You can even hear it in the video, link added…
You know I will say as an IT tech, that often times works in data centers doing repairs upgrades ads changes etc. That data centers are absolutely horrid to work in. The constant hum in drone will just wear you out. There’s absolutely no way to silence something like that. It literally gets into your bones. That’s why most data centers are not really staffed unless somebody is on site to do some work. This myth of data centers creating jobs is absolutely idiotic. I’ve never been in a data center with more than one or two employees in it. And most of those like I said aren’t full-time employees they literally show up let you in show you where you need to work and will only hang out long enough while you’re on the site. Having to wear headphones in a data center is absolutely mandatory.
Oh I think the idea is that the data centers will create amazing jobs in society at large, of people making AI slop to be consumed by other people’s AI agents and this somehow produces value.
I used to work for a company where we were in the data centers constantly, either deploying new machines or servicing others. Definitely not the norm, and way overstaffed compared to other companies. But, it made sense given their business model.
Anyway, working in the hot aisles is miserable when you have to do a bunch of cabling work (about 60% of the copper we ran was cut and tipped to length). It also sucked working on equipment at the tops of our racks as ours were like 56U high. Ear protection was must-have, I used noise cancelling headphones but a lot of guys didn’t even use ear plugs.
Well yeah, they say that data centers create jobs just so that it sounds like a good idea to people. Thankfully, people are starting to realize just how horrid data centers and AI is for the environment and daily life etc. I say that as someone who uses AI for work daily, and unfortunately I do find AI useful outside of work too…
Aren’t we also discovering the noise is also putting pressure on vital organs?
Pretty sure I saw that with these data centers.
I dunno, I used to love naps behind the server racks with warm air blowing in my face.
Never noticed the noise till I get in the suite.
I guess the only jobs that those created are temporary during the construction.
After that it’s some security guards and they just contract smart hands for a few hours when they need it. Landscaping I guess.
After that it’s just a big noisy heater.
Maybe an office for two or three people, but they’re not really human habitable. The HVAC is like a cold twenty mile an hour wind being blasted at hot twenty mile an hour wind produced by little powerful fans designed to push air.
It would be like being trapped in a room with a million drones.
A gigafactory with close to zero human maintenance, literally a dream come true if you’re a robber baron.
Most factories are already close.
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.
this is not an “AI” data center
I was a bit more high-level in the supply chain planning side (more on the long-term supply planning than rack planning), but AWS definitely has different rack types including AI rack types with dense GPU hardware setups. Are they slicing the buildings by rack type or is it heterogeneous with some AI racks + compute racks?
I just meant that they’re just us-east-1 racks, that the facility wasn’t built for AI specifically in the way that most people are probably going to assume given the past couple years. I don’t know what’s in there rack by rack, building by building either. There is a good chance that if you spin up Opus 4.7 in Bedrock it could be in these buildings.
Before he described the noise I was assuming he lived by a highway, because that’s exactly what it sounds like in the video.
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?
More surveillance.
AI propaganda, AI surveillance.
Shrimp Jesus memes and scams able to dupe even more old people
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.
What the fuck are we getting in return?
A third yacht for a billionaire
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.
yeah I’m pretty sure the long game is only half AI. AI is the sales pitch. Taking over the internet and home computing is the long game.
Regular non-ai datacenters don’t have all this noise
This isn’t an “AI” data center specifically.
(At least according to this comment) this is a normal data center.
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.
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.
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.
There are a few examples where they run turbine gas generators for power. In those cases the noise (and pollution) are in an entirely new class of problem. They just do so much compute.
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.
I do not like the recent use of the word “compute” as a noun, it’s such incredibly obnoxious boardroom bullshit speak. Compute is a verb. Otherwise great comment that explains the situation pretty well.
Ok.
Which noun would you prefer for the overarching generalized concept of computation sold as a product?
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.
Currently, AI accounts for 20% of data center power usage. By 2030 it’s projected to be 50%.
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.
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
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo
Data centers are acoustic weapons
It’s weird that they would build such a big annoying target in a country with so many rifles
and they build it in GOP controlled districts too. republicans, by in large do not actually protest in anyway for change.
The don’t tread on me crowd are the biggest pussies in the world.
The only time they stood up and protested was against nurses as doctors trying to save lives…
Meanwhile corporations dry fucking them in the ass… they bend over and cry “Can I have some more daddy??”
There was also the Jan 6th riot.
