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You lot are excellent, thank you very much for understanding!
And this is why you should self host all personal data. I wish I had the capability and time to self host emails as well but can't have everything.
Data storage is a tiny, TINY fraction of a datacenter's power budget. That's just BS "blame the consumer" type of vapid advice from the start.
I mean, the biggest joke of this is Starmer has been enthusiastically promoting new datacenter construction
Vantage Data Centres – which is working to build one of Europe’s largest data centre campuses in Wales – plans to invest over £12 billion in data centres across the UK – creating over 11,500 jobs in the process.
Kyndryl – the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider and a leading IT consultancy – announces plans to create up to 1,000 AI-related jobs in Liverpool over the next three years. This new tech hub will share the government’s ambition to roll AI out across the country to help grow the economy and foster the next generation of talent.
Nscale – one of the UK’s leading AI companies – has announced a $2.5 billion investment to support the UK’s data centre infrastructure over the next three years. They have also signed a contract to build the largest UK sovereign AI data centre in Loughton, Essex by 2026.
How the fuck is deleting your email going to compete with the national government throwing billions in subsidies after these AI behemoths?
Ok, as a non-native speaker, "rain butt" is funny.
Extended use leads to swamp ass.
Equivalent of using paper straws to save the environment.
I don't use straws to save the environment, like a boss
Evaporative cooling is not being used on email datacenters
The problem is data centers use potable water in their heat exchangers and in the process turn it into non-potable water.
However, this is as stupid as when Johnson recommended buying a new kettle to save on energy bills.
A new fridge, washing machine, dishwasher... I can understand that.
But a kettle is nearly 100% efficient at using electricity to turn cold water into boiling water.
And spending the money to get (I guess) an insulated kettle (is that a thing?!) to get closer to 100% efficient is not going to save you any money.
Fucking clown show
Anything using heat exchangers is going to be closed loop so the water use use there is negligible. It's just the same water being pumped in a loop. Chiller systems are not the issue here and should actually be encouraged because they make far more efficient use of refrigerant than conventional cooling systems.
Yes, there are loops of water.
But evaporative cooling is used by less sustainable data centers to release the heat from the cooling loops.
Which is what UK government is concerned about: Unsustainable use of water by data centers.
UK government classifies data centers as Critical National Infrastructure. Which means they have some responsibility for their uptime and security, but also their sustainability and environmental impact.
The rapid growth of AI data centers with their massive power consumption and cooling requirements are not included in UKs water planning and projections.
So, that's what this report is about.
And the UK government is recommending the public should delete old emails and pictures to reduce load on data centers.
Which is the kind of out-of-touch misinterpretation (or misrepresentation) of the information in the report thats inline with conclusion of "buy a new kettle" from a report that probably said "old fridges can be inefficient".
I was responding to this exchange.
Specifically not talking about evaporative cooling.
Gotcha. I don't feel I was refuting you, just adding context as to why the UK government is sending the wrong message.
I might have been confuddled and wandered from my intentions.
I think we agree.
Data centers aren't the problem.
LLM being rammed into everything and requiring insane resources is the problem.
And the UK is blurring/confusing the point, and telling people to delete emails
I have this strange feeling that the people chosen to head the National Drought Group have as their only qualification for the job having attended the same public school as the Government Minister who came up with it...
The place I work requires that all videos taken on the job be kept for 20 years, but sure I'll take a few hours of my day and delete old emails. Great.
Well you have to keep old emails for at least a few years for GDPR reasons. Frankly it's all nonsense anyway, data storage does not require cooling or active power so you can keep as much as you want without worrying about the environmental impact because there is essentially zero environmental impact.
All the other advice on there is good but whoever wrote that section is an idiot.
This is like the paper straws, people would not believe what shit companies and millionaires do that make your work INSIGNIFICANT to the overall outcome, yes, we should always be careful but holy shit is this ever asinine
Dumb American: A rain butt?
*image search*
Ooohhhh. A rain butt.
Good thing people in the UK already know that term, since it sounds like the kind of thing they'd need to upload their ID to look up online.
My dad, entirely innocently (according to him) went looking for some new, larger water butts for their new house and went straight to Google for "large butts".
I think he knew what he was doing.
Also know as a water butt...
A butt you "make it rain" on
A butt where you put your rain, duh.
Does deleting emails or photos actually clear up space in data centers? I imagine the sweet sweet data is still accessible by the company but just not for you.
Stagnant data doesn't do anything in those data centres, though. If you were downloading and uploading data all the time, sure. Don't do that. But deleting old data actively uses power as the computers will then have to go and fetch that data and then erase it.
Plays pass responsibility to end user card
A casual place for banter and anything that doesn't fit in anywhere else.
Have chat and a natter. Talk about anything and everything that's not political!
Keep it casual.
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