marticode3 hours ago
Well my IP (regular plain residential Asian ISP) is blocked on this site. Zealous Cloudflare-blocking is breaking the web.
(also thanks for the useful message telling me to "contact the website owner... while blocking me from the website where the contact info should be)
dylan6042 hours ago
I'm not defending Cloudflare, but what is a better solution? If small websites can just be DDOS'd out of existence because some group thinks it'll be funny, what protections do they have? It takes too much equipment and know-how to stop an attack for people to be able to survive online. The next thing you'll hear about is a monthly service fee to the hackers as a protection racket just like the mob.
Dylan16807an hour ago
The better solution to blocking entire continents is probably doing nothing.
For DDoS resistance... Well I can imagine a world where a tech in the same area as IPFS or freenet gives backup access to websites that are overloaded.
warkdarrior23 minutes ago
> For DDoS resistance... Well I can imagine a world where a tech in the same area as IPFS or freenet gives backup access to websites that are overloaded.
As a small website owner, I can use Cloudflare or I can wait for this imagined tech.
somenameformean hour ago
The site's also blocked for me, also on a normal residential IP. Making your site inaccessible for people out of fear that somebody might make it inaccessible for people feels reminiscent of blockading the strait because you don't want the strait blockaded.
dantillberg40 minutes ago
> feels reminiscent of blockading the strait because you don't want the strait blockaded
I think this is a poor analogy, unnecessarily politicizing the topic.
It might be a good analogy the other way around, if hackers DDOSed the website as revenge for partial IP-based blocking, in order to apply pressure to the website operator to remove IP-based blocking. But that wasn't the topic.
expedition32an hour ago
The internet is killing itself.
And no I do not blame small website owners they just have to live with this mess same as everyone else.
sph36 minutes ago
How many small websites served by Cloudflare risk being DDOS'd? How many small website owners would incur serious loss of livelihood if they are DDOS'd for a few days? Is DDOS risk so important that the web needs a protection racket?
> If small websites can just be DDOS'd out of existence
DDOS doesn't destroy websites. It just makes them unreachable until the disgruntled person decides it's been running long enough.
Please stop exaggerating a very real problem only a few entities on the web have; what you are perpetuating is FUD, which enables companies like Cloudflare to kill the web.
> The next thing you'll hear about is a monthly service fee to the hackers as a protection racket
How do you not even see the irony of this?
dylan6045 minutes ago
> Please stop exaggerating a very real problem only a few entities on the web have; what you are perpetuating is FUD, which enables companies like Cloudflare to kill the web.
I'm not exaggerating, I'm just playing what if. That's a game where you think of random things that could go wrong, and then deciding if it is worth the expense. Just because maybe you can't think of things of varying plausibility does not make me exaggerating. We already see ransomware working from the hacker's perspective. There's no reason to think that greed will not come into play. If I can think of it, there's no reason to think that hackers are not also considering various ways to expand on ransomware as a service
>> The next thing you'll hear about is a monthly service fee to the hackers as a protection racket
> How do you not even see the irony of this?
How do you not? If every hacking group can come along and extort any site they choose to pay them a protection fee, there's no way websites will accept any of this. Compare that to paying a single legit service protecting against all of those hacking groups. Can't imagine why people would be willing to do that.
deely32 hours ago
And don't forget about kids safety!
PunchyHamster2 hours ago
nah they will be selling their service to both hackers and their targets
isodev2 hours ago
It's amazing how after all these years, tech world still believes it's a good idea to sell the entrance to their websites and services to the same bouncer. Cloudflare not in the mood for your IP/ISP/Country? Tough cookies.
llm_nerdan hour ago
In this case a site is geoblocking. It's an affiliate station is Wisconsin, serving up local news. Sites have been using things like MaxMind and blanket blocking entire regions long before Cloudflare.
