Amazon Announces Multibillion-Dollar Data Center in Missouri

Post by rcpt » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:50 AM UTC

halestock wrote: post #38

tengbretson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 10 years prior to like 2023, any new large scale data center build-out was explicitly for serving more ads. Meanwhile, now that we have a new tech that's literally solving unsolved math problems, we're suddenly doomers. Why?

Because it's pretty evident that all these data centers are primarily intended to eliminate jobs and make more trillionaires and destroy democracy, and the positive stuff (like solving unsolved math problems) doesn't remotely justify that.

Post by rcpt » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:53 AM UTC

tdb7893 wrote: post #18

AmazingEveryDay wrote: post #3

All the compute being built out is very impressive and it's nice to think it could be used to further science, further our understanding, just in some way for the greater good. But I think mostly it will be used to serve ads.

It's already being used for the greatest good of all, creating value for the shareholders!

Post by Mistletoe » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 7:07 AM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #57

doctorwho42 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sheer size of and resource consumption to build and operate them. Most people can't really understand the numbers in question due to their size. It's like that picture of 1 million dollars in $100's stacked up on a pallet, then 1 billion and 1 trillion. But instead of worthless paper, it is consuming huge swaths of the limited fresh water on the planet, creating the largest natural gas power plants in the world,…

100% of the water that is 'used up' in a datacenter, or even in electrical generation, is evaporated into the atmosphere. The same one where the rain comes from. Everywhere East of the Rockies, they don't even have droughts, so that seems like a lot of area where we can use a lot of water with basically no impact because it's all just coming back into the water cycle directly as opposed to ending up in a water treatm…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 7:25 AM UTC

mkhpalm wrote: post #30

altcognito wrote: post #8

Oh! Thank goodness! 138 megawatts, they might be able to support the air conditioning systems with that much power.

I'm relieved to hear it's 138 megawatts instead of 6 to 10 gigawatts we keep hearing about elsewhere. For 6–10 gigawatt data centers I consider what else that amount of power could support. At current desalination efficiencies, 6 gigawatts of continuous power could produce roughly 11–14 million acre-feet of freshwater per year, comparable to the historical annual flow of the Colorado River. So a single 6 GW power sup…

Post by veber-alex » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 8:20 AM UTC

fooster wrote: post #53

halestock wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's pretty evident that all these data centers are primarily intended to eliminate jobs and make more trillionaires and destroy democracy, and the positive stuff (like solving unsolved math problems) doesn't remotely justify that.

The number of doomers and luddites with extremely hyperbolic views on a site for tech entrepreneurs is wild.