AI article? Or just clickbait? Waste water system is not the same as water supply.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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Seems like they are, how would you say?
Careless People
Like the book of the same name.
how does a datacenter even contaminate water?
Construction and vibrations caused by the generators disturb well water systems. Or if a main is close enough, heavy construction will settel the ground and break pipes.
All the data center issues are caused by people and towns not classifying them as heavy industry. Do you want an aluminum foundry in your back yard? No, then same goes for a data center.
By warming it
how the fuck does a data center pump out a rare germ? Seriously. Isn't the water meant for cooling computers?!
That's one of the problems with having an open loop. Cold water comes in and it has a tiny quantity of an infectious agent, far too smaller quantity to be a problem for anyone.
Then Meta kindly warms that water up by running it through lots of hot computers, the bacterium multiply and do so at a rate proportionate to the temperature (if it goes too hot they die but I doubt even an AI data centre is going to get that hot), then the water gets dumped back into the mains water grid complete with all its lovely infectious agents.
You get bacteria growing in closed loop systems as well, that isn't an issue because it's closed loop you just have to clean it out every now and then.
I think the problem is that if the water got hot enough to kill the bacteria, it would mean the computers were running at temperatures hot enough that it would damage components on them (or at the very least reduce the lifespan of them).
I have a UV sterilizer on my aquarium to cut down pathogens and algae. They could install similar on their outflow, but that would cost more money.
thank you for this great explanation.
The meta incubator
If they multiply, wouldn't that be bacteria? Bacterium is singular.
You're technically correct, but you may struggle to make friends like that ..
Moreover, is it not the same water that enter the datacenter ?
Nice and warm water, good place for it to thrive. The cooling towers in Arizona sometimes has stickers warning about legionnaires disease.
How many atrocities is this company responsible for? Counting just this week's headlines, it's already unconscionable.
I remember when that futurism site was a weird news site about utopic things. Now it's dystopic as hell, and this scares me a lot, because if even they don't have good hopes for the future, things are REALLY bad
Tbf scary sells more.
Yeah, it scares me too. Though it does give me some comfort to exist in communities like this, where people are well informed of the kind of fuckery done by big tech and other asshole corporations, and thus are not surprised by this kind of news. Although it's pretty grim that we all recognise how fucked things are, it's within communities like this that I often find my will to live be bolstered.
Maybe it's to do with the average political inclination of folks here, or maybe it's just that Lemmy has a high concentration of creative, nerdy people who find joy in making or sharing cool stuff. Or maybe I'm just so burnt out that I'm desperate to construct and/or clutch onto anything remotely meaningful ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Regardless I find it reassuring to see so many people trying their damnedest to forge something good — not in ignorance of the world being on fire, but precisely because we need good reasons to live now more than ever.
Sometimes I find myself thinking that I wish I could put my head in the sand and find some bliss in the ignorance of it all. I don't really want that though. Real hope is built on a comprehensive understanding of the problems we face, with a hearty dash of some potentially irrational defiance.
I remember the /r Collapse vs /r Futurism debate.
/r Futurism's representative lost, and converted.
“When the board shared that it found a substance in the city’s wastewater — not public drinking water — Fortis immediately stopped discharging industrial wastewater and began hauling it offsite,” a Meta spokesperson told Cowboy State.
Bob Collins - Australian Senator: Well the ship was towed outside the environment.
Interviewer: Into another environment...?
Bob Collins - Australian Senator: No, no it's been towed beyond the environment, it's not in the environment.
Interviewer: No but from one environment to another environment...?
Bob Collins - Australian Senator: No it's been towed beyond the environment, it's not in an environment.
Interviewer: Well what's out there?
Bob Collins - Australian Senator: Nothings out there!
Interviewer: There must be something out there...?
Bob Collins - Australian Senator: There is nothing out there, all there is is sea, and birds, and fish.
Interviewer: And?
Bob Collins - Australian Senator: And ~~20,000 tons of crude oil~~. truckloads of deadly bacteria
Interviewer: And what else?
Bob Collins - Australian Senator: And a fire.
Interviewer: And anything else?
Bob Collins - Australian Senator: And the part of the ship that the front fell off. But theres nothing else out there. It's just a complete void.
does that normally happen?
Wow, good thing this company has a squeaky clean reputation otherwise or this might tarnish their reputation.
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Jeez
Bacteria? If it came from the computers, it should have been viruses.
/s
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It became sentient
Zuck and the entire board should face both civil and criminal charges.
Our Amazon processing centers are all set to discharge "treated" 95-degree water into our waterways. Board of Supervisors isn't concerned. Good times.
95-degree water
F or c?
F haha
First one, then the other
That implies it gets hotter after dumping and that tickles me as a concept
Cool. Charge Zuck with Attempted Murder.
What doesn't Meta infect?
It loves to metastasize, like cancer.
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