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Meta data center water discharges suspended for contaminating water supply

tomshardware.com

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

#81
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data center water use is a fairly separate topic from what this article covers. Related of course but the conversation on USE centers around actual volume use, not contaminants.

Discharge, is part of "water usage". Arguing otherwise is embarrassing.

Not sure if you're being purposely intellectually dishonest or just unaware, but the common thread on the water usage argument is literally about quantity of usage and rising prices for local areas. So as I said, somewhat related, but still two completely separate discussion topics.

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

#82
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I could vibe code 1:6

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

#83

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.

I kinda think the reaction and reporting on this is already being colored by the objection to the datacenters, as opposed to the other way around. And it's not obvious exactly where the problem came from in the first place: it doesn't look like this is some super-obvious, common and easy to prevent issue that they just decided to cheap out on, nor is it obviously a datacenter-specific issue.

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

#84
post #40

Since the article doesn't make this clear, let me explain. The cheapest (and worst) option is to take in water, use it for cooling and then dixcharge it. Why is this bad? Because DCs don't want to corrode their pipes with untreated water so they add coolant and additives to it, which pollute the water. This is bad. But nobody really does this because you don't want to keep adding additives to water you're constantly…

> But again, you don't want to discharge chlorine into bodies of water.

Maybe but there are citywide chlorine flushes of their water supply. some worse than others

Erin Brockovich tracks this

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

#85

[fnord]

How do I, as an ordinary person, benefit from Meta's data centers? I don't have any presence on Meta's platforms & the only time I even notice their existence is when someone sends me a text message via signal for some viral link on one of the social networks. I think you're overestimating the relevance of these data centers for regular people. They can get by just fine w/ local¹ & a lot less environmentally destruct…

https://github.com/facebookresearch

There's a lot of excellent projects here.

Also, people in your community probably own businesses that advertise or sell directly on a Meta platform. That's money affecting many things you interact with online and offline.

Also also, you describe yourself as an ordinary person but say you have no presence on any of the largest social media or messaging platforms. I think that's fairly far out of the ordinary.

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

#87
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in London buy Instagram ads to sell products to people in Birmingham and that money comes into the US. There are plenty of ways for you to catch some of it.

This is downvoted but factually correct way of looking at it. The benefits of Meta are convoluted and hard to state in ways that are quantified to simple numbers. (Well you can - Meta contributes ~0.25% of USA's GDP which is enormous) For example, what is the benefit of google existing? Sure you can do google searches. You can use maps. But can you quantify it? The benefits of living in a society that respects plural…

I believe you are thinking of “collectivism”.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/collectivism

“Pluralism” refers to a society supporting diverse systems of law, religion, or culture. Like the United States.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pluralism

I don’t know what “popularist” is but perhaps “populism”; however, the complement of collectivism is individualism.

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

#88
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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? Are you going to apply the same standard to every house with a swimming pool, every municipal storm drain that collects rain water having passed over the ground in nature where there are untold strains of bacteria and every other system handling thousands of gal…

> Are you going to apply the same standard to every house with a swimming pool, every municipal storm drain that collects rain water having passed over the ground in nature where there are untold strains of bacteria and every other system handling thousands of gallons of unfiltered water?

All of those are regulated and studied.

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

#89
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Are you going to apply the same standard to every house with a swimming pool, every municipal storm drain that collects rain water having passed over the ground in nature where there are untold strains of bacteria and every other system handling thousands of gal…

> Are you going to apply the same standard to every house with a swimming pool, every municipal storm drain that collects rain water having passed over the ground in nature where there are untold strains of bacteria and every other system handling thousands of gallons of unfiltered water? All of those are regulated and studied.

If by "regulated and studied" you mean there are some laws that people regularly pay no attention to and aren't even aware exist, and some random sampling of a minuscule proportion of storm water for a minuscule subset of possible contaminants, and not even that much in many jurisdictions.

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

#90
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you going to apply the same standard to every house with a swimming pool, every municipal storm drain that collects rain water having passed over the ground in nature where there are untold strains of bacteria and every other system handling thousands of gallons of unfiltered water? All of those are regulated and studied.

If by "regulated and studied" you mean there are some laws that people regularly pay no attention to and aren't even aware exist, and some random sampling of a minuscule proportion of storm water for a minuscule subset of possible contaminants, and not even that much in many jurisdictions.

People dont need to pay attention, because when you buy a pool or pool chemistry, it already follows applicable regulations. The companies doing the work also know them.

> some random sampling of a minuscule proportion of storm water for a minuscule subset of possible contaminants

The whole point of random sampling is to ensure you need as miniscule amount of water as possible. These tests checking likely polutants is also not a bad thing.

Are you claiming these pools are massively poluting water? Or are you just angry that potentially large polutants are not allowed to just do what they want?

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