Subj : Re: Forget a hosepipe ban
To   : ROB MCCART
From : Mike Powell
Date : Tue Aug 19 2025 09:56 am

> MP>I don't (on purpose anyway) here, either.  My guess is that they want the
>   >extra storage that "the cloud" is using for AI and are therefore blaming
>   >cloud users for what is really being caused by increased AI usage... energy
>   >and water usage, etc.

> If I recall this was more about water usage than electricity use but
> suggestied that less data stored on servers would reduce the amount
> of water needed to cool them. I'd think a big part of the water part
> of it would depend on if coolant is recycled or just dumped with new
> water coming in to replace it, and where that water is coming from.
> Pretty much anything could be used but I suppose if the servers are
> in a city then it's a huge waste of clean, processed, drinking water.

> I half wonder if people mining Bitcoin aren't a bigger problem
> than cloud storage..

IMHO, the folks mining Bitcoin... and running AI servers... would require a
lot more cooling (and therefor water) than cloud storage.  Storing files
shouldn't really have much of any abnormally high cooling requirements as it
is not a CPU/GPU intensive process.

Also IMHO, they are trying to make "regular people" think they are the
problem in order to free up resources for increased AI use.

> Personally, I do use a cloud account for files I need to transfer
> between multiple units or files I temporarily park there for others
> to download, but I doubt I have 5 meg of total data on there..

I doubt that anything you've described is processor intensive, either.  ;)

Mike


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