Hacker News Reader

Comment by esikich | Hacker News Reader

So? Since when is there a floor for the number of jobs a business has to create? Suzies Tanning Salon uses a lot of energy but only employs 3 people.

View on HN

So maybe 50kW for 10 hours a day? Double it and call it 1Mwh a day.

A 1GW DC would have to employ 75,000 people if that’s an acceptable ratio.

So what's the ratio for malls? Or strip malls? Or metal refineries? Or auto plants? Or giant office buildings?

You’re the one that came up with a tanning salon being a high ratio of resource usage to local utility.

I'm the one saying it's a silly thing to measure. Shut down Main Street everyone, it's not efficient.

Presumably Suzie also serves the people in her community who want tanned skin but don't like the sun. A data center offers nothing of value to the community it's embedded in - neither jobs nor any useful product or service. All the benefits accrue to the owners, and the very real costs are paid by the people breathing in the fumes from the gas turbines, or paying an extra hundred bucks a month for power.

If you don't understand why people don't want them, you're probably trying not to. It's not that hard.

A data center offers software development/infrastructure where people know it or not. Just because they aren't the first order users doesn't mean it's not beneficial. How is a machine shop beneficial to 65 year old Janet?

Machine shop employs more local people per unit of resource. Far more.

Oh my god, no one measures this though. You'd have to be anti-bookstore if that's your metric.

By what metric?

>So? Since when is there a floor for the number of jobs a business has to create?

There doesn't have to be but since when is it not in a municipalities ability to make determinations as to what kinds of business can operate within its jurisdiction?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com