them to benefit both from the AI revolution, and from the resistance to it. It's like a hypothetical 19th century textile company that managed to profit from Luddite riots by using them to help move production…

[deleted]

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

#237

Post by kakacik » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #194

Supermancho wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The company surveyed a number of surrounding locales, looking for a favorable situation. Harwood had the existing Fargo infrastructure and the mayor of Harwood was happy to take a payout. I think the company predation was transparent.

How is that predation if the people in that city democratically elected the mayor who made that choice? Isn’t that representative democracy decisionmaking working as intended?

For such a massive long term impact, people should vote directly. That's ideal, and its pretty realistic ideal especially with 800 votes which are trivial to count.

If course its not ideal for the company investing. Then the question becomes if rights/wishes of people are above of those of companies. Often, in Europe they are not, and often in US they are, exceptions notwithstanding.

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

#238

Post by its_ethan » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

coredog64 wrote: post #193

its_ethan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Due to the United States Supreme Court ruling in Wisconsin v. Illinois, the State of Illinois is not subject to certain provisions of the compact pertaining to new or increased withdrawals or diversions from the Great Lakes. I mean it seems like there's already avenues to skirt around this compact? Also, from what I can tell, this isn't some sort of ban on using water from the Great Lakes basin, it's just a framewo…

I can understand concerns about moving thousands of acre-feet of water into the desert for cooling, or pumping your aquifer dry for the same thing. But moving water from the Great Lakes a few miles inland? How much water evaporates out of the Great Lakes every day, and what is the percentage increase when used for cooling?

I don't recall the exact specifics, but I do remember a while ago there was some outrage that Nestle was bottling some really large sounding amount of water (think ~millions of gallons a day?) from a Great Lake. The math behind how much was being used as a % of lake volume was negligible (it would take ~3,500,000 years to "drain" Michigan at that rate).

In my mind this is partly due to people not understanding large numbers, and also not understanding just how much water is actually in the Great Lakes. It's a huge amount - Lake Michigan has 1,288,000,000,000,000 gallons in it. Every human on earth could use close to 10gal of water per day for the next 50 years before Lake Michigan would be "dry", assuming it was never replenished. And that's just Lake Michigan. (Obviously environmental systems are more complicated than the simple division I did, and individual water usage isn't simply 10gal a day - it's just to demonstrate a point).

Now, someone else pointed out that the tragedy of the commons is a sort of death by a thousand cuts. And if anyone who shows up is allowed to draw millions of gallons a day, that can add up and certainly have negative effects. It's just important to actually understand the scale of the numbers involved, and to not let legitimate environmental concerns be cross-contaminated with just anti-tech-of-the-year sentiment, or political motivations, or whatever else might cloud the waters (pun unintended).

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

#239

Post by PTOB » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 4:58 PM UTC

Things like this have had me scratching my head for decades.

Why would local governments annex property, upgrade utilities, and build new roads without moving that burden to the entities driving those things? They routinely do this for new residential developments in many jurisdictions, refusing to annex subdivisions until the residents have paid for the utilities and roads.

There seems to be no reason that the current residents of a region should consider paying for these things to benefit the owners of facilities that do not generate enough tax revenue to support the added costs. Hospitals, schools, water treatment facilities, roads for their own use may merit issuing bonds that can be paid off based on new or existing taxes. But asking folks making standard wages to pitch in over decades for a company which could pay for the needed upgrades with a few weeks of revenue makes little sense. It seems disingenuous on its face or downright negligent at worst.

Does anyone have a bead on resources that could help me learn more about how all this works [or doesn't]?

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

#240

Post by sixo » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #176

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Certainly commensurate to the price. It's up to the companies to bring the cost under the price.

AFAICT, fears of the marginal costs of LLM inference being high are dramatically overblown. All the "water" concerns are outlandish, for one—a day of moderately heavy LLM usage consumes on the order of one glass of water, compared to a baseline consumption of 1000 glasses/day for a modern human. And the water usage of a data center is approximately the same as agriculture per acre.