Google, Microsoft, and other hyperscalers have come under scrutiny for their impact on water quality and availability.
On Monday, SpaceX amended its initial public offering to state that water conditionsāincluding water scarcity, regulations around water, and droughtācould constrain data center development.
It isnāt the only tech company trying to assess how water scarcity might impact its business. Water use is emerging as one of the most contentious data center issues. A recent Gallup poll found that seven out of 10 Americans are opposed to data center development, with water scarcity ranking as the top resource concern. Facing increasingly fierce resistance, some tech companies are scrambling to assure the public that theyāre facing the issue head-on.
Data centers primarily use water to cool server racks, which throw off massive amounts of heat. One popular technique, known as evaporative cooling, uses fresh water to absorb the heat, which is then pumped to cooling towers where it evaporates outside.
Using more water can save money and reduce emissions for big tech companies by reducing the power needed for cooling that relies on energy-intensive pumps to recirculate water. But it can also come with a large water footprint: Googleās facility in Council Bluffs, Iowa, for instance, which uses evaporative cooling, consumed more than 1 billion gallons in 2024.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory predicted in a 2024 report that hyperscale data centers could consume up to 33 billion gallons of water by 2030 if they relied heavily on evaporative cooling. Thatās on par or even less than other thirsty industries, like agriculture or oil and gasāa single fracked well can use 1.5 to 16 million gallons of waterābut it poses a risk in regions where water is already scarce. The risk is particularly acute in summer, when data center cooling needs tend to skyrocket at the same time as municipal water use.
āWater is a highly local, highly regional issue,ā says Shaolei Ren, a professor of engineering at UC Riverside. āIt's a limited resource, and we have to manage it very carefully.ā
Some tech giants, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Oracle, have made statements in recent months indicating that they are moving away from evaporative cooling entirely in order to save water. That includes OpenAI and Oracleās massive Stargate expansion in a number of states, including a water-stressed region of Texas.
Google is taking a different approach. On Wednesday, the company rolled out a series of water-related commitments to communities where it has data centers, along with funding announcements for water-related projects in the US.
They include pledges to replenish more freshwater than the company consumes, via investments in local water projects; to scale up the use of reclaimed and recycled water; and to disclose annual water use in data centers. (Other tech companies, including Microsoft, have similar promises around water replenishment and local investment. Google has been working on most of these pledges for a few years.) Thereās also a promise to use āa data-driven frameworkā to decide what data center designs would work best with local watersheds.
Ben Townsend, the global head of infrastructure and sustainability at Google, says that data center design is a lot more complicated than simply swearing off one type of cooling in all cases. The company, he says, has been doing detailed hydrologic assessments of its sites for the past four years to determine what types of cooling would work best.
āWater is scarce in some regions and plentiful in others,ā he says. āA one-size-fits-all strategy just doesn't work.ā
In April, Google defended evaporative cooling for areas with what it called āabundantā water in a filing to the European Union as necessary for developing truly sustainable data centers. Googleās arguments line up with new research from Ren and his team, who found that if all data centers in the US were to adopt some kind of evaporative cooling during peak demand, it could free up an additional 10 to 30 gigawatts of power. In areas where grids are stressed but water resources arenāt, using evaporative cooling could provide a meaningful headroom to utilities trying to balance load.
āIf you don't use water, the challenge is that you're going to be using a lot more power in the summer, and that will push up the cost,ā Ren says.
Most tech giants, including Google, have seen their carbon emissions skyrocket as a result of the AI boom. Totally avoiding evaporative cooling could increase emissions if data centers rely on dirty energy to keep facilities cool. Using less evaporative cooling could also mean more water used offsite for electric generation, depending on how data centers are getting their electricity.
Despite efforts to curb water use, tech companies are still struggling to do soāand it could eventually impact business. Even as Microsoft is moving away from evaporative cooling, The New York Times reported in February that the companyās internal records indicate that its water use is set to skyrocket. In 2024, Google halted plans for a data center outside of Santiago, Chile, after a court partially revoked its permits over water concerns. (The permits for that data center were granted in 2020; Townsend says the company adopted its water scarcity framework for new locations a few years after that.)