If you've run a site like that, pretty soon you realize 100% of the traffic that hits you from Asia, Russia, the Middle East and even Eastern Europe / the Baltics is exploit detection scripts and is just noise in your logs. Okay, 99.999999% as once every decade something ends up on HN and gets a broader audience.
isodev38 minutes ago
This is such a narrow PoV and I don't see how it relates to Cloudflare currently being de factor gatekeeper for every web properly of consequence.
What's the point of publishing news or content on the web if you don't want it to be accessible? What about locals who travel? What about locals who share links with others?
sammy225526 minutes ago
You could use a search engine to find their contact information
not_a_bot_4shoan hour ago
> (also thanks for the useful message telling me to "contact the website owner... while blocking me from the website where the contact info should be)
I hit this a lot with Firefox VPN and it's ridiculous
kogasa240p3 hours ago
Microsoft has decided not to move forward with its proposed site for a data center in the Village of Caledonia after facing significant community pushback from residents. Posted and last updated
VILLAGE OF CALEDONIA, Wis. — Microsoft has decided not to move forward with its proposed site for a data center in the Village of Caledonia after facing significant community pushback from residents.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE | Microsoft data center proposal continues to divide Caledonia residents as rezoning plans move forward
“Based on the community feedback we heard, we have chosen not to move forward with this site,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday.
The tech giant’s decision comes after hundreds of residents voiced opposition to the project over recent weeks. More than 2,000 people signed a petition opposing a rezoning proposal that would have allowed the data center to be built on 244 acres of land.
Watch: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia after community pushback
The proposed site was situated on County Line Road and State Highway 32, southwest of the WE Energies Oak Creek Power Plant, and was surrounded by farmland and residential properties.
47032805-Concept Site Plan - Project Nova by TMJ4 News
Despite abandoning this particular location, Microsoft indicated it remains interested in investing in Southeast Wisconsin.
The spokesperson said the company looks forward to “working with the Village of Caledonia and Racine County leaders to identify a site that aligns with community priorities and our long-term development goals.”
TMJ4’s Jenna Rae, who has been following this story, reached out to Todd Willis, the village administrator, who provided the following statement:
“Nothing official has been submitted to the Village regarding their pending application, and have no comment until such time.”
Resident Prescott Balch told TMJ4 that his phone did not stop ringing on Wednesday morning, as people delivered the news. PRESCOTT BALCH TMJ4 Prescott Balch lives in Caledonia. Balch welcomed the news that Microsoft is changing plans to bring a data center in the area.
"We're ecstatic that those arguments held water and ultimately convinced a large corporation to back off, so great day here in Caledonia," Balch said.
Village trustee Nancy Pierce says she learned about the change from a news article.
"I have a lot of respect for Microsoft, making the decision when they say they listened to the constituents. They also listened to board questions both at the planning commission at the board level. I believe that they took a lot of different pieces of information into play," Pierce stated. Nancy Pierce TMJ4 News Nancy Pierce is a village trustee in Caledonia.
Both Pierce and Balch made it clear that they are not opposed to working with Microsoft in Caledonia.
As the tech giant looks for a new site, there is hope that there are improvements to the overall process.
"I would’ve liked to been able to engage directly with Microsoft much earlier in the process. We were not allowed to do that. I think that became an obstacle for a lot of different points and reasons," Pierce explained. "I feel like now they would come forward much quicker and engage directly with the community, really get to understand the community."
"There are people that have an opinion about what they want to do with their village, and that was absent in this to me. That's the real message of this thing," Balch explained. "Let's help Microsoft find the right spot in southeast Wisconsin."
PunchyHamster2 hours ago
block was enabled by site owner, not cloudflare. If they used something else they'd just blanked block ASN IP blocks
arjie3 hours ago
What is the actual procedure through which this happens? You buy the land and then are granted permission on a discretionary basis? It seems to me that if you were a small business this becomes much harder to participate in because you need to acquire and hold the unproductive asset.
This would mean that land use tends towards that which large firms (which can sustain the costs easily by self-financing) find useful.
thewebguyd2 hours ago
My employer went through a similar process, not for a data center but for a large recycling yard/center. We had to buy the land first, and it was basically unproductive for 2.5 years of mostly waiting for permits, and it was already zoned industrial so no zoning changes were needed.
