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[–] 32 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I mean Microsoft is currently preferable to Google.

Microsoft:

Microsoft’s “biomimicry” program is reshaping the land around its data centers with restored wetlands and native gardens to help the buildings blend into local ecosystems at 20-plus sites, reports The Verge. Critics question the company’s motives after recent energy deals, such as a 20-year deal inked in June to buy power from a planned Chevron gas plant in West Texas. Public Citizen’s Texas director, Adrian Shelley, called the plan “basically lipstick on a pig.”

The Mount Pleasant site, home to Fairwater, which Microsoft calls the “world’s most powerful AI data center,” has 100 acres of prairie and forest in a Lamparek Creek restoration with the Root-Pike Watershed Initiative Network. Its executive director, Dave Giordano, told the outlet that Microsoft developed its stormwater ponds with forebays to retain sediment, one of a number of accommodations for the environment. “Not all data center companies are the same,” he said. It is a living example of the company’s answer to AI data center backlash.

Google:

As Finnish newspaper Kaleva reported last month, Google is under fire for clearing over 300 hectares — the equivalent of almost 500 football fields — for two new data centers in the northern part of the European nation without concluding the necessary environmental assessments.

Despite the assessments still being in progress, the tech giant’s contractors started clearing trees in the area months ago, raising the alarm bells at the Finnish Nature Conservation Association.

But it's ultimately leverage for killing the planet and making a destructive technology seem acceptable. We've seen "industrial parks". It's a bandaid on a heart attack.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 month ago (9 children)

    What the fuck am I looking at?

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    [–] 13 points 1 month ago

    Biomimicry.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    It's at least something, but the noise will probably scare all the animals away anyway

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    Can't believe Microsoft out here leaking Sonic Frontiers 2.

    Cause this shit is straight up a zone you'd see in the games caused by Eggman's technofuckery.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Microslop sloppin’ it up (not soapy tigglebitties)

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  • 26 comments in c/technology@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 64 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    They won’t be camouflaged for long once the pollution starts to kill off the vegetation…pretty sure we have seen this scenario exactly before in the 60s & 70s…

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  • [–] 20 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Once they'll built they'll start to argue that they pollute anywhere so might as well stay there...

    And still build as many as they can anywhere.

    Their MO seems to be do whatever it takes to get started then finish

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  • [–] 34 points 1 month ago (9 children)

    A tale as old as time. Forestry has been doing this forever: clear-cutting where the public can't see it and keeping forests near roads pristine.

    Once again: the problem isn't Microsoft or the datacenter builders. It's the governments approving these projects in the first place. Regulation is the only fix. Companies will rape and pillage unless we collectively choose to stop them.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    The problem is Microsoft. It's also the datacentre builders. It's also the governments.

    All three are a fucking problem

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    I mean, yes but?

    Create a system that incentivizes people or groups to pursue profit ahead of environmental concerns and that's what you'll get. POSWID and all that.

    Directing anger at Microsoft or a datacenter builder is a very convenient way for those in power to deflect blame away from those who created the system in the first place.

    The only real, systemic solve is to fix the incentives through taxation and regulation.

    Anything else is futile.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

    This is one of my critics of wilderness areas (I love them otherwise). Without having a place for people to be apart of and with the rest of the natural ecology of an area it's too easy to see avoiding active harm as an optional charity instead of a needed part of maintaining a living biosphere

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  • [–] -3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Regulation through government won't do jack shit because the politicians writing those policies bury lots of grey areas and confusing language in there, because they're bought and paid for by the very tech companies those laws should regulate.

    TL;dr laws and regulations won't do shit even though verbiage will be cleverly written to seem so.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (7 children)

    The only way to avoid negative environmental consequences I've seen implemented is Japan using geothermal vents in the ocean.

    They harvest the heat for energy, and the ocean (that would get heated up anyways) for cooling.

    The net effect is an artificial reef and spreading the heat out further in a temperate zone that facilitates biological growth.

    I don't think there's any scenario that actually works on land. Maybe out in the middle of the desert powered only by solar and using an absolutely massive heatsink that dumps it all over night when the desert is cold. But the cost for that would be insane.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    Yah but that requires coastal development or in the vicinity of the coast, with increasing sea level rise, that is just going to require these things to be made like giant doomsday bunkers able to survive a life extinguishing event. I still question the need for these data centers.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

    Yah but that requires coastal development or in the vicinity of the coast

    There's this new thing called "boats"...

    And data cables can (and do) run along the ocean floor, they don't even need to connect to mainland, they can join an existing cable.

    I still question the need for these data centers

    We needed them before AI and well need them after...

    Finding an environmental positive way to have them is worthwhile. Arguing that it's expensive literally just means you're putting a price on our planet. Which is especially stupid since the billionaires are the ones keeping those savings.

    Quit fucking simping for billionaire techbros. Even if you don't realize it's what you're doing, it's what you're doing. Fuck their profits the planet matters more.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    There’s this new thing called “boats”…

    Yah sorry nobody serious is putting a data center on a floating boat/vessel. Maybe submerged, but not on the surface.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Jesus...

    That's honestly what you thought?!

    I meant that geothermal vents are rarely on the shoreline anyways, and a bot is what's needed, not coastal facilities.

    I mean damn dude, you actually thought putting a fat center on a boat is what I was suggesting?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    Well it wasn’t clear what you were saying, sorry. Yah copy that, that could work, but why not just keep the vents on the seafloor…no boat is needed.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    but why not just keep the vents on the seafloor…no boat is needed.

    ...

    Yes, you can not "move" a geothermal vent from the ocean floor, and especially not onto a boat...

    The boat is what's needed to sink the equipment deep to the ocean floor.

    I think the real problem is, you don't know what a geothermal vent actually is.

    https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/deep-sea-hydrothermal-vents/

    The entire reason these are perfect is it's near boiling water surrounded by deep sea near frozen temps. You don't get that anywhere near a shore. And even if you did, doing it 20 miles or 200 miles from any shore is the same amount of effort.

    But I got to tap out here

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago*

    you mean camouflaging so it doesn't get identified to be vandalized, sabotaged or protested from, much like they did with some corporate farms to hide abuse.

    all this to power windows 11 AI slop, and some government mass surveillance tech.

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  • Since when does toms hardware give my computer aids? Oh how the mighty have fallen.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Bruh. Attack the actual problems. there really are enough of them. No need to attack the only good point.
    I wished every industry would "camouflage" their factories like that.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    Complete nonsense spin attempt by Microsoft.

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