5 ms·

Same region all the new data centers are being built. Unfortunately, humans can't eat data like they can wheat.

by evanjrowley 5mo ago

Jgrubb 5mo ago
"All the new data centers" are being built everywhere.
- dgellow 5mo ago
  They are planned everywhere, if they are actually being built is a different story
- jeffbee 5mo ago
  Largely not. Data center people aren't idiots. They site their projects in places with water and power, or if not power then at least gas. I don't think you'd be able to point out a project that actually exists and is competing for a scarce local water resource.
  - bluGill 5mo ago
    Data centers don't use much water on the scale of things. The numbers look big in isolation, but most people have no idea how much water a country really needs and isolating the numbers makes data centers look bad.
    - jeffbee 5mo ago
      Absolutely. It's tiring to squeeze all the facts into every post, though.
    - wholinator2 5mo ago
      But aren't they trying to build data centers outside of smaller localities, where they do exist somewhat in isolation? Water cannot just be transported thousands of miles, water itself exists in isolated pockets. Straining the water resources of towns is a problem! You can't just say "the US is big so if you look at the maximum possible widest numbers, it looks small". You have to look at the actual human impact. I think data centers look bad because of the human impacts that I've seen, not some highly abstracted spreadsheet.
      - jeffbee 5mo ago
        Water is a locally isolated resource, but again these guys aren't dumb. Nearly all of the water impacts from data centers that I have seen in the news are imaginary. Most actual large-scale facilities have been built in places where water is so abundant it constitutes a natural hazard. In other places, the data centers exist alongside other much larger water consumers, which in my mind tends to absolve them. For example, one of the most objectionable (IMHO) data center sites is Phoenix, but all of the data centers in the area use something like 1% of the water evaporated by the local nuclear power station, not to mention golf courses and agriculture, so it seems weird to complain about the data centers.
      - phil21 5mo ago
        > Straining the water resources of towns is a problem! Citation needed. I'm sure you can find a few outlier cases, but in general speaking terms datacenters - AI or not - are not even a rounding error on any local water source so far. It's just not a thing. It's made up for social media rage bait. > I think data centers look bad because of the human impacts that I've seen What human impact is this, precisely speaking? Outside of the (again) few outlier cases, datacenters are basically warehouses you didn't even know existed until you were told to be mad about them. Plenty of friends who know I'm in the space have recently asked me about this, not having a clue they've been living within a mile of a facility for the past decade. Facilities with co-located power plants are not datacenters. Those are power plants with a datacenter attached to the side of it. The power plant would be the concern. Even then, these are exceedingly rare and a symptom of a generation or two of American's deciding not to invest in energy infrastructure. Power usage is a concern due to the lack of investment in generation or transmission infrastructure in this country the entire time all HN members have been alive - along with the outsourcing of effectively all US industrial capacity to third world nations. Anything else is effectively amped up rage bait without a grounding in reality.
RiverCrochet 5mo ago
DNA is technically data, right?
9rx 5mo ago
You can eat soybeans, though, which are seeing record production thanks to it supplanting what is affectionately known in agriculture circles as poverty grass.
- threetonesun 5mo ago
  There's some cosmic irony that this is happening when the people who came up with the derogatory term "soy boys" are in office, but I'm too depressed to laugh about it.
  - aziaziazi 5mo ago
    AFAIK the first occurence of that expression is from Katy Perry in 2018: https://youtu.be/tWbLkXhGEmo?si=EGtXdwHneXGQRWbP&t=153 https://youtu.be/tWbLkXhGEmo?si=EGtXdwHneXGQRWbP&t=153
- fullstop 5mo ago
  Perhaps someone in the industry can chime in, but I had read that the soybeans that the US primarily grows and previously sold to China were used for pig feed. In my mind I pictured it like "cow corn" -- humans technically can eat it, but it's chewy and not very good. Are there different grades of soybean?
  - bluGill 5mo ago
    There are different grades with different properties. However very few are consumed by humans. When sold for humans it is called edamame. The most common use is crush the beans, and collect the oil feeding the rest to pigs. If you read the ingredients at the grocery store, soy bean oil comes up a lot. Soy bean oil is also often used in diesel engines after processing.
    - 9rx 5mo ago
      > When sold for humans it is called edamame. Edamame is limited to special varieties that are harvested before ripening, which isn't the soybeans those supplanting wheat will be growing. You're probably thinking of tofu, natto, or something in that vein.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
jeffbee 5mo ago
Wheat, being basically worthless, is predominantly not irrigated. A data center that draws water from a river or aquifer is not a rival to wheat, which relies on rain. When farmers have invested in irrigation they largely grow something else that's worth actual money.
Pay08 5mo ago
This doesn't have anything to do with data centres.
phendrenad2 5mo ago
Shark attacks increase relative to ice cream sales. Unless you have some theory that correlates the two, that you're willing to share, we shouldn't entertain this.
- usefulcat 5mo ago
  > Unless you have some theory that correlates the two I guess you meant something more like "shows a causal relationship"? Because they're already correlated, which I thought was the point..
  - phendrenad2 5mo ago
    Well, I don't quite get the sophistry there, so I'll just agree that you're probably right in a way that has no bearing on the point.

