Well there is not really any reason to speculate if you read the article. They say it’s the sound. It reaches 90 decibels right outside of people’s homes. Some people are literally losing their hearing, and doctors in the article say that exposure to loud sounds can cause all of these heart issues.
Comment on Inside the 'Nightmare' Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
CaptainBasculin@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
The root cause issue could be power plants used to supply energy to the datacenters running the computers (there are many things a power plant can do to harm its environment), or if we consider electromagnetic hypersensitivity not being a pseudoscientific term but an actual thing; electromagnetic waves coming from all the computers at the same time in a concentrated space could have triggered this whole ordeal.
I can’t really think of any other possibilities, and I highly believe first one is the case.
Zarxrax@lemmy.world 6 months ago
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 6 months ago
90 decibels right outside of people’s homes
This is torture. No wonder people get sick and die every day there.
Don’t they have any laws to protect people’s homes?
dhork@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The article says that in Texas, only a city government can enact an enforceable noise ordinance. Since this thing is outside city limits, all the local sheriff can do is write tickets, he can’t force them to turn it off.
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 6 months ago
OK but noise ordinances are just a small detail here!
This “mine” makes people suffer physical and psychological damage every minute of every day. Imagine a machine gun rattling day and night into all directions, eventually killing some people accidentially…
Police should therefore shut this thing down immediately without any questions. And then they can ask all questions and discuss all details afterwards.
carl_dungeon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah but how is this any different than living next to ANY data center? Bitcoin mining is just racks of servers doing what servers do- sucking power, venting heat. A GPU farm for ai training or an AWS data center wouldn’t be any different, and this isn’t being widely reported as an issue. I wonder how the leap from chest pain to “it’s the bitcoins!!” happened.
dhork@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Data centers are normally built with good security, and solid walls that keeps the roar of the fans inside. It seems like this mining outfit took the cheap road, and just set up shipping containers with servers inside them instead of building an actual building.
Still, these people shouldn’t be mad at the bitcoiners, they should be mad at the state laws that allow these machines to be as loud as they are with no real penalty. Maybe they should write their State Legislature and tell them the bitcoin mines are killing innocent child processes in broad daylight, since abortion is all they seem to care about.
ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
But a child process is already a child, not an unborn fetus. So they don’t care.
dhork@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Didn’t you listen to the other old man in the debate? Liberals advocate for termination of child processes even after they have spawned!
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 6 months ago
Normal datacenters aren’t constructed out if metal shipping containers with external fans blowing through them. Most just look like big warehouses and don’t emit 90db of noise (between a lawnmower and a chainsaw as noted in the article).
0x0@programming.dev 6 months ago
CryptoFUD or clickbait or both.
redisdead@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Constant exposure to loud sounds can absolutely lead to other health conditions.
0x0@programming.dev 6 months ago
Didn’t claim otherwise, but the title is clear clickbait. It’s a matter of a crap “datacenter” regardless of the data being processed. Could be AI of your tax returns, it just so happens to be cryptocurrency so let’s put that in the title.