The whole project was several million in expenses before even making a dollar. We aren't huge either, the permitting was not supposed to take that long it but a real strain on the business.
So yeah, you're correct. The current process favors large firms, at least those large enough to absorb the cost for multiple years or however long permitting takes, which in some municipalities can be a very, very long time.
nixgeekan hour ago
It’s unusual to buy the land and take a gamble on its utility, at least whenever datacenter construction is involved. Purchasing parties are risk averse to this exact scenario and work hard to craft contracts that reduce risk.
Often the choices are —
1. Buy land at $/acre that reflects very little premium, based on a short feasibility study, but without any ultimate contingency that permitting will occur. This is your example. But problematically all permitting applications are typically public record, so when you fail, the land can’t be sold on to someone else as if that didn’t happen, any sophisticated buyer will know the exact issues the city/county had with your usage. Land often transacts onward at firesale prices under these circumstances.
2. $/acre for land is bid upon at a substantial premium reflecting the future value as a datacenter, it remains under contract for potentially years pending outcome of approvals, then it transacts. Permitting being denied usually results in either no money changing hands or a small termination fee reflecting the carrying cost of the land during that period. If permitting works out the seller of land walks away very happy as the $/acre was extremely lucrative.
edmundsauto20 minutes ago
The second option also incentivizes the seller, who is often a local real estate magnate, to pressure local officials to issue the permits.
cbdevidalan hour ago
Fun fact: Large businesses are often tapped to write the laws intended to target large businesses. The process is called “model legislation.” Fox and henhouse.
hylaride3 minutes ago
It's also called "regulatory capture" and it's been around in some form (implicitly or explicitly) since there's been laws in existence.
toss1an hour ago
Well, businesses — and all parties — who will be affected by legislation should be able to provide input. Otherwise we too often get clueless legislation that is massively mocked and rightly bemoaned on this site — because the legislators have no real clue of the technical issues involved.
Of course, the businesses should be only one part of the expertise that goes into writing the laws; other experts MUST be involved, or it will indeed be a fox and henhouse situation where the fox designs the legal locks so they can always be opened by foxes...
parineuman hour ago
That's not what model legislation is.
That can be an example of model legislation but, broadly, model legislation is created by an organization for use as an example for multiple different legislatures (usually states). Everyone from think tanks, busineses, the EFF, the ACLU and PETA draft model legislation.
toast03 hours ago
Depending on things, you might enter a land purchase (or lease) contract that's contingent on issuance of a building permit.
But a seller would probably prefer to sell without contingency, so what terms are available depends on market conditions.
Title insurance for residential real estate may sometimes cover properties that are unbuildable due to unsatisfiable permit requirements.
All told, it's easier as a buyer if you purchase an existing structure that was built under permits and is currently in use under appropriate occupancy permits.
delusional2 hours ago
From what I can tell Microsoft hasn't purchased the land yet. It's apparently owned by WE energies as part of the power plant next door.
delfinom3 hours ago
Zoning laws. Many parts of the US but not all have land use zoning. The zoning for any property you buy is public record, so any business knows well in advance of what they are buying. If you want to deviate from the zoning you have to submit an application for that zoning variance which requires usually a community hearing.
Neither small or large businesses really have any big advantages here. Got to win over the community. If anything, the small business may be local and the operators more readily able to convince the community for a variance than some corporate lawyer.
thewebguyd2 hours ago
Zoning is only part of it. If a plot is already zoned industrial, but is empty, you still need to get the permitting for building construction, utility hookup, waste water & stormwater, environmental inspections, etc.
It varies from state to state (and city specific laws), but to go from empty land to productive asset can take several years.
bobthepanda2 hours ago
Also for a large enough utility hookup you will need to coordinate with the utility and or government since you can’t just plop down a large consumer on any old power line or pipe.
