183 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50048638
253 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50196837
Here is the (much, much higher quality) original reporting that this terrible ny post writeup is based on: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/...
Can we have a news feed the is parsed and checked again other sources to deliver the highest proportion of base factually unambiguous data, with maybe a tier 2/3 probable analysis/opinions as optional overlays? Seems doable
Here's their page for this story: https://ground.news/article/google-knocks-down-250-thousand-...
It also links to related coverage, such as the project being cancelled in response to the outrage.
You may enjoy Kagi’s News offering. Linked is the same topic.
Disagree.
Most people would think this is journalism. This is the kind of journalism most people are interacting with in 2026.
Their current obsession is Mamdani, and there seems to be nothing about him they won't print, no matter how petty and ridiculous.
If you read the news to scratch an entertainment itch it's perfect. If you want to understand what's happening in the world and why, it's a terrible option.
How cool climate helps saving energy ? My naive understanding is it helps with cooling which is mostly done by evaporating water. Does they also cool DS by compressing and expanding fluids?
Also evaporative cooling is not used in most of the world, only in very hot and dry places
Why not news sources that eschew emotional manipulation, like Associated Press or Reuters. They aim for information rather than propaganda.
I think your “datacenter bad” and “non story” comments indicate that you are biased in the opposite direction that you’re complaining about. You seem not to be interested in actually learning whether any serious misconduct occurred, which is genuinely up for debate.
This issue genuinely matters to a lot of people. Tribalism doesn’t help on either side.
Yup, definitely no partisan spin in the guardian article...c'mon
"Dog whistling" is the formal term for the style of reporting being published.
Or did China spark the fire in western countries to care about this stuff?
"A Finnish contractor working for Google failed to get the correct permits for clearing 1.5sq-mi of man made forest that was rezoned to industrial"
The actual takeaway is how desperate the media is for clicks. They don't report based on importance, the report based on attention potential (while people naturally assume it's based on importance, as that's the aire the media projects ofc)
It was about making an environmental assesment before starting on the clearing.
Which is mandated by law.
Now the environmental impact cannot be assessed.
This is making the entire country quite angry.
A small minority might be concerned about the trees in the area, but it's not a big topic. Main topics are, again, the bureaucracy and the center's electricity consumption with its effect on consumer electricity bills.
Because of the news articles.
> It was about making an environmental assessment before starting on the clearing.
Proof? Because it was already rezoned to industrial from what OP said. Why would it be rezoned if the municipality didn't intend for the trees to be cut and a DC built there?
Basically the law says you need to do the assessment if you're removing the trees permanently from over 200 hectares. The company asked for an exemption, the relevant bureau said nope, they cut anyway.
Notably, these kind of hit pieces are almost always about extracting some concession from the targeted organization (Google, in this case).
Yes, my point, the media fosters misinformation and deceit to foster rage all in the name of getting people to view ads.
The logging forest was getting cleared not matter what, and it's microscopic compared to total forested land. So the actual story is a permitting fumble.
And entire country getting outraged over a permitting fumble (a parking ticket level occurnace) is something only institution that lives and dies by hijacking eyeballs could orchestrate.
I find this issue small but the choice of these companies to pick the convenient location for them to build a data center concerning, and govts shouldn't be bending over. If these things can be built in space we can build them in places where no one lives and no living being is harmed or logged.. cough.
Boy I sure hope it’s infinity times!
Anyway it seems like you’re incorrect. They actually didn’t have the approval necessary, and no, a zoning approval does not grant all other required forms of approval (obviously).
The issue is that gravity of the crime wouldn't even register 5 years ago in a local paper.
My underlying point is that the media is making people insane, and they are somehow grateful for it.
Remember Finland is the country where we scale fines based on income, as the famous article says "Home of the $103,000 Speeding Ticket."
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...
Not appropriate for this specific issue, but for "traffic ticket" it's worth remembering.
Including large multinational companies.
I do realize different countries have different names for various political alignments but I've never heard respecting law and order to be particular to liberals.
The bigger thing I worry about isn't the felled trees, but rather the power consumption of the data center. And for that, I think it's generally good that google is placing a datacenter in a cold climate country.
The majority of endangered animals in Finland are water dwelling. The ones that aren't are predators who wander regardless. They are endangered because of their interactions with farmers and livestock.
1 sq mile of forest lost in a nation that has over 80,000 square miles of forest is insignificant.
Someone caring for environnement might think: the finlandforestgate focus public attention while there’s way more important and actionable environmental issues to solve.
This is the most effective altruist anti AI headline you could get out of this story.
250k trees seems like a lot from you looking out your window. From the perspective of trees we cut down every year (that we account for) it is close to a rounding error. This is a place where they take forest management seriously - and thats the only reason any one even noticed or had to get a permit.
It's wildly decoupled in such a way that only full blown moral panic farming could materialize.
At some point, you need cognitive dissonance to function and we see that pretty plainly on HN since the money in the space became very good.
Until it is not; some companies are actually putting environnemental & employees health issues with sincerity in their contracts. With shared responsibilities.
We all know It's okay to subcontract evil, like having poor paid workers in Asian countries. The big company is never at fault in such cases /s
This has been a major story in Finland. The head of Google's Finnish operations was hiding from the biggest newspaper in Finland (Helsingin Sanomat) for days. This is also not on a "Finnish contractor", since the fuck up was on Tuike Finland, which is Google's data center subsidiary in Finland.
