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this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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This is fresh water coming into the datacenter. A datacenter uses water for air conditioning; imagine spraying water on a screen door when wind is blowing through it and you'll have a good intuitive idea of the dynamics. Most of the water is recaptured and used for several sprays before it evaporates away. To force wind through the screens, they use windcatchers, tall towers which induce wind inside the building.
This is completely different from water-cooling gamer setups. It's more like a weather system. Water usually needs to be added because the datacenter is located in a dry biome; air conditioning doesn't thermodynamically work if the air is too dry. This is actually really delicate; too much water will cause clouds to form inside the building!
Ok that makes sense, thanks for the explanation!
The data center nearest to me works a bit differently, I know they use sea-water for their HVAC because they share the pipes with other buildings using it for the same purpose, and I was lucky enough to get a tour of the system in one of those buildings a few years back. It's multi-storey so perhaps I simply didn't notice the windcatcher parts in the architecture.
But that obviously means it's also near the coast and therefore not the driest biome from the start. I don't doubt it still impacts the ecosystem but at least it's not draining the potable reserves at the same time. To me this begs the question of why they're building these data centers so far inland.
As a side note, it's pretty amazing we still do the windcatcher setup. They've always been fascinating to me, but I can't help but be amazed they're still relevant even in the highest tech buildings.