Delete Emails - Save Water?

[andyb28]

I am not even shocked anymore at stuff like this

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/uk-gove...

[rodericb]

ha ha, note that it's YOU who has to delete your old emails, which is a spit into the ocean compared to what computing power the government is consuming every second of every day.....

[Lucas Ayde]

Don't worry - the government will have copies of any 'interesting' ones.

[Sheets Tabuer]

Is this so they can make space for all the monitoring they're doing?

[Brainpox]

Excellent, that'll help the car washes and patio cleaners stay open a bit longer.

[mmm-five]

Ban every MP from drinking at a subsidised bar in the HOC/HOP - and that should save millions of gallons of water and jiggawatts of energy (from the production/processing/transporting of the beverages) - and reduce the tax bill from them!

[Gary C]

Just ban crypto use.

[andyb28]

The biggest problem I have with it is that freeing up space on servers hard drives will not make any difference in the cooling of the server. If anything, the CPU involved in people deleting stuff will increase CPU.

Secondly, I have been to most of the datacentres in the UK and they have all been air cooled.

We are govererned by idiots with no industry experience.

[skyebear]

What about if I share a bath with my computer - will that save water?

[Xenoous]

skyebear said:

What about if I share a bath with my computer - will that save water?

A toaster might...

[JoshSm]

They're concerned (and stupid) enough to publish something like this, while also pushing through new datacenter construction as CNI.

So do they think it's a problem or not?

I guess the answer is it's just morons, all the way down.

[geeks]

This is up there with "when are you going to stop using algorithms?"

[Mr Whippy]

Wtf?

I assume these data centres are closed loop, like a car radiator?

Ie, they don’t just pump water through and down a drain

Utter fking morons.


The fact they can even fall for this is disturbing. If in doubt say nothing.




Just reading, in dry environments open loop might be used because the extra humidity isn’t an issue.

Wtf, put it on a river. Or next to the sea.

Just evaporating off drinking water into the atmosphere does seem utterly bonkers, I’d hope we don’t do that in the UK, and if we do, what dipst gave that the go ahead?

Edited by Mr Whippy on Thursday 14th August 15:17

[98elise]

Mr Whippy said:

Wtf?

I assume these data centres are closed loop, like a car radiator?

Ie, they don’t just pump water through and down a drain

Utter fking morons.

If they are air conditioned then it's likely the chillers are cooled by water, and the water is cooled by evaporation in a cooling tower. In that case yes they are using water.

They could be also air cooled, but the few I've worked on have have been water/cooling tower


Edited to answer your edit

Mr Whippy said:

Just reading, in dry environments open loop might be used because the extra humidity isn’t an issue.

Wtf, put it on a river. Or next to the sea.

Just evaporating off drinking water into the atmosphere does seem utterly bonkers, I’d hope we don’t do that in the UK, and if we do, what dipst gave that the go ahead?

Edited by Mr Whippy on Thursday 14th August 15:17

Thats how a large proportion of industrial A/C works, not just data centres.

You can use river water (Shell Centre in London does) but that has its own issues. You're now having to deal with all sorts of debris running through your heat exchangers, and you're dumping additional heat into the river.

Edited by 98elise on Thursday 14th August 17:17

[motco]

andyb28 said:

I am not even shocked anymore at stuff like this

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/uk-gove...

I can hear Justin Rowlatt in my head with his accusatory tone "Climate experts say..."

[Mr Whippy]

98elise said:

Mr Whippy said:

Wtf?

I assume these data centres are closed loop, like a car radiator?

Ie, they don’t just pump water through and down a drain

Utter fking morons.

If they are air conditioned then it's likely the chillers are cooled by water, and the water is cooled by evaporation in a cooling tower. In that case yes they are using water.

They could be also air cooled, but the few I've worked on have have been water/cooling tower


Edited to answer your edit

Mr Whippy said:

Just reading, in dry environments open loop might be used because the extra humidity isn’t an issue.

Wtf, put it on a river. Or next to the sea.

Just evaporating off drinking water into the atmosphere does seem utterly bonkers, I’d hope we don’t do that in the UK, and if we do, what dipst gave that the go ahead?

Edited by Mr Whippy on Thursday 14th August 15:17

Thats how a large proportion of industrial A/C works, not just data centres.

You can use river water (Shell Centre in London does) but that has its own issues. You're now having to deal with all sorts of debris running through your heat exchangers, and you're dumping additional heat into the river.

Edited by 98elise on Thursday 14th August 17:17

Well they're going to struggle justifying operation over people being able to drink water to survive and stay nice smelling.

This won't end well if datacentres can't find closed loop systems (or just dump it all to air)

Oooor, get this, bit out-field, stop using AI constantly for it's largely garbage outputs, at huge energy cost.

Ie, random googling, AI answers, with a footnote, might be wrong. No st. How much water and energy did that just cost us all?

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-misinformation-llm-bu...

[rodericb]

The one thing which the Toms Hardware article didn't really do that well was to direct people to the press release:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/national-drough...

Maybe it was someone clever who thought they stick some outrage bait in there (and right at the end) so people will read the press release but reading through, it seems that it's pretty much long-term mismanagement which has resulted in water infrastructure which leaks like a sieve!

[andyb28]

rodericb said:

The one thing which the Toms Hardware article didn't really do that well was to direct people to the press release:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/national-drough...

Maybe it was someone clever who thought they stick some outrage bait in there (and right at the end) so people will read the press release but reading through, it seems that it's pretty much long-term mismanagement which has resulted in water infrastructure which leaks like a sieve!

Reminds me of the Ricky Gervais safe sex leaflet. Its home time, they wanted 1 more for the list.

[bad company]

Gary C said:

Just ban crypto use.

Excellent idea.

[Discendo Discimus]

I used to manage the install of adiabatic (water) air conditioning systems in data centers.
They work by wetting a large "pad" *basically a big sponge) and passing air over it to cool via evaporation.

The amount of water they use is astronomical, I remember BT really kicking off when they first realised.
DX or mechanical cooling is closed loop and better, but worse for the environment and more expensive.

Asking us to delete our emails to save water when systems like this exist, not to mention the amount of water that is currently leaking out of our out-dated sewers and water supplies is an absolute joke.