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Please don't take HN threads into regional flamewar. It's understandably annoying when people are dissing the place you're from, or you feel they are, but a flamewar like this should obviously not be at the top of the page (where it was stuck after collecting tons of upvotes, as flamewar comments often do), and you shouldn't be breaking the site guidelines yourself when something annoys you. Instead, you should follow the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and this one in particular: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead.". In egregious cases you can email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can take care of them.

Every time I've looked in this thread, the comments I saw referencing Ohio were overwhelmingly positive ("brilliant location", etc.). In fact, after skimming this thread, I couldn't find a single comment that matched your description. I'm not saying they don't exist, but they must be a tiny minority of what got posted here. (Edit: I saw your list at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30031374 - the comments you were reacting to were not representative in the slightest, and you misinterpreted several of them.)

There's a strong tendency to fall prey to the bias of noticing, or putting a greater weight on, the ones that felt negative to you (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). This is a function of your own pre-existing condition (I don't mean you personally—this is true of all of us), of being ready to flare up at the first thing that feels like a trigger. In that sense, what we're all actually encountering when we get triggered on the internet are our own pre-existing feelings. No wonder people find it hard to talk to each other about inflammatory topics.

The comments you've "quoted" in your first paragraph, for example, simply don't exist. The only occurrence of "Ohio sucks" in the entire HN dataset (I just checked) is the one in your own post. That's how that cognitive bias works, and that's how we get flamewars like this. People here (you, me, and everyone else) need to manage our own inflammation a little differently so we don't end up with complete derails like this, which are not in the spirit of this site nor in the interest of anyone in the community.

I'm going to mark this flamewar off topic now.

Sorry, I didn’t intend to start a flamewar. The comments I did see (the specific ones I found to be immature) were what this was meant for, but you’re right. Where you saw a general positive sentiment, I only saw the negative sentiment (like the potato “joke” or “Dayton ruined my life”) and I should have just ignored it ya know?

I do attach my exact name and LinkedIn profile to my comments so I hope that it’s clear that I’m not just trolling or have specific bad intentions. Just frustrated a little bit today with those comments I did see, so I ranted. My apologies. Again you’re 100% right.

Cheers!

Appreciated! I know how easy it is for this to happen.

The greater problem is actually caused by the upvotes that such a post attracts, but we can't moderate those very easily.

Yours is actually the first comment I saw. My thinking was more along the lines of "what a great way to bring more future focused jobs to the mid-west".

We're seeing a very promising dispersion of future focused Jobs in the US (btw, I'm not American). While software has been predominantly west coast, and finance in the north east. Don't forget that TI is based in Texas. I believe much of Bio-tech is in San Diego and Boston, the list goes on and on. With giga & Tesla in Texas, will that bring more manufacturing and power technology to the area?

This is very positive in bringing employment and opportunities to these regions. I'm also hopeful that along with the tax credits that were likely given to the companies, there is a portion that is set-aside, or another allocation to improve access to the higher education needed to fill the jobs, and that the education will be provided to the local community, not just dragged in from other areas, displacing the local community and gentrifying it.

I'm Canadian (although on a clear day I'm almost close enough to see Ohio across Lake Erie) and I'm in complete agreement with you.

Everyone in the USA should be utterly ecstatic that Intel is building a large domestic chip plant and not outsourcing even more overseas. This is fantastic news.

Intel has some 15 or so fabs already in the US (most upgraded multiple times), and is constructing two giant new ones in Arizona.

The continental US has a good amount of domestic production capacity. The "problem" is that TSMC and Samsung got a node advantage on Intel, drawing a lot of the performance part manufacturing (including Intel contract work). Will this Ohio plant be competitive on the edge? I haven't seen information indicating that, and the two Arizona fabs Intel is building (operating in 2024) are targeting 7nm.

Samsung (3nm) and TSMC (5nm) are both building fabs in the US as well. A pretty healthy subsidy by the government and various levels of government lubricated the choice. It's good for the sanity and economic stability of the world if everything wasn't concentrated in Taiwan.

Thank you so much for the clarification as this is definitely not my area of expertise. It's heartening to hear that, subsidies aside, the US is managing to maintain significant capacity for domestic production, and it's increasing.

Such investment runs quite counter to the general trends I've witnessed in other manufacturing industries that continue to shrink every year.

To be honest, some shrinking manufacturing doesn't always mean it's bad. It could be, but not always. Sometimes it means increasing the efficiency or disappearing products that aren't in the demand of the society.

