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The UK government saying "delete old emails" to save water. 🤦♂️
Most emails average about 50k of storage even for someone who gets a lot of attachments, and will have exactly zero effect on data center consumption.
"Don't use cryptocurrency" and "don't use generative AI" would of course be thousands of times more effective.
1. I don't use AI
2. I don't use cryptocurrency
3. None of my emails are in the cloud
4. None of my pictures are in the cloud (there may be pictures, but they aren't mine)
5. I have no leaks, I don't leave taps running I still apply the water saving rules from my childhood
How do I save water again ?
1. I don't use AI
2. I don't use cryptocurrency
3. None of my emails are in the cloud
4. None of my pictures are in the cloud (there may be pictures, but they aren't mine
5. I have no leaks, I don't leave taps running I still apply the water saving rules from my childhood
How do I save water again ?
Appreciate all the boosts, I'm muting this for myself to save my mentions.
All the best, y'all.
What's next?
- Shower less for Microsoft?
- Don't water your plants for Google?
- Buy bottled water for Open AI?
Someone here has to get their priorities right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer
I run a bitcoin node on an old server xeon e3 1245v2. Every time there's a new transaction system load spikes.
So far, there have been no btc donations, so I'll probably shut it down again.
It requires over 1TB of HDD space, and when you're running a lightning node, even more
50k per email
I’ve got 10,000 emails sitting there.
Uk population 60million
= 30,000 TB ish
Let’s say cloud energy use is 64kWh per TB per year (figures vary wildly, possibly pessimistic)
= 1.92 TWh
It’s not nothing - data at rest is going to be a fair chunk of the overall data centre energy (and by extension water) budget.
(I *hope* I’ve got all my zeroes in the right places)
Another reply to this had some clear data on power usage per stored TB. Given that almost all email at this point will be on some kind of hierarchical storage with cold data being highly compressed and/or on tape, at most it's about .5W/TB.
For your 30 PB figure, that's generating capacity of around 15 kW needed, or less than one smallish wind turbine.
A forestry business in Canada told the utility it would be using vast amounts of electricity because it was expanding into crypto to print money.
The utility said no.
Government said no.
Courts agreed. No.
So say we all.
HTML email in general is a bugbear of mine, and HTML signatures with embedded graphics is an even bigger one. They make an email which would otherwise be less than a kilobyte take up 600kb or more.
On the other hand, I take your point. It's a drop in the ocean (no pun intended) if your aim is to save water. :-)
mails don't generate a shit load of money out of thin air, so fuck'em
just keep using that sweet sweet #AI
The longer our government is in power, the more I feel they're greenwashing us.
It is fascism, authoritarianism, genocide - all in the cause of capitalism or wealth inequality.
There are so many better ways to pay outside of the credit card system than crypto. Any of the payment apps are superior.
Besides, the blockchain never forgets. If you want to hide transactions, it's a pretty rotten choice.
Why? Eventually one bank told me: the issue was that the Ukrainian bank could not rule out having customers on occupied territory, and sanctions were implemented at a bank, not account, level.
Blockchain is a ledger of all transactions, yes, but coins like Monero are specifically designed for privacy and can be obfuscated well.
That's about the only way I can justify it.
But our whole economy is now based on cryptocurrency scams and generative AI bullcrap!
It reminds me of the DotCom bubble, ... shortly before it imploded.
Storage is cheap, spyware is resource wasting
:)
So that would put the storage of the average persons entire archive of old emails (say at most 10 GB) at about 1 kWh per decade?
Being generous, many people may have even close to 100 GB of email.
At the same time, your estimate it looks like comes from spinning disks. Most email storage from large vendors is going to be on hierarchical storage so old stuff is going to be either extra compressed or on tape. And according to that presentation, the tape is .13W/TB.
So it *might* be 4-5 kWh/decade?
We could just round that up to "less than 1 kWh/year" in either case. Or roughly equivalent to reducing the thermostat setting by 0.001 degrees for heating, if I got the numbers right.
In fact, most llions of people signing on to hunt for old emails online, when they've probably been downloaded to your laptop, when sitting in a file consumes nothing.
This is ugly misdirection. And dumb.
Did I say dumb?
Make sure you recycle that plastic, too!
Or banning high-frequency trading.
@MichaelTBacon The #LabourParty has stated they want to "mainline #AI into the veins of the country" https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/13/uk_government_ai_plans/ and apparently labour is "four years on, Labour is the party of business" https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/keir-starmer-speech-at-labours-business-conference/ aiming to contrast leadership under the more left wing #JeremyCorbyn before #KeirStarmer's leftist purge
I think this is just setting up an future excuse when a freedom of information request is put forth for some ministerial emails, so they can just turn around and say it was "lost" as part of this "save water" directive. 🙄
Also - I'm pretty sure the energy usage of reviewing and deleting the emails and attachments will use more energy than just leaving them alone, where no computing power is needed.
The only way this actually saves energy is by preventing undesired AI ingestion of our personal emails &c
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