Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#231

Post by triceratops » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 12:39 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #225

triceratops wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much is "enough" exactly? The upper limit seems to be 1g per lb (454g) of body weight. This is for people who lift heavy regularly to build and grow muscle. The lower bound is about 1/3 of that. A 165 lb person needs about 55g of protein daily for maintenance. This is about one cup of black beans and 3 eggs. Huevos rancheros for breakfast will cover most or all of an average person's daily protein needs and tha…

You're not accounting for protein quality and essential amino acids. You can't just add up grams. That's not how this works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_quality#Protein_source...

Lots of sources of complete protein on there besides beef. Don't limit yourself. A combination of quinoa, buckwheat, eggs, soy, pea, milk, whey, beans, and nuts will provide all the amino acids you need. Even beef, despite being a complete protein, is deficient in tryptophan.

I like meat. I'm not a militant vegetarian or vegan or anything like that. I dislike the laundering of people's love of eating meat as "essential for health", when it's anything but (special dietary needs aside). Eating meat is a mostly a choice.

I'll repeat again: varied diets are essential. A single protein source won't cut it. And most people get enough protein going just by raw numbers.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#232

Post by array_key_first » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 12:49 AM UTC

bitmasher9 wrote: post #138

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industry advocacy groups ≠ corruption. They're basically necessary to do business in an advanced society that has rules governing every aspect of life. Those rules (even if good) often have unintended consequences and advocacy groups can help ensure that their industries are considered when rule-making.

Lobbying as practiced by these advocacy groups is basically American flavored corruption. If the system were in place anywhere else we’d call it corruption, but it’s our system so we call it Lobbying.

Yes but that ship has sailed, so now you need anti-corruption corruption to hopefully corrupt the corruption so it's less corrupt.

Like, the only reason "almond advocacy" even exists is because dairy and beef are some of the most lobbied and blessed industries in America. They can practically do whatever they want, whenever they want, so fuck you, pal.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#233

Post by nradov » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 1:14 AM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #231

nradov wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not accounting for protein quality and essential amino acids. You can't just add up grams. That's not how this works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_quality#Protein_source... Lots of sources of complete protein on there besides beef. Don't limit yourself. A combination of quinoa, buckwheat, eggs, soy, pea, milk, whey, beans, and nuts will provide all the amino acids you need. Even beef, despite being a complete protein, is deficient in tryptophan. I like meat. I'm not a militant vegetarian or vegan or anything like that. I di…

I don't know why you felt the need to post that little rant. No one here claimed that people should only eat beef as their sole source of protein. You're arguing against a strawman.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#234

Post by triceratops » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 1:40 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #233

triceratops wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_quality#Protein_source... Lots of sources of complete protein on there besides beef. Don't limit yourself. A combination of quinoa, buckwheat, eggs, soy, pea, milk, whey, beans, and nuts will provide all the amino acids you need. Even beef, despite being a complete protein, is deficient in tryptophan. I like meat. I'm not a militant vegetarian or vegan or anything like that. I di…

I don't know why you felt the need to post that little rant. No one here claimed that people should only eat beef as their sole source of protein. You're arguing against a strawman.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45722288

You've been pretty reasonable. Not everyone is.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#235

Post by 827a » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 2:58 AM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #228

827a wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes: my understanding is that it’s rather common practice to at least make a best-effort estimation of all these secondary impacts. It’s also absolutely true that “agricultural usage dominating data center usage” is a dirty little secret that a lot of people are very, very incentivized to keep secret. Amazon can’t outright say that, because uh whutabuht mah poor farmers.

This also tends to include the rainwater that falls on the ground to grow the grass that cattle eat that would fall on the grass anyway, or that the cow farts aren't really more greenhouse emissions than the grass rotting out over the summer anyway. It's distortive. IMO, water is a renewable resource and what should count is the use of water in scarce environments from scarce sources directly in excess of what gets r…

> assuming their cooling systems are a closed loop

My understanding is that the closed-loop systems are rather new; like, "we started using these things in 2024 literally because everyone's been moaning about our AI water usage" new. I'd assume that many new constructions are starting to leverage them, but its not 100%, and existing DCs would be slow to upgrade.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#236

Post by londons_explore » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 9:39 AM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #26

londons_explore wrote: post #3

Water use is a pretty close proxy for power use which is a pretty close proxy for how much computation is happening. I can totally see why a company wants to keep this info secret. Competitors would really like to know.

Water use is not necessarily linked with energy use. Open up Google's annual environmental report and look at the water consumption for each facility. Unrelated to the size/power of those sites.

It is strongly linked when you adjust for local outdoor temperature and humidity. Pretty much all sites use evaporative chillers whose properties are well known.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#237

Post by julianozen » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 3:30 PM UTC

hwillis wrote: post #155

julianozen wrote: post #147

Dumb question, but is this done with fresh water? If so, why? If not, does it matter how much water is used?

Its freshwater and has to be freshwater because it goes through pipes and/or is evaporated. Corrosion, scaling and fouling are all issues. Even if seawater was easy to use and datacenters were near the shore, it would produce very saline brine which would be difficult to safely get rid of.

Thanks!

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#238

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

Faelon wrote: post #229

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beef is not causally linked to diabetes.

There are proposed diabetic mechanisms which are exacerbated by cholesterol. Plant based food are completely devoid of cholesterol and have dramatically lower incidences of diabetes. So there you have a mechanism, and the demonstrable effect of abstaining from that source of food. What else do you want? https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/56/9/2328/1265... https://www.mdpi.com/2218-273X/13/2/224

A causal link.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#239

Post by mikkupikku » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 4:24 PM UTC

wyre wrote: post #218

mikkupikku wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bro, get out of the city or just look at a map, America is absolutely enormous. There is no shortage of land to let cows graze on. Feedlots for cattle aren't even necessary at all, they're only used to increase profit. What's really asinine is that you have such strong opinions about a subject you know nothing about and demand that other people do research for you.

Cope harder, bro. Show me sources. Cattle is a massive industry and it should not be hard to find sources proving me wrong. Calves live on pasture for the first few months, but are then transferred to backgrounding farms, that are technically still pastures, but are fed a highly supplemented diet and have less room to roam. STFU about me not knowing what I'm talking about. Feedlots are absolutely necessary at the lev…

> Calves live on pasture for the first few months, but are then transferred to backgrounding farms, that are technically still pastures, but are fed a highly supplemented diet and have less room to roam

Glad to see you finally looked it up and saw that I was right. Your attempt to save face is amusing though. From "factory farmed" to "the pastures are a bit small" is funny.

And no, feed lots aren't necessary. They make beef cheaper by making cows bigger, therefore making the industry more profitable, but if you did away with them Americans would still be eating enough beef to make urban vegan weenies seethe.

Re: Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret

#240

Post by mikkupikku » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 4:27 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #222

mikkupikku wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Factory-farmed beef" doesn't even exist. All cows get raised in fields for their first 12-18 months. The ""factory-farming"" is just a feed lot they get taken to for 3-6 months to eat grain before slaughter. If you want to talk about pigs or chickens, that's an entirely different story. Those do get raised full life cycle in factory-like industrial facilities. But those aren't cows.

You've never heard of free-range chickens? I agree pigs are raised in abominable conditions.

Not all pigs and chickens are "factory farmed" but most are. And unlike cows, the term is relatively meaningful and descriptive when applied to the way those are raised. Bro heard about how pigs and chickens get raised in tiny cages never seeing the light of day then assumed that's how it works for cows too, which he now realizes isn't the case because I shamed him into looking it up.