I'm surprised by the location. I would have expected closer to Cleveland to draw from Detroit, Columbus, Cleveland and Pittsburgh and get electricity from the Beaver Valley nuke plant. I'm guessing AFRL/Wright-Patterson and government contracts have something to do with this.

Columbus isn't exactly "low cost of living" except by Silicon Valley standards, either.

Scanned this submission several times today, never seeing a single negative comment about Ohio. I did chuckle at one pro-Ohio that basically said it's a great place because it has [list of things that every metropolitan everywhere has], but whatever.

After seeing your comment I dug through the comments and found a single negative comment that is clearly written by someone from and in Ohio.

Here's a few just with a quick glance:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30029310
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30027858 
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30026358

Maybe you don't interpret these as negative. That's ok. Idk. Seem negative to me without really adding any value and that's not counting just general, unwarranted cynicism:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30029732
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30026680
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30029025 (as if that's some metric that we need to really care about)

I've responded to the first three now. Yes, they were bad comments. They were nowhere close to being representative of this thread, and they were all downvoted.

Some of the others, like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30026680, you clearly misinterpreted. That comment isn't dissing Ohio, it's dissing a headline the commenter didn't like. Edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30034705 also - the 'potato' thing was an unrelated joke that had nothing to do with Ohio.

I apologize for being so direct, but you seem really sensitive about this topic. The tweet you linked to in your edit was actually questioning Intel's faltering business model, not Ohio. Of the comments you linked, most are banal or negative about a specific area. Columbus, for instance, really doesn't seem like a particularly compelling place to most people who don't already live in Columbus. That doesn't seem particularly contentious. I see absolutely nothing about (the) Ohio State, or how it compares to Stanford.

And a smattering of negative comments is hardly unique. Anti-valley rhetoric is nonstop on HN (as an aside, I suspect >85% of HN contributors are not in or near the valley). The theft gangs, homeless people, drug overdoes, etc.

But none of it is really relevant at all for an automated facility. Like a data center, it really doesn't make a big impact in an area outside of the initial construction . The real beneficiary will be ASML in all probability. Regardless, it's good to have more advanced fabs distributed around the globe.

I am in Bay Area and frankly we need to criticize this place more. If you want to read about it, San Fransicko is a great book: https://www.amazon.com/San-Fransicko-Progressives-Ruin-Citie...

I feel like doubling down on the criticism of the place I live (Oakland) just so that we don't set an example of how to manage cities.

I empathize with OP. I live in the Bay Area and most people here are convinced that every other place is a slum, particularly the “flyover states”. The negativity drives people to become sensitive to the topic.

Out of 430 comments, there are bound to be some negative comments. Some of them may be valid ( Not a place they want to live is not against Ohio, but an opinion ) , some of them are not. But that is still less than 10 comments.

>unwarranted cynicism

The vast majority are questioning Ohio not because of negativity or cynicism but curiosity. Why Ohio, why not other state? Are there important strategic reasons? Some of them are calling out Tax Break, that is a fair point, but aren't there Tax Break elsewhere? I did a quick glance in the first 300 comments on this page, barely any negativity.

No offence but your comments seems to be the most negative in this thread. But then I am not American. So may be I am not as sensitive.

Honestly this is one of the things I couldn't stand about the bay area. Tons of people that think they're hot stuff and the rest of the country is a dump pile. It reflects in HN comments all the time.

The reality is Ohio State is actually a good university and there's really solid talent out there too. You also have Chicago not all that far away that's a big talent hub.

Please don't take HN threads further into regional flamewar, regardless of which region you have a problem with. It's tedious, offtopic, hellish, and particularly avoidable.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>and the rest of the country is a dump pile

Which is especially ironic, considered how much of a shithole San Francisco has become

This is getting old. I've lived in the Bay Area for 20+ years and guess what, the Bay Area != San Francisco (I personally go to SF less than once every two years).

As far as I can tell, every part of the country dumps on every other part of the country. Sometimes including other parts of their own state.

Been a few years since I heard anyone claim the bay area or SF was really great.

We had our time. It was great. Now a new era starts.

The whinging hits everyone. Look at any HN story involving the Bay Area, and you'll see a dozen subthreads about how it's a post-apocalyptic hellscape. (But it's home, you know.)

Speaking as an elitist left-wing hippie-business-geek-bro-demon in the Bay Area...