3eb7988a16632 hours ago
Notably, this location is not far from where the Foxconn facility was going to be installed (the "eighth wonder of the world", 10k+ jobs, yada yada). After that debacle, I can imagine local residents are deeply skeptical of new big development projects.
pathartl16 minutes ago
It's about 15 miles north. Microsoft is already building a data center on some of the land that Foxconn didn't use
lelandfe36 minutes ago
I remember this. The state widened a freeway at humongous expense for it, expecting gridlock from the 10k+ employees.
delecti3 hours ago
My first reaction is that 244 acres for a data center sounds absolutely obscene. But I have to admit that I'm coming from a place of ignorance.
How big "should" a data center be? How big are some other data centers? How big is us-east-1, for an example of a large one? I'm finding this to be rather difficult information to google.
manarth3 hours ago
That's the land allocation rather than the building-size / data-centre size.
The average data centre is 10,000 square metres (2.5 acres).
As well as compute and network facilities, DCs also need to accommodate parking, personnel areas, cooling, fire-suppression, power substations, power redundancy (generators), ground-security…
244 acres is absolutely at the upper end of any DC site.
nixgeek2 hours ago
Utah’s 40,000 acre datacenter proves it’s not absolutely at the upper end.
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/933687/u...
Most hyperscalers now prefer to build larger sites as “campuses” which may consist of many buildings each consuming 40-100MW, and then yes each building needs most of what you mentioned, so it adds up.
A few sites are now also contemplating BTM or ‘behind the meter’ power generation which takes additional space.
Then some sites like Microsoft’s Fairwater design are optimized for a very large number of Accelerator cabinets — think GPU, TPU, etc. Those cabinets are each consuming 140kW today and with a path to 700-1000kW cabinets soon, so that’s one super dense building instead of a campus of less dense buildings filled with Compute.
manarth2 hours ago
40,000 acres, aka 77 × Monaco's!
TIL.
jubilanti3 hours ago
I assume you mean AWS us-east-1. It isn't a single data center. It is a cluster of data centers around Northern Virginia.
mapt2 hours ago
Based on a majority of games regions, US-East-1 is scattered properties in a <100 square mile area near Dulles Airport in Virginia, associated with an Internet backbone junction and former AOL campus in small town called Ashburn.
LeFantome3 hours ago
us-east-1 is a region. That means that it is 3 to 6 “availability zones” within a 100 km or so. Each of these availability zones consists of a cluster of data centers. Each cluster is perhaps 3-5 that are a few km from each other. The data centers will have tens of thousands of servers each.
So that is the mental model you should have for “how big is us-east-1”. But also, the data centers are not going to be, individually, anything like 244 acres. Best guess is that individual data centers are between 200,000 and 400,000 square feet. That is 5 to 10 acres.
Do the math above and us-east-1 may be 300 acres of floor space spread over a very large area.
nixgeek2 hours ago
AWS publicly stated I think in 2021 that the larger availability zones in US East 1 consisted of 17-18 datacenters each. It’s likely grown a lot since, and they recently announced AZ7 will be online in Maryland soon, so they must be running out of ability to grow the ones in NoVA.
I can’t find a link now but it was one of the re:Invent talks like Peter DeSantis briefly explaining AZs before he dug into how Amazon optimizes their concrete mixtures to be more environmentally friendly or something…
All things point to that being the biggest region any hyperscaler has in the world, and several gigawatts of power consumption.
James Hamilton also gave a talk in 2021 about AWS having crossed 20 million Nitro cards deployed and 12GW power consumed —
https://mvdirona.com/jrh/talksandpapers/JamesHamilton2022101...
bigdick12 hours ago
My data center is bigger than yours.
sterlind2 hours ago
it's not the size of the chip, it's the motion of the digitalocean.
jeffbee3 hours ago
Almost all of the site would have been open space, existing transmission corridors, an electric substation, and two flood control ponds they threw in to try to sweeten the deal by offsetting the new impermeable surfaces. The data halls are a small portion of the site.
badlibrarian3 hours ago
[dead]
Danox2 hours ago
Probably a wise decision on their part Microsoft already is all in on Copilot AI if it fails, the CEO probably is gone.
simonebrunozzi2 hours ago
Are you sure? AFAIK, Satya did a great job from the point of view of a shareholder - +1,200% from 2014 to today [0]
[0]: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/sto...