In 2021, Google funded a lawsuit filed by a town in Oregon fighting a local newspaper to avoid disclosing how much water the tech giant would use for an expansion of its existing data center. The company began disclosing water use from specific data centers in annual reports in 2023.
Priscilla Johnson, an independent consultant who served as Microsoftās director of water strategy between 2017 and 2020, agrees with Ren that thereās trade-offs between water and power. However, she says, there are ways to push companies to develop better designs that use both less water and energy. Public pushback and regulation, she says, is crucial.
āThe industry has to be challenged to design smarter and simplify things,ā she says.
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Mid-range drones that can hit targets almost 100 miles behind Russian lines have changed the game.
Dozens of miles behind Russian lines, a Ukrainian drone feed shows an unsuspecting Russian military truck idling. Then the feed cuts out as the drone slams into the vehicle. Itās a scene repeated over and over again on Ukrainian social media in recent weeks as the country leans into a new phase of its war against Russia.
The strikes, which have seen Ukrainian drones range almost 100 miles behind Russian lines, are part of a major campaign to starve Russian troops of supplies. And theyāre an important factor in spurring optimism that Ukraine finally is gaining the upper hand.
āThe situation is better now than it was a year agoāthis is one of the clear differences,ā said Rob Lee, a Eurasia expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) who regularly visits the front line.
Last year, Ukraineās military was struggling to fend off Russian attacks, a task made all the harder by frequent Russian strikes on Ukrainian logistics and a deep manpower shortage in the Ukrainian army.
Now, thanks in part to the strike campaignāalong with high Russian casualties, domestic discontent in Russia, and other factorsāUkraine appears more confident that it can end the war on favorable terms. On Monday, Kyrylo Budanov, a former top military commander and current chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said peace might be achievable by winter.
Ukraineās mid-range attack drones force Russia to either take expensive or time-wasting security precautions in how it delivers troops, food, munitions, and fuel, or else risk further losses. āItās going to make it more difficult for Russia to advance, because itās going to increase the cost for them,ā Lee said.
Ukraine is doubling down on the tactic. Strikes targeting Russians 12 miles or more from the front line have quadrupled since February, Zelensky said in May, calling it a āpriority.ā
Last week, Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said the ministry would boost strikes by offering cash to units that use them effectively in order for them to buy more drones, in an expansion of the militaryās āe-pointsā system, which rewards the highest-performing units with more resources.
āWe are launching a ālogistics lockdownā for the Russian army,ā Fedorov wrote. Russian channels on the social media app Telegram have warned of attacks across highways in occupied portions of Ukraine.
Fedorovās move to incentivize strikes holds promise, said Kateryna Bondar, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Still, she cautioned that it could end up with units pursuing points to the detriment of military goals. āThe strategic value of middle strike lies in [the] systemic degradation of a logistics network, not in individual platform kills ā yet a points-per-confirmed-destruction logic rewards the easily-reachable, easily-filmed target over the higher-value but harder-to-verify node,ā she wrote in an email.
Ukraine has had weapons with similar effects in the pastāchiefly rocket systems such as the U.S. Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, which has a range of around 40 miles and a payload of 200 pounds. Such systems were key in turning back a Russian advance in 2022, again by forcing Russian logistics to disperse.
However, the system had disadvantages: Each missile cost $168,000 and suffered from production constraints. The missiles are also jammable by Russia, and, because theyāre U.S.-made products, they are more vulnerable to U.S. restrictions on military aid.
Among the most prominent mid-range strike drones is the Hornet, produced by Perennial Autonomy, a company founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, an early investor in Ukrainian defense companies.
The droneās payload, at 10 pounds, is small but sufficient to destroy valuable trucks carrying supplies and boasts a range of over 62 miles. To beat Russian jamming, it uses a combination of Starlink satellite systems and some artificial intelligence in targeting.
While itās unclear how many Ukraine can produce, in 2025 Perennial Autonomy, under its previous corporate name of Swift Beat, signed a deal to produce āhundreds of thousands of drones,ā a figure that also includes other drone types produced by the company. The drone costs as little as $6,000, making it a cost-efficient weapon for cash-strapped Ukraine.
For larger targetsālike command posts or warehousesāUkraine also has drones like the FP-2, which can crash a payload of 440 pounds of explosives into a target over 200 miles away. Ukraine can produce FP-2 and its original, longer-range variant, the FP-1, at a collective rate of 200 per day, with the FP-2 costing $50,000 per drone.
