That's a perfectly valid concern, but isn't specific to data centers or their construction. That's like being mad at a factory that produces pens because you don't like what people are writing with them.
If they're building pen factories specifically to satisfy the demand of people buying pens to log the daily lives of the public, yeah, I'm mad at the factory.
Got any credible sources that data centers are being built with exactly this objective in mind?
Instead of, you know, people who just want to talk to ChatGPT or use Claude models for their software engineering work... I.e. the vast majority of grass-roots AI demand...
>What's preventing them getting cool water from a lake and draining to it again to cool down?
Some do, but most don't since the requirements for using cooling water are relatively strict due to the pipes, equipment, and heat exchangers the water flows through. The water used needs to be free of any biological contaminants (such as bacteria and algae), maintain proper pH levels, and are often then treated with other chemicals such as biocides.
Lake water certainly can be treated to the level needed and used, it's just often cheaper to buy domestic water from the local utility than to construct and operate a small scale water treatment system along side the industrial process.
> Where is water going after usage since there is literally zero water consumption?
Most of the water is "consumed" via open loop evaporative cooling systems, so the water is never really "used" as in destroyed or anything. The majority of it is evaporated and returns to the land as rain and the rest is returned via sanitary drains, to city sewer systems.
And as we all know, investments of vast amounts of capital by companies can never be contrary to the well-being of humans... See Purdue, Monsanto, Union Carbide, etc.
> The additives used by datacenters in some cases can't be filtered or processed out practically or in economically viable ways, so the water returns back as unusable, esp. if they get water from a body of water and return it with added chemicals the process gets very damaging.
Why would any water be returned?
Datacenters (and literally every industrial process that requires cooling) use water for evaporative cooling. The water evaporates, then returns as rain elsewhere.
The only water being "returned" I can think of would be from the intermittent or continuous blowdown systems to maintain TDS levels; but blowdown is a small fraction of the water consumed and is typically returned back via the city sewer system.
Roughly 80% of the water evaporates into the atmosphere. The remaining 20% is flushed out of the system to remove mineral build-ups and sent to local treatment plants.
It's complicated, and depends on the hardness of the water entering the system from the water supply as well, since blowdown is ultimately to control the level of dissolved solids in the water so it does not contrate enough to start coming out of solution. Rarely if ever is true demineralized water used in open loop cooling systems; it's simply too expensive to produce to then "throw away" into evaporation.
The previously stated 80/20 isn't a bad general estimate, but it varies depending on the specific site. 10%-25% of makeup water being lost to blowdown is a reasonable range.
As for papers about it, I was only able to find a few in my brief search, but they don't land on a single number since it depends on the ratio of dissolved minerals/solids in the circulating cooling-tower water compared with the incoming makeup water, which varies due to acceptability for the process and due to the incoming water quality.
This short PDF on "Mechanical Systems Water Efficiency Management" from the EPA goes over the concepts pretty well though
This document from the US DOD (UFM 3-230-13, Industrial Water Treatment Operation and Maintenance (2026), Chapter 5) says that most cooling towers operate at 3-10 CoC, with 5-7 CoC identified as a cost-effective range. Where CoC is Cycles of concentration described in the previous PDF, and a higher CoC means less blowdown and better water efficiency, with the trade-off of a greater risk of scaling, corrosion, and biological/water-chemistry problems.
Epstein (and Ghislaine Maxwell in particular) are widely believed to have operated as a massive Mossad blackmail operation, collecting (and creating) blackmail material against western politicians and influential individuals to ensure their support for Israel.
I won't go into details that support or refute this claim, but that is what the parent poster likely meant.
and it seems pretty likely that's exactly what was happening.
The idea that a nation-state was/is running a child sex trafficking ring, and we're *not* turning over heaven and earth to investigate that so that country faces unprecedented consequences...I don't even know what to say
Didn't he have ties to basically all powerful people? Is there something special about his Israel ties that are different to his Bill Gates ties?
I thought this was interesting, from Al Jazeera to boot:
Political Reactions: While critics and unverified intelligence memos pointed to the deep relationship as a sign of state ties, current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly dismissed the notion, stating on social media that Epstein's close ties to Barak (a political opponent of Netanyahu) actually "proves the opposite" of Epstein working for the Israeli state.
Of course. A very valid way to view it, and the same way I would've viewed it in 2016 if you told me there was a global elite pedophile ring that helped get Trump elected.
>disguised as thieves stealing fiber optic. This does not have any sense economically, as the value in the market is zero
Do you honestly think that crackheads think that far in advance?
I've seen fiberoptic cables stolen from 2 (city) jobsites in the last 5 years, once by tweakers later caught trying to sell them as scrap copper and the second thief was never caught.
This happened even though the spools had big signs on them saying "Fiber Optic Cable - NO COPPER".
> big signs on them saying "Fiber Optic Cable - NO COPPER".
Crackheads can be manipulated easily, or bribed. Maybe the value was in that they were paid with $50 in drugs for doing that.
People too dumb to plan X and to inconsistent to spend several days honing the plan, somehow avoided all the traps and locks, go for the precise location and do X... either they worked in the place and are very familiar with each room, or there is a director manipulating them.
With the added value that addicts can be overdosed easily if they try to strike back and treat to getting too talkative. Nobody would bat an eye.
Many, going back years.
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