Ampersanderan hour ago
That was then. Today the stock is trading at a lower price than in May 2024. Google is up over 100% in that time.
thewebguydan hour ago
They're already backtracking on, at least, the consumer Copilot being shoved everywhere in Windows. I think Nadella is already on his way out though (voluntarily). Judson Athoff is already taking over as "CEO of Commercial Businesses" so Nadella can be closer to engineering, which he's said he misses.
rbanffy3 hours ago
For a moment I thought they were referring to the Scottish Highlands, but I guess the name fell in disuse when the Roman Empire fell...
ChrisArchitectan hour ago
(2025) OP.
jeffbee3 hours ago
Wealthy white exclave succeeds in using environmental justice language to keep cheap coal-fired power to themselves. Very American outcome.
Although I obviously don't care about Microsoft's outcome here, this was clearly a great site at the intersection of two transmission lines and with essentially infinite water resources.
The data center would have been built in this scene. https://www.google.com/maps/@42.8440852,-87.8474228,2445m/da...
trollbridge3 hours ago
Some of us would like to keep our “infinite” water resources which actually aren’t infinite.
I live beneath two transmission lines (overlapping, I guess, but not intersecting) and would prefer no data centre built here. Why? Because it will provide me no benefit whatsoever, reduce my property value, and worsen my quality of life due to things like light pollution and noise.
If data centre operators would fix these things perhaps people would feel differently. For example - provide multi gigabit fibre Internet to everyone nearby.
thewebguydan hour ago
> provide multi gigabit fibre Internet to everyone nearby.
Kind of a cool idea, actually. These data centers could turn the towns where they build into startup incubators. Offer free high speed internet and heavily subsidized compute to residents in exchange for building there. At least gives back economically somewhat, as a data center itself doesn't provide much in return.
culian hour ago
Gigabit internet doesn't power startups. It powers consumer streaming. As long as you can run Zoom, you don't need high internet speeds for startups
r_lee13 minutes ago
how exactly is high speed fiber + subsidized compute a recipe for making startups?
parineum42 minutes ago
This water usage meme needs to die. Although, it is nice to have an indicator for people who believe whatever they told without trivial verification.
jeffbee3 hours ago
I support in principle the rights of towns to set their own land use rules, but on the larger societal picture I don't support people benefiting from things like intermodal shipping, goods distribution, and information services that they refuse to host. So I perceive a certain hypocrisy in this story.
3eb7988a16632 hours ago
Surely I benefit from a host of things for which I want nowhere near me. Strip mining, petroleum refining, chemical processing, coal fired electricity, etc. Am I allowed any autonomy or must we all accept that if a rich group wants to plop down a leather tanning factory across the street, I should have no recourse?
jeffbee2 hours ago
That's a mix of different issues. The site of a natural resource isn't one of the things that political systems control, whereas the site of a petrochemical refinery or a power station is chosen by those systems. So yes, it is obviously hypocrisy to consume petrochemical products while insisting that the refinery can't be in your "rural character" exclave with the arbitrary line drawn around it, but allowing the same facility to be built over the county line in the poorer, browner community that you consider sacrificial. Anyway, the impacts of a data center are not in the same ballpark as the other things you mentioned.
Scroll_Swe2 hours ago
I kind of agree but I live in a city in Sweden.
Should I not be able to use youtube or order online because we don't have a DC right next door?
mindslight2 hours ago
Maybe everyone in this village already has their own local AI rig. From a technical perspective, data centers aren't providing public goods - rather they're more like attractive nuisances that foster centralized control.
thewebguydan hour ago
Mentioned earlier in the thread, but maybe these data centers should start providing public goods to the towns/counties in which they build? Free high speed internet, heavily subsidized compute, maybe partner with local colleges to offer labs & internships, etc.
