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  • Dr. Unabart@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1 hour

    On a side note: that dude can crush some fkn beers. That’s an impressive beer muscle he’s got.

  • aesthelete@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3 hours

    Before he described the noise I was assuming he lived by a highway, because that’s exactly what it sounds like in the video.

  • borari@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3 hours

    If anyone’s curious, this is the AWS Tanner Campus. It’s right across the street from the official, marked on the map location for AWS’s us-east-1, and they are all IAD- buildings, so they’re part of what makes up the us-east-1 AWS region. The project was announced as early as 2020.

    It consists of four single-story data center buildings spanning nearly 800,000 square feet, which are supported by a massive 192-megawatt electrical substation and backup diesel generators.

    As others here have said, this is not an “AI” data center, it’s a data center that runs massive swathes of the internet as we know it. Either way it’s fucked that they’re approved to build this shit right behind peoples houses. They are right across the street from a regional airport, so maybe that areas zoned commercial? It’s definitely a weird area in general. Driving down prince william parkway you’re seeing tons of straight industrial support shit, like metal shops and construction supply stuff and warehouses with performance car shops with dynos and everything, then you just hit houses.

    It was probably zoned back when nobody ever thought anyone but the rednecks already out there would live that far outside the beltway, but now commuting from Manassas/Gainesville into DC or somewhere else inside the beltway is normal, and they’re building houses where they never thought they’d be building.

    Again though, fuck Amazon and Prince William County for assaulting these people like this.

  • QuantumSparkles@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    5 hours

    Is the image for this just a man’s torso with his hand over his stomach like he’s going to have a baby or is it just me. I thought this was going to be very different at first

  • UndergroundParking@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    3 hours

    I understand this whole newfound hate is coming from the AI bubble, but a bunch of cool stuff is in those DCs as well - most lemmy instances included.

    • monotremata@lemmy.caEnglish
      6 minutes

      The noise is created by cooling, and AI data centers require so much more cooling that it’s hard to even compare them. The kind of server rack that would run something like Lemmy might draw 8-12kW of power. A new nVidia NVL72 rack for AI workloads, running the new B300 gpus, draws about 132-140kW. All that power ultimately has to be removed by cooling. You know how a regular laptop is basically silent, but a gaming laptop running something heavy will make quite a racket with its fan? It’s like that, but scaled up to the size of Manhattan.

  • Agent641@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13 hours

    It’s weird that they would build such a big annoying target in a country with so many rifles

  • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zipEnglish
    14 hours

    Well that was pointless.

    Was there supposed to be something on the “sound readings” meter? Can I see it?

    No.

    • czardestructo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6 hours

      For what its worth, despite missing the punchline of the actual measurement, the guy knows what he is talking about. Taking a dB measurement in C weighting over some integration period is how to do it for this scenario. I doubt his meter is calibrated but its doing a good job.

    • Soup@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6 hours

      Did you not hear the noise with your own two ears? Are you that fucking deaf and willfully ignorant that you you need to see a number and can’t, without it, hear exactly what he’s talking about?

      “It’s a conversation that never stops, is in your bedroom, and you can’t turn off, ever. It’s not loud but it never stops.” should be more than enough to make the point abundantly clear especially when you can fucking hear the sound in the video.

      • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zipEnglish
        4 minutes

        People like you are insufferable. He had a device and he found it worth using, I too would like to see that device. What the fuck is wrong with you that you need to say I am deaf and willingly ignorant because you don’t want to know more?

        Damn, people like you make it hard to give a shit about bad things. I just wanted more information, data centers are noisy, I know that. I also have a decibel meter and want to know the db (or dba with calibration) and I am interested in the wave and frequencies. Because, you know, I want to know these things. I am curious about how these sounds are generated. The fans? The cooling system? A back up generator? How are the frequencies effecting people in various other industries?

        Sorry you have no interest in the world, and a video of someone saying “its loud” pointing to some trees in the distance is all you the capacity you have for knowledge.

        Fuck right off.

    • Kokesh@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12 hours

      I hear it perfectly. It is a sort of background hum.

        • zbyte64@awful.systemsEnglish
          3 hours

          “yeah there’s a new giant structure and there’s a new persistent and pervasive sound in the region that both appeared around the same time, but there’s no data connecting the two. It could just be the sound of my own ego”

  • protist@retrofed.comEnglish
    18 hours

    Oh man, I hate data centers more every day. They’re burning energy and causing disturbances in order to support fucking what? What the fuck are we getting in return?

    • dan1101@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7 hours

      Storing data on us and replacing human jobs with AI. No matter how many jobs your local leaders have been told data centers will create, they are intended to replace many more.

    • A_norny_mousse@piefed.zipEnglish
      7 hours

      Slightly more convenient search engines. At least according to most of my IT-illiterate peers. “Just ask ChatGPT” - “Fuck, I can already do that with any other search engine, for 1/10th of the energy”.

      People never see the cost if they don’t pay it.

