What Happened When Small-Town America Became Data-Center, USA (msn.com)
- Reference: 0179962318
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/11/04/147232/what-happened-when-small-town-america-became-data-center-usa
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/what-happened-when-small-town-america-became-data-center-usa/ar-AA1PKvTO
Federal data shows investment in software and information-processing equipment [1]drove most of America's GDP growth in the first half of 2025 . Goldman Sachs estimated that roughly 72% of all server-farm capacity sat in just 1% of counties as of July. The region's hydroelectric dams and cheap power attracted Amazon Web Services more than a decade ago. Growth has brought rising costs for housing and child care. Political tensions over spending erupted this year when Mayor Caden Sipe sued the city manager and council members.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/what-happened-when-small-town-america-became-data-center-usa/ar-AA1PKvTO
Like oil fields in Nigeria (Score:4, Insightful)
Poor people live among pipelines and drilling infrastructure... they are worse off, not better.
The benefits accrue to Big Co, nothing trickles down to the people who actually live there.
Different industry, same tactics.
Nice Job, Amazon. /s
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So, you didn't read the article?
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of course not.
but I did budgets for geothermal powerplants in a previous life, and after the shovels leave the ground, you only need a skeleton crew to run the place... same with datacenters, no?
Jobs during construction, then pretty much just a maintenance crew
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You didn't even read the summary, which specifies that someone who used to be a walmart employee is making 3 real estate deals a month now based on the local growth. Or that the city's budget is 20x what it was 15 years ago.
Does that sound like "nothing trickles down" to the people who actually live there?
Try at least reading the summary - it's right there, you don't even need to click anything.
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You don't think this data center should be where it is but you haven't provided a better alternative location.
Re:Like oil fields in Nigeria (Score:5, Informative)
> Poor people live among pipelines and drilling infrastructure... they are worse off, not better.
> The benefits accrue to Big Co, nothing trickles down to the people who actually live there.
> Different industry, same tactics.
> Nice Job, Amazon. /s
Oregon isn't Nigeria. All of the worker creature comforts aren't being flown in at great expense because local infrastructure and services are shit. Houses and restaurants are being built. Stores are being built. That means employing the locals for the most part, raising their wages and improving their infrastructure.
There are downsides to big companies coming into small towns. I live in one, and the increased traffic and general hassle of more people annoys the fuck out of me. But our standard of living has most definitely gone up , not down.
AI slop posting to /. (Score:5, Informative)
This is some AI slop generated summary of the article. While the article says "$144 million", the AI slop changed it to "a hundred and $44 million".
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> This is some AI slop generated summary of the article. While the article says "$144 million", the AI slop changed it to "a hundred and $44 million".
Came here to complain about that wording as well.
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From human-generated slop provided by The Guardian, to AI slop in summaries, msmash is doing us all a great service.
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how does a conversion error like this happen? is AI transcribing an audio clip?
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Agreed, laziness by msmash
Easy come, easy go (Score:2)
Be careful of the tax-incentives offered to big business to set up shop cheaply in small towns. If from a bottom-line perspective they have little invested, then they have little reason to abandon those investments, leading to a boom/bust cycle for the town next time the big tech vendors concoct some new 'best practices' scheme to try to cause the businesses dependent on them to buy more crap.
If the business has spent a lot of money out of their own coffers to build, they're more likely to treat that build
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We're talking about AWS's us-west-2 region.
You can't just pull up stakes and move that. It was put there for three very good reasons: cheap land, plentiful hydropower from the Columbia River, and also loads of nice cold water for cooling from the same river. And, if they're serious about nuclear power it's very close to both the Columbia River Nuclear Generating Station and Hanford.
It's been there for a decade and is home to a double-digit percentage of all the stuff AWS runs. Context matters.
Point on the Zoho where the Doll Hurt you? (Score:1)
If it was One China or Kancho Boong Ga... it's hereditary. Get the Jab.
Growth == Rising Costs (Score:2)
Growth and rising costs, or stagnation. Take your pick.
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Rising costs are a political decision. They could just build more suburbs instead of being strangled by urban growth boundaries.
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Are you sure the terrain allows for more suburbs? I don't know about this case but lots of mountainous areas have limited buildable land.