Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply • Hacker News Board

Re: Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply

#61

Post by littlestymaar » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #37

littlestymaar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even you use HN. A website that runs on an infra that could sit in a cupboard under the stairs serving hundreds of thousands of users with very small loading time. > My friends and family aren't going to be convinced to use a Jitsi instance running in my house > (where I pay $0.35/kWh). Using an old phone or laptop as server means you'll end up with a single digit annual electricity bill for that.

Does dang run HN on a single server? Why does HN use Algolia for search and Firebase for its API? "Using an old phone or laptop as server means you'll end up with a single digit annual electricity bill for that." The largest possible single digit annual electricity bill would be $9. That's almost enough to run a 3W device 24x7 for a year. Do you know any old phone or laptop that can serve as a reliable Jitsi server y…

> Does dang run HN on a single server?

I don't think Dang is responsible of that part, but I may be wrong.

HN used to run on a single server (source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041), and I don't see why that would have changed given that the hardware keeps getting better.

> Why does HN use Algolia for search

Algolia is a YC company, it's pretty much free marketing for their asset.

> That's almost enough to run a 3W device 24x7 for a year. Do you know any old phone or laptop that can serve as a reliable Jitsi server yet draws an average of 3W or less?

You don't need to run it for 24 hours a day, nor do you need it to be the only process running on your machine.

Jitsi is a bit heavy for a phone, but easily fits on an old M1 macbook/mac mini, whose idle power consumption is well below 10W (idle power consumption is what matters, since your machine isn't going to be handling calls all the time). If you shut it down at night, you're almost good. And for any additional service you serve from the machine, you reduce the cost per service further.

Modern computers are fast, and fascinatingly energy efficient.

Re: Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply

#62

Post by vlian2088 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 9:05 PM UTC

Catloafdev wrote: post #26

Is it really that expensive to not do stuff like this? I guess 'turning the entirety of the American public against data centers' is not something they factor into the cost analysis.

'turning the entirety of the American public against data centers' is a blatant public opinion campaign ran by people and entities who didn't give a damn about data centers up until 3 years ago.

Re: Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply

#63

Post by quickthrowman » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 9:08 PM UTC

nomel wrote: post #58

jazzyjackson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a “closed loop system” but you need to shed heat somewhere and that is either by air cooling drawing tons of electricity, or evaporation that draws tons of water.

> air cooling drawing tons of electricity Reference? What's the efficiency of the systems like used here?

Air cooled chillers are generally used in a closed loop system. A coefficient of performance (COP) of 4 is reasonable to expect, which means 1 watt of electricity to remove 4 watts of heat.

Re: Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply

#64

Post by littlestymaar » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

seltzered_ wrote: post #46

lioeters wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always imagined the HN server running on a single machine in some basement, running a magically efficient Lisp program that easily handles millions of requests per second.

HN supposedly currently runs via M5 Hosting according to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45750668 (comment from late 2025), though I think it ran on a single server over a decade ago.

Back in 2018 it was already running on M5 Hosting, but still on a single server: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041

(And honestly I don't see why it would have changed given that the hardware has been getting faster in the meantime).

Re: Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply

#65

Post by anon7000 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

beloch wrote: post #56

andrew_lettuce wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This closed loop system needs to be filled and flushed, which is the operation discussed in the article. The bacterium was described as a possible airborne hazard if used for irrigation, it's not a regulated substance though so dump and dilute might be perfectly safe.

Might be. Might not be. To put it another way, would you want this waste water diluted and dumped in a lake you swim in or a river you fish in without proper study and regulation?

Not sure why you got downloaded, but you’re right. Polluting public (and even private!) spaces is philosophically speaking a property rights violation, which is a core libertarian/free market value.

So why the fuck are we in the habit of giving companies the benefit of the doubt on this? Companies always follow the financial incentive. There is rarely a financial incentive to not pollute and always a financial incentive to spend less money on costly processes that slow things down, so they’ll pollute every chance they can. It’s just a side effect of how capitalism works.

So yes, if you actually care about your property (including public property in your town!), you absolutely need to push for more oversight. Companies have absolutely zero incentive to do it themselves, as evidenced in this scenario where the town “caught them in the act” so to speak.

And I’m not saying this company was doing anything deliberately malicious, but it takes the town being on top of their wastewater management processes and doing a solid root cause investigation to even find out this was happening. That doesn’t happen unless people care. A company has no incentive to do it themselves.

Re: Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply

#66

Post by bentt » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

Move fast and break things is back.

Re: Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply

#67

Post by anon7000 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

vlian2088 wrote: post #62

Catloafdev wrote: post #26

Is it really that expensive to not do stuff like this? I guess 'turning the entirety of the American public against data centers' is not something they factor into the cost analysis.

'turning the entirety of the American public against data centers' is a blatant public opinion campaign ran by people and entities who didn't give a damn about data centers up until 3 years ago.

Well, it turns out people started noticing local community impacts when new data center construction absolutely exploded 2-3 years ago.

Re: Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply

#68

Post by vlian2088 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 9:26 PM UTC

anon7000 wrote: post #67

vlian2088 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'turning the entirety of the American public against data centers' is a blatant public opinion campaign ran by people and entities who didn't give a damn about data centers up until 3 years ago.

Well, it turns out people started noticing local community impacts when new data center construction absolutely exploded 2-3 years ago.

you have numbers? I asked a chatbot and the numbers I got were underwhelming.

Re: Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply

#69

Post by jubilanti » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 9:30 PM UTC

anon7000 wrote: post #67

vlian2088 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'turning the entirety of the American public against data centers' is a blatant public opinion campaign ran by people and entities who didn't give a damn about data centers up until 3 years ago.

Well, it turns out people started noticing local community impacts when new data center construction absolutely exploded 2-3 years ago.

Not just exploded, but went full on "move fast and break things". Nobody complained about the data centers that have no more impact on the local environment that a warehouse. But in all this rush, they're cutting corners everywhere and putting so much strain on the electric grid. Many also have massive onsite natural gas turbines, some big enough to power a small city, built by the contractor with the lowest bidder, half a mile from people's houses. You can hear and FEEL them from inside a house.

Re: Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply

#70

Post by jubilanti » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 9:30 PM UTC

vlian2088 wrote: post #68

anon7000 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it turns out people started noticing local community impacts when new data center construction absolutely exploded 2-3 years ago.

you have numbers? I asked a chatbot and the numbers I got were underwhelming.

I feel sorry for you. How about you do your own research?