cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/14304762
Over the course of several months in 2024, TIME spoke to more than 40 people in the Granbury area who reported a medical ailment that they believe is connected to the arrival of the Bitcoin mine: hypertension, heart palpitations, chest pain, vertigo, tinnitus, migraines, panic attacks. At least 10 people went to urgent care or the emergency room with these symptoms. The development of large-scale Bitcoin mines and data centers is quite new, and most of them are housed in extremely remote places. There have been no major medical studies on the impacts of living near one. But there is an increasing body of scientific studies linking prolonged exposure to noise pollution with cardiovascular damage.
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.
Edit: appearently if was noise whoops
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.
Edit: ok I’d be mad too if there was some screaming loud fans next to my house 24/7 too, sounds like that’s the real issue.
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.
But a child process is already a child, not an unborn fetus. So they don’t care.
Didn’t you listen to the other old man in the debate? Liberals advocate for termination of child processes even after they have spawned!
They should be mad at both?
But this has nothing to do with bitcoin, other than the pop-up datacenter’s purpose is to mine it. They could have popped up a datacenter for any other purpose, and it would have the same issues.
OTOH, the State can solve this today, either by instituting regulations or allowing the county to. Heck, just putting walls and a ceiling around the thing will help. But the mining outfit, like any good Capitalist, will not spend a dime unless it is forced to, and this state thinks regulations are a tool of the devil herself.
I think it’s fair to be mad at the data center. Whether that nuisance is legal or not, and the lawmakers as well
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).
CryptoFUD or clickbait or both.
Constant exposure to loud sounds can absolutely lead to other health conditions.
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.
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.
This is torture. No wonder people get sick and die every day there.
Don’t they have any laws to protect people’s homes?
The article says that in Texas, only a city government can enact an enforceable noise ordinance. Since this thing is nowhere near any city, all the local sheriff can do is write tickets, he can’t force them to turn it off.
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.
No, noise ordinances are the entire point, because the excessive noise is the only thing that can be causing these problems in the community. There are thousands of data centers all over the world, with fans running 24/7, and staff on hand 24/7 to tend to them. They don’t cause these problems in the community, but they also have actual walls. And I bet their employers mandate good hearing protection so their staff doesn’t have these problems.
There is no statute local police can use to shut it down, because Texans love their freedom so much, and elect freedom-loving politicians who abhor any regulations at all. Maybe if they paint the trailers black, the cops will think they are a threat and shoot them or something.
When lives are in immediate danger, police must act immediately. Isn’t that a general principle, independent of small details?
What you are saying comes down to “murder is allowed unless there is a specific law against your specific method of murdering” and this appears still quite unbelievable to me.