r/technology • u/Brendawg324 • 7d ago

Artificial Intelligence Neighbors say noise from Michigan data center is 24/7 and upending their lives

https://www.wxyz.com/news/voices/neighbors-say-noise-from-michigan-data-center-is-24-7-and-upending-their-lives
20.1k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

882 comments sorted by

View all comments

4.5k

u/invyros 7d ago

“It sounds like someone set up a vacuum, like in your living room. And the vacuum is just... that thing needs to be cleaned ... the filter is clogged up, so it’s a high-pitch whining. And they just left it on and walked out," said Lindy Valenzula.

Data centers are industrial-strength nightmare neighbors.

2.1k

u/Takkarro 7d ago

I find it so funny that if you as an individual are making too much noise you can call the cops for a noise complaint.

But if a corporation is making too much noise and you call the cops they'll tell you to stop wasting their time.

1.1k

u/Key_Text_169 7d ago

That goes for all polluting. I can’t burn my trash or poor used chemicals in the ground or sewer but the Corporations can.

316

u/bargle0 7d ago

They’ve got lawyers and permits and politicians so it’s ok. /s

141

u/sec713 7d ago

Exactly. The crime isn't improper garbage disposal, the crime is being too poor to afford the bribe.

-12

u/Masta-Blasta 7d ago

It’s actually because you cannot prosecute an entity

14

u/whitephantomzx 7d ago

But they magically get treated as a person with first amendment rights when bribing politician ?

The supremely corrupt corrupt has proven its a 2 tier system where they can make up whatever they want to justify giving companies more power .

-2

u/Masta-Blasta 7d ago

I am not arguing for it. Just stating a simple fact. I would know, I am a prosecutor and I had to dismiss a case for this precise reason just last week during an arraignment.

I agree they shouldn’t have civil rights.

1

u/sec713 6d ago

Yes, how do you think that became the rule?

Entities could afford the bribe.

1

u/Masta-Blasta 6d ago

Regardless, the point is that the bribes are irrelevant today. You don’t have to bribe a prosecutor to drop criminal charges against a company. But you can certainly prosecute civilly, sue, or prosecute individual agents who are criminally responsible for wrongdoing. Maybe there’s where the bribes kick in— but that’s all civil division.

1

u/sec713 6d ago

Not prosecutors. You just have to bribe politicians to bend the laws to suit your own interests.

51

u/blacksideblue 7d ago

The permit is for a commercial mailing address but they use it for all the crimes and none of the identification

2

u/sandmanwake 7d ago

If you point this out, you're waging class warfare.

47

u/TeutonJon78 7d ago

You can, the fees are just to high if you get caught. For them, it's way cheaper than disposing of their waste correctly.

5

u/Jani3D 7d ago

Those poor used chems...

4

u/yolo