4 ms·
It was already near zero compared to various other uses. It's always depressing to me to see a lot of effort put in to "solve a problem" (with subsequent fanfar
by randallsquared 4mo ago
It was already near zero compared to various other uses. It's always depressing to me to see a lot of effort put in to "solve a problem" (with subsequent fanfare) which is only a PR or image problem in the first place.
- krupan 4mo ago"compared to various other uses" You realize how that vague and open ended clause completely undermines any point you are trying to make, right?
- randallsquared 4mo agoI assumed people here mostly already knew that water usage for data centers was trivial compared to lots of uses like alfalfa, non-data-center power generation, etc. My point used that as a foundation, so I agree that if you didn't already know that, it's undermined. It's a quick thing to dig into though, via search or LLM. You could start with Andy Masley: xcancel.com/andymasley / x.com/andymasley
- pjdesno 4mo agoMost people don't plant an alfalfa field in the desert and then try to use the local municipal water supply for irrigation. Some of the folks looking to build datacenters to cash in on the AI craze aren't as bright as that.
- randallsquared 4mo agoWater is pretty fungible, so while it might not be that alfalfa fields in the Arizona and southern California desert are irrigated from a residential pipe, it's the same water either way. Whether the water arrives at the field/datacenter via municipal pipe or irrigation canal doesn't seem relevant, except that a municipal pipe probably could supply most datacenters' needs, while desert alfalfa has a whole different scale of usage. But if your point is that no one would farm alfalfa in the desert and use water that would otherwise be available for residential use, you are quite wrong.