This is inefficient compared to evaporation cooling, so the data centre's power usage effectiveness goes up. The result is that it uses more energy for the same compute task. And in the short term, that energy is still majority from fossil fuel and increasingly likely to be provided by gas rather than by renewables, in particular in the US. So overall CO2 emissions will increase as a result.

#FrugalComputing #DataCentres #datacenters (2/2)

Although it is important to oppose data centres based on the detrimental effect of their water usage on local communities, in the end I fear this will simply lead to an increase in CO2 emissions: the data centres will still be built but they will be cooled using a closed circuit so that the water usage is no longer an issue.
(1/2)

#FrugalComputing #DataCentres #datacenters

@cstross @NewtonMark

Bingo.

Folks who are hoping for #AIbubble to pop are going to be disappointed.

Not because it's NOT going to happen, but because when it does, it's not going to look like like a wipe-out, but consolidation like the dot.com boom-bust.

Instead of hundreds of capitalised players, there will be two, three. Which IMHO will be worse.

LLMs are genuinely useful tech and you don't need broligarch #datacentres, I got Deepseek R2 and Qwen 2.5 Coder running on a bottom tier VPS the other day, and though performance was shit, it's just a matter of more RAM.

TLDR; LLMs are not going away, folks who use them find them useful, and you don't have to burn the planet to use them.

Anarchist Communist Group: **New Jackdaw Now Out!**

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2026/01/28/new-jackdaw-now-out/

Articles on AI and data centres, Your Party, anti-militarism, land justice, women. Free Download: Jackdaw 24 To order bundles contact: londonacg@gmail.com

#Jackdaw #Uncategorized #AI #Antimilitarist #Datacentres #Land #Yourparty

Ready to push against surveillance-driven corporations profiting on stolen land, stolen resources and YOUR STOLEN DATA? 👀❌💸

Join @scienceforthepeople and @ResearchForTheFrontLines for a free, two-part beginner-friendly workshop that breaks down the mysteries of servers and guides you through the benefits and basics of building your own at-home/in-community server. 🛠️👩🏻‍💻

Online (EST) and in-person
Saturday, February 28

#workshop #server #selfhosting #datacentres #datacenters #GenAI #surveillance

2026, is it the year of the small language model, but maybe also the tiny data centre? Can we repurpose derelict buildings and bring data centres closer to the user? Will AI be processed on devices? The @BBCNews’s @zsk talked to a group of tech folk about the wee data centre alternative. Read the article "Honey, I shrunk the data centres: Is small the new big?" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0ynenr1eno
#datacentres #AI #datacenters #opensource #opensourceai

Ready to push against surveillance-driven corporations profiting on stolen land, stolen resources and YOUR STOLEN DATA? 👀❌💸

Join @scienceforthepeople and @ResearchForTheFrontLines for a free, two-part beginner-friendly workshop that breaks down the mysteries of servers and guides you through the benefits and basics of building your own at-home/in-community server. 🛠️👩🏻‍💻

Online (EST) and in-person
Saturday, February 28

#workshop #server #selfhosting #datacentres #datacenters #GenAI #surveillance

There's a lot of wisdom in this piece about the AI bubble:

https://www.chrbutler.com/what-ai-is-really-for

Unfortunately, here in the UK, our Prime Minister has already approved huge data centre building projects that will burn through local water and energy supplies:

https://europeanpowell.substack.com/p/the-ai-gold-rush-how-starmers-data

Given that tech giants pay as little tax as possible, this will be another example of government handing national resources to private interests virtually free of charge.

#AI #UK #DataCentres #KeirStarmer #Privatisation

RE: https://dair-community.social/@timnitGebru/115646642010144982

Stellar #investigative #journalism from RollingStone on the #environmental & human cost of mega #datacentres.
"It never occurred to Doherty that his effort to fix the #water problem would provoke the ire of a group of local officials who resented scrutiny of their role in the #pollution. That it would end his political career, tank his cattle sales, and cause him so much stress he’d lose 50 pounds".

New homes in London were delayed by 'energy-hungry' data centres

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0mpr1mvwj3o

#HackerNews #NewHomes #London #DataCentres #EnergyDelay #UrbanDevelopment

RE: https://dair-community.social/@timnitGebru/115646642010144982

Stellar #investigative #journalism from RollingStone on the #environmental & human cost of mega #datacentres.
"It never occurred to Doherty that his effort to fix the #water problem would provoke the ire of a group of local officials who resented scrutiny of their role in the #pollution. That it would end his political career, tank his cattle sales, and cause him so much stress he’d lose 50 pounds".

There's a lot of wisdom in this piece about the AI bubble:

https://www.chrbutler.com/what-ai-is-really-for

Unfortunately, here in the UK, our Prime Minister has already approved huge data centre building projects that will burn through local water and energy supplies:

https://europeanpowell.substack.com/p/the-ai-gold-rush-how-starmers-data

Given that tech giants pay as little tax as possible, this will be another example of government handing national resources to private interests virtually free of charge.

#AI #UK #DataCentres #KeirStarmer #Privatisation

"The danger of #AI is not that it will achieve consciousness and hit the big red button. The end is much less flashy, far more stupid: The resource-intensive advertisement tools of AI will increasingly overtax the grid, leaving us to cook alive in sweltering darkness. The AI hype is part of a larger, false narrative justifying fossil fuel expansion. Let’s not get fooled."

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/ai-data-centers-climate-change/
#ArtificialIntelligence #tech #techFutures #BigTech #dataCentres #energy #climateChange

"The danger of #AI is not that it will achieve consciousness and hit the big red button. The end is much less flashy, far more stupid: The resource-intensive advertisement tools of AI will increasingly overtax the grid, leaving us to cook alive in sweltering darkness. The AI hype is part of a larger, false narrative justifying fossil fuel expansion. Let’s not get fooled."

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/ai-data-centers-climate-change/
#ArtificialIntelligence #tech #techFutures #BigTech #dataCentres #energy #climateChange

Thought for the day:

We used to measure data centres in how many rack units of capacity they had - e.g. this data centre has 5000 rack unit equivalent capacity. This is a measure of physical capacity.

Then we measure data centres in TFLOPS - how many trillions of floating point operations they could perform. This is a measure of computational capacity.

Now we measure data centres in Gigawatts - how much power they consume. This is a measure of power consumption, not physical space or output.

What *should* we measure data centres in? Gigalitres of water consumed? Households disrupted by their construction?

#data #dataCentres #HPC

Thought for the day:

We used to measure data centres in how many rack units of capacity they had - e.g. this data centre has 5000 rack unit equivalent capacity. This is a measure of physical capacity.

Then we measure data centres in TFLOPS - how many trillions of floating point operations they could perform. This is a measure of computational capacity.

Now we measure data centres in Gigawatts - how much power they consume. This is a measure of power consumption, not physical space or output.

What *should* we measure data centres in? Gigalitres of water consumed? Households disrupted by their construction?

#data #dataCentres #HPC

... in general. The #DataVampires series @parismarx did for the Tech Won't Save Us podcast is a great exploration of this;

https://techwontsave.us/episode/241_data_vampires_going_hyperscale_episode_1

#podcasts #TechWontSaveUs#DataCentres#HyperScale

@sidawson