Aria 
🏳️⚧️ok. I get that datacenters use a lot of electricity. What I'm not understanding is how they use a lot of water. Isn't it a closed loop system? Like, yes, a lot of water up front, but once it's there you're not using huge amounts more every day for basic operation? Or am I missing something?
Or are they just doing something incredibly stupid like running open faucets over servers to keep them cool?
I guess I should also clarify (since this is the internet and people will always make assumptions) I'm not trying to make any argument for datacenters. I'm just trying to understand what people mean when they're saying they use a lot of water, in addition to electricity.
Saphira Lohikäärmekettunen 
🚫 KubeCon Europe@aria often evaporation cooling is used, which is not a closed loop but cooling stuff down by running water over it and let it evaporate into the air and sky - so yea, that's actually what they do kinda, just not over servers but heat exchanger of the hot side of a closed loop
@littlefox
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I guess I shouldn't have made the assumption that the techbros would chose a more sensible option over ✨ maximum performance✨
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I guess I shouldn't have made the assumption that the techbros would chose a more sensible option over ✨ maximum performance✨
@aria it's actually pretty old tech that's just used for a long time already and it has efficiency benefits on power usage; it's always tradeoffs
Melody 
鳥 
@aria
@littlefox
This is a super common system for HVAC anywhere that one can reliably evaporate water. It's known as a swamp cooler for residential, and is far more energy efficient than other methods which makes for a lower carbon footprint. That's good!
The tradeoff is that you end up using water to remove heat. And it can be a lot of water if there's a lot of heat generated, which is bad.