Same region all the new data centers are being built. Unfortunately, humans can't eat data like they can wheat.

Jgrubb 5mo ago

"All the new data centers" are being built everywhere.

dgellow 5mo ago
They are planned everywhere, if they are actually being built is a different story
jeffbee 5mo ago
Largely not. Data center people aren't idiots. They site their projects in places with water and power, or if not power then at least gas. I don't think you'd be able to point out a project that actually exists and is competing for a scarce local water resource.
- bluGill 5mo ago
  Data centers don't use much water on the scale of things. The numbers look big in isolation, but most people have no idea how much water a country really needs and isolating the numbers makes data centers look bad.
  - jeffbee 5mo ago
    Absolutely. It's tiring to squeeze all the facts into every post, though.
  - wholinator2 5mo ago
    But aren't they trying to build data centers outside of smaller localities, where they do exist somewhat in isolation? Water cannot just be transported thousands of miles, water itself exists in isolated pockets. Straining the water resources of towns is a problem! You can't just say "the US is big so if you look at the maximum possible widest numbers, it looks small". You have to look at the actual human impact. I think data centers look bad because of the human impacts that I've seen, not some highly abstracted spreadsheet.
    - jeffbee 5mo ago
      Water is a locally isolated resource, but again these guys aren't dumb. Nearly all of the water impacts from data centers that I have seen in the news are imaginary. Most actual large-scale facilities have been built in places where water is so abundant it constitutes a natural hazard. In other places, the data centers exist alongside other much larger water consumers, which in my mind tends to absolve them. For example, one of the most objectionable (IMHO) data center sites is Phoenix, but all of the data centers in the area use something like 1% of the water evaporated by the local nuclear power station, not to mention golf courses and agriculture, so it seems weird to complain about the data centers.
    - phil21 5mo ago
      > Straining the water resources of towns is a problem! Citation needed. I'm sure you can find a few outlier cases, but in general speaking terms datacenters - AI or not - are not even a rounding error on any local water source so far. It's just not a thing. It's made up for social media rage bait. > I think data centers look bad because of the human impacts that I've seen What human impact is this, precisely speaking? Outside of the (again) few outlier cases, datacenters are basically warehouses you didn't even know existed until you were told to be mad about them. Plenty of friends who know I'm in the space have recently asked me about this, not having a clue they've been living within a mile of a facility for the past decade. Facilities with co-located power plants are not datacenters. Those are power plants with a datacenter attached to the side of it. The power plant would be the concern. Even then, these are exceedingly rare and a symptom of a generation or two of American's deciding not to invest in energy infrastructure. Power usage is a concern due to the lack of investment in generation or transmission infrastructure in this country the entire time all HN members have been alive - along with the outsourcing of effectively all US industrial capacity to third world nations. Anything else is effectively amped up rage bait without a grounding in reality.

RiverCrochet 5mo ago

DNA is technically data, right?

9rx 5mo ago

You can eat soybeans, though, which are seeing record production thanks to it supplanting what is affectionately known in agriculture circles as poverty grass.

threetonesun 5mo ago
There's some cosmic irony that this is happening when the people who came up with the derogatory term "soy boys" are in office, but I'm too depressed to laugh about it.
- aziaziazi 5mo ago
  AFAIK the first occurence of that expression is from Katy Perry in 2018: https://youtu.be/tWbLkXhGEmo?si=EGtXdwHneXGQRWbP&t=153 https://youtu.be/tWbLkXhGEmo?si=EGtXdwHneXGQRWbP&t=153
fullstop 5mo ago
Perhaps someone in the industry can chime in, but I had read that the soybeans that the US primarily grows and previously sold to China were used for pig feed. In my mind I pictured it like "cow corn" -- humans technically can eat it, but it's chewy and not very good. Are there different grades of soybean?
- bluGill 5mo ago
  There are different grades with different properties. However very few are consumed by humans. When sold for humans it is called edamame. The most common use is crush the beans, and collect the oil feeding the rest to pigs. If you read the ingredients at the grocery store, soy bean oil comes up a lot. Soy bean oil is also often used in diesel engines after processing.
  - 9rx 5mo ago
    > When sold for humans it is called edamame. Edamame is limited to special varieties that are harvested before ripening, which isn't the soybeans those supplanting wheat will be growing. You're probably thinking of tofu, natto, or something in that vein.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

jeffbee 5mo ago

Wheat, being basically worthless, is predominantly not irrigated. A data center that draws water from a river or aquifer is not a rival to wheat, which relies on rain. When farmers have invested in irrigation they largely grow something else that's worth actual money.

Pay08 5mo ago

This doesn't have anything to do with data centres.

phendrenad2 5mo ago

Shark attacks increase relative to ice cream sales. Unless you have some theory that correlates the two, that you're willing to share, we shouldn't entertain this.

usefulcat 5mo ago
> Unless you have some theory that correlates the two I guess you meant something more like "shows a causal relationship"? Because they're already correlated, which I thought was the point..
- phendrenad2 5mo ago
  Well, I don't quite get the sophistry there, so I'll just agree that you're probably right in a way that has no bearing on the point.