this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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[–] Fontasia@feddit.nl 29 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Remember that time that Microsoft sunk a data center in the ocean, proved this was cost effective, was reliable and could scale? And now it's been five years and nothing happened? Yeah that was annoying.

Anyway their site of glowing press releases is still up for some reason

[–] Zanathos@lemmy.world 23 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It worked well until there was a component failure, requiring a whole farm to be taken down to replace said failed components. This is why they dropped the project.

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago (2 children)

They didn't think of that when designing this?

[–] Zanathos@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

I'm sure they did, and they wouldn't take the farm down until there was X% failure, but the amount of time and effort it took to perform those repairs made it unfeasible.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

What do you think research is?

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

you don't need to jump off a building to research gravity...

the specific issue that is claimed to have made the entire project unviable is easily spotted a mile away

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

How are you going to evaluate long term effects without practical experiments? They clearly have the money and its much easier and efficient to launch a real MVP than to design a complex set of simulations and tests.

[–] JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world 16 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This is a good showcase of how a few individuals can leverage power to fend off massive interests. For the good of the public even, in this instance.

[–] Glytch@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago

Also a good showcase on why you should care about your local elections. Vote for people who will protect your interests, like these folks.

[–] biofaust@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

I guess that , unlike some famous people in "Phoenix Valley", the people in Tucson did not forget "the white man's greed".

Kudos to them!

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 days ago

Well fine, guess I'll have to make my obese fart videos the old fashioned way. Anyone seen my kimchi?

[–] roguetrick@lemmy.world 214 points 1 week ago (24 children)

Why the hell are they trying to build data centers in the fucking Sonoran Desert anyway.

[–] dyathinkhesaurus@lemmy.world 158 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's not their water, so they don't care. When it finally runs out, they'll just go somewhere else.

[–] Dogiedog64@lemmy.world 74 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I mean, sure, that's their plan, but you can only do that so many times before you run out of money, materials, water, or places to build. If ever there was proof that there's no forward thinking in this tech bubble, this would be it.

[–] SARGE@startrek.website 49 points 1 week ago

you can only do that so many times before you run out of money, materials, water, or places to build

That's someone else's problem. Hopefully someone after they're dead, but as long as they have their golden parachute, who cares?

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

True but this isn't specific to the tech bubble. It's a feature of capitalism. Competition forces firms to adopt shorter term horizons. If a firm has significant profit to make by focusing on the short term and it does not, its competitor would. If the profit possoble within this period is significant, having the competitor collect it runs the risk of the current firm failing, or the competitor accumulating enough for hostile takeover, among other failures. That would stop the current firm onwer from collecting profits in the future. Even if focusing on the long term is more profitable over time, firms may not survive in a competitive environment to realize long term profits. These are some of the fundamental processes that drive firms into short term horizons. With liquid asset markets there are even more immediate processes driving firms into short term planning.

Add to that planning based mainly on prices, which don't capture a ton of reality and you get situations like a water hungry datacenter in the desert, cause the price of water does not capture its long term availability for example.

All of this has happened in the past, even a century ago. It's happened and keeps happening in other industries too. For example the fossil fuel industry.

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

That's more an artifact of modern corporate structure where a publicity traded entity must always be growing or it will be considered a failure.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 week ago

They're locusts. They don't think about anything past the next fiscal quarter.

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[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 62 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Low humidity. Good for longevity of electronics, and makes the evaporative cooling more efficient. So it’s a matter of the benefits of that vs. the cost of the added heat.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago

Land is also relatively cheap.

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[–] d00phy@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Yeah, seems like a desert isn’t the best place to build something where cooling is a critical factor! Or building something that uses massive amounts of chemical treated water for cooling in a place that has had water scarcity concerns for generations, now.

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[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago

Because they got fuck-you money.

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[–] inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 139 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Good. This whole thing was stupid when the local government and utilities keep telling us little people to conserve water because, well we're in a 113 degree desert with a complete lack of water due to climate change and they wanted to do this bullshit.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Have you tried collecting the condensation off the glass? If you use that to wash your armpits you can go an extra day before you shower so Jeff Bezos can make numbers go up in his theoretical money.

Edit: "Comical" thought. There is less than $2.5 trillion in cash circulating.

That wouldn't cover 20 people net worth in a country of near 350,000,000.

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[–] crumbguzzler5000@feddit.org 59 points 1 week ago (21 children)

Amazon have how many data centers and they wanna be building more? Greedy cunts

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[–] Fuck_u_spez_@sh.itjust.works 53 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Why are data centers so thirsty anyway? Can't cooling systems just reuse water in a closed loop?

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 86 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Evaporative cooling needs less water mass and less surface area for the same cooling effect. They could simply use bigger heat sinks outside the building and have a bigger water cooling system to make it closed loop, but they don't want to do that.

[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 42 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Then why the fuck do they keep wanting build them in the middle of the desert then?

[–] StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world 60 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Cheap land, dry air is good for evaporative cooling, and many arid areas have a surprising amount of ground water. It ultimately comes down to being the cheapest option, not the smartest or best option.

[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So how long to the billionaires have that entire city council replaced with people who are in their pocket and will vote for its passing?

[–] StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)

In the states? 1-2 years tops.

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Trump will have them arrested on terrorism charges in a month...after a totally coincidental delivery of a golden idol to trump, from bezos

edit I said this as a joke, and later found Apple recently gifted Trump a golden idol.

God I miss when satire was silliness, and not psychic future sight.

[–] Vandals_handle@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago

Externalization of cost, the environment and community bears the cost instead of the corporation. Privatize the profits, externalize the costs.

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[–] innermachine@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago

They absolutely can run closed loop. It does not cool as well as evaporative cooling (it takes MASSIVE heat to evaporate water) but it can work if designed right with large system capacity and big radiators. Trouble is it's likely more expensive than pissing away the water and we know all that matters is bottom line.

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