Not a protest, but yeah
(by and large)
And also in a country with such a huge diabetes from sugar problem. That was a joke - fun fact sugar ruins concrete mix
You ever hear about the people that shot up a power station? They never figured out who did it.
I went to go get a link, and turns out it happened again a few years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Metcalf_sniper_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_County_substation_attack
You’re a real piece of shit if you shoot up a power substation/relay…
Oh it didn’t happen just once or twice. It sort of dominated the news for a month two years ago I think. Multiple states
I can’t think of a better illustration for the article than that guy’s belly.
Well that was pointless.
Was there supposed to be something on the “sound readings” meter? Can I see it?
No.
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.
Taking a dB measurement in C weighting over some integration period
Yeah, the non filtering of the lower frequencies happens when done correctly, if I recall. I am curious what that actually is, and I am curious what is making those specific frequencies.
At a certain decibel range of ambient noise, humans become even more sensitive to the lower freqs. Being able to use that knowledge while taking measurements of my own is useful to me.
I would be interested to know the sound signature of gas turbines.
Probably would’ve been worthless since they were talking over it
I hear it perfectly. It is a sort of background hum.
Not really data though. It could be anything.
“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”
It’s more about what the guy is saying.
Lots of people say lots of things. I was interested in the data. Particularly since he said he was collecting it!
Mr Ben Jordan has a very good video about this. Collects a lot of data
While standing next to his sound strength measuring setup no less…
He should have showed more.
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.
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.
You called it “pointless”, thay was the problem. You could not see any worth in the video without seeing the number. Yes, it would be nice to see it, but holy fuck, dipshit, you can kick rocks with attitude.
And let the door hit you on the way out.
Yes it was pointless. There was nothing of interest in that video. There was nothing to take away that was useful or new.
And if you have been on the internet for the last few years, you don’t take some dude standing on the porch saying “shits loud” somewhere over there beyond the trees as being anything to make note of.
Come on. We can do better. Data is a worthwhile thing to have.
And let the door hit you on the way out.
You are really not looking for allies in this are you? You had no reason to come out swinging and being an asshole.
Literally you can hear the thing in the video. I don’t need to trust his words if I can hear the fucking thing clear as day. I also hadn’t heard the noise like that yet, so it was new to me. You’re just moving the goalposts to justify your shitty attitude.
With allies like you, who needs enemies?
Its the frequencies you can’t here that are what you want to pay attention to.
Lots of people live in loud areas, just look at population centers overlayed with highways noise maps.
A noise is simply not that interesting by itself.
I’ll bury the hatchet: if the noise gets you interested to learn more then I suppose it isn’t pointless.
He literally talked about how the sound never went away like with highways. I live in a city, night time is significantly quieter without all the cars ripping around. Cities are actually pretty damn quiet, it’s the cars that are loud. He said it felt like a low conversation that never, ever stopped and that it was impossible to get away from, even in his own bedroom where us city folk are pretty safe from too much sound.
I’m sure that sounds we can’t hear are also really bad, not arguing that, and I am also not arguing that the data itself would be awesome(they may be compiling and not ready to put all the data out yet) and thank you for the acknowledgement.
Stop using your mobile phones and computers. All those ones and zeroes need to go someplace. I wonder if the European or Japanese data centers require more sound proofing to reduce noise pollution.
most of the stuff on a debian computer and graphene phone is processed directly on the device, the ones and zeroes go to your device
and primitivism is bad, computers are a net good for us
No their don’t.
Not all datacenters are the same. The U.S. has like 4000 of them which outscales any other country by a factor of ten. Most are small nondescript buildings which are just there to route internet packets or were built before other countries even had internet.
This is like treating a car the same as a semi.
Made without AI will be the next organic non-gmo revolution, even though the latter was mostly a fad.
That’s a very good point!
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
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.
I mean if the cops are going to ignore noise complaints then they should ignore vandalism complaints too.
umm, yay vid. what does it sound like?
Like he lives near a constantly-used motorway
Sounds like you need to listen to the video
I did and can’t hear it. Apparently it’s like a conversation and a highway.
It’s a low frequency hum throughout the video, others compare it to an idling diesel truck and I agree.
Of you can’t hear it, you could move there and switch house with one of the locals.
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.
No-one commenting has tinnitus then
On a side note: that dude can crush some fkn beers. That’s an impressive beer muscle he’s got.
The guy is * gasp for air * out of breath just talking.
He’s 26 years old by the way. That’s just what AI hum does to you.
Imagine the resonance chamber in there! No wonder he’s the face of the movement.
