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[–] 105 points 4 months ago (15 children)

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?

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    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.

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

    Regular non-ai datacenters don’t have all this noise

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    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

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    [–] 80 points 4 months ago (11 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 26 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    A gigafactory with close to zero human maintenance, literally a dream come true if you're a robber baron.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Most factories are already close.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Yea, they are. Quite a bit of automation, many employees are there to maintain the machines, not do the actual work.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I've worked in industrial automation for the past 18 years. What you're talking about is lights-out manufacturing. While this may be the state of the art in some sectors, it's definitely not for most sectors and even less in the aged installed base in the US.

    The investment to bring old factories even close to fully automated is simply not being made, and for good reason. The sad reality is that exploiting humans to do a lot of the more expensive to automate work is cheaper.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    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...

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  • [–] 55 points 4 months ago* (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    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.

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

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    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?

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 45 points 4 months ago (12 children)

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

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  • [–] 22 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    and they build it in GOP controlled districts too. republicans, by in large do not actually protest in anyway for change.

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

    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??"

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

    Rifles are noisy. Trebuchets are not. What's the range of the average consumer trebuchet?

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

    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

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  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago*

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

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (1 child)

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

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    [–] 6 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago

    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

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    I can't think of a better illustration for the article than that guy's belly.

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  • [–] 22 points 4 months ago (20 children)

    Well that was pointless.

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

    No.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    It's more about what the guy is saying.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    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.

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    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.

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  • [–] -2 points 4 months ago* (8 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    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.

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

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago* (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (2 children)

    There are plenty of highways that almost never stop these days, while their peak hours are much louder than this. That was a huge frustration for me, this amount of noise (conversational decibels) is really not much and very hard to relate to by audio from a clip alone.

    Think of all the people that live near freeways with international airports next to those. Airplanes coming and going all day, traffic constantly.

    That's why I wanted to see data and get a real distance from the data center, and an actual db reading. I just can't do anything with this video.

    Another example is wind turbines. Near constant noise https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=78QwBM_AD3s

    How loud exactly is that? At least I have some sense of the distance. People are concerned about the frequencies of these too, although a Finnish study could find no correlation.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    The solution would then be to reduce car traffic, honestly, not tell people to be ok with this. I remember my roommate trying to be quiet in the other room while talking to someone and it was keeping me up(several perfectly acceptable reasons I let it happen, one of them being I knew it would end, but still).

    I have a friend on a groundfloor who has trains go by their place somewhat regularly, but that’s also not frequent and they got to choose to be there, where these people where there first.

    I’ve experienced situations like this, it’s not fun. The unceasing nature is probably the worst part, where you can put up with a lot specifically because you know that it will end at some point but if it’s just going on forever that’ll drive ya nuts.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Agreed about taking account people who were there before. Its a type of pollution and you shouldn't be allowed to make noise over a certain level, and even then only during business hours. Or put a road in either. The US has a really sad history of running roads through areas using poverty or racism to only affect the people who can't complain.

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    [–] 7 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    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

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

    umm, yay vid. what does it sound like?

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

    Sounds like you need to listen to the video

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (3 children)

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

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    No-one commenting has tinnitus then

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  • [–] -4 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] -3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

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

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

    The guy is * gasp for air * out of breath just talking.

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