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Comment by helsinkiandrew | Hacker News Reader

> Does it really matter so desperately if it takes your AI query an extra 10 ms to go to the middle of nowhere and we have to wait to build renewable or nuclear power to scale it?

The middle of nowhere in Finland is likely to be a forest (about 80% coverage).

The area being developed is roughly here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/f5vn3KaZ1eZEcNh67?g_st=ic

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Interesting the forest area in question doesn't appear to be some sort of amazing old growth forest thats been there for centuries it appears to be old logging sites that was maybe reforested a few decades or so ago.

None of this has anything to do with forests, and a step beyond that, doesn't have anything to do with datacenters either. It's entirely panicked flailing about AI capabilities.

It is not anything special pretty much standard industrial forest in normal growthy cycle. Just that it seems some steps were skipped in the process.

Maybe the answer is not to build them in Finland if there is really no more useless land there (unless Finland is explicitly asking for the DC to be built in the country for other reasons) but there is elsewhere. Even if it was, that's still less than 0.5 ms from a city of 200k+, surely there is some option better for the climate in 20x the radius!

I do like that it is at least a naturally cooler place, which is more consideration than most DCs get. And, being Finland, I'd imagine a decently cleaner power mix than usual for a new DC? Both of these are fair things to give credit and support for IMO - not everything has to be outrage.

Off the top of my head Finland seems to tick a lot of boxes: low population density, good local availability of water without competing uses, low electricity prices, very green electricity (lots of nuclear, hydro, wind), good infrastructure, cold climate

Apart from this being in a forest, this seems like an ideal place. And places that are not used for agriculture or human habitation but do have water available have a habit of being forests (or mountains)

> low population density, good local availability of water without competing uses, low electricity prices, very green electricity (lots of nuclear, hydro, wind), good infrastructure, cold climate

This then makes the headline basically read as, "Popularly disliked company listened, with new project avoiding literally every valid or ignorant criticism people brought up; news found some even more nonsensical criticism to amplify".

The trees being cleared look like commercial forest - trees planted a few decades ago after a previous clearing

https://datacenters.google/locations/#data-center-list

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