> I have no idea if data centers are more likely than other kinds of construction projects to pollute groundwater and destroy neighboring homes’ wells
This article is trash. It is nice to see that Millennials have their very own David Brooks.
egberts1 · 5h ago
Did Meta pay Matthew Yglesias to write this article?
westurner · 5h ago
Aquifers are running dry.
Some crops require a lot of water for very little nutrient returns.
Agriculture and Drilling and Mining and Datacenters use a lot of water.
But datacenters don't need to use so much water.
A recent Microsoft datacenter shows that datacenters can fill up with water initially and then not waste the steamed, sterilized, demineralized water into the atmosphere as waste to manage waste heat: "Next-generation datacenters consume zero water for cooling" (2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376406
> this design will avoid the need for more than 125 million liters of water per year per datacenter
How else can datacenters reduce their excessive and inefficient new resource consumption requirements?
> I have no idea if data centers are more likely than other kinds of construction projects to pollute groundwater and destroy neighboring homes’ wells
This article is trash. It is nice to see that Millennials have their very own David Brooks.
Some crops require a lot of water for very little nutrient returns.
Agriculture and Drilling and Mining and Datacenters use a lot of water.
But datacenters don't need to use so much water.
A recent Microsoft datacenter shows that datacenters can fill up with water initially and then not waste the steamed, sterilized, demineralized water into the atmosphere as waste to manage waste heat: "Next-generation datacenters consume zero water for cooling" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376406
> this design will avoid the need for more than 125 million liters of water per year per datacenter
How else can datacenters reduce their excessive and inefficient new resource consumption requirements?