There's no reason they can't be economic accelerators for the towns they are in.
mindslight5 minutes ago
[delayed]
energy1232 hours ago
One of the rare cases where nimbys can't do damage because the hyper scalers will (and are) building their data centers across MENA, South Asia and SEA where they're welcomed with generous tax breaks and incentives.
Sending kilobytes of text over thousands of miles is a lot easier than piping energy or housing across distance!
expedition32an hour ago
Welcomed by corrupt politicians perhaps the locals not so much.
Data centers do not provide jobs and they are run by sociopath Americans who couldn't give a shit about human rights or the environment.
866-RON-0-FEZ39 minutes ago
> The data center would have been built in this scene
You mean the carefully cropped photo of pristine rolling farmland in the article is in reality next door to a coal-fired power plant? Say it ain't so.
insane_dreamer2 hours ago
"a great site" -- you frame it like Microsoft was working for the public good
nixgeekan hour ago
Building a datacenter typically employs thousands of people in the trades, often for hundreds or a thousand plus hours, per person, from the start of a big build to the campus being complete. It’s quite literally millions of billable hours in trade labor.
Modern datacenters also require very high standards of construction and are complex, so these projects create jobs and also represent a real training, upskilling and work experience opportunity for labor. There are many examples of electricians, plumbers and groundwork teams who did Microsoft’s site getting future work from Meta, Google or Amazon in the same part of the state because the experience has value.
It’s easy to dismissively say datacenter is bad, or that it consumes too much water (despite many datacenters accused of this being a closed-loop cooling system), and ignore the billions of dollars spent during the project on labor which supports that local economy, or the improvements negotiated for the local area and paid for the hyperscaler, bundled in by the city/county planning as part of the permits and approvals.
It’s also rare the tax for a campus is fully rebated, although it’s normal for the improvements to be partially rebated for some period (this is an investment incentive). Viewed over 20-40 years these sites are often tremendously lucrative in tax for the county/city as well.
SoftTalkeran hour ago
There are a lot of jobs during construction.
There are very few jobs during operation. Mostly site security and a few tech support staff. There will be some steady work for maintenance contractors, but that's much less than the initial construction.
nixgeek29 minutes ago
I mean, you’re right, but when the alternative is all that investment and those construction jobs AND the post-commissioning operational jobs go to a different community and a different economy, …
What would you prefer? To me, local communities tend to benefit in multiple different ways during and after these projects, poorer communities become richer, communities with little opportunity now have more opportunity. I’m always a bit baffled by someone saying “Please don’t invest $5B and create 100s of jobs and taxable improvements in my back yard”.
This is a common argument: wanting 1000s of jobs during construction and 1000s of jobs after construction, but this isn’t a car manufacturing plant. That’s a “we want our cake and we want to eat it too” argument — not saying it’s your argument just that this comes up frequently.
SoftTalker14 minutes ago
But what often happens is that the company is granted a ten year tax abatement in exchange for the jobs, the jobs end up being fewer than promised, and then in ten years the company closes the site and now the community has an empty industrial brownfield that was built for one thing and can't be easily repurposed.
Danox2 hours ago
This is the last stand for Satya Narayana Nadella Copilot has to work…
Scroll_Swe2 hours ago
And this is bad because they are wealthy and white?
Nothing is "infinite"
Do and did us white Europeans (I'm Swedish) and white WASP american have it good, yes.
Why do you hate us so, out with it!
Cant tell if woke socialist, racist or both.
You would probably say, "oh sweden needs more refogees"
pessimizeran hour ago
Libertarians turn super-woke when white privilege keeps them from doing what they want to do when they want to do it. The bad thing about just being able to steal from the blacks is that the blacks don't have anything to steal anymore.
Not being able to steal from whites as easily as you can steal from blacks is literally white supremacy actually, so to be a good ally everybody has to let Microsoft build a datacenter in their backyard. YIMBYs rule!
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