Still, Russia has some options for neutralizing the impact of Ukraineās mid-range strike drones.
For one, Ukraineās use of the drones relies in part on sophisticated intelligence collection to help identify targets, with U.S. contributions playing a major role, said Kateryna Stepanenko, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank.
However, that also poses a vulnerability that Russia could seek to exploit. āWe will likely see some sort of cognitive warfare effort where the Kremlin will claim āweāre ready to negotiate if you cut [intelligence support],āā Stepanenko said. The United States briefly cut off intelligence support for Ukraine in March 2025, seemingly as a way to pressure Ukraine over negotiations with Russia, before quickly resuming it.
Russia can also work to boost its defense against such drones, which it currently lacks.
Ukraineās system for shooting down similar Russian drones points toward the complexity of the task. Ukraine reliably shoots down most Russian Shahed drones, one of the most common types of Russian drones used for striking behind Ukrainian lines.
To do so, however, Ukraine has had to build up both a complex system for tracking the drones, as well as invent new, semi-autonomous interceptor drones, in addition to dedicated drone-hunter teams using machine guns in order to cover the over 700 miles of front line.
āIt will likely take [Russia] at least a year to figure out how to protect against Ukrainian mid-range strike capabilities,ā Stepanenko said.
āIām not prepared to say that Russians will never find some sort of a countermeasure,ā she said. āBut I do think that itās going to take them time.ā
Jonathan Joss was an Indigenous, gay man who was murdered on the first day of Pride month as well as Indigenous History Month. He died protecting his trans husband. Homophobia and racism arenāt marks of the past, and this is a heart breaking reminder of that.
Today is the anniversary of the death of Jonathan Joss (King of the Hill, Parks and Rec). Jonathan Joss was an Indigenous, gay man who died protecting his transgender husband, on the first day of Pride month. Today we remember him and how he protected his family.
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Once I said "My gender is whatever's funniest at the time" and my coworker stops dead in his tracks, turns slowly and says "So are your pronouns honk/honk?" killing me instantly
I was talking to a friend I knew before I transitioned about my new relationship (my first one ever!) and I said "Yeah, I think I only indentified as aro/ace most of my life because I didn't have lesbian as an option" and he looked me dead in the eye and said "Oh? Why not? ...Ohhh"
Then he said "You know, I completely forgot you weren't always this way. Femininity really suits you" and let me tell you I started tearing up
Of course, not ten minutes later I mentioned that I had to relearn how to sing and he said "oh no, what happened?" so he might just be a little slow
Update on that friend: a bunch of people sent me "he's a little confused, but he's got the spirit" gifs in response to that story. I can tell you now with certainty that she definitely has the spirit, and she's not confused anymore
hi!! sorry if you've been asked this question before, but as someone who wants to be a lawyer, how do you deal with defending people that morally you really don't agree with? thanks!
I get a lot of versions of this question, and I answer it seriously every time, because itās both important and not important at all. Anyone who asks respectfully gets my whole ass answer.
Itās just not really about that. My job isnāt about defending the idea of hurting someone else. Itās about stopping the state from inflicting further hurt, torture, pain. Itās about pushing back for some fairness against a monumentally stacked system. And itās about stuff thatās normal human stuff that counts as crime for some reason.
Yeah, itās hard to do a sex abuse case. Sometimes the images stick around and it bothers me. But honestly? Mostly those cases have real plausible theories of innocence or theyāre cases that I will lose because the evidence is there, and the question is not whether the perpetrator will go to jail but how long.
Those cases are so rare, though. I get so much pointless bullshit. Felony of a teen taking momās car without permission. Two kids that try to break into a car and get so scared by the alarm that they run away. Trespassing on dadās house because his new girlfriend wants you to stop coming around. Itās just human stuff, and the violence of the state is not necessary or helpful.
I also reject the idea of punishment completely. The state has a responsibility to stop people from hurting other people again. But inflicting pain doesnāt do it, we know this by now. So I argue for mercy and for real solutions to real problems. Iām here to build a future, not get caught up with doing violence to someone because of the past.
