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Amazon acquires 400 acres near new Intel development in Ohio
- MrCharismatist 4y agohttps://archive.ph/VssmA https://archive.ph/VssmA Sounds like us-east-2d is coming.
- ericmay 4y agoThanks for sharing the non-paywalled article!
- TeMPOraL 4y agoThanks for saying this, as it made me pay attention - and so I must now ask in surprise: when did we lose the automatic "web"/"archive" links in HN submissions?
- mtmail 4y ago"Ask HN: Why did HN get rid of the “web” button?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34468746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34468746
- tester756 4y agoIs Ohio becoming tech heartland?
- ProAm 4y agoI'm not sure if you've ever been to Ohio, but no.
- ch4s3 4y agoHard to say yet, but it isn't impossible and the triangle between Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Columbus isn't the worst option. There are a bunch of universities in range to draw talent, including Carnegie Mellon, OSU, and some smaller state and private schools. The land is cheap and the cost of living is pretty low.
- ydnaclementine 4y agoAlways has been
- LarryMullins 4y agoOhio invented outer space after all.
- a2tech 4y agoThe state of Ohio has birthed more astronauts than any other state. Mostly because people are so desperate to get out of Ohio they’ll go to space to escape. UofM has the most astronauts that made it to the moon. And a flag on the moon. Good natured ribbing :)
- Kon-Peki 4y ago> UofM has the most astronauts that made it to the moon The Wikipedia page suggests that the US Naval Academy has had 3 graduates walk on the moon with UofM, Purdue and West Point all having 2. Good company to be in, for sure. I have many extended family members in Ohio. What I've heard is that most feel like public education is going down hill. It used to be that any sufficiently advanced high school student would get to attend classes at nearby colleges for free (and receive credit) if their local school didn't have a course they were qualified for. The current program has been very watered down and is underfunded, so very few kids actually get to take advantage of it. Just one of many negatives I've heard over the years.
- asdff 4y agoLike in most other red states these days, the GOP controlled statehouse is trying to ruin public education further by passing don't say gay bills or preventing the teaching of the racist history of this country. One can't really be optimistic until the gerrymandering situation is fixed, because as it stands the republicans cannot ever lose their majority.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nDIgger 4y ago[dead]
- agentwiggles 4y agoSeems at least semi-possible given all the recent investment. I've lived in Columbus for the last decade or so and generally enjoy living here. I view all this development with some trepidation as more high-paying jobs and big salaries threaten to do to Columbus and the surrounding area what has happened to lots of other tech cities though. Housing here is still _semi_ reasonable but definitely increasing fast, and the city has a fairly small footprint compared to other major metros. Even so, it's an exciting time in a state which I think is usually fairly underrated as flyover country.
- makestuff 4y agoI thought Chicago/Illinois had a good shot at becoming the midwest tech hub, but Ohio seems to be making a good run at it. Don't get me wrong Chicago has tech companies, but Columbus is making some major gains there.
- exclusiv 4y agoChicago could have been but they have long been hostile to businesses. And it's a big country. So you can see why some of these cities provide crazy tax incentives.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoWhich is a shame since Chicago is a great city and Illinois is a blue state that has a much better history with individual rights (outside of guns). I think that's something that younger tech workers really want in a place they plan on being in for a while.
- sparrc 4y agoDo datacenters actually do anything to draw in engineering or a significant number of tech jobs? Beyond just HVAC and a few server operations people. us-west-2 certainly hasn't done much to make The Dalles, Oregon a tech hub (or even Portland for that matter)
- ericmay 4y agoThey don't, though at least this development seems to have enough footprint to do something interesting. A lot of people I talk to get excited "Google is coming to town" and it's like, you don't want warehouses (datacenters) moving in, you want engineers, designers, marketing teams, c-suite to move in. Intel is an example for Columbus of one of those things you really do want to come into town, which is why it's such a big deal.
- hparadiz 4y agoAfter growing up in Pennsylvania you could not pay me to move back to one of these states in the Northeast. First of all there's barely any tech jobs so even if you were payed really well by Google or Amazon you would be at their mercy. If they fired you you'd be pretty much fucked.
