OK, then. I don't believe everyone is a thief, but there are clearly plenty of actual thieves, and still others who can rationalize thievish behavior if launder

OK, then. I don't believe everyone is a thief, but there are clearly plenty of actual thieves, and still others who can rationalize thievish behavior if laundered through a process like mining-on-someone-else's-utility-bill. So this lab-mining is seasonal, or someplace (one of the poles?) where the building would be uncomfortably-cold year-round without the mining? Is it hooked up to the buildings' thermostats? Using computing waste heat for practical purposes is a good idea. Running CPUs as heating elements, I'd need more info about their efficiency for that purpose, especially if the system isn't in a control-loop with a thermostat (and ideally peak-vs-off-peak electricity pricing). My hunch is they might be cost-competitive with electric space heaters but way more costly than any non-electric boiler heating system. Maybe the bill-payer's value for (heating + novelty + cut-rate tech support) is greater than (marginal-electric-bill). But even if that were true a while ago, the difficulty escalation makes that far less likely now, especially for CPU mining, or a process that's not ambient-temperature-influenced.