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Comment by sqldba | Hacker News Reader

One of the problems in the email is that some huts have been located very close to residences and make a lot of noise 24/7.

Maybe there's something to it.

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Noise can be controlled. As I work for a French telco, I know it is one of the important parameters to manage when shoehorning an FTTH head-end in a residential building in a very dense neighborhood. Heat too ! It is routinely done, unless you want to cheap out and just drop a bare container on a concrete slab... Which would not surprise me much in a nation where utility poles are still considered adequate as city infrastructure (I remember the face of one of our American suppliers when he realized that we bury everything...)

Buried everything is not unusual in the US. Roughly 20% of power lines in the US are buried. Contrast that to somewhere like Tokyo, which has less than 10% of its power lines buried (which shoots a massive hole in your theory about that having anything to do with whether a nation's infrastructure is adequate). It varies from location to location in the US; where I grew up, everything was buried. It's bizarre that your supplier would in any regard be surprised by such a thing.

> (which shoots a massive hole in your theory about that having anything to do with whether a nation's infrastructure is adequate)

Let's not pretend the US infrastructure is anywhere near as adequately done as in most North or West-European countries.

I always thought that Tokyo situation is because of constant seismic activity - when you have so many earthquakes it would be very hard to find the break underground

The article is very light on details, direct link to email:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4yHnbgE5ocJbUJpWFJGYUVVajg...

Is this really NIMBYism? People honestly can't stand a small utility building? It's strikes me as slightly odd that the person is sure that the huts make a lot of noise, but unsure if they operate 24/7 - could this be a way of phrasing that the information comes from a third party?

The noise is probably from the air conditioner units which is why the person is unsure how often they operate. They can be quite loud and irritating.

The neighbor's house next door also has air conditioning. Why would the hut have to be louder than that?

There's probably more heat to be removed from what's essentially a small datacentre than from a residential building.

They don't necessarily have to be louder but the two AC units shown in the photo appear to be of the 'louder than a car idling next door' variety. At full bore on a hot summer day you probably wouldn't want to try having a conversation within 10-15ft of them. Hard to say without knowing the details of the sizing or any aftermarket soundproofing they may not be visible in the photo. The neighbors may have a legitimate reason to be upset.

I think in the case of one of the huts they have already installed, it was taking up a quarter of the park total land.

https://goo.gl/maps/s3fXzcywT1w

It seems like a better wall might solve most objections. Something nice looking with some sound-proofing would probably go a long way.

What about just giving those households free internet?

If any of them accept a $70/month "gift" to give up their opposition, then they really were NIMBY's without any real concerns.

So what? Those substations serve thousands of people. Why are we letting busybodies ruin it for everyone? Pay them off and move on.

Or you can simply just sound proof it. You're already open to spending money. Stop trying to externalize your failures.

The NIMBY crowd doesn't care that it's loud, they care that it's there. Loud is a rationalization. It's loud, it causes bird to die, the current causes brain cancer/allergies, etc.

That's a very simplified view, if the A/C is right in front of your bedroom and you can't sleep anymore, it's not $70/month that'll make for it because you basically "can't" live here anymore. I'm all against NIMBY, but I really think it can be legit in such case to request to address sound issues.

You're speaking from biases because you're rejecting what appears to be very reasonable and plausible concerns as being prima facie absurd, without actually knowing any of the specifics in this matter.

Furthermore your proposed remedy isn't even consistent with your biases, as you propose throwing $840 per house per ad infitum will make the complaints go away, and then turn and round and effectively say that nothing would placate them.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't make any sense at all. If nothing will placate them, then any dollar spent is wasted. If concern is warranted, then spending the money to actually solve the problem would be cheaper over the long term.

You have strong feelings about this topic, and I respect that. However, I've watched NIMBY arguments for a couple decades now and they are all basically the same: fear of decreasing home prices due to visible nearby infrastructure improvements justified by hard to prove allegations of harm to the community.

It's basically greed mixed with selfishness - deny the community improvement for the sake of my portfolio. So, if it's money they care about, then throw money at them. There's a break-even point, of course, where the bribe exceeds the benefit of the improvement.

You'll notice that I never suggested that improving the buildings was mutually exclusive with paying them off. Do both! Make the buildings quieter or less allergenic: try to address the complaint de jour. However, realize that you're treating a symptom, not a cause.

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