It's generally more expensive for them when it comes to things like power, water and internet.

Boonies have very poor in each of those and building it up would take too long so throw another in Northern Virginia since they have expensive access to additional of that but at least it will become operational.

And ruin the boonies too? American norms and laws are not conducive to making nice places to live, but they've skated by having enough land and car-first infrastructure. With the huge increase in warehouses and data centers in residential areas over the past 5-10 years, I wonder if there will be an inflection point where it finally needs to be dealt with.

Even then they can wind up in the proverbial backyard. I don't know much about data center staffing needs and zoning laws but those would seem relevant spatial constraints and considerations.

I wonder the same thing. It could be that getting transition grid interconnects and redundant fiber paths is much faster in more suburban areas vs rural areas.

I agree with you, but even then it's still going to be someone's backyard

We could in a vacuum, but they require human labor and human labor isn't found in the boonies.

It's the age old problem. The people in the cities cry that there are no jobs and the rural businesses cry that they can't find anyone to hire, with no great resolution as the businesses cannot afford to move into the city and the people don't want to travel to the boonies.

However, in this case, these data centers are so well capitalized that they can afford to move them into the cities right beside where the workers are located.

I propose we build one under Sam Altman's house.

They need to hire IT, maintainence, and security to run the datacenters, and there aren't many qualified people in the boonies. Small towns are better targets, and honestly also just objectively less damaging to the environment.

None of this NIMBYism is about the datacenter itself, it's all a protest against AI making the economy really shitty for them.