Kudos to the Columbus Area! Ohio, build it up!

The Midwest makes some sense for building fabs. The two largest inputs are power and water - and the midwest has plenty of both. There's a small but thriving fab community in Minneapolis.

Hilariously, there isn't much in the way of fabs left in Silicon Valley. Those aren't suitable for any production. The last high volume fab to close was the Linear Technologies fab out in Milpitas.

There's a Raytheon fab in Lompoc CA, a few defense related fabs down in Santa Barbara and LA, but that's about it.

The major semiconductor manufacturing states in the US right now are Arizona, Texas, Oregon and NY. It's nice to see Ohio joining the list. Hopefully other companies will follow Intel's lead here.

Where does the power come from? Hydro on Great Lakes? Wind? Natural gas from fracking?

Largely gas and coal powered, which isn't ideal. It is cheap though.

> Don’t like Ohio? Good we don’t care.

I see maybe one or two negative comments of substance about Ohio on this post. Meanwhile you've written a rant about the bay area that implies everyone out there has sold their relationships and souls for some kind of elitism.

The midwest is great, but it's not some utopia (the same way the bay area isn't some kind of homeless wasteland). Please stop making the rest of us look ridiculous.

"west coast liberal" here -- I'm thrilled to hear about this project. While I'm not a fan of the political climate of Ohio I want to see the midwest (and rest or the country) thrive.

It's about the United States -- we're all on the same team.

Funny, the political climate of Ohio is probably a reason they chose it. Being business-friendly is a stated goal of the Ohio GOP.

I want to be respectful here, but it's not about being business friendly that I take issue with.

I'd be more than happy to go deeper but again, that's likely to go nowhere so there's no point. I wish them well, m'kay?

The Tweet you linked seems to have a totally different issue with the announcement. Here's the follow-up Tweet:

> It’s so depressing to read about Andy Grove’s brilliant and expert pivot of Intel from memory to processing and then see the same company miss RISC when they had checks watch 50 years to prepare.

Which is a pretty relatable point?

This is a very childish rant. You could swap Ohio, with Missouri, Indiana, Iowa... All country have states/provinces that are more developed than others. You liking your home state (or not) doesn't make it better. You can say whatever you want, good luck getting people to move to Ohio.

People used to say that about Idaho, now it’s half Californians. Maine was a backwater now it’s got some of the biggest population growth metros in the country. Florida used to be swamps now it’s growing like crazy. Things change, man. In fact the numbers show people are leaving California.

"Used to be"? I lived in South Florida for a long time.

- 0 tech scene, besides a couple of wannabe startups , ans a few outliers.

- Compensation is bad, taking into account the raising real state prices.

- Most companies are on the services, tourism, insurance, medicine sector.

- Racism is rampant, very ironix as SoFlo workforce is mostly south american immigrants.

- High level of organized crime, shitty schools for kids (including mass shootings), very few things to do(besides the beach), and so on...

Btw this is arguably the best part of Florida, don't even mention central/north Florida. People moving there are chasing tax breaks( I will still take Texas any day). SoFlo is great to party, and that type of things, but as long term move, for a techie , is going to be rough. But to each their own, I met people there that really love it.

This is sad because Boca Raton was where the PC was invented, and was also the place Microsoft and IBM worked on OS/2 together. When IBM moved all their R&D from Boca to Austin in the mid-90s, the scene was already fairly depressed, however.

Yeah, I worked with ex-IBM and ex-DELL people over there. Boca is one of the best places to live in SoFlo, in my opinion.

> People used to say that about Idaho, now it’s half Californians.

Idaho has always been half Californians. Now we just have Californians who moved there 50 years ago complaining about Californians who moved there 5 years ago. It is like that in most western states.

>Florida used to be swamps now it’s growing like crazy.

Florida native. Every person on the Internet loves to poo-poo Florida.

1000 people move to Florida a day. Every. Day.

Most of my native-born friends hate it.

Don't move to Florida, we're begging you.

Is 1000 people a day a lot more than other places? It sounds like a lot, but every place has lots of people moving to (and away from) every day.

Ohio has 5 metro areas and is decently well developed, with good schools. It's a bit culturally dull from a costal perspective (well mine anyway), but perfectly nice in most ways. I've enjoyed a number of visits to Cleveland and Columbus.

Now that brain drain isn't required to get a great job, we will finally see a diversity of distribution in talent instead of east/west coast. This will be a good thing. It's completely unsustainable to have talent cloistered away forever and always in the same couple spots.

