'We used acid to sabotage Microsoft hyperscale data centre construction'

OsrsNeedsf2P

I expect this article to top the HN page, since both people aghast and supportive of the sabotage will upvote

Aunche

What exactly are they trying to accomplish? I doubt they would just abandon the project. They would just redo the concrete which would emit even more emissions.

exabrial

Right, all they're going to do is rip the concrete out and repour it, causing even more damage to the environment (concrete production and curing is unbelievably C02 intensive) I don't disagree we shouldn't be expanding power consumption unless we've moved the vast majority (>90%) of the load off fossil fuels, but this certainly didn't help anything.

beanjuiceII

bring back asylums

nick__m

Ruining concrete seems to go against extinction rebellion main goal. According to the World Economic Forum the co2 released during ciment production account for 8% of global co2 emissions, datancenter are estimated to contribute between 1 and 2 percent.... Math is not theirs forte!

Zsfe510asG

That is a good excuse for Microslop to address the overcapacity and stop building more data centers. KOSPI is down again.

luxuryballs

That's a pretty solid name, despite not agreeing with their methods here.

j45

Is hyperscale a branding term?

cannonpr

They threw balloons… over a fence, while they like drama, this is unlikely to have had any effect on a cured structural slab. I doubt they even managed to get industrial strength peroxide.

bpodgursky

An obvious point, but if Europe wants sovereign onshore AI, they have to get these people under control. It's easy for Microsoft to simply build EU-serving datacenters elsewhere.

appreciatorBus

> amid growing worker opposition lol this is not "worker opposition", these are the antics of over educated downwardly mobile elites.

__MatrixMan__

Companies at this scale only speak existential threat. If you can't pose one, they don't even know you exist. I question whether this made enough of a dent to be noticed, but it's a start.

namuol

I suspect many HN commenters would be surprised to learn just how much the general public are on the side of these activists, condoning if not outright applauding their actions.

mitthrowaway2

If they really wanted to have an impact on data center construction, they'd sneakily spill some silicone oil in semiconductor fab cleanrooms.

thyristan

> There’s an acute water shortage in The Netherlands right now. When I open BlueSky, everyone is talking about water being increasingly wasted on cooling data centres. And for what? To generate more AI shit. Ah, the water-use BS again. In Europe, other than in the US, water use for data centers is strictly regulated. You cannot just do open-loop cooling and use a tap-water -> chiller -> sewer line. Things have to be closed-loop so there is no water consumption beyond the initial filling. The only thing you could get away with is to mist your outdoor units on the one or two hottest days per year. But even that is getting more and more restricted.

cryo32

I hate all this weird activist stuff. It's pointless. Someone just pays for it and the problem is fixed. If you want to sabotage their hyperscale data centre construction, you probably should do it from the inside. Get the skills, get a job, get to the top and do a fucking terrible job of it like MSFT's C-suite.

bix6

> In recent years, people from Extinction Rebellion Netherlands have focused heavily on large scale disruptive action of ‘business as usual’. Everyone talking about how stupid and ineffective this is. The whole point is to interrupt business as usual to draw attention to the stupidity of our continued head in the sand path. The damage (or lack thereof) is largely irrelevant. The fact a regular person is risking jail to try and stop business as usual is the entire point. It starts with one person.

tavavex

The point people bring up about concrete CO2 use is absurd. To me it screams of refusing to talk about the debate the protestors are having and instead trying to find any minor nit to pick, which then lets you declare that they're imperfect and therefore not even worth discussing. In the grand scheme of things, the concrete use here is completely unnoticeable. They're not causing extreme ecological damage here. This is a protest that does something about the problem they're complaining about, slows down their enemies and brings a lot of publicity to their act of protest. Without making a value judgement, this is much better than what a lot of other protests achieve in terms of direct effectiveness. Frankly, the CO2 retort can be reused for almost any protest that destroys or defaces something, because the work to undo or replace that probably creates emissions.