An Eloquent Argument For Data Centers (6 min video) | Hacker News Reader

An Eloquent Argument For Data Centers (6 min video)

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2 pointsrmason8 comments

I'm from the Lansing Michigan area where there has been a big fight over four proposed data centers. Travis was a childhood friend of the founder and an executive at Liquid Web. He helped them build four data centers and even though he was head of marketing at the company he knows everything about the business.

I am saddened that the industry hasn't spoken out and let the opponents define the debate.

> I am saddened that the industry hasn't spoken out and let the opponents define the debate.

Insisting on NDAs with the municipal leadership involved in approving the deals was a choice by the industry. This created the opportunity for their opponents to set the narrative. This was not a surprising outcome to anyone, and no one is going to cry for the execs without sufficient sense to foresee this result.

Here's an eloquent counterargument: emissions.

The world is on fire and these clowns are completely fine with dumping a good portion of France's GHG emissions back into the atmosphere if it means we can turn a few more millionaires into billionaires.

I do not know what GHG means but isn't the overwhelming amount of France's electricity generated from nuclear power?

In Lansing's case as he mentioned the power is already being generated and sold to other utilities. If it powered local data centers instead it would generate high paying jobs and rather large tax revenues.

> I do not know what GHG means

"Greenhouse gas"

"Already being generated and sold to other utilities," i.e., "already bought and paid for by you rubes to do useful things like heat your home and run your refrigerator."

I'd love to import a couple of high paid weirdos from out of town to build a data center for a year and then jet off to some other poor community to do it all over again. At least a couple of the locals can work as janitors and night security at the empty, shrieking warehouse that they erect.

They built the power in hopes of attracting more industry. With Michigan's high taxes and aggressive unions the state isn't as desirable as other locations. Now they've succeeded in attracting data centers who want to use the power, bring both high paying jobs and tax money but they are turned away.

Travis makes a strong argument that the city that birthed Oldsmobile and REO Motors would probably reject those companies today if they wanted to build there.

Awesome, I hope they attract a better industry than this. Maybe something that builds useful things for the world, and not a shrieking blight of a warehouse, dependent entirely on the economic dead end of frontier AI. An industry that provides better jobs than the menial long term work opportunities provided by a 5 acre box full of single purpose RAM chips.

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