- myko 4y agoYes, there's even a shirt for it: https://www.homage.com/products/the-silicon-heartland https://www.homage.com/products/the-silicon-heartland Makes sense for tech companies to be in the Columbus area, Ohio State has an excellent CS program. The big markets in Columbus are banks and insurance.
- sriram_sun 4y agoIs Phoenix a tech heartland? How long has Intel been around that area? My guess is no.
- asdff 4y agoI'm not sure it will be as long as the ohio republican party is in total control of the state. Between the rampant gerrymandering and corruption, abortion stance, lgbt stance, attacks on public education and critical race theory, and recently declaring natural gas is green energy, its hard to imagine that this will foster an innovative and progressive environment long term.
- samvher 4y agoIt's not obvious to me why it would be very beneficial to have a data center close to an Intel plant, but it sounds a bit like it might not be a coincidence that they're close together. If someone knows why this pairing makes sense, care to explain? (The closest thing I can think of is low delivery costs on electronics, but that seems really tiny compared to basically anything else that matters here, and it's not like they would typically get delivered straight from a plant, so that doesn't seem like it would be it.)
- jcims 4y agoProbably more about utilities/logistics of supporting both plants.
- discodave 4y agoTo wit: One way you can find Amazon (or other) datacenters on Google maps is to look for the substation next door.
- tomschlick 4y agoMost likely its just that the county officials there are willing to clear red-tape and expedite zoning/permitting/inspection for large corps looking to place high tech jobs there. Possibly negotiate property tax breaks too.
- tersers 4y agoThis is the simplest and most likely answer, not everything in tech is a big masterminded ploy
- acdha 4y agoThat would be my assumption as well: they're relatively similar in what they're looking for many of the same things: reasonable prices for land, water, electricity, etc., amenable local government, and reasonable housing + workforce. Intel's going to need more people but otherwise I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that both lists of candidate locations ended up being very similar.
- doublerabbit 4y ago[flagged]
- m348e912 4y agoNot nearly as profitable.
- throwayyy479087 4y agoOhio has enormous parks already
- doublerabbit 4y agoWhy not more?
- LarryMullins 4y agoBecause people live there? Nah forget it, evacuate the whole state and let nature take over under the unbounded logic of "why not more." 400 acres is basically nothing compared to the scale of an entire state. It's less than a single square mile. Ohio has more than 40,000 square miles.
- doublerabbit 4y ago> 400 acres is basically nothing It's still something. 400 trees are still better then 1. It's more than you and I will ever own. It's lot of land which could provide so much resource we desperately need. For good rather than evil. 1 acre ~ 4848 trees - That's a lot of trees. 4848 squirrels if each squirrel had a tree each, 4848 birds. So lets complain about the worlds state while we continue to suck resources for construction with wastage of water for cooling as electricity is funneled via fossil fuels; polluting the air we breath. Killing natural ecosystems from destroyed habitats all while causing climate changes for more for nothing other than what? You tell me. So you can run your fancy JavaScript app? I refuse to use any operative service Amazon provides. Apart from network connectivity where I'm forced to use against my will; they're just an another evil corporate entity who cares about nothing other than money. Where's the care for their workers?
- yazaddaruvala 4y agoProbably just another data center. But instead I’ll take a leap and predict: This is Amazon moving into not just designing Graviton but also vertically integrating silicon fabrication (for CPU, memory, and/or storage) into their portfolio.
- bob1029 4y agoFabrication is a red line. Apple-style chip design is as far as it will ever go. You'd need to take the combined capital of Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, along with 2-3 decades of time to even begin considering becoming competitive with the likes of TSM or Samsung. Who is signing up for that risk profile?
