What a waste
Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center
121–130 of 170 posts
Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I turn my fan on and 100% of the electricity is converted to heat, where does the kinetic energy of moving fan blades come from? Even the Trump administration cannot just repeal the law of conservation of energy.
While spinning, the blades store a miniscule amount of kinetic energy. After removing power even that small amount ends up as heat through friction ( both in the bearing but mostly in the air turbulence). And the blades end up in the same zero energy state: sitting still. So it is correct that a 100% "end up" as heat
Most of that energy gets transfered to the air that's being moved by the blades, and who knows what that air does eventually. And we're not even talking about the plant growing light that might be sitting in my room near my house plants literally creating new life from electricity.
Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center
#123"leaking" is the wrong word here - it implies some sort of inefficiency, process which is not working as well as it needs to. Leaky bucket, leaky faucet... That's not the case here, that center is __dumping__ heat into environment - it is by design, all that electricity is being converted into the heat. By design, it's enormous electric heater.
Seriously, the only way I would accept Bitcoin mining is as a winter heating source that pays for itself. Why can't people sell those?
The economics of bitcoin mining dictate that the work must have no other utility. If you increase its profitability by using it for auxiliary winter heating, then more people will mine bitcoin until there is an oversupply of heating and we return to the current equilibrium amount of "wasted" heat.
Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center
#124"leaking" is the wrong word here - it implies some sort of inefficiency, process which is not working as well as it needs to. Leaky bucket, leaky faucet... That's not the case here, that center is __dumping__ heat into environment - it is by design, all that electricity is being converted into the heat. By design, it's enormous electric heater.
Well It it's using solar power it's just moving heat from one place to another.
I guess, if it's using fossil fuel to generate power it's also just moving heat from one place to another, but really really slowly. The relevant factor there is that the long term storage was performing a important secondary function of holding a lot of co2.
It's in Texas, surely that's an area amenable to solar production. What are they actually using there.
Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center
#125"leaking" is the wrong word here - it implies some sort of inefficiency, process which is not working as well as it needs to. Leaky bucket, leaky faucet... That's not the case here, that center is __dumping__ heat into environment - it is by design, all that electricity is being converted into the heat. By design, it's enormous electric heater.
this obvious disingenuous framing is clearly on purpose to manipulate
Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the book Calculating God, a character notes that this is a common civilization-wide choice. Living in virtual reality, rather than trying to expand into the vast expanses of space, is a common trope as much as it's a logical choice. It neatly explains the Fermi Paradox. In some fiction, like The Matrix, the choice might be forced due to cultural shifts, but the outcome is the same. A relatively sterile low-energy…
I wonder if it's illogical to think that all civilizations must always pick the most logical of the options
Those civilisations that make too much illogical choices probably die off.
Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> every single one of those Joules ends up as one Joule of waste heat. Yes it ends up as heat, but with some forethought, it could be used to eg heat people's homes rather than as waste.
You can say that about any waste heat. In really, it’s not convenient to move all waste heat to where it’s more needed.
It's always more convenient to ignore externalities. That doesn't mean we should be okay with only bottom-of-the-barrel solutions.
Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if it's illogical to think that all civilizations must always pick the most logical of the options
Those civilisations that make too much illogical choices probably die off.
True. But it's not a binary choice. All it takes is to make one sub-optmial choice for the universe to be filled up with von-neuman probes in all star systems
Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically it is inefficiency. The electricity should be doing computer things. Heat is wasted electricity. Just there's not much the data centre could do about it.
Even if the computer does perfectly-efficient computer things with every Joule, every single one of those Joules ends up as one Joule of waste heat. If you pull 100W of power out of an electric socket, you are heating your environment at 100W of power completely independent of what you use that electricity for.
This violates energy conservation principles. Some power will be "wasted" into heat, some other will be used for some other work.
Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would just make miners move somewhere with more favorable regulation and taxation, and nothing would change. Funny how taxes work
What do you mean nothing would change? What does "That would just make miners move" mean to you?
Mining is one of the most mobile industries on the planet, see what happened when china "banned" mining, they all just moved somewhere else (or kept mining in secrecy). If it's in the US at least it can be regulated.