frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

AOC displays drinking water contaminated by data center

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:iu4j537hox5huj4bwnwgub4z/post/3mmeysgcjbs2j
43•cdrnsf•1h ago

Comments

ecshafer•45m ago
That doesn't make any sense. Data centers just use some water for water cooling of cpus, there isn't anything to pollute. If this isn't fake, its probably a broken line.
yfw•40m ago
Rushed construction affecting well water https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o
yepyoukno•22m ago
Love how the haters conclude decisively there could not be any justification other than she’s wrong. They’ve thought of everything.
tech_ken•38m ago
> its probably a broken line

Per her website (which is hosting the transcript of the interview here: https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/press-releases/ocasio-...) seems that the cause is known and acknowledge to be construction

"""

...A few weeks ago, while Congress was in recess, I visited Morgan County, Georgia, where Meta is building a massive data center campus. They are clear cutting forests and began heavy construction, including explosive blasting, and families in the area are starting to see not only their water pressure decrease, to your point about water availability, but their appliances have all stopped working because it is decimating their water quality.

They now rely on bottled water to drink and prepare meals, and nearby residents' water bills are expected to increase by 33%. In fact, I have a jar right here. This is the current drinking water in Morgan County, Georgia, right after a data center was constructed, the Meta data center was constructed. ...

"""

shimman•38m ago
Makes plenty of sense to me, the company that profited off of the Myanmar genocide likely also doesn't care about local regulations either or the impacts on American civilians either.
arrowleaf•37m ago
Overdrawing water from an aquifer can disturb sediment. There are many second-order effects to consider.
sroussey•26m ago
It’s cheaper to use lots of water for cooling than to make a closed system where you have to cool it yourself. Easy solution is to only give them a small pipe for restrooms.
markdown•23m ago
> Data centers just use some water for water cooling of cpus, there isn't anything to pollute.

I wonder why they're using up and dumping all the water then. If the water was clean they'd consume none... it'd just flow through their CPU's, into tanks, and back into municipal water supply.

perching_aix•18m ago
Isn't the water used for evaporative cooling? Not much to return then I'd assume.

Edit:

Upon looking into it, looks like a portion of it (tens of percents) becomes a concentrated fluid called "blowdown", filled with minerals from the water source, and various treatment additives used for ensuring that the thing keeps flowing and doesn't become a growth media. This does need to be flushed out periodically, and is apparently supposed to be directed towards a water reclamation plant (e.g. via the sewage system).

I don't necessarily find it a reasonable suggestion that it should be cleaned in place, but obviously I do agree it should not just be dumped yolo.

maerF0x0•6m ago
It seems like you didnt watch the source video. The water is allegedly contaminated by the construction of a new datacenter.
metalman•25m ago
lets get something strait about the scale off data centers, and how they compare to any OTHER mega INDUSTRIAL project, bieng done in a massive rush backed by massive amounts of capital with a lax, very lax, regulatory environment

we strait now?

or is it thissy that, footsy, look LOOK!, over there!

CHINA!

johnea•22m ago
I don't read bsky due to javascript requirement.

Here are some sources that don't require js:

https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/press-releases/ocasio-...

https://www.commondreams.org/news/aoc-data-centers-water

https://www.rawstory.com/aoc-data-center-drinking-water/

OutOfHere•21m ago
Meanwhile, in Texas, they arrest people for documenting the water:

Woman files lawsuit after arrest for Facebook post concerning Trinidad water supply issues

https://www.fox4news.com/news/woman-arrested-facebook-post-c...

