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Etheelast Friday at 7:08 PM1 replyview on HN

Is there a problem with providing other metrics like water? I didn't see that mentioned any where in the article. Not to be snarky, but your response kind of reminds me of this famous tweet: https://x.com/AustingrahamZ1/status/1029385497213366279?lang...

If you want to talk about water you're obviously free to do so, but you were the one to bring it up. Most of the articles I see about water usage in data centers seems to be propaganda as well. That's not to say data centers aren't consuming more water. I'm sure they are. Considering however that agriculture still accounts for over 70% of overall water usage and we're wasting a lot of it growing things like alfalfa in water hungry regions. Last I'd seen the metric data centers were estimated at around 6%. So I'd argue we should probably look at the worst offenders first.


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GuestFAUniverselast Friday at 11:04 PM

Bringing up alfalfa (which is horrible) is the typical whataboutism: wasting water there doesn't make it right to waste fresh water for basically cat pictures and slop. Sprinkling it with dismissing the water issue with "propaganda" and calling agriculture "worst offenders" (seriously? Nourishment is bad and 6% for data centres is insignificant?)... I don't think I can even remotely agree.

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