
The Hidden Damage From Waste Data (And How To Deal With It) - raphar
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26962/
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diogenescynic
Back in 1999, a computer scientist at Cornell University began monitoring the
way that the Windows NT 4.0 operating system used files. What he found was
astonishing.

About 80 per cent of all files that NT creates are either over-written or
deleted within 5 seconds of being born.

Today, Ragib Hasan and Randal Burns at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore
say this ought to give programmers pause for thought. Deleting data requires
energy, which means that a substantial fraction of a computer system’s energy
budget is currently devoted to creating and then almost immediately scrubbing
data.

And if the wasted energy weren’t bad enough, computer memory has a limited
life span. Flash memory, for example, has a lifespan of 100,000 cycles. So
cycling it needlessly brings the inevitable breakdown closer.

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gojomo
This reads like it's from 4/1 not 7/4.

Reading the article wastes enough of the reader's time to pay for many GB of
'waste data'.

Apply Gilderian logic: some things are so cheap it makes sense to 'waste' them
to save on what's really valuable (user or programmer attention).

