Can someone explain why the new crop of datacenters are considered to be noisy?. I've been around the Wall Street datacenters in Jersey and they are basically the same as nondescript office buildings surrounded by a fence. The ones running on generators 24/7 are a problem but what is making the rest such an issue?
I wrote this in another reply here, but from this article and others I've read on Space X's/Tesla's datacenters, it's the use of turbine generators that cause that enormous whine sound. (Note how similar it is to a jet engine.) I live in Ashburn, where we have datacenters all over the place. But none of them sound like this. At worst, we get a dull hum, much lower in volume, if the air handlers are working especially hard. But you need to be on top of them to hear that.<p>Ashburn has the infrastructure however. From what I'm reading, other places don't. So they bring in power on-site, and it seems to be much less regulated.
This feels less like a data center problem and more like a basic failure to price and regulate industrial externalities...are crypto mining or ai compute socially useful? Up for debate, but what isn't is that neither should make a surrounding neighborhood unlivable.<p>Also, noise regulations aren't good for this kind of constant tonal sound. Any facility like this should have to prove it can operate within a certain acousting footprint before it's built
Ah, the ol' "stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself" defense<p>It's so easy! Just think of every possible scenario and avenue that can be abused, and legislate it, in perpetuity.
Make John Stewart, Chief Marketing Officer of Hyperscale Data, live in one of those houses for a month. See how he likes the sound.
Every day, the gap between the news and The Onion gets a little smaller.
youtube video link from the article behind the "you must agree to cookies to play this youtube video embed that's actually not a youtube video embed" shenanigans<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wDr2dec474" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wDr2dec474</a>
another link: <a href="https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/data-center-noise-pollution-dowagiac-michigan-blasts-homes" rel="nofollow">https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/data-center-noi...</a><p>This particular datacenter was retrofitted into an existing industrial building, there was some sort of industrial metalworking factory there previously. Structure dates to 1972.<p>The houses are basically right across the street from it. The noise does sound annoying as hell. This seems like a basic failure in local permitting/zoning to allow something this noisy without a significant empty buffer zone to any residences.<p>edit: it's here: <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Dowagiac,+MI+49047,+USA/@41.9924536,-86.0992949,740m" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/place/Dowagiac,+MI+49047,+USA/@4...</a>
what I want to know is why the fuck dont they put these data monstrocities in any number of thousands of empty giant office towers littering city centers everywhere, catch all the heat and sell it to the few buildings with actual tenants, and as soon as the much less flamable sodium batteries come on at scale stack the rest of the empty buildings with those,and then run the whole mess from cheap solar