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This is the “move the factories to third world countries so that we can have cleaner air and water while consuming endlessly, pretending the consumption doesn’t

This is the “move the factories to third world countries so that we can have cleaner air and water while consuming endlessly, pretending the consumption doesn’t come with problems or that the third world countries are the problem” equivalent of data centers.

scarab92 2y ago
No it isn't. That's just the journalist unprofessionally injecting their political ideology into what is supposed to be a factual article. Malaysia has an opportunity simply because Singapore can't keep up. It doesn't have the land to waste on data centers, nor does it have the spare power generation capacity.
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  > Malaysia has an opportunity simply because Singapore can't keep up. It doesn't have the land to waste on data centers, nor does it have the spare power generation capacity. Malasia doesn’t have the spare power either and neither does it have the capacity to keep the power clean, that’s what is being argued in the article. Poor countries will always take up a business opportunity to make money because they are poor. That doesn’t fix the problem that the business opportunity could do plenty of harm to the country in other ways. Just like Malaysia and other South Asian countries import more garbage than they can process from first world countries because that brings in money for them.
  - scarab92 2y ago
    Malaysia has sufficient land and water to produce more power as needed. It's just a matter of investment. If anything, the stable power demands from datacenters make business case for new builds stronger. Also, it's not like these datacenters are serving western customers. These datacenters are far MORE costly than those in the EU/US because of the higher cooling costs, and also the latency is more than 200ms to the EU and US making them not suitable for real time use cases. This story is nothing but a contrived whingefest, like much of the media these days.
    - w00kie 2y ago
      I might also add that all of the big data center companies have sustainability goals that will push demand for cleaner energy, and therefore investment, in the country where they build. I work for one of the top datacenter companies in the world and we run 8TWh on 96% renewable energy.
  - themgt 2y ago
    Malaysia's GDP per capita is now equivalent to Poland's in 2015 or Portugal's in 2001. It's honestly kind of offensive to just lump them in like this is some failed state being exploited by building modern datacenters. Maybe they can manage their own affairs.
  - lmm 2y ago
    > Poor countries will always take up a business opportunity to make money because they are poor. That doesn’t fix the problem that the business opportunity could do plenty of harm to the country in other ways. Actually it does. Taking business opportunities to make money is the main way that poor countries become rich. If you block them off from that they don't find harmless ways to make money (any conceivable way for a poor country to make money can be painted as getting exploited if you're that way inclined), they just stay poor.
  - blackhawkC17 2y ago
    Do you have anything better to offer them? Because Malaysia can definitely not build these data centers without foreign investment.. As someone from a certain poor country, I can attest that your tone sounds very condescending. It makes it look like such countries lack the agency to choose for themselves and need a savior to swoop in and rescue them from their predicament.
MangoCoffee 2y ago
>move the factories to third world countries so that we can have cleaner air and water You do know there are latency issues when servicing the Western countries from Asia, right? make it make sense.
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  If you read the article, it is about Singapore, a first world country and Malaysia which is not. Western countries were not part of the conversation.
  - lmz 2y ago
    It's not serving Singapore though. If anything it would serve Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia. All countries with vastly more people than Singapore.

scarab92 2y ago

No it isn't. That's just the journalist unprofessionally injecting their political ideology into what is supposed to be a factual article. Malaysia has an opportunity simply because Singapore can't keep up. It doesn't have the land to waste on data centers, nor does it have the spare power generation capacity.

darth_avocado 2y ago
> Malaysia has an opportunity simply because Singapore can't keep up. It doesn't have the land to waste on data centers, nor does it have the spare power generation capacity. Malasia doesn’t have the spare power either and neither does it have the capacity to keep the power clean, that’s what is being argued in the article. Poor countries will always take up a business opportunity to make money because they are poor. That doesn’t fix the problem that the business opportunity could do plenty of harm to the country in other ways. Just like Malaysia and other South Asian countries import more garbage than they can process from first world countries because that brings in money for them.
- scarab92 2y ago
  Malaysia has sufficient land and water to produce more power as needed. It's just a matter of investment. If anything, the stable power demands from datacenters make business case for new builds stronger. Also, it's not like these datacenters are serving western customers. These datacenters are far MORE costly than those in the EU/US because of the higher cooling costs, and also the latency is more than 200ms to the EU and US making them not suitable for real time use cases. This story is nothing but a contrived whingefest, like much of the media these days.
  - w00kie 2y ago
    I might also add that all of the big data center companies have sustainability goals that will push demand for cleaner energy, and therefore investment, in the country where they build. I work for one of the top datacenter companies in the world and we run 8TWh on 96% renewable energy.
- themgt 2y ago
  Malaysia's GDP per capita is now equivalent to Poland's in 2015 or Portugal's in 2001. It's honestly kind of offensive to just lump them in like this is some failed state being exploited by building modern datacenters. Maybe they can manage their own affairs.
- lmm 2y ago
  > Poor countries will always take up a business opportunity to make money because they are poor. That doesn’t fix the problem that the business opportunity could do plenty of harm to the country in other ways. Actually it does. Taking business opportunities to make money is the main way that poor countries become rich. If you block them off from that they don't find harmless ways to make money (any conceivable way for a poor country to make money can be painted as getting exploited if you're that way inclined), they just stay poor.
- blackhawkC17 2y ago
  Do you have anything better to offer them? Because Malaysia can definitely not build these data centers without foreign investment.. As someone from a certain poor country, I can attest that your tone sounds very condescending. It makes it look like such countries lack the agency to choose for themselves and need a savior to swoop in and rescue them from their predicament.

MangoCoffee 2y ago

>move the factories to third world countries so that we can have cleaner air and water You do know there are latency issues when servicing the Western countries from Asia, right? make it make sense.

darth_avocado 2y ago
If you read the article, it is about Singapore, a first world country and Malaysia which is not. Western countries were not part of the conversation.
- lmz 2y ago
  It's not serving Singapore though. If anything it would serve Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia. All countries with vastly more people than Singapore.