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Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center

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Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center

#61

Post by lostlogin »

sowbug wrote: post #4
andai wrote: post #3

So I don't have any context for this. The article says it uses as much power as 300,000 homes. Is that a little? Is that a lot? How much does one steel foundry use? Edit: One steel foundry uses about 3,000 more than that, according to my napkin math

You can multiply your own power bill by 300,000 if money is a more relatable unit.

These discussions often turn into a ‘is this per hour? Per year?’ Discussion, which I find irritating. And now I’m that guy.

Is this a daily usage thing? I test based on my home usage and the numbers seem way out. I use about 25kWh per day.

Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center

#62

Post by wmf »

EGreg wrote: post #50
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.

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?

Those exist but they're too expensive to pay back their cost. And heat pumps are 3x the efficiency of resistive heating.

Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center

#63

Post by rixed »

e-dant wrote: post #41

This life is needlessly absurd. Why does this even exist? And yes, I get what mining is and I get what the blockchain does. I’m saying that proof of work is absurd.

Those datacenters are the moai of our time; if you step back, it's interesting to watch.

Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center

#64

Post by iJohnDoe »

Waterluvian wrote: post #31

Some days I just can’t get over how we’re just the dumbest ##^*ing species to ever visit space. Oh let’s look at what the humans are up to with their climate change problem. Oh wow they’ve got giant data centers at work on the problem. I guess maybe it’s worth the extra heat. Let’s see what they’re calculati— nope they’re just collecting and trading numbers.

You’re overall point and sentiment isn’t wrong. As a species, we do tend to focus on things that aren’t for the collective good. If some collective good actually happens, then it’s almost guaranteed another group will come along to undo it.

We’re not a species that will likely ever reach singularity (unified, fully cooperative humanity). We operate in packs and if we don’t have a pack we’re loyal to then it’s every man for themselves.

Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center

#65

Post by [deleted] »

msisk6 wrote: post #12
andai wrote: post #3

So I don't have any context for this. The article says it uses as much power as 300,000 homes. Is that a little? Is that a lot? How much does one steel foundry use? Edit: One steel foundry uses about 3,000 more than that, according to my napkin math

This was previously the location of an Alcoa aluminum smelter which used something around 1000+ MW. And that's why the crypto farm is there -- it already had sufficient electrical capacity to the site. Folks should be happy since the crypto operation is using far less power and dumping less heat into the environment that the industrial operation that was previously there, but datacenters seem to be a trendy thing com…

[deleted]

Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center

#66

Post by UltraSane »

ctmnt wrote: post #55
UltraSane wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum amount of energy needed to compute decreased asymptotically to 0 as the temperature of space goes to 0. This is the reason a common sci-fi trope where advanced civilizations hibernate for extremely long times so that they can do more computation with available energy.

That’s a common trope? Can’t say I’ve run into it. But I’d like to! What are some good examples?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestivation_hypothesis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9sh9NpL4i8

https://mindmatters.ai/2020/10/researchers-the-aliens-exist-...

https://aleph.se/andart2/space/the-aestivation-hypothesis-po...

Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center

#67

Post by CamperBob2 »

ctmnt wrote: post #55
UltraSane wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum amount of energy needed to compute decreased asymptotically to 0 as the temperature of space goes to 0. This is the reason a common sci-fi trope where advanced civilizations hibernate for extremely long times so that they can do more computation with available energy.

That’s a common trope? Can’t say I’ve run into it. But I’d like to! What are some good examples?

Here you go: https://pastebin.com/raw/SUd5sLRC

And it only cost 0.006 rain forests!

Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center

#68

Post by tonyarkles »

adonovan wrote: post #58
hephaes7us wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There absolutely is, but of course it's nonzero cost to capture.

Also, the temperature is not high enough (compared to the steam coming out of a gas/oil/nuclear plant) to obtain much work from the waste heat.

That is 100% the issue. This is really low quality heat. Making it better would require even more energy input (e.g. a heat pump) because we can’t safely run electronics hot enough to generate high quality process heat.

Re: Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center

#70

Post by cousin_it »

stouset wrote: post #36
kelnos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would definitely call that an inefficiency. Heat is wasted energy that in theory could be turned into useful work. The electricity used that created that heat (that is, not including the electricity that "went to" the computations themselves) ended up serving no useful purpose. It would be wonderful if we could capture that waste heat and give it a useful purpose, like heating homes, or perhaps even generating new…

> wasted energy that in theory could be turned into useful work Even if turned into useful work, the end result of that work is still ultimately heat.

Right, but if it's noticeably hotter than the environment, then that temperature difference could be used to drive a heat engine and get some more useful work. So the knee-jerk response "omg, we see the heat from space? it's gotta be wasteful!" is kind of correct, in theory.
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