I live out in the mid-West many years ago. It actually offers a lot of what people claim is missing on HN - affordable housing, low crime, good public schools, community, better work-life balance.

I’m assuming most people bitching about have never been there.

It's way better than putting another fab on the ring of fire.

The worst thing about threads mentioning the Midwest are these inferiority complex rants. People shit on California, Seattle, New York, etc endlessly on any article mentioning them.

If a state is in the news implying it’s getting something good, people are going to shit on it. You need to grow thicker skin. Otherwise you just end up reinforcing the idea that Ohio residents are delicate and care what the coasts think.

P.s. the tweet you linked to is not about the location

Shrug. This happens all the time, for every state or location, including California.

> Don’t like Ohio? Good we don’t care.

Lol. Sure. You spent 400 words showing how much you don't care.

What's wrong with Ohio? I hear only good stuff from there. I'd love to live there if I was in the states - quiet, reserved and self reliant to a point.

I may be wrong, but I'm assuming one of the cardinal factors in the location came down to the cheapest labor they could find.

Competing with labor, in terms of willingness to work for a low wage, against Asia is next to impossible for these fabs.

How much does the cost of labor really factor into a 20B factory? Assume 200k fully loaded at 3000 people is 600M a year on labor. That's not nothing but it seems pretty insignificant if you can save enough on the actual buildout of the fab(s).

Everyone is claiming this a race to the bottom on labor, but I'm not sure about that. Sure it's probably cheap compared to SV, but there are cheaper places too.

The state is claiming the average salary for the fab workers is going to be $135k. Maybe I'm missing something, but that's a very comfortable life in this part of the country.

I wouldn’t call it a race to the bottom. It’s more about a large workforce that’s educated and has some skills and a culture for making things, and also doesn’t need $300k to buy a house.

[opinion]

We should race to the bottom, and employ the poorest people possible!

Balanced with other things I think. Ohio doesn’t have the cheapest labor in the US. Probably would be cheaper in Mississippi or maybe Georgia or Tennessee but I’m not sure.

apparently getting under people from ohio's skin is really easy

This is awesome.

I lost three years of the prime of my life to living in Dayton. It was one of the biggest mistakes I made in my life, one from which I will probably never be able to recover. I did miss the mountains but that wasn't the real problem. I got way more negative and insecure from living there, I had to work at appallingly terrible companies like Reed Elsevier, and I stagnated intellectually. It's the most racist place I've ever lived, and I've lived in Texas. Dayton's idea of a startup is an Amway distributor with a big downline. My ex-brother-in-law had a job making actual things (he's a machinist, specialized in wire EDM, and yeah he's honest) and ended up having to leave Ohio because the economy sucks and the government actively impedes progress. Now he works at Boeing.

I'm sure Pat Gelsinger knows a thing or two I don't about Intel's chances to prosper in Ohio. But Intel's chances to prosper are not individuals' chances to prosper.

The people claiming Intel's employees are "low skill" have no idea what they're talking about.

OSU is apparently pretty good though, and there's apparently a decent startup scene in Columbus now.

But I'm still going to share my experience (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30028203) so other people can take it into account when they're deciding whether to move there or not. I did piss off, thank God.

I'm sorry you had a bad time at a place.

But what does your comment even mean? "Texas" is your benchmark for how racist places are? Where in Texas? It's about as large as the average country. If you lived in Austin, or in the city of Houston, or in Dallas, you lived in a place with substantially more Black folks than San Francisco.

Dayton, for what it's worth, is a weird benchmark for the state of Ohio. It's a declining city with a troubled economy.

The Intel factory is apparently being sited on the outskirts of Columbus. Columbus is not Dayton, any more than Ann Arbor, MI is Livonia or Cadillac.

Hell hath no fury like a scorned nerd.

I mostly agree with what you said, its a comment about other HNers.

"Don’t like Ohio? Good we don’t care. You don’t have to live here and we have never needed to care about your opinion"

This tells me all i ever needed to know about Nohio. A worthy state for a tech hub doesn't say this. Instead try:

Don’t like Ohio? What can we do to help? Are you a startup? Can you help us better understand the concern? You don’t have to live here but were sorry we couldnt have done better. We value your opinion.

This is some A-grade trolling.

>we couldnt have done better. We value your opinion.

This sounds a lot like every silicon valley company.

There's a reason the region has a net brain drain... and the Bay Area has a net gain!