OutOfHere•18m ago
Most of these AI datacenters need to be moved to space. For many AI uses, the resulting latency would be altogether acceptable.
ChrisArchitect•9m ago
non-random source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOQ-vH5fAk8

BBEdit 16

https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/bbedit16.html
176•qaz_plm•2h ago•47 comments

Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

https://valhovey.github.io/gaia-mary/
286•speleo•4h ago•73 comments

Flipper One – we need your help

https://blog.flipper.net/flipper-one-we-need-your-help/
924•sandebert•9h ago•387 comments

Blog ran on Ubuntu 16.04 for 10 years. I migrated it to FreeBSD

https://crocidb.com/post/this-blog-ran-on-ubuntu-16-04-for-10-years-i-migrated-it-to-freebsd/
33•speckx•1h ago•3 comments

Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

https://freenet.org/
79•sanity•6h ago•19 comments

Seattle Shield, an intelligence-sharing network operated by the Seattle police

https://prismreports.org/2026/05/20/seattle-shield-private-companies-surveillance/
343•root-parent•2h ago•140 comments

We're testing new ad formats in Search and expanding our Direct Offers pilot

https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/google-marketing-live-search-ads/
516•sofumel•11h ago•434 comments

Was my $48K GPU server worth it?

https://rosmine.ai/2026/05/13/was-my-48k-gpu-worth-it/
131•apwheele•3d ago•101 comments

Using Kagi Search with Low Vision

https://veroniiiica.com/using-kagi-search-with-low-vision/
15•speckx•1h ago•1 comments

Indexing a year of video locally on a 2021 MacBook with Gemma4-31B (50GB swap)

https://blog.simbastack.com/indexed-a-year-of-video-locally/
216•asenna•6h ago•73 comments

Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-industry-news/spotify-will-start-reserving-concert-...
49•elffjs•4h ago•101 comments

Waymo pauses Atlanta service as its robotaxis keep driving into floods

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/21/waymo-pauses-atlanta-service-as-its-robotaxis-keep-driving-into...
170•mattas•4h ago•213 comments

Python 3.15: features that didn't make the headlines

https://blog.changs.co.uk/python-315-features-that-didnt-make-the-headlines.html
289•rbanffy•9h ago•128 comments

ParadeDB (YC S23) Is Hiring Distributed Systems/Platform Engineers

1•philippemnoel•3h ago

News outlets are limiting the Internet Archive’s access to their journalism

https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/05/more-than-340-local-news-outlets-are-limiting-the-internet-arch...
143•jaredwiener•3h ago•45 comments

Where are all the UK red telephone kiosks?

https://www.thek6project.co.uk/
45•Kaibeezy•2h ago•32 comments

Lost Images from the 1945 Trinity Nuclear Test Restored

https://spectrum.ieee.org/trinity-nuclear-test
242•pseudolus•9h ago•73 comments

Google's Antigravity bait and switch

https://www.0xsid.com/blog/antigravity-bait-n-switch
425•ssiddharth•6h ago•223 comments

Launch HN: Runtime (YC P26) – Sandboxed coding agents for everyone on a team

https://www.runtm.com/
44•gustrigos•4h ago•17 comments

Mounting git commits as folders with NFS (2023)

https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/12/04/mounting-git-commits-as-folders-with-nfs/
72•pvtmert•2d ago•37 comments

You’ll lose your job in 2027

https://www.elenaverna.com/p/youll-lose-your-job-in-2027
5•jger15•19m ago•0 comments

Thoughts on People and Blogs

https://afranca.com.br/thoughts-on-people-and-blogs/
6•meysamazad•2d ago•0 comments

Show HN: Agent.email – sign up via curl, claim with a human OTP

26•adisingh13•4h ago•19 comments

Multi-Stream LLMs: new paper on parallelizing/separating prompts, thinking, I/O

https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.12460
12•atomicthumbs•1h ago•1 comments

Museum of Pocket Calculating Devices

https://www.calculators.de/
50•ohjeez•5h ago•9 comments

Bournegol???

https://oldhome.schmorp.de/marc/bournegol.html
24•greyface-•2d ago•4 comments

Stop throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations

https://noslopgrenade.com/
407•napolux•11h ago•236 comments

Chewing gum restores dad's taste and smell years after Covid

https://discover.swns.com/2026/05/chewing-gum-restores-dads-taste-and-smell-years-after-covid/
103•speckx•3h ago•43 comments

Vivaldi 8.0

https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-on-desktop-8-0/
299•OuterVale•13h ago•215 comments

Show HN: I Dedicated 4 Years to Mastering Offline Password Cracking

194•bojta-lepenye•7h ago•36 comments