Ade

Probably the energy used in composing, publishing and (by three people) viewing this thread has just outweighed the savings tho. 🥴

... and then data centres don't need to add more hardware which may need more cooling sooner than they otherwise would. Big IF. Probably not worth the effort for the amounts saved.

About the only theoretical benefit I can imagine is that IF you (and everyone else) delete your entirely unnecessary and trivial cloud-backed pics of funny signs, baking instructions too small to read, accidental screenshots, etc., there would be room for stuff that _might_ be more important...

Because they haven't actually explained how it will save water, or why the public should be responsible for this. Probably because it won't, at least to any measurable degree.

4) Oh ghod, the messaging is so bad on this because, as well as all the know-alls scoffing about hard drives as above, it will be reported as "Kier Starmer wants you to delete your kids baby photos so he doesn't have to force Thames Water to fix their infrastructure!"

3) Does it use water to cool it? In the UK? Dunno, maybe, conceivably, in some scenarios perhaps. Negligible amounts per byte tho, I'd guess. Nothing compared to genAI compute demands. Infinitesimal next to the amounts lost by water companies like Thames Water.

It could be on multiple devices, across the world, compressed, cached, replicated, dedup'ed, who knows.
2) Just because you aren't accessing it doesn't mean it's "inactive". Cloud storage might be shuffling it around, moving it between tiers, repacking it - who knows.

Re. the deleting emails & pics to save water thing: Yes, probably arrant bollocks with at best barely measurable impacts but...
1) No, your old data isn't stored on an "idle hard drive" in a data centre. It's not like your digital grot collection at home.

It's a very rare publisher's misprint of the Dale Carnegie title.

Swear this govt has a large book called "How To Make Countless Enemies Needlessly And Influence Nothing" that they consult for all their comms & policy decisions.

😁 But they might make you sad and then you might cry, and then you'd need a drink. Or, you know, some other fluid replacement.

No, a DC will never shrink but reduced demand would slow the rate of storage expansion (= more hardware & cooling). But pics & emails would be so negligible and the effort so disproportionate that it wouldn't make any impact. And like you say, no impact on compute which is the major consumer.

Oh ghod, over on twitter people are asking ChatGPT et al how much water will be saved by deleting emails just to prove a point. That'll really help, thanks.

The only (deeply theoretical) angle I can see is that freed storage might slow the rate of DC expansion to hold all the new AI crap.
But "old photos" sounds callous - what they mean is all those random phone snaps that get saved to cloud unnecessarily. Ain't nobody got time to fillet those out.

My cultural awakening: a Steve Carell film made me realise I was being abused After my dad died, my mum and I endured the coercive control of her new partner for years. It was The Way Way Back that freed us both

This is an excellent, extremely funny film even if you don't have a coercive asshole in your life. Shout out to the rest of the cast too, inc. (on top form as always) Alison Janney and Sam Rockwell.
www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Album cover carrying the name Auri in faux-Nordic runes.

Imagine going into a record shop to ask for this (pre-Internet).
"Have you got the new album by... 'Aort'...? 'Fart'...??"

To make a broader point about "the left has no answer to young men not getting any", it strikes me as the same basic argument as "the left has no answer to small boats" or "the left has no answer to trans women dominating women's sports". Yeah, we have no answer because those problems are made up.

Expecting Labour themselves to know the answer to that when I wouldn't trust any of these cunts to work a CD player.

Google search result for "how many cards in a standard deck"

Irrationally annoyed by one of tonight's pub quiz questions. "52 cards plus two extra Jokers" - so that's FIFTY-FOUR, right? 52 + 2 cards = 54, yes?? Not 52? It's like asking how many fingers you have: "Eight... oh, and two thumbs." Die in a ditch, pedants.

Old enough to remember plans under the last Labour govt for using this as extra platform space to expand Piccadilly.

A weary knight slouched on a rock next to a skeleton. The caption reads: me and the one guy on Reddit that had the same problem as me 10 years ago.

"edit: never mind, i figured it out"

If you protest against environmental collapse you get arrested.

If you protest against an ongoing genocide you get arrested.

If you try and burn down a hotel housing asylum seekers you get a pat on the back and told you are correct.

Labour are a fascist party.

Petition: Repeal the Online Safety Act We want the Government to repeal the Online Safety act.

But but but all the age verifying programmes promise they won't divulge to anybody! Mostly! Kind of! A bit...

Anyway spread it around: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/72...

New Age Assurance requirement dialogue in Bluesky settings

Translation: UK Govt wants to know if you fuck.

Our Lives - Series 9: The Prisoner of Portmeirion In a dreamy Welsh village built like an Italian town, fans gather to celebrate a TV show – and something much deeper about story, place and belonging.

This is a lovely programme, and a perfect intro to the place and the show for noobs: Our Lives, Series 9: The Prisoner of Portmeirion: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002fxw0
Also: bonus Derren Nesbitt! 🙌

we produce tonnes of marketable, valuable, productive stuff that we could sell to the world — like university education, and television programmes, for example — but the government has no interest in improving the conditions for making and selling these things

Me: i’m Autistic

Them: Oh you take things literally

Me: No that’s kleptomania

And this was with a vehicle that worked perfectly fine with an older Nord CE2.

Re. Android Auto & hub: *nothing* else worked, inc. different cables, settings changes, connection order, etc. The USB connection is so temperamental.

The Nord CE5 would have been ideal if it had NFC, but that's a deal breaker as I use contactless payments a lot.
Overall, OnePlus have dropped a bollock here.