Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

costar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 514 posts

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#241

Post by conductr »

kube-system wrote: post #217
otherme123 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense: are they going to use this datacenter exclusively for Nashville people use? We regularly access data from datacenters thousands of kilometers away, and the latency is acceptable. Not even pro-gamers would notice the latency increase if the datacenter moved 10 kilometers further in any direction, which is virtually empty in Nashville. I live in Spain, and my latency to my VPS at Germany, 3,000 kil…

If it’s a colo… yes, it would be primarily local customers. Data centers are not just for consumer B2C services. There’s a lot of stuff that runs in data centers that are both more important and more sensitive to latency or connectivity than video games. Even for something as simple as a business that needs somewhere to run critical VDI hosts — then yes, they need low latency and somewhere that their techs can physic…

If they zoned it, then the city is saying “you will commute”. It doesn’t have to be unreasonably far away, just less convenient than a Walmart. Most people commute for work anyway, business rent storage/warehouse space in cheaper part of town than their office space, etc. Its hyperlocalness isn’t crucial to its function.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#242

Post by wewtyflakes »

culi wrote: post #200
hiitsmyaccount wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of a datacenter being for AI or not, NIMBY applies to everyone. I look forward to these totally probable datacenters in space.

NIMBYs are the reason San Francisco doesn't have massive freeways splitting through the center of it. Sometimes NIMBYs get things right

Didn't the Loma Prieta earthquake do that?

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#243

Post by jrflowers »

tptacek wrote: post #185
jrflowers wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s wild, where do all the people from Aurora work? The data centers? Also what does the specific building or set of buildings you hate in one town have to do with the concept of office buildings

I've lost track of what your argument is. Mine is that office buildings are not generally filled with workers from the immediate municipality in which they're situated. We're talking about office buildings because office buildings and data centers are both large-format commercial real estate developments.

>are you saying office buildings bring less to the community because so, so, so many more people work in them than in data centers

>Mine is that office buildings are not generally filled with workers from the immediate municipality in which they're situated.

Since neither are data centers, which aren’t filled with workers, you could’ve just said “yeah”

“Office buildings bring less to communities than data centers because of all the people that work in them” lmao

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#244

Post by kube-system »

darth_avocado wrote: post #80
conductr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aesthetics are important. Everyone enjoys looking at a golf course, even non-golfers. Nobody wants to look at a datacenter. My general thought is, what’s the argument for placing them in populated areas to begin with? Why dedicate land use for it in Nashville? Wouldn’t putting it 40 miles outside town work just as well? Why don’t we create development zones specifically for these things? In Dallas we have a similar t…

Try living next to a constant 80-100 dB hum 24x7. You’d not be complaining about people being irrational.

That depends highly on the datacenter. While a huge hyperscaler might be noisy, many datacenters are quiet enough that people don’t even know they’re there.

The one I host at, you can’t hear from the end of the parking lot. The coolers aren’t any noisier than the ones on other commercial buildings. These kinds of datacenters are everywhere and most people probably just think they are warehouse or office building.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#245

Post by namdnay »

DANmode wrote: post #232
namdnay wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The water sediment thing had nothing to do with the building being a data center I think? Any form of construction would interfere with people drinking well water next to it

I am not talking about sediment, or anything construction-related. This is normal operations being done irresponsibly: 1.) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/08/meta-datacen... 2.) https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/saline-township-residen...

Did you read the guardian article? It’s a bit of a nothing-burger, are we really going to have a national panic based on that?

> flushed bacteria-contaminated water into public sewers

I do that every morning

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#246

Post by kube-system »

bruce511 wrote: post #175
darth_avocado wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try living next to a constant 80-100 dB hum 24x7. You’d not be complaining about people being irrational.

I'm sure there are data centers that make a noise. And if you're firing up a generator that's a separate issue. But the noise from computer fans and power supplies is easy to ameliorate and can be a trivial permit requirement. The noise is all high-frequency which means most anything will stop it. Frankly building an earth berm around the site would kill all the noise and make it better to look at. Throw in some tree…

Absolutely zero noise from any datacenter comes from the fans or power supplies of the equipment inside of it. The equipment is inside of the building.

Datacenter noise comes from the chiller units.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#247

Post by kube-system »

conductr wrote: post #241
kube-system wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s a colo… yes, it would be primarily local customers. Data centers are not just for consumer B2C services. There’s a lot of stuff that runs in data centers that are both more important and more sensitive to latency or connectivity than video games. Even for something as simple as a business that needs somewhere to run critical VDI hosts — then yes, they need low latency and somewhere that their techs can physic…

If they zoned it, then the city is saying “you will commute”. It doesn’t have to be unreasonably far away, just less convenient than a Walmart. Most people commute for work anyway, business rent storage/warehouse space in cheaper part of town than their office space, etc. Its hyperlocalness isn’t crucial to its function.

Yeah, I commute 45 minutes to mine. That’s entirely reasonable for my use case. If you’re not doing something like HFT, then being in the same metro area is fine for most purposes.

I was responding to why you wouldn’t want one in a different freakin country

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#249

Post by fragmede »

kulahan wrote: post #229
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby I wouldn’t dismiss the critics as NIMBY. They are closer to fuck it, nowhere. Some opposition is just anti-AI or misinformed about e.g. water use. But most of them have legitimate complaints about, on one hand, noise and power prices and, on the other hand, the shocking lack of contribution to local employment or taxes from these structures mintin…

I’ve heard there’s misinformation regarding water use. As far as I’ve heard, these data centers use quite a bit. I imagine they just use them for cooking and spit it back out warmer (though if we’re going to do that, I’d prefer we do it cooling a nuclear power plant, personally…) Is this not accurate? Are there any good resources that aren’t like… these companies being super honest about how super good they are?

The reality is that there are two approaches for water: open loop and closed loop, and you can guess correctly at what they mean. The problem is that's subtle and we can't have subtle conversations about things.

Re: Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo

#250

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kulahan wrote: post #229
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you tried actually listening to what critics have to say? Nimby I wouldn’t dismiss the critics as NIMBY. They are closer to fuck it, nowhere. Some opposition is just anti-AI or misinformed about e.g. water use. But most of them have legitimate complaints about, on one hand, noise and power prices and, on the other hand, the shocking lack of contribution to local employment or taxes from these structures mintin…

I’ve heard there’s misinformation regarding water use. As far as I’ve heard, these data centers use quite a bit. I imagine they just use them for cooking and spit it back out warmer (though if we’re going to do that, I’d prefer we do it cooling a nuclear power plant, personally…) Is this not accurate? Are there any good resources that aren’t like… these companies being super honest about how super good they are?

Construction Physics [1] and Hank Green [2] have done good takes. Broadly speaking, most general-use datacenters use evaporative cooling (i.e. open loop) because it's cheap [3]. AI datacenters reject so much heat, however, that even absent public pressure they pretty much need closed loops [4].

The misconception is that while both of these processes use a lot of water, we both have and use tremendously more. That makes their levels tiny compared with plenty of uncontroversial, thoughtless uses. And the increasing efficiency makes this a choke point across medium-term scaling. (And replacing an AI datacenter with a conventional one counterproductive from a water-conservation perspective.)

Power—and with it, noise, air pollution and grid-upgrade costs—is the real and present problem.

[1] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-does-the-us-use-w...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc&t=240s

[3] https://www.fwpcoa.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=859275...

[4] https://axis-intelligence.com/data-center-liquid-cooling-sta...

Post reply on HN