For "no fangs" there are an awful lot of people around (or dead) with GOP bite marks these days.
The SAVE act status probably has more to do with some Republican legislators who think it will harm their re-election chances by impacting their own supporters.
What on earth are you talking about? Trump invaded multiple American cities. He created an $85 billion federal goon force. He's kidnapped or killed TWO DIFFERENT heads of state. He's destroyed our trade relationships. He's taken inflation from frustrating to existential. He's bulldozing national parks. He's started a brand spanking new forever war. He's utterly corrupted the Supreme Court. He's multiplied the national deficit and debt. He's cut taxes for only the richest. He let Elon tear our institutions to shreds, costing infinitely more money than he "saved" in the process. Our entire federal science and research apparatus is gone. Effing measles is back and killing people. Screw worm is back. Air traffic is falling apart. Trump and his family have made tens of billions.
It is going to take literal decades, if it is even possible at all, to repair the damage Trump has done in 18 months.
> He let Elon tear our institutions to shreds, costing infinitely more money...
...and lives. Musk is now up there as one of the individuals with the highest kill counts in history - at least 500,000 to 700,000 so far. Analysis suggests that by 2030, this could reach as many as 14 million, including 4.5 million children under age 5. Musk is going to have to come up with his own salute, because he's no longer playing second fiddle to that other guy.
It's to put water usage in perspective. I think the best example is golf courses.
If you think datacenters are a waste of water and you want to do a global campaign to stop building / shutdown golf courses first, then your values don't really make sense.
Golf is pure leisure, and uses 531 gallons compared to 17.4 gallons a year.
Datacenters on the other hand, power the site we're using right now to discuss the "problem". You wouldn't be able to have this conversation without them.
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Why aren't people screaming constantly about golf courses and pressuring to shut them down?
Why the focus on datacenters if the bigger win is staring you right in the face (if you're that concerned about water usage)?
I would get rid of every single golf course in the world if I could. One of the worst uses of land out there. Imagine the horrible, gross volume of herbicides each course uses to ensure that only the "correct" grass is growing over all those acres.
You'd have to look locally at individual datacenter projects then and not be against all of them.
If it's really the case that a local municipality grants a new datacenter to be built that already has a stressed water supply, the people in the area should complain, and if nothing is done then we can be mad at just that ONE datacenter/company. Not the entire industry.
But I just don't see that happening. Noone is going without water because of datacenters. Noone is going without water other than people in California who get there's stolen from farms. That's a real issue, not a hypothetical.
Though you can also be mad at the industry as a whole, an industry where leaders scream as loud as possible how they will make your life worse. I think it’s perfectly justified. And DCs are a perfect fit for that, you have a huge ominous monolith to point at that nobody wants to have around them
> Though you can also be mad at the industry as a whole, an industry where leaders scream as loud as possible how they will make your life worse. I think it’s perfectly justified. And DCs are a perfect fit for that, you have a huge ominous monolith to point at that nobody wants to have around them
This is exactly my problem. I'm not saying you're wrong about this in any way. But your (and many others) core problem with datacenters is not actually the water use. The water argument is just a strawman to increase environmental legitimacy, and thats a really bad and harmful practice (I do realize that this might seem minor given incompetent political leadership that spews uninformed drivel all day, but coherency and correctness still matter!)
The water argument is simply never helpful. If water is scarce locally, then let local administration reject datacenter projects for exactly that reason. If they fail to do that, fix/campaign against the local administration (because that's where the problem is at). But blanket arguing against datacenter buildout because of water usage is just bad-faith campaigning, and it is gonna hurt credibility elsewhere.
The worst designs evap up to 80%. New designs use closed-loop system where very none to little evaps (0-6%) depending on the system.
Many designs in-between with air cooling, hybrid, etc.
Still a non-issue, it's going back into the water cycle.
Any water issue would be specific to the municipality, it's not a national issue, nor is it an issue specific to datacenters, it's true for anything being built in the town (golf courses, power plants, etc.)
Okay I feel like maybe I'm missing something. In a closed loop system, nothing evaporates. If you use an air cooled design, nothing evaporates.
If you use a hybrid design, you still evaporate ~80% of your cooling water - you just use less overall cooling water.
The water going back to the water cycle doesn't mean it's potable.
And yes, I do understand that it is a very small fraction of overall water use. I am actually in favor of using water where it will reduce electricity use. But let's not be inaccurate - the water used for cooling is absolutely evaporated or sent to sewage, with the exception of whatever sits inside the system's closed loop (which exists whether or not the system is cooled evap/dry/hybrid).
Hybrid systems keep the primary process fluid in a closed loop, they spray water on pads to cool the coils during the hotter parts. Basically a stop gap when air cooling is not enough.
There's also close loop systems that lose none, it's just more expensive to build. They are already being deployed in areas with scarce water. Microsoft and a quite a few others already built a few.
> Of course, there’s not a lot of studios building MMORPGs right now, and the ones that are building any kind of multiplayer games really tend to prefer their own in-house backends
So which one is it, most mmorpgs build their own backends or clockwork shouldn't have wasted their time building their own backend?
They had to build it anyway, might as well sell it. Similar to Epic and their Unreal engine, right?
They can't even get the SAVE act passed.
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