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UK government advises deleting emails to save water

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Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#31

Post by dylan604 »

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 fresh water issue. I'm assuming some sort of closed system where evaporation isn't an issue to leave deposits. Saltwater would also have a lower freezing temp, so you could chill the water cooler than fresh as well.

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#32

Post by mytailorisrich »

stoobs wrote: post #27
sna1l wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not anywhere near as much as the stereotypes/memes/etc would have you believe. Most of the issue though is the water companies funnelling revenue to shareholders and not maintaining the network, so they lose an awful lot of water through leaking pipes. The privatisation of critical utilities and infrastructure was such a stupid move. That said, the recommendation is nonsense, emails and photos make up a tiny fraction…

Currently, because of the warming climate, the UK is actually getting more and more rain. But the problem is that rainfall is also getting more irregular, so it rains a lot then not at all for longer than before.

Overall this is "just" a question of infrastructure, which means long term investments that have dried up (pun intended!) decades ago.

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#33

Post by dylan604 »

milliams wrote: post #4

That'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.

"No trees were harmed by this email, although, some electrons were slightly bothered" or some such was something I remember seeing in response

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#34

Post by jl6 »

Data centers don't really "use" water; it gets released back into the environment one way or another. What matters is whether the data center is in a water-stressed region. According to the article:

> The remaining areas are normal: Hertfordshire, London, Kent, Devon and Cornwall.

So maybe the advice should be to migrate your workloads from regional data centers into London data centers.

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#35

Post by dylan604 »

ryao wrote: post #30
philipwhiuk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Install a rain butt to collect rainwater to use in the garden. This assumes water is inconsistent. Once the rain butt is full, there's no more benefit. And then in a long dry season once it's emptied, it's not saving any more. > Fix a leaking toilet – leaky loos can waste 200-400 litres a day. If you're on a water meter you're already incentivised to fix this - so a better answer is water meters. > Use water from t…

> Assuming you're using waste water, which most people won't. My household (in the US) uses water from cooking rice to water plants, but I cannot imagine many UK households cook rice to be able to do that.

How? When I use water to cook rice, the rice absorbs that water. That's kind of how you know it's done. How much water are you using when cooking rice that there's some left over to use in the plants?

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#37

Post by lenerdenator »

Given that emails could contain adult material, and that you need to register yourself to view adult materials in the UK, what is one to do if they want to delete emails in their web-based email service of choice but hasn't registered?

"Oi oi, stop right there, in the name of His Majesty the King. 'ave you a deleting loicence?"

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#38

Post by fsflover »

dylan604 wrote: post #33
milliams wrote: post #4

That'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.

"No trees were harmed by this email, although, some electrons were slightly bothered" or some such was something I remember seeing in response

Also "this email consists of 100% recycled electrons".

Re: UK government advises deleting emails to save water

#40

Post by benjojo12 »

lenerdenator wrote: post #37

Given that emails could contain adult material, and that you need to register yourself to view adult materials in the UK, what is one to do if they want to delete emails in their web-based email service of choice but hasn't registered? "Oi oi, stop right there, in the name of His Majesty the King. 'ave you a deleting loicence?"

Email has a specific carve out on the online safety act
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