James Sutton
Robb Knight"Delete your old emails to save water" - the environment agency
you wot?!
Well this toot is popping off.
Buy my stickers https://rknight.me/shop/training-data
Alex Pardoe@robb Havenโt you heard, you canโt go viral on Mastodon ๐.
@digitalpardoe the reply guys in my mentions would disagree
Dave@robb @digitalpardoe I love the idea that somehow you didnโt know and was just surprised at the reason
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ป๐:~$ โ@robb I get an error page when going to that link. I think you have a space in the address
@kimschulz working here but hereโs the redirected link https://buy.stripe.com/eVqeVd3QI7703F22M42kw01
@kimschulz @robb thanks. the last part of your link is shown as "training- data" with a space after the dash. Might be my mastodon client acting up though if it considers it a too long line or something
Landsil@robb
Want to upload to the Redbubble so people from outside of the US can order?
Want to upload to the Redbubble so people from outside of the US can order?
@Landsil Iโm shipping them worldwide not just the US (Iโm not even in the US)
Dr. Christopher Kunz@robb Can I place a bulk order somehow? Thinking about pooling orders in the office to cut down shipping cost.
@christopherkunz I set up the link wrong so there's no quantity, but you can change what you pay so if do that for however many you want I can make sure you get what you've paid for
@robb I'm not too sure how many stickers you currently get for $10, the wording confuses me. Is it 2x"Training Data" & 2x"Piracy is a crime", or any other denomination?
Bjรถrn โ๏ธ StarkimarmIch nehm auch welche
@Starkimarm Ist notiert!
Allison Reinheimer@robb 10/10 marketing plan.
Alvan ๐ต๐ธ 
@robb This is peak, nice. Telling citizens to delete emails instead of regulating data centers redirecting rivers lovely๐
@robb people, this is the most number of favourites ive ever had on fediverse. Look mom I am on TV
Cory Dransfeldt 
@robb Surely that will offset the usage by data centers dedicated to AI
MarjorieR
Juhis@robb This is wild
Stephen Gower@robb lol "rain butt"
Jason Garber@robb Ah, yes, the old familiar โindividualize the problemโ playbook that worked extremely well with recycling programs in the 80s and 90s.
Andy Carolan 
Jon HenshawHilarious!
Alastair Temple@robb Also the Environment Agency: "We use โHello Lamp Postโ, an AI powered chat bot to support our work by sharing information with the public about our role, the benefits our assets provide, information specific to our flood defence projects, and to engage the public in conversations about resilience and adaptation to flooding and coastal change." - https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2025-02-10/30037
Jason 
@robb one deleted email could help provide a milliliter of water to thirsty children. Wonโt you think of the children?
Magical Cat@robb
The most annoying thing the authors forgot to mention that real sources of heating in these datacenters are not "light" tasks like serving emails and images, or from SSD disks where these photos stored untouched for years, but from overheating GPUs during training so called "AI models" and from processing these requests to the trained models...
The most annoying thing the authors forgot to mention that real sources of heating in these datacenters are not "light" tasks like serving emails and images, or from SSD disks where these photos stored untouched for years, but from overheating GPUs during training so called "AI models" and from processing these requests to the trained models...
AlisonW โฟ๐ณ๏ธโ๐โพ๏ธ@robb
My emails are stored on an SSD in the next room. No water is used for cooling them (but might be for cooling me).
My emails are stored on an SSD in the next room. No water is used for cooling them (but might be for cooling me).
Keir@robb also the fact that I expect most people's emails are stored abroad
Peter Burka@robb I wonder how much energy and water it takes to call up and then delete those old emails and photos that were being archived on spun-down discs in glacier storage.
Alison Meeks@robb I literally store on my own system. Get stuffed and bugger off with these freaking AI data centres.
Andrew@robb itโs ok I also sometimes confuse emails and fish
"Mediocre Bunny" Evelyn
Flipper ๐ฌ๐ณ๏ธโ๐@robb Also: Improve local air quality by taking fewer breaths and then exhale into a bag so you can reuse it at a later date.
xr@robb why should we save water when there is a possibility in the future that the world would overflood and there wont be anymore land for us humans? wouldn't it be better if we spend more water?
linden17@robb Goverment thinking If we delete old emails , when can africa giving water
Alan is @cogdog ๐จ๐ฆ@robb Set up email clients to make a drop in the can sound effect when you delete an email?
damianwalsh@robb 300bn litres of water lost daily through leaks in the supply network. No new reservoirs built since 1991. But yeah, our bad for not deleting old emails.
Irina@damianwalsh @robb If I took my showers even half a minute shorter I'd barely get wet.
su_liam
Kid ManiaI--
๐คฆโโ๏ธ
jfc
Worst. Timeline. Ever.
"Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness."
- Thomas Ligotti
#doomed #worsttimeline
Graeme ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ@robb Its' pathetic.
Not to mention, don't upload photographs in the first place. Store local, where they use no energy and are not AI fodder.
Not to mention, don't upload photographs in the first place. Store local, where they use no energy and are not AI fodder.
LimaJ@robb Also the elite: we're gonna enhance everyones lives with AI
!!!!
!!!!
The Net is Vast and Infinite
Keith Brady@robb Their advice and a lot of replies are missing that data on disk uses very, very little power. The water is to cool the DC because of electricity use and electricity use is ~all for CPU and TPU work. There's some cost to spinning platters but historical, cold data is a tiny fraction of recent data. There's some cost if AI is trained on all data including old but it's a tiny fraction of training cost and giant model training is surprisingly rare and much smaller than inference (*).
@robb (*) depends a bit on exact model. Datacenters are heavily optimised to reduce electricity (the main opex cost) and so cooling and so water costs. It's because there's so many that there's a problem. It's nearly always more efficient in electricity to do things in a DC, not at home. Of course cooling at home is usually passive and there are no water-eating cooling towers. And you hold your own data. But "delete old pictures" is the "turn off your TV at the socket". Every big counts.
Kevin Russell
Justin Derrick@robb I particularly love the idea that they're so ignorant that they don't understand that the equipment doesn't disappear when you delete your eMails...
In fact, they probably don't even understand that nothing actually gets deleted, it's just marked as deleted so that it's not visible anymore -- for a variety of reasons like:
- running a deletion process is too time-consuming or expensive
- they want the ability to 'undo' a delete at some point in the future
- they want to retain all data for reasons they already know, or for reasons they haven't dreamt up yet.
- they retain data as a result of a deal with government or intelligence agencies for data mining, preservation of evidence of crimes, etc.
sharon linne faulk@robb Sure, right after AI ๐
OrbitalMartian@robb Wow, I didn't know this was a thing. That's absolutely hilarious. Almost as funny as when BoJo went waffling about Peppa Pig World at an official Government conference about (I think) COVID. XD
Octavia Con Amore 
Succubard's Library@robb gotta save those precious kilobytes 
Morten Juhl-Johansen
Ian K Tindale@robb better print them all out then
Cas@robb This is true, but if we really talk about ecology, what we need to avoid is what uses the most bandwidth, such as internet-based TV, Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Also, AI platforms! People don't realise, but all the computers and cell phones in the world pollute a lot more than all vehicles in the world.
Paul@robb To be fair, they do advise fixing the toilet. Possibly due to the risk of people soiling themselves laughing further down the list.