UK government advises deleting emails to save water
1–10 of 158 posts
Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water
#2Ok I'm not a physicist but surely long term storage of pictures and emails does not actively generate heat in a data-center?
Encouraging people to log on and delete old pics and emails is only going to create more heat as servers have to spin up access to stuff.
The real culprit of data-center heat usage is surely AI
Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water
#3> Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems.
Also the UK government:
> Taken together, the 50 measures will make the UK irresistible to AI firms looking to start, scale, or grow their business. It builds on recent progress in AI that saw £25 billion of new investment in data centres announced since the government took office last July.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-sets-out-b...
Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water
#4That's pretty funny. It shows the slight gap in understanding about what "data centres" do, mixed with the classic advice to "don't print this email" to save power/trees.
Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water
#5Someone explain to me why this matters please. The emails (passively) stored on HDD/SSDs in a data centre wouldn't be the main contributor to heat generation and the needs for cooling.
What would probably increase heat and the need for cooling more meaningfully is actual data transfer and processing (i.e, reading and sending emails). But even so, compared to all the other internet activities (streaming video, gaming, AWS/Azure/GCP).. it's probably a drop in the bucket.
Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water
#6Archive link in case the original page is updated: https://archive.is/sAOtC
Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water
#7Not a single mention of the lack of reservoir capacity, with the last major reservoir built in 1992. Population has grown by 12 million / 21% since.
So turn the tap off while brushing your teeth and delete your old emails, and all will be fine.
Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water
#8Ok I'm not a physicist but surely long term storage of pictures and emails does not actively generate heat in a data-center? Encouraging people to log on and delete old pics and emails is only going to create more heat as servers have to spin up access to stuff. The real culprit of data-center heat usage is surely AI
Storage on spinning disks does. Storage on ssds does as well but should be much less. Cold backups don't. Now, the idea that people can just delete their cat pictures to meaningful impact cooling in the dcs is just garbage, particularly now when most of the energy used in the dcs goes to gpus
Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water
#9Ok I'm not a physicist but surely long term storage of pictures and emails does not actively generate heat in a data-center? Encouraging people to log on and delete old pics and emails is only going to create more heat as servers have to spin up access to stuff. The real culprit of data-center heat usage is surely AI
In theory if you delete enough you can power off a server.
In practice the random storage and delayed deletion makes this an absurdly asynchronous event.
In reality the UK just doesn't have that many consumer data centres, they mostly serve business. There's not likely even that much AI compute in the UK (yet).
The actual reason (as said elsewhere is water storage planning).
Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water
#10Knowing the UK government it wouldn't surprise me if we start getting regular emails or text messages reminding us to regularly delete our old emails and text messages to save water