Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center

Post by baruchel » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 10:18 AM UTC

fainpul wrote: post #120

theamk wrote: post #2

"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.

> By design, it's enormous electric heater. You're right, it's not leaking, it's dumping excess heat on purpose. However, I get triggered whenever someone uses the term "by design" wrongly. The generation of heat is not by design. It's an undesired side-effect of the computing being done. "By design" would mean that someone decided that there should be a certain amount of heat generation and made sure that it happens…

Post by csomar » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 10:32 AM UTC

kanemcgrath wrote: post #15

I always wondered if anybody has calculated how much of our global heating could be attributed, if any at all, to every electronic device, server, and engine outputting heat as a byproduct.

Post by KellyCriterion » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 11:50 AM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #111

tasuki wrote: post #100

Earlier 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.

These days it's not rare to have data center heated buildings. I guess crypto bros are just not thinking about this. But technically if could be done there too.

Post by fainpul » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 12:10 PM UTC

baruchel wrote: post #131

fainpul wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By design, it's enormous electric heater. You're right, it's not leaking, it's dumping excess heat on purpose. However, I get triggered whenever someone uses the term "by design" wrongly. The generation of heat is not by design. It's an undesired side-effect of the computing being done. "By design" would mean that someone decided that there should be a certain amount of heat generation and made sure that it happens…

When you compute some nice and elegant result, dissipated heat is an undesired side effect. But let's face it: we are speaking about proof of work. Proof of work means that a computed has run during some "required" time. In other words, you have to prove that enough heat has been dissipated. Waste of energy actually is "by design" here.

Post by tatjam » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 12:36 PM UTC

flave wrote: post #104

spyder wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only true for our current computers and not true with reversible computing. With reversible computing you can use electricity to perform a calculation and then "push" that electricity back into a battery or a capacitor instead of dumping it to the environment. It's still a huge challenge, but there is a recent promising attempt: "British reversible computing startup Vaire has demonstrated an adiabatic reversible comp…

Actually pretty cool - I was about to comment “nice perpetual motion machine” but looked into a bit more and it’s much more interesting than that (well, a real perpetual motion machine would be interesting but…) Thanks for posting. Pretty cool.