Slow reminder to delete old emails to save water in the United Kingdom.

This is just for other people before they comment: please respect that we prefer if you don't engage in a deep political discussion on this community. Our instance has other communities you are more than welcome to engage in more serious discussion in

!uk_politics@feddit.uk !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk

You lot are excellent, thank you very much for understanding!

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?

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.

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

Ok, as a non-native speaker, "rain butt" is funny.

Extended use leads to swamp ass.

Dumb American: A rain butt?

image search*

Ooohhhh. A rain butt.

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...
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.
A butt where you put your rain, duh.
A butt you "make it rain" on

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.

Equivalent of using paper straws to save the environment.

I don't use straws to save the environment, like a boss

The email data just sits on a drive, deleting it causes stuff to happen like drive head moving and deletion Or ssd electron and table manipulation. More energy is used in deletion.. Just leave them alone

Plays pass responsibility to end user card

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.