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Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

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Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#211

Post by [deleted] »

dantillberg wrote: post #173
hunterpayne wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily AI data centers produce nowhere near that amount of heat. Remember the heat is waste and 300 MWh is the total draw. Some of that energy becomes heat. That ratio is somewhere like 100:1 though. Also, the waste water is only like 10F hotter than the intake. We build GW sized PP all the time and they will leak far more heat (as like on the order of 100x) than a 300 MWh AI data center. Thought there were supposed…

> Some of that energy becomes heat. I'm neither for nor against, but on the physics here: basically all of the energy input as electricity is transformed to heat leaving a datacenter. Only a tiny tiny fraction is emitted as radiation (eg floodlights outside or light in fiber optics) or as kinetic energy (air moving away from fans/vents). Computers are machines for turning electric energy into heat energy, plus some s…

[deleted]

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#212

Post by kennywinker »

dyauspitr wrote: post #201
kennywinker wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future is inevitable, says people working tirelessly to make a specific future happen.

It’s better than your suggested future where Asia shoots off into orbit because we give up the race so you can have your dev job for a few more months.

What’s the difference, either fantasy scenario - yours or your straw-man of mine - ends with no jobs and us fighting over the scraps the oligarch class toss us.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#213

Post by kennywinker »

hunterpayne wrote: post #179
no-name-here wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Beef uses trillions of gallons of water per year, while data centers use billions - data center water use is nowhere remotely as much as beef. 2. Despite beef using far more water, is it getting anywhere remotely as much coverage as data center water use? 3. Senators like Sanders proposed stopping data center construction nationwide - have senators proposed similar nationwide bans for beef?

You can go ahead and try to do that. Politically, to say its a DOA bill, is the understatement of the century. Also, water is renewable. This entire discussion is absurd and scientifically illiterate. There is a reason why nobody says, "party of science" anymore.

> Also, water is renewable.

Tell that to the aquafers we’re emptying that won’t refill for generations.

Water is renewable, but not necessarily in the right place or in timely manner.

Using treated potable water to cool servers is just taxpayers subsidizing server cooling.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#214

Post by hparadiz »

SilverElfin wrote: post #205
tptacek wrote: post #65

The Erin Brockovich page itself repeats the canard, on the front page, that these sites endanger ecosystems with their water consumption.

Is it a canard? In Florida a data center drew water in an unauthorized way and the surrounding community had issues with brown water and had to go into water rationing. Even if datacenters are highly efficient, if the water supply is strained, you can pollute people’s supply by drawing wells down too far and things like that.

This happened to me in the middle of the city of Philadelphia when construction of a new apartment building caused a water main collapse. Took them three days to repair. It wasn't anyone's fault. The pipe was simply very old. My water had soil in it and basically I had to run the water until all the soil was flushed. Could have been a lot worse and thankfully I was renting. A lot of these situations are simple construction issues and old pipes. It's not like a data center is pushing gray water into the system.

When AOC is waving a jar of brown water in congress she's being disengenous. Just like the killed Amazon office in NYC it's just gonna kill jobs.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#215

Post by hparadiz »

cootsnuck wrote: post #164
mmmeff wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, we should build it in a third world country instead!

I'd argue we don't need to build a 9 GW data center anywhere. But that's just me.

This new flavor of NIMBY is pretty funny.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#217

Post by jml7c5 »

SilverElfin wrote: post #205
tptacek wrote: post #65

The Erin Brockovich page itself repeats the canard, on the front page, that these sites endanger ecosystems with their water consumption.

Is it a canard? In Florida a data center drew water in an unauthorized way and the surrounding community had issues with brown water and had to go into water rationing. Even if datacenters are highly efficient, if the water supply is strained, you can pollute people’s supply by drawing wells down too far and things like that.

>In Florida a data center drew water in an unauthorized way and the surrounding community had issues with brown water and had to go into water rationing.

Can you cite a source for this? I can't find it anywhere.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#218

Post by mike_hearn »

jmye wrote: post #128
thiagoperes wrote: post #49

It's poetically beautiful that the tool was very very clearly built mostly if not entirely using AI

The most boring comment on the whole internet now - just blindly calling every single thing slop and pretending that has any vague value whatsoever. All noise, no signal.

It obviously has signal if the website is all about attacking AI. It shows hypocrisy and a lack of attention to detail that undermines their credibility.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#219

Post by tstrimple »

eleventen wrote: post #105
WatchDog wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be, I'm not sure. The code is interesting though, it's not minified, it's very readable, and nicely indented with lots of comments. The curated data center list is just some inline JSON. The javascript uses var instead of let or const, I'm not sure if this is just style choice, or there is some code post processing. It doesn't use react, AI seems to almost always opt for react for front end design, unless to…

[flagged]

People who provide nothing but comments like “this is ai!” actually contribute far less than AI responses somehow.

Re: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country

#220

Post by mike_hearn »

SilverElfin wrote: post #205
tptacek wrote: post #65

The Erin Brockovich page itself repeats the canard, on the front page, that these sites endanger ecosystems with their water consumption.

Is it a canard? In Florida a data center drew water in an unauthorized way and the surrounding community had issues with brown water and had to go into water rationing. Even if datacenters are highly efficient, if the water supply is strained, you can pollute people’s supply by drawing wells down too far and things like that.

There are lots of nonsensical stories like this circulating on social media right now. Water draw for datacenters can't turn tap water brown. That's a supply or piping issue.
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