
A Bitcoin mine went up in flames, affecting the entire network - wxs
http://qz.com/293418/an-enormous-bitcoin-mine-went-up-in-flames-affecting-the-entire-network/
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RustyRussell
Err... No, the network didn't even notice. There's so much noise in the hash
rate that any signal is lost. See [https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-
rate](https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate) and try to find the
"disruption".

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jchendy
Wow, rate of increase there is crazy. I don't know a ton about the whole
bitcoin ecosystem, but it's pretty interesting that in the past year, the
hashrate has grown 100X while the value of a bitcoin has fallen about 66%.

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waterlesscloud
The advent of ASICs designed for bitcoin mining made the difference. More
hashrate for less electricity, and thus lower costs.

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Maxious
This is allegedly what a fire in a bitcoin mine looks like:
[http://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/11/grim-meathook-mining-
disaste...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2014/11/grim-meathook-mining-disaster/)

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adestefan
Wow it did actually go up in flames. I thought that was just going to be
hyperbole in the title, but I was incorrect.

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bfe
Me too. Add fires to energy consumption among the perverse results skeptics
will harp on for the arbitrary constraints imposed by bitcoin.

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mintplant
Are you saying that energy consumption isn't a problem? Why not?

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mpyne
Because the blockchain is awesome and the government is bad. They'd use bubble
sort, efficiency be damned, if they could find a way to keep the bankers out
of it.

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userbinator
I'm surprised at the severity of the fire; it doesn't look like bitcoin mining
equipment would be comprised of much flammable material - it's mostly metal
and silicon and PCBs. The former two are essentially nonflammable, while the
latter usually being made of FR-4 is flame-retardant (UL94V0).

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ansible
There's always at least a bit of plastic. That's quite flammable, and produces
toxic smoke as a bonus.

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farmdve
The article has a sensational title, nothing at all was disrupted, not even
slightly.

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peterkelly
Well, someone's mining rig was disrupted

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jtchang
I'm just thinking someone lost a lot of money. I doubt there was any sort of
insurance.

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PhasmaFelis
Agreed. Taking out insurance on expensive facilities requires a degree of
intelligence and forethought that one doesn't really expect in the kind of
person who builds said facilities with flammable tiles and doesn't include a
fire-suppression system.

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perlgeek
> But Gizmodo suggests it could have spread due to flammable acoustic foam and
> suggested that the facility probably lacked in a sprinkler system that most
> high-end data centers in the US would have as standard

Are sprinkler systems in data centers really the standard? How well does
standard server hardware operate after contact with water from the sprinkler
system?

I work at a company that runs a data center that has a nitrogen-based fire
suppression system, so that the servers can continue to run uninterrupted.
That sounds a lot more expensive, but also seems to make more sense to me.

~~~
skuhn
Sprinklers are very common, mostly dry-pipe systems to avoid water leakage.
There are some alternatives like HI-FOG, which uses less water and therefore
may do less damage to the room's equipment.

It is very undesirable for the equipment in the room to get wet. A sprinkler
activation generally results in partial or total loss of the equipment in the
room, and even if you can get stuff running again, it's going to take a while.
However, it's even less desirable for people to die or the building to burn
down.

Fire suppression systems that operate by removing oxygen from the room (such
as Halon) can kill people who are trapped inside. I haven't seen a facility
with this type of system in a long time.

Also, most datacenters have very strict rules about flammable material (like
cardboard) on the datacenter floor. Most sites aren't super diligent about
enforcing it, but just having the rules shifts the blame onto you. Imagine
being on the hook financially for tens of thousands of servers because
something caught on fire in your cage.

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fsiefken
I sure hope they had an offsite backup or address for their mined coins.

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meowface
I'm sure they do. Unless they had insurance though, the investment into the
datacenter and servers will be lost forever.

