To some extent yes. At least in Michigan most of the larger landfills are required to have methane capture/monitoring piping already in place so it's a no-brainer for many of them them to use that gas to power turbines to feed a few MW or even 10's of MW into the local grids.

edit: turns out that in the US,
Good article about it here.

Depending on where the mine is located and ones cost of power, probably quite true.
BUT If you have very cheap power then halving is just an inconvenience - not a deal breaker.

Ja, take the Bitfury tank immersion route using a Novec fluid like this which boils at 61C - perfect chip temp - and they are home free. When burn in for large customers is done or even as part final hash board QC just disconnect the boards, pull `em, run through a final low temp oven to dry off any remaining fluid and ship the pristene boards to final packaging dept.

A good description is here  and here for their 1st implementation in HK in 2012 they can do up to 250kw per-tank...

They ^^ should have moved the body away from the power lines but left it up there as a stark warning to others and to showcase how stupid the thief was....

Typical paid-for press release I take it. I'll believe it when I see them in the wild and reviewed here by reputable folks.
Speaking of seeing -- Bloomberg requires subscribing to them to see their content. Not gonna happen here 

Yesterday I read that Hive bought 4,800 S19's and are expecting delivery within 30 days. So ja, methinks it was BM running a burn-in of them before packing them up and putting them on the boat to here. That has to be several containers worth I'd think...

edit: It sounds like when they come back online at Hive there won't be to much change in their total hash rate as the article states that the new gear is slated to replace older gear that sucks much more power.

And that (fire) is exactly what happens when folks who have no idea what they are doing try to DIY high power electrical circuits....
I DO hope they've learned a lesson (though I also doubt it...).

Um, model number?
MicroBT (Whatsminer) have many different ones...
And - I hope to God you have not just connected the PSU's in parallel with each other or have 2 feeding 1 hash board... Use 1 PSU to 1 hash board otherwise they will constantly fight each other leading to the Majik Smoke escaping...

The title makes it sound like it is supposed to be our fault if other folks do not bother to do their own research.
Bullshit. Their mistakes are theirs alone.

Now if someone asks you about BTC then ja, one should do their best to explain it. Thing is - they have to ask - if they don't then it is not our fault if/when they get screwed.

Starting with the A1041 Avalons have used variable output PSU's that is controlled by the miner software. Bitmain and Whatsminer's do the same. The reason is efficiency as losing the final Vcore regulators that used to be part of the hash boards and directly controlling the PSU to set the voltage fed to chips gives about a 10% increase in power efficiency.

That of course means that your miner control board must be able to talk to the PSU to set whatever voltage the miner needs.
You need to find what kind of communication is used, (simple voltage sensing or digital coms) and then provide the correct signals to the PSU.

This better belongs in Beginners & Help or in Mining/Altcoins area as this one is for Bitcoin only. Plenty of discussion on those topics there.

Electricity cost can be an important factor?
There is no 'can' about it! Cost of power is the #1 concern. If the cost to run a miner exceeds potential returns there is no point in mining. Period.

Your #1 issue is the cost of power. Anything over $0.10/kW/H will NOT be able to mine at a profit. Period. No miner will ever be able to be efficient enough to do that.

Now if BTC goes over $50k again then ja that could work.

Your only option is to use a USB miner like Sidehack's R909, pulls less than 100w for over 1.5TH. Use something like that and point it at a solo pool like Kano's or -ck's as a lottery miner. Dirt cheap to run and if it finds a block you get the entire reward.

Considering this area is for Bitcoin only you need to ask about altcoin (aka crap coin) hardware in the altcoin area like here

As for Not counting the fact that they are entirely different algorithms, in what world is 212KH/s faster than 95TH/s....

MOBO is short for MOtherBOard. More specifically, it relates to the CPU and the support chips (eg Southbridge chip) along with the BIOS on it.

Just for technical clarity, 2-phase power does not exist outside of some *very* specialized applications.

Utility power is either single phase (which includes split-phase) or 3-phase.

Out of a total of 4 R4's I've had only 1 that burned the PCI connectors and I place the blame for that on the modular PSU cables I was using - they were thin 18ga ones plus that PSU had been used for several S1-S5 miners so the connector was no doubt worn out. FYI PCIe connectors are only rated for 10-25 plug/unplug cycles before the plating is gone and they start to go down hill quickly from there. 2 had the infamous chip chain break where the long boards result in flexure and breaking the coms between chips. I still run my 'Lucky' 1 that has found 3 blocks over the years.

re: firmware, the one from Bitmain to have would be an early version that has an Advanced Config tab that lets you choose from a long list of speeds vs the later versions that were all auto-tune.

Intel cancelled *their* production but sold all the IP and production rights to Block.
With all the design work done and a proven chip making process already established, Block just has to schedule a slot in Foundry production. Considering that a few years ago Intel reopened their Foundry services to outside companies, making more of the chips should not be a problem.

Only problem I see with the chips is that they a less efficient than current bleeding-edge ones from BM, microBt or even Canaan.

Biggest problem is that it requires power to run the compression stages and in the air-cycle systems on aircraft that power of course comes from the engines plus the temperature delta is far lower. Miners have no 'excess' power to run it because power efficiency is driven to be as high as possible and the lower inlet temp would seriously impact the efficiency of the process.

Pay off my debts and buy BTC with the rest.