[HN Gopher] Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its eco...
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       Malaysia is betting on data centers to boost its economy
        
       Author : rntn
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2025-02-19 21:20 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (apnews.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
        
       | decimalenough wrote:
       | This article has so many problems that I don't know where to
       | start.
       | 
       | > _Tech companies exploiting resources in poorer countries while
       | extracting data from their populations to get rich is akin to
       | "digital colonialism." She compared data extraction to silver
       | mining in Bolivia, which enriched colonial Spain but left nothing
       | behind for Latin America. "They are extracting data in the same
       | way. Data doesn't even leave (behind) taxes," she said._
       | 
       | 1) Data collection and data mining are _very_ different from data
       | centers, but good luck explaining that to the layman.
       | 
       | 2) Malaysia's economic problems are largely due to dysfunctional
       | government including racial preferences baked into the
       | constitution, coupled with the resource curse, meaning exports of
       | oil/LNG fund all sorts of wasteful spending and crowd out other
       | businesses. "Digital colonialism" is the least of their worries.
       | 
       | 3) Last but not least, 60% of SE Asia's data centers are in
       | Singapore, which is wealthier than the Western countries that,
       | per the article, are apparently exploiting it.
        
         | mc32 wrote:
         | Why do they have to go in that bent? Report the news, don't
         | inject prejudices into a story. All the things you mention are
         | true but AP assumes few people know the ground truth and those
         | that do they'd hope would just ignore it.
        
         | re-thc wrote:
         | 2) let's not forget cases like 1MDB
        
       | crowcroft wrote:
       | I guess the thesis is that Singapore is the primary business hub
       | in SEA, but Singapore doesn't have a grid that can handle large
       | scale data centers (especially with power hungry GPU demand).
       | Logically Johor bordering Singapore is the next best option for
       | data centers.
        
         | decimalenough wrote:
         | Singapore is also very land-constrained. Google's latest DCs
         | there are multi-story, which is obviously going to be more
         | expensive to build that your standard one-story warehouse.
        
         | re-thc wrote:
         | Latency/Routing too. There are ISPs that would send you to Hong
         | Kong or other places.
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-19 23:00 UTC)