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Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

gizmodo.com

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Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#61

Post by m4rtink »

illliillll wrote: post #52
m4rtink wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These simple natural gas turbine generators are also massively inefficient - the same natural gas used in a combined cycle district heating plant would have its energy used much more efficiently, but here instead most of it ends up as waste heat, for the same amount of CO2 generated. Not to mention the same natural gas could be used for chemical processes, like fertilizer production. You know, helping make the stuff…

[flagged]

Who says this needs to feed Americans ? With LNG shipments from Middle East disrupted, the same American natural gas that is used to generate AI slop could have been shipped as LNG & used to generate fertilizer that then helps feed people in other parts of the globe, avoiding famine.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#62

Post by breakpointalpha »

bob1029 wrote: post #53

The most annoying part of this for me is that acoustic treatment is usually unbelievably effective if you make even the slightest attempt at applying it. A box lined with mineral wool is not exactly an expensive or complicated engineering solution. I see this kind of ignorance everywhere. Rooms where people suffer all day every day that could be made 10x more comfortable with $50 of treatment and literally 30 minutes…

At a minimum the data center should be responsible for paying for noise mitigation on all houses within a half mile of the site.

That work could be done within a few months, upgrade all the window treatments, replace all doors with solid core, add sound mitigation fencing, etc.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#63

Post by tomhow »

illliillll wrote: post #52
m4rtink wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These simple natural gas turbine generators are also massively inefficient - the same natural gas used in a combined cycle district heating plant would have its energy used much more efficiently, but here instead most of it ends up as waste heat, for the same amount of CO2 generated. Not to mention the same natural gas could be used for chemical processes, like fertilizer production. You know, helping make the stuff…

[flagged]

We’ve banned this account. This isn’t the place for you, thanks.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#64

Post by bob1029 »

breakpointalpha wrote: post #62
bob1029 wrote: post #53

The most annoying part of this for me is that acoustic treatment is usually unbelievably effective if you make even the slightest attempt at applying it. A box lined with mineral wool is not exactly an expensive or complicated engineering solution. I see this kind of ignorance everywhere. Rooms where people suffer all day every day that could be made 10x more comfortable with $50 of treatment and literally 30 minutes…

At a minimum the data center should be responsible for paying for noise mitigation on all houses within a half mile of the site. That work could be done within a few months, upgrade all the window treatments, replace all doors with solid core, add sound mitigation fencing, etc.

The problem with noise is that it follows inverse square law. It is several orders of magnitude more efficient to simply abate the noise at the source.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#65

Post by ChiperSoft »

margalabargala wrote: post #49
guessmyname wrote: post #3

Make John Stewart, Chief Marketing Officer of Hyperscale Data, live in one of those houses for a month. See how he likes the sound.

To be fair a large amount of the fault here lies with the city, who permitted a data center to be built in a residential neighborhood. There are plenty of dirty, noisy, disruptive industrial buildings out there. Smelters, quarries, incinerators, etc. Fine to build them. Don't build them next to houses, build them next to each other.

If they're any thing like my city, the board members don't live anywhere near the areas they're granting permits for.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#66

Post by SoftTalker »

K0balt wrote: post #58
SoftTalker wrote: post #25

Also depends on what you were used to before. I live in a rural area and it can be annoying when a neighbor half a mile away is running a lawn mower. In a downtown urban center there is so much noise from traffic, emergency vehicles, construction, and equipment of various types that a new data center would probably just blend in unnoticed.

The problem is the salvaged aviation turbines. Airplanes are prevented from operating at high power levels above cities. These engines-from-old-airplanes are likely being operated in their high efficiency range, around 80 percent, so they are loud. Living next to a runway loud.

Airplanes can't carry much in the way of sound supression or "mufflers" on engines. Running them on the ground, it should be straightforward to make them reasonably quiet.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#67

Post by xnx »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #7

Can someone explain why the new crop of datacenters are considered to be noisy?. I've been around the Wall Street datacenters in Jersey and they are basically the same as nondescript office buildings surrounded by a fence. The ones running on generators 24/7 are a problem but what is making the rest such an issue?

AI datacenters are an entirely different beast than traditional "computers in a warehouse" datacenters.

It's like the difference between and idyllic family farm with a few chickens and pigs to a factory farm with thousands of pigs jammed under one roof.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#68

Post by xnx »

cortesoft wrote: post #26
luk212 wrote: post #11

This feels less like a data center problem and more like a basic failure to price and regulate industrial externalities...are crypto mining or ai compute socially useful? Up for debate, but what isn't is that neither should make a surrounding neighborhood unlivable. Also, noise regulations aren't good for this kind of constant tonal sound. Any facility like this should have to prove it can operate within a certain ac…

You really just need the noise ordinance to have more teeth... instead of just a perpetual fine, you need to be able to shut them down if they continue to exceed the noise threshold.

Perpetual fine bad. Escalating fine good.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#69

Post by xnx »

SoftTalker wrote: post #25

Also depends on what you were used to before. I live in a rural area and it can be annoying when a neighbor half a mile away is running a lawn mower. In a downtown urban center there is so much noise from traffic, emergency vehicles, construction, and equipment of various types that a new data center would probably just blend in unnoticed.

And, surprisingly, dense urban buildings are pretty good at blocking sound. It's rare to hear a mower even one street over.

Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"

#70

Post by K0balt »

SoftTalker wrote: post #66
K0balt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the salvaged aviation turbines. Airplanes are prevented from operating at high power levels above cities. These engines-from-old-airplanes are likely being operated in their high efficiency range, around 80 percent, so they are loud. Living next to a runway loud.

Airplanes can't carry much in the way of sound supression or "mufflers" on engines. Running them on the ground, it should be straightforward to make them reasonably quiet.

The sheer volume of air moved by high pressure gas turbines makes that large and costly. Not impossible, but very large. These units are 2 per container size, intake and exhaust silencers would probably increase their footprint 5-8x. Not that it shouldn’t be done, just that there’s a lot of incentive not to do it.
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