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Comment by decimalenough | Hacker News Reader

How are they "far worse"? Steam trains are noisy, polluting, require tons of coal, kill animals and people in their way, and crash fairly regularly (when built with 1800s technology).

A data center is a big grey box that sits there humming quietly, and that's it. They do require power and lots of it, but unlikely steam engines they'll happily use solar, nuclear or anything else.

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Noise pollution is a real issue, even for data centers that is "humming quietly". Same for its energy consumption. Water cooling is another issue, given that lots of the steam a data center generates can rain down in places that wont make the water re-join the water lifecycle easily.

You're comparing steam trains in practice to datacentres in theory. To give one example: the US federal government is suspending all sorts of environmental regulations relating to pollution, just for datacentres: why would they do that if datacentres ran on clean solar or nuclear?

I get why people wouldn't want (steam) trains in their proverbial back yard just as much as they wouldn't want datacenters. Trains may be a net benefit for a region's mobility and economy, but that doesn't undo the local disruption to people's environments. (I'm unconvinced datacenters have that impact on a region, it generates some jobs at best but most of those will be secondary/tertiary jobs. Primary jobs will be the people doing daily work in and around the site like security and maintenance, but the higher paid specialist work will be flown in or done remotely)

They tend to use coal and natural gas, instead, often in especially dirty forms. The fact that they can use solar doesn’t mean they do.

Data centers are quite loud.

I worked in a data center for a decade. None of the neighbors even knew what it was. One actually stopped me to ask.

It was very loud inside, but you couldn't hear it from outside unless the power failed and the generators came on.

Yes, the new ones often use dirty generators 24/7, and probably will for years. They are loud and toxic to the local community.

The answer to that is to outlaw running noisy generators. It probably already is. Most places already have noise pollution laws designed to harass teenagers with loud music. They should enforce them.

Force them to either install mufflers and proper exhausts on their generators or build their own power infrastructure. They don't now because nobody makes them and it would cost money.

If you outlaw noisy generators the DC doesn't get built, so it's the same as just outlawing the DC.

People who don't want to spend money doing it right say that, but when the choice becomes "some money or no money" they always pick "some money". A few mufflers aren't going to ruin the economy of a deal that size.

It's like when California "destroyed the entire economy" by raising minimum wage. All the jobs are still there, prices are mostly the same. The only thing that moved were the goal posts.

The new AI ones are built below minimum standards as a cash grab and they somehow manage to be as loud as jet engines. I have no idea how they manage to achieve that, but I try to avoid denying reality. I agree that an ordinary non-AI data center is no worse than an office building without the people, but that isn't what's happening right now.

> somehow manage to be as loud as jet engines

Thats what anti-AI activists say. A decibel meter is about $20. For some reason the people in those videos never have one.

I saw one news report featuring a reporter casually holding a decibel meter. 55dB at a distance of about a kilometer.

55db is lower than the noise floor in the average office. They were probably just measuring the background noise of regular-ass being outside.

For perspective, the inside of your home is probably about 40. When I turn on my box fan it's about 55.

That said they can be loud when the generators are running. It's possible that when the grid can't keep up the volume goes up, but thats not meant to be a long term state.

We're not talking 55dB peaks--it's a constant 55dB _tone_, and not a pleasant one.

Here: https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/s/RAUfB2WAMD

In this case it's a constant 60dB metallic whine. I would be livid if they built this near my home.

That's a small datacenter with a terrible exhaust fan.

Imagine how bad the big ones are then. They're not building them any less cheaply, you know.

Usually you see a big building without windows and you can't hear it from the fence of the property. You probably don't know what it is unless someone tells you.

In another thread someone claimed a town grew around a new hospital and that it didn't have a datacenter. That town has at least one AT&T Datacenter, a supercomputer that's more AI than traditional computing, and of course said hospital likely has one.

“Humming quietly”? Really? Humming, yeah, sure, but ask the people living next door how quiet they are.

The data centers near me are pretty quiet. They’re set back from the road enough that they’re no louder than the background noise of traffic, wind, airplanes overhead, etc. I understand my small sample size doesn’t apply everywhere, but it does negate “all data centers are loud.” Some data centers might be loud.

Oh, data centers are no louder than having planes flying overhead? And they are that 'quiet' a constant 24/7? Man, why would people complain about that?

Are they pre-AI data centers or are they the new ones being rapidly built to capture AI compute demand?

They were built before AI insanity. What’s different about the new generation of data centers?

The new ones will be though. Look up the specs for the NVIDIA Vera Rubin: no fans; recycled liquid cooling.

That's inside the DC, right? I'd think that even with current generation GPUs the noise of the fans won't be audible outside the building but the cooling infra that is outside the building plus (backup) power generation through gas or diesel generators.

EDIT: recently I read about (I guess on HN) a new planned Amazon datacenter that was super environment-friendly. So in fact it might eventually be possible to create silent DCs but we'll see how this turns out.

Maybe, but for today, er 6 days ago:

Public hearing set for nearly 650 diesel generators tied to Amazon data center.

Some new ones might be.

Agreed in principle for today’s new ones, though with all the buying frenzy it quickly becomes hard to procure anything but the latest hardware and the economics of older generation hardware makes little sense for new data center deployments.

it's a dumb comparison and you're doubling down on it

They also need gargantuan amounts of fresh water. And it's anything but a quiet humming.

96db is quiet?

https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/communities-are-raising-n...

The linked article claims that sound can be heard "hundreds of feet from the data center". That is a very short range.

As much as I doubt that spreading of the data centers is a good thing, noise is not the weapon to wield. Unless we are talking the center of a quaint town. And possibly not even then.

The posted article measured 67db, the sound of a lively conversation, next to the data center.

I am interested to learn where the 96db comes from.

I see only vague claims about up to 96db inside of a server rack, but could not locate a concrete measurement or method used to determine this number.

I stopped reading this a few lines in at: "Because there is a lack of reliable data from sound level meters ..."

A decibel meter is about $20 on Amazon, often cheaper. I dont know what their agenda is, but they've got one.

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