- yazaddaruvala 4y agoFabrication (or the loss of access to it at an affordable price) is an existential risk for every IAAS provider! Lets forget about WW3, but even the risk of a TSMC monopoly (or rather a TSMC+Apple monopoly) and price gouging is existential enough that Amazon has plenty of risk sitting on the sidelines regarding fabrication. It would be very inline with AWS to start fabrication as a service to avoid this existential risk. They can always start with easier node sizes for SSDs / DDRs / networking / automotive chips / etc. Even if only to self-source, Amazon alone needs a roughly-infinite supply of these speciality chips. Even totally new innovation that "only Amazon-types" need, like a Silicon interconnect the size of a Datacenter Cabinet (if the yield is reasonable) would be interesting to see. They could even make a play at SiC chips[0]. If they can make it cheap and at small enough node sizes, I'd love to see what innovation SiC could bring to datacenter design. eg more efficient power supplies of each server/rack/cabinet. [0] https://www.investors.com/news/technology/silicon-carbide-chips-are-new-gold-rush/ https://www.investors.com/news/technology/silicon-carbide-ch...
- jeffbee 4y agoInteresting. I associate the region with air pollution and carbon-intensive power. Ohio is near the bottom of the 50 states in wind and solar energy. A few years ago I would not have said Ohio was going to attract so much datacenter construction, but now every big datacenter operator is there.
- nickpeterson 4y agoCarbon intensive power is likely cheaper, unfortunately, so there’s that.
- renewedrebecca 4y agoIt's ok- our governor just declared natural gas to be green energy, so we don't need that silly wind and solar stuff.
- snihalani 4y agoThis is what the layoff money was used for
- rotten 4y agoI live next to where this is going in (walking distance). We already have a huge Google Data Center, One of the Ohio-east region availability zones. A Meta data center and office park, and a dbt data center under construction all within a short radius. We also have a vitamin factory being built, we have a large Amazon Fulfillment center, an R&D lab for a perfume company, and an R&D lab for plastics packaging. All of this has been built over the last 3 or 4 years. This particular spot has electricity and water available from multiple service providers. It has one of the lowest seismic activity ratings in the US. We don't get hurricanes and very rarely get tornados. It is very flat and has great access to highways. We are within a 12 hour drive of something like 60% of the population of the US. There are huge tax incentives to support Intel's Ohio One, which may have 6-10 fabs built within the next few years. The Intel project is paying for highway development the power and sewer extensions and more. Spin off development is adding a slew of hotels, big box stores and other development all happening at the same time. The local schools are rated very highly, and we are only a short drive from The Ohio State University, which is one of the largest universities in the country. Columbus has a vibrant startup scene with several unicorns in the last couple of years. They are taking our quiet country town on the outskirts of Columbus, of about 15K people to 100K people over the course of the next 7 years. They are taking many square miles of farmland to make this happen. They are bulldozing over everyone and anything that gets in their way. The developers are making money hand-over-fist. In particular Les Wexner's development company "The New Albany Company". Wexner is one of the key players behind all of this development. I live on land that goes back in my wife's family to a Revolutionary war grant. I'm pretty sure we will be pushed out within the next year or two as well. The only thing that has stopped them so far is that we have most of the land set as conservation land, which is hard to undo and just pave over. That doesn't stop the bulldozers from pushing things around next door to us and right up to our property line. They cut down huge swaths of forest with 100, 150+ year old trees. They got permission to wipe out acres and acres of wetlands without having to worry about mitigation by donating the money to some wildlife fund instead. We have a pair of displaced bald eagles that have been spotted flying around the area now trying to find a new home.
- rconti 4y agoIs this Delaware?
- atdrummond 4y ago[flagged]
- cycrutchfield 4y ago“Sent from my iPhone”
- zdragnar 4y agoFor the other inhabitants of the world, certainly, but by what metric has it been a disaster for the human race? There are potential serious issues in the making, but as of yet we are largely living longer and with lower rates of malnutrition and starvation than any time before us. To keep growing (both in quantity but also in health and life outcomes) we will need to find a new balance. We weren't necessarily in balance of any sort before then, either. Everything changes, and we will keep changing with the times.
- dang 4y agoMaybe so, but please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34525298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34525298.
- atdrummond 4y agoYeah, not my intent at all.
- dang 4y agoI believe you! But intent doesn't express yourself, and often gets more obscure the shorter/more generic a comment is. When it comes to moderation, we have to go by effects, not intent. Specifically, we have to by "effects in the general statistical case", if that makes sense. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=burden%20disambiguate%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=troll%20effects%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...