    • krashmo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15 hours

      Not all data centers are for AI. Practically anything you do on the internet lives or transits through a data center. A very serious answer to your question is simply “the internet”. AI data centers are just bigger and more dense than the ones that have been around for a long time.

        • d15d@feddit.org
          English
          14 hours

          Are you sure about that? I haven’t been near one but have a single dell poweredge in my basement and it’s fucking loud without diy noise insulation around it. I can only imagine the noise a full building of these things is making.

          • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
            25 minutes

            Yes I’m sure. I’ve worked in a number of standard compute and colo datacenters for years and I haven’t experienced anything like that even in the parking lot of said datacenters. I’ve taken breaks to quietly read in the lobbies of said buildings.

          • d15d@feddit.org
            English
            13 hours

            Since I’m getting downvoted and I’m genouinly curious, could someone explain how AI data centers are worse on a noise level than data centers for other purposes?

            I’m not saying they are quiet, I just don’t see which hardware for AI is so different from non-ai that it makes a big difference in noise production.

            • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
              15 minutes

              Traditional datacenters usually came in one of two general forms, Colocation datacenters where anyone can rent rack space in the building, and your hyperscaler datacenters like AWS and Azure.

              Colocation Datacenters are usually only partially full of servers at any given time, and are often rented by private enterprises running small time web applications or even just internal tools.

              The hyperscalers are worse, but the business model is overbuilding capacity but not all the compute is actually being used at any given time. Workloads are variable usually.

              It’s not that these datacenters can’t be loud, but rather that due to their lower power usage (compared to AI or Crypto before that) they don’t usually have to be.

              The problem with AI datacenters is that they are designed to maximize their capacity and run full throttle 24/7 365. These facilities are bigger, are completely full to the brim with servers, and those servers are all working very hard nonstop. The thing about computers is, the stronger they are and the harder you push them, the more power they require to run. When electronic devices of any kind use more power, they generate more heat. Too much heat will also kill these electronic devices, so they need more cooling. Cooling apparatus makes noise, and the more you have of it, the louder it gets.

              The TL;DR of it all is that AI datacenters are designed to maximize their compute capacity, which maximizes their power consumption, which maximizes the heat they generate, so you maximize the cooling, which maximizes the noise.

              There’s a separate issue back the the “Consumes more power” step where some datacenters can’t be sated by the local power infrastructure so they have to find ways to supplement the power they get from the grid with additional noisy things like gas generators and such.

            • NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.netEnglish
              12 hours

              Turbine generators onsite to manage power spikes and reduce the company’s cost of buying power, in musk’s megadatacenter case, the cunt didnt even get permission, he just ordered it done, and the community suffers.

      • protist@retrofed.comEnglish
        9 hours

        Yes, but until AI, there weren’t nearly as many data centers and they were much smaller. Now massive data centers are going up all over the country, and no, hosting the internet is not their primary purpose

      • Rothe@piefed.socialEnglish
        13 hours

        But the reason most new datacenters are build is AI. AI is the cause that the number of datacenters are spiking, not any other poor excuse.

  • justlemmyin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13 hours

    Made without AI will be the next organic non-gmo revolution, even though the latter was mostly a fad.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.socialEnglish
    19 hours

    I used to live a few miles from I5 and that was loud and constant, but was a pretty soft kinda rushing sound not really that different from hearing the wind rustling trees; the sound going on in this video sounds like an idling diesel truck parked across the street.

    • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.netEnglish
      12 hours

      I live close to a highway and it’s just white noise. I can tune it out outside and inside you can’t hear anything. Except for the motorbikes with custom exhausts. You can hear those assholes even inside. And it’s not because of the highway, you can hear the motorbikes all on adjacent streets as well. It’s really crazy to me that some idiots are allowed to add huge amounts of noise to our environment just for fun. Fuck bikers.

    • Agent641@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13 hours

      I live 1.5km away from a busy intl airport and there are jets all day idling their engines, it’s not loud, but it is quite constant. Now, I chose to live near the airport because it’s a great location and very convenient, but I do smell burning rubber whenever the wind is blowing my way and a plane lands. But at least the flights quiet down to a trickle at night time. Data enters never quiet down. I’d rather an airport 1.5km from me than a data centre. At least the airport benefits me in some way.

  • MalReynolds@slrpnk.netEnglish
    13 hours

    We should seriously consider a right to destroy noise making crap in general. Currently listening to a 110Db mower, I should be allowed to go out and stomp it, except, maybe, on Sunday afternoons.

      • idiomaddict@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15 hours

        I did and can’t hear it. Apparently it’s like a conversation and a highway.

        • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.caEnglish
          14 hours

          It’s a low frequency hum throughout the video, others compare it to an idling diesel truck and I agree.

          • idiomaddict@lemmy.worldEnglish
            14 hours

            Why on earth would I do that? It needs to be removed, not pushed onto deaf and hoh communities, who still feel the effects of constant vibration without the benefit of being able to sense its sources.