Here's the list of articles that Helsingin Sanomat has written about Google's data center shenanigans:
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012281667.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012293262.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012304991.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012320374.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012324438.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012324753.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012325168.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012326957.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012327899.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012331009.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012331370.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012333022.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012332605.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012336348.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012341842.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012343047.html
https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000012342968.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012337298.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012349563.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012343936.html
https://www.hs.fi/alueet/art-2000012352803.html
https://www.hs.fi/paakirjoitukset/art-2000012351360.html
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000012360395.html
https://www.hs.fi/alueet/art-2000012358967.html
They even asked the authorities if they could skip doing the assessment, were not exempted, and they still continued to log.
Its ridiculous and insane if you think about it for five seconds.
They bring substantial tax revenue to their towns, while having basically zero environmental impact. After the „water usage“ thing became stale (since they barely use any) apparently they’re going for „chopped trees“, nevermind that land use is very modest and rounds to zero when considering a country’s forrest inventory.
And no, they don’t even drive up electricity bills in any meaningful way.
>MAGA supporters (46% favor) and Republican men (45%) are the groups most likely to favor data centers, while White women with a college degree (84% oppose) and liberal voters (80%) are the most opposed.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-cool-your-ser...
Would Fox News have reason to overestimate rightist opposition here?
I don't 100% understand it, but it seems to be driven partially by AI hate, and partially by bad experiences and stories making the rounds, like backup generator exhaust and noise making people nearby angry.
They are interesting the first time if you’re in any way curious about technology.
After that they become a bit mundane. Noisy if you’re in the a server room. Toasty if you’re in a hot row.
Hard to imagine anyone else thinking of them as anything other than boring or a bit mysterious. Or even think of them at all.
I imagine anyone who has ever racked a server is scratching their head at the news these days.
Jussi Kangasharju, head of computer science at the University of Helsinki, said that while datacentres brought a limited number of jobs, potentially boosting the local economy, the benefits on a national level were minimal. “Really, for Finland, there are no benefits,” he said. “They are international companies serving international customers. Very little corporate taxes go to Finland. Datacentres ultimately have very little benefit for others except the datacentre operator.”
I guess that's why people keep giving them money to build them
Finland has trees in billions. Still google should follow the laws and hand in the right permits.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/...
Us data center stans need to accept the public's worries and make a more collaborative argument.
This isn’t about trees. This is about not following the environmental regulation.
To put in contrast this is something for which a private citizen could get into a lot of hot water.
So it’s about can a large corporation act as they like or do they need to follow the laws just like everyone else.
If they had followed the law, the trees would not be an issue.
So, no thank you, these are not the data centres we need.
Unfortunately the distance between stupid, self-defeating Anglo-American activism and European legislation is shorter than the distance between that activism and American legislation.
Generally, Europeans would benefit from being as critical of progressive Anglo-American activists, academics, and media as we are of American corporate interests.
2. Google starts construction, fails to file paperwork at some level.
3. 1,000's of trees decompose naturally somewhere.
4. Local community upset that Google is building what Government welcomed while allowing tree decomposition to reign unchecked. The horror, the horror.
5. Sea levels rise, 86.5% of humanity is wiped out, and a great famine ensues.
6. Meanwhile, in the State of California, taxpayer funding is squandered on supertrains to nowhere that noone wants, instead of clearing fuel from forests, while the electric company shuts off the electricity, to prevent forest fires.
As much as I dislike big evil corporations, I'm gonna give google a pass on forgetting to hand in their homework this time.
Compared to the State of California, they seem to be doing a good job.
disclaimer: this summary contains at least one forward looking statement :|
Finland has something like 20 billion trees and plant tens of millions a year for forestry. The bloody country is nothing but trees. 250k isn't nothing but it's hardly the end of the world.
But if the very first thing you do on the construction site is disregarding the local laws and regulations, when they were explicitly told about environment assessment requirement, it's not exactly favorable first impression, is it?
You can buy a similar sized forest for €50-150K.
https://www.metsatilat.fi/en/osta?property_type=forest&area_...
Or maybe this is a bad measure?
You also forgot that Google owned the trees that they cut down, so they would be compensating themselves.
The debate is about the order in which a contractor pulled permits. It’s silly how much people are obsessing over some trees being cut down. This happens with all development.
What the news is about is "environmental impact study".
For Google, a fine of ~EUR 5 billion is a rounding error in their cost of doing business.
That's a perfectly normal and environmentally conscious thing to do before laying down concrete foundations. Topsoil is recycled and sold to farms. To leave it in place would pointlessly waste an ecological resource.
Not really? That’d be ~1% of global revenue and ~2% of opex? Sure they could pay it, but it’s not a negligible amount.
Also sucks to think that mature trees take a really long time to grow. For example, Oak trees often live 150 - 300 years.
Finland alone has around 22 billion trees. People seriously underestimate how many trees there are on Earth.
The space around the town is entirely cultivated land for tens of kms across, hundreds of times the land that they sold to Google- and that land too once had been forest and was felled by the Finns to make space for agriculture. Is anyone outraged about this?
Also the entity selling the land is ofc not the same as the entity enforcing the law. I assume that everyone was kind of expecting that they would follow the laws.
No, “guilty” means a judge found you guilty. Illegal means you did something that’s not legal. People doing illegal things without getting caught or sentenced happens all the time. Speeding in your car is illegal, whether or not a judge finds you guilty.
Anyway if you read the original guardian piece it does seem this was deemed illegal. The related government department halted their work saying it was not permitted. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/...
> Earlier this month, Google was ordered by the Finnish Licensing and Supervision Authority (LVV) to temporarily stop work on Muhos and another site about 100km south-east in the village of Otanmäki after it failed to complete the necessary environmental impact assessments before clearcutting the land
Objectivity and truth post-modernism is no less out of favor with press as it is with politicians