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The New Data Center Capital of America
crimeandpunishment writes "Move over Silicon Valley, here comes... Buffalo. Where the weather might actually be a big advantage. The recent opening of Yahoo's state-of-the-art data center, which uses the region's cooler climate and a high-tech 'chicken coop' design to dramatically lower energy costs is getting a lot of attention in the industry."
not being hosted in the state-of-the-art facility, has its server on fire
Cheap hydro power, no summers ( well actually that is not true we had summer last year, it happened on a Thursday). You can also use the excess heat to warm up the parking garage of the employees because the cars will blow their frost plugs even if they are plugged into block heaters and the batteries will freeze if they don't have an electric blanket around them. -60c (-100c with wind chill) is horrible, most people run their cars 24/7 when it gets really cold.
I agree with your concerns. Many Silicon Valley startups have taken to using expensive Monster Brand DVI cables to link the computers in Buffalo with the monitors in the Valley.
That said, many techies claim you can just use ordinary lamp cord for the DVI signal, true techies know that Monster Cable uses sophisticated techniques to cut out jitter and chromatic abnormalities often introduced in transit over the Sierra Nevada mountain range. I personally would not hire an admin who did not use monster cabling.
Some have taken to frame-grabbing. They capture the screen in Buffalo several times second, compress the image using sophisticated algorithms such as GIF89 or TIFF, and the send them using ordinary phone lines as pulses of one or zero. It is very expensive, and only the most well funded start-ups use this technique.
Skilled help may be needed by these new data centers. So all they have to do is talk high quality employees into the joys of living in Buffalo. If the cold doesn't kill you and boredom doesn't finish you off the state income taxes may have you wander about hoping that you will freeze to death.