• turdburglar@piefed.social
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    1 month ago

    grok is using delicious clean drinking water from the memphis sands aquifer for cooling. elon promised to build a water treatment plant in order to stop using drinking water but, and you’ll never believe this, he didn’t.

    fuck elon.

    please do not use grok.

    • Waterpumpee@lemmus.org
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      30 days ago

      he did the same in germany. When questioned about the water usage of his tesla factory he gaslighted every1 by saying look here’s water everywhere. Turns out, you can only extract so much water from the ecosystem and the inhabitants now have their water rationed. He doesnt give a flying fuck about other people.

  • ExtremeDullard@piefed.social
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    1 month ago

    There’s nothing hard to explain for historians of the future: it was the second gilded age that saw the buildup of the techno-fascist infrastructure by greedy billionaires - sorry, trillionaires - in cahoots with the government. Now get back in line to get counted citizen…

  • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I think it’s pretty easy. We let the rich rule our world, and the rich demanded this, and so a lot of people just let it happen through bribes.

    • Fmstrat@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      It’s even easier to explain when it becomes public how much of this infrastructure use is consumerism vs most-probably government analysis.

  • DupaCycki@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    The worst part is all that drinking water is being wasted semi-permanently. Most of it then goes to the sea and becomes saltwater. Even if the US heavily invested into desalination plants right now - it’d take decades to potentially retrieve most of that.

    All that for… another economic crisis?

  • jdr@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    Per day? Per year? Per second?

    Sounds like a lot of water, but you can’t just give an amount of water when you’re talking about the rate of something.

  • Switorik@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    Meanwhile we have commercials on the radio “debunking” the myth that data centers waste a ton of water. We’re brainwashing the people, which is becoming easier as our braincells waste away using LLMs.

  • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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    30 days ago

    One report estimated that U.S. data centers consume 449 million gallons of water per day and 163.7 billion gallons annually (as of 2021).

    That estimate was from 2021.

    Now it’s at least around 600 million gallons of water per day.

    Corporate capture of our government has destroyed our country, and will soon destroy our entire way of life. If we stop all harmful emissions today, the planet will still warm for another 20-30 years before it starts going back down. 30 more years of hotter summers, shortened winters, extended hurricane seasons, extended and worse droughts/wildfires…

    The people that approved these data centers should be charged with crimes against humanity.

  • Malyca@lemmy.zip
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    30 days ago

    We need to make evaporation cooling illegal. They can make a closed loop system like Nvidia uses but they won’t, because it’s more expensive. We need the law to force them to.

    • nanometer1625@thelemmy.club
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      30 days ago

      What do you mean by “evaporation cooling”? A fraction of the water evaporates to provide cooling, a fraction is discharged as purge to prevent solute accumulation, and the rest is recycled? I thought the main reason that datacenters consume as much water as they do is when they don’t recycle the water, and just use it once and then discharge it (no evaporation at all).

      • Malyca@lemmy.zip
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        29 days ago

        Maybe I’m misinformed but I am close to someone that designs them. He said evaporation cooling is cheaper, closed loop systems are more expensive.

  • DERRALEXANO@sh.itjust.works
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    30 days ago

    Related Digital’s development of a $16 billion data center in Saline Township, Michigan is moving forward after they sued the local government in response to the locals voting AGAINST the construction. They’re just going to ignore the people’s vote 🫩

    • cannedtuna@lemmy.worldOP
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      30 days ago

      Same thing is happening in TN right now where a company is trying to build a small data center next to a zoo. The city held public hearings about it, but basically told people it was already a done deal. The company threatened to sue to city if it didn’t pass.

      These things are a blight on our society. It’s a race to the bottom with profits coming before everything else.

  • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.social
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    30 days ago

    The drought statistic is true but the water consumption one is batshit insane lmao. It all comes form a press firm called Mordor Intelligence which hasn’t meaningfully backed up that claim.

    AI datacenters are likely to not even breach 100 billion gallons BY 2028. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/08/datacenter-ai-drought-water)

    Obviously that’s still a lot of water, but 264 billion gallons right now is an absurd claim.

  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    30 days ago

    No mystery. The entire point of capitalism is to please the disgustingly privileged at the expense of everybody else. Literally everything is like this. “AI” is just the latest version. See also cars.

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    30 days ago

    The likely irony that these data centres will be used in the pipeline of creating a commercial for bottled water.