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Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage

384 points · 503 comments · sensanaty

  1. aliasxneo · · focus · HN ↗
    I lived in a smaller rural town near a Google datacenter. During my career there I had routinely come across some outlandish accusations made about our water/power usage from the locals. But for obvious reasons I could never dispute them. I remember we hired a local who'd grown up in the town and he was "really surprised" when he started to see what we were doing to remain efficient.

    The current data center craze just feels like the same thing but on a bigger scale.

    1. WarmWash · · focus · HN ↗
      The current hysteria has little to do with datacenters and a lot to do with societal unrest about AI.
      1. numbsafari · · focus · HN ↗
        Also the unforced error around NDAs and attempts at bypassing environmental and other reviews. People don’t like the idea of their local elected officials bypassing the rules in the dark.

        I understand these companies want to move fast, but this seems to be one of those cases where going slow gets you there faster.

        1. vovavili · · focus · HN ↗
          >People don’t like the idea of their local elected officials bypassing the rules in the dark.

          Others don't like technological progress to be reduced to the speed of bureaucracies who have no compelling incentive to be particularly efficient. Especially when the technology at hand might end up making quite a few of these bureaucracies much less staffed.

          1. whatshisface · · focus · HN ↗
            The thinking on display in this thread is something like,

            "I needed to add a billing address field to the order flow, so I suggested we use Kafka to process shipping requests. My boss said the form field should turn red if an invalid address was entered, and in response, the team lead objected that Oracle charged too much for MySQL. I checked for a pricing page but found a 'call us' form. The CTO decided to go with Kafka, and told us that landlines are an obsolete platform."

            1. vovavili · · focus · HN ↗
              I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say.
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