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AI data centers face increasing complaints about inaudible but 'felt' infrasound — citizens complain high- and low-frequency sounds do not register on decibel meters but cause adverse health effects (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 39 points 6 months ago (10 children)

It's a very real phenomenon with documented health effects. You have to use a decibel meter that's capable of detecting sounds just outside of audible range. Benn Jordan on YouTube recorded infrasound at the edge of the property line at Collosus XAI peaking at -96 dB.
https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo

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  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    actually it's inauduble and therefore can't hurt you, like how gamma rays are invisible and therefore harmless

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Is this sarcasm? Sorry sarcasm detector broke.

    Edit: Yes, it has to be. No one would think gamma rays are safe right? Right?

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Yes. I had a vibratory roller compacting the lot beside my old office a while back and there were very low frequency vibrations that made me feel like dogshit. Earplugs didn't help. I am therefore a believer

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  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago* (3 children)

    Alright so I watched him break down the data at the end, and the best that this proves is that it should be studied further to verify his experiments. Thousands of people should be studied in universities all over the world. My own distaste for datacenters not withstanding, if those future studies indicated and even maybe found the mechanism for these issues, that would not translate to datacenters ought not be built. It will and should be translated to a public health and engineering problem. We put shielding on nuclear powerplants to protect people from radiation, and we can likely do something similar to prevent infrasound, if the claims of some papers and this youtuber are proven to be correct beyond a reasonable doubt. This whole thing just stinks of "wifi sickness" and I am highly skeptical 🫤

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    We will all be picking up the tab to shield these places in the future in the name of public health and safety. The hyperscalers won't pay when they can plead ignorance and have the tax payer pay to fix it for them. Problem with data centres is once they are online, changes are very slow. Any datacentre with five 9's or above will only allow small incremental change each year. While this is faster for single tenant datacentres, it won't be a quick fix.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    It's still just a matter of political will.

    You would be AMAZED at how quickly things would be fixed. At rates previously claimed "beyond impossible", IF governments "pulled the plug" until things were fixed... rather than issuing fines or providing grace periods (and subsequent extensions).

    I've worked at places that would just eat compliance fines (not for health). Just straight up eat them. They put a token team on it... but continually divert that time to other tasks.

    The companies that claim these things cannot be done are the same ones who said they couldn't survive without slavery, with any environmental regulations, with a 5 day work week, without being able to use child labour, with a minimum wage, without strikebreakers etc etc etc. It's literally industries job to push back on anything that cuts into thier bottom line at all. It's governments job to say "bullshit"

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago

    I hear you that these companies would make excuses just to make the executives more money. Wish someone in my government had the balls to yell bullshit but they all just see the project dollars and know they can use that number to get re-elected. Politicians are cunts

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