Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UK government advises deleting emails to save water

gov.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 158 posts

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#121

Post by dylan604 »

ryao wrote: post #101
dylan604 wrote: post #31

I just heard this while driving, and I couldn't stop laughing at how confident the lady was in this being a solution. The storage pools will not suddenly no longer be needed because people stop syncing their devices to the cloud. It will just be used by something else. One question I had is what would replacing fresh water with saltwater be viable? We have endless amounts of saltwater that would solve the wasting fre…

I see a few obvious problems: 1. A closed system cannot exhaust heat via evaporative cooling, which would defeat the purpose. 2. Many datacenters are no where near salt water. 3. There are likely reliability issues that would need to be overcome and it is simply cheaper to use fresh water.

> 2. Many datacenters are no where near salt water.

If only we had a way of moving water around from places where it was plentiful to places that are not. Seriously though, this is a limitation? Vegas is no where near water, and that didn't stop it from being.

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#122

Post by FirmwareBurner »

ViktorRay wrote: post #82
dbushell wrote: post #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/govern…

When George Orwell wrote 1984 it wasn’t just the Soviet Union he was criticizing. He was also satirizing some of the most absurd parts of British political culture too. Doublethink wasn’t just part of Soviet political culture. It was part of British political culture and clearly still is based on what you just posted.

There's a reason 1984, V for Vendetta and all such stories come from the UK.

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#123

Post by roryirvine »

AvAn12 wrote: post #39

Serious question. Is there any technology to capture the excess thermal energy from data centers and run some of it back into the grid? Or drive some kind of desalination process? Or do anything else useful with this “surplus” heat energy?

It's low-grade heat, so isn't worth much.

If you're going to be doing cogeneration on-site, it can be worth considering a Combined Heating, Cooling, and Power system - but the benefits tend to be fairly marginal.

In the future, there's a possibility of extending the "lights out datacentre" concept, and going fully automated. If you don't need to accommodate humans, you can run much higher temperature gradients.

With a gradient of around 200 K, for instance, you might expect to recover somewhere between 30-35% of your total energy input.

The UK actually ought to be a good choice for an experiment along those lines, given its long history with gas-cooled nuclear systems - sadly, the engineers involved have mostly all retired by now...

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#124

Post by plorkyeran »

dylan604 wrote: post #59
mytailorisrich wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "standard" method used by East Asians is to wash the rice several times until water is clear before cooking. This waste water is said to be good to water plants with and accounts for most of the water needed.

Interesting. I was unaware of that being a thing. Is there any point/benefit to that?

Rinsing the starch off the rice results in the cooked rice having a significantly different texture. It's how you get fluffy and not very sticky rice, which is typically what you want for east asian dishes. Some rice dishes specifically need you to not rinse the rice.

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#125

Post by plorkyeran »

sna1l wrote: post #13
mytailorisrich wrote: post #7

Not 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.

seriously wtf ... it rains all the time there :)

It is frequently damp, but that doesn't necessarily come with meaningful rainfall.

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#126

Post by lytfyre »

AvAn12 wrote: post #39

Serious question. Is there any technology to capture the excess thermal energy from data centers and run some of it back into the grid? Or drive some kind of desalination process? Or do anything else useful with this “surplus” heat energy?

Vancouver has a plant that harvests heat from sewage to provide district heating and hot water (https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/how-the-utili...) - you don't need super high temperatures for it to be useful. During construction there was talk that the Telus building downtown's in house data centre providing heat to the attached condo building (https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/servers/telus-warms-cond...) - I'm unsure if that actually went ahead.

Fundamentally, a limit on doing it at scale is that it for efficiency it requires the heat to be consumed near the production - and the bulk of large power intense data centres are not located in the midst of high density residential neighbourhoods with a demand for heat.

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#127

Post by jandrewrogers »

dylan604 wrote: post #121
ryao wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a few obvious problems: 1. A closed system cannot exhaust heat via evaporative cooling, which would defeat the purpose. 2. Many datacenters are no where near salt water. 3. There are likely reliability issues that would need to be overcome and it is simply cheaper to use fresh water.

> 2. Many datacenters are no where near salt water. If only we had a way of moving water around from places where it was plentiful to places that are not. Seriously though, this is a limitation? Vegas is no where near water, and that didn't stop it from being.

> Vegas is no where near water...

Las Vegas is very close to water. 90% of their water from the Hoover Dam, which is only 30 miles away. They don't pipe it in. Of course, this has created a severe risk of water shortages due to falling water levels on the Colorado River.

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#128

Post by reorder9695 »

pjc50 wrote: post #71
tomatocracy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fix a leaking toilet – leaky loos can waste 200-400 litres a day. I suspect this one dwarfs the others. It's why some water companies have campaigned to ban new dual flush toilets in the UK (there's a common failure mode for dual flush toilets which results in the tap to the cistern not properly switching off once it's full).

Ironically, dual flush toilets are supposed to be a water saving measure.

Have you ever actually pressed the smaller flush button?

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#129

Post by reorder9695 »

dylan604 wrote: post #59
mytailorisrich wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "standard" method used by East Asians is to wash the rice several times until water is clear before cooking. This waste water is said to be good to water plants with and accounts for most of the water needed.

Interesting. I was unaware of that being a thing. Is there any point/benefit to that?

Adam Ragusea has a good video on this topic: https://youtu.be/B3CHsbNkr3c
Post reply on HN