So yeah, sometimes itās hard, but mostly my conscience is dead clear: Iām not responsible for the crime. The damage has been done. I want to start the healing process, and I want it for everyone involved. When thatās not possible, I just want to tell the authorities they donāt get to just Do What They Want.
The more I do this job, the more I am a genuine pacifist who is against violence in all forms, and actually I donāt see a contradiction between that and what I do for a living. State violence is a pervasive evil that tears apart families, communities, and countries, and itās far more damaging and awful than any individual crime. The average prosecutor has more blood on their hands than a serial killer, but itās invisible: people who died in jail, who froze to death on the street, who were shot in a drug deal. Their violence begets violence.
When I get blood on my hands, itās because I put my hands over the wounds and try to stop the flow. Iām okay with it.
Also: people donāt ask doctors how they can stand to treat bad people. Why ask me?
#i find people have such an inherent misunderstanding of the roles of defense attorneys (understandably but still)#in that most people i talk to seem to be envisioning me personally defending the right of people to commit crimes or that like. Crime Is#Good Actually#āyeah this person did X but they should never face any consequences ever please and thank you judgeā#(and people think this would WORK??? a different tangent on a lack of legal education and cop shows being awful etc)#meanwhile i am simply protecting peopleās rights. yes even those peopleās#idk i could write my own post but op Gets It and also a prosecutor just filed the DUMBEST motion ive ever seen and i need to respond to that#instead lmao (via @anixit26)
The number of people who respond to my post about how even the guiltiest person in the world deserves rights with "but not [crime I think makes you undeserving of rights]!" is truly insane. People really truly think that being accused of a crime makes you irredeemably evil and protecting the rights of those accused means you are also evil.
The energy-efficient desalination system produces fresh water without chemical additives and transforms leftover salts into useful materials
Desalination is the process of generating freshwater from brackish or saltwater, usually through the process of reverse osmosis. While this can be a very useful tool in water shortages, it also has some pretty huge drawbacks--reverse osmosis requires a lot of energy, requires chemical treatment of the water, and produces concentrated brine as a waste product which can be harmful to aquatic ecosystems.
Researchers have recently discovered a new way to perform desalination using solar energy, which doesn't require chemical inputs and collects waste salt instead of producing brine. Concentrating the waste salt in a solid form instead of brine means that it can later be processed to extract valuable minerals like lithium.
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My most millennial opinion is that the art of Rick Rolling is lost. A Rick Roll isn't any time you put Never Gonna Give You Up in someone face. Anyone can do that in the middle of any video. Lazy. There's no art in it.
The target that gets rick rolled has to be an active participant by clicking a hyperlink. The game teaches you an important lesson o internet safety: 'before you click a link, look at the url that it's going to direct you to. Do you want to go there? Is the link malicious?'
A true master Rick Roller made people so eager to see something that they would click the link immediately and skip their usual caution.
Unfortunately, recent studies show that approximately 35% of Gen Z internet users and 67% of Gen Alpha users don't even know what Rickrolling is. It truly is a dying art. One of the greatest cultural losses of the 2020s.
Further context: Durham city council (Reform UK) cut funding and support for Pride. The Durham Miner's Association and other trade unions raised enough money for Durham Pride 2026 to go ahead - a direct call back to when Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) raised money for mining communities when Margaret Thatcher seized union funding during the miner strikes of 1984-85.
At the 1985 Labour party meet, the motion to support LGBT rights as a party was passed due to a block vote from mining unions.
Stephen Guy, the chair of the Durham Minersā Association, said that when it became apparent Durham Pride was under threat, he took it upon himself to āencourage the trade union movement to step up and do the right thing, and stand shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT+ community [ā¦] They not only raised funds for us, but came to our communities, uplifted our spirits when they were down, and showed their solidarity.ā
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āBecause the truth is, tech doesnāt have an image problem. It doesnāt have a message problem. It has an intention problem. Whatās wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasnāt successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. Whatās wrong is that heās trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product thatās designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isnāt that you havenāt told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.ā
Since you donāt respect my opinion anyway, quit pestering me to fill out a survey after every single consumer experience. I keep wondering who looks at these surveys. Is the CEO sitting in his wood-paneled office, reading each individual response on an old-timey stock ticker? If so, you can keep doing this. If not, I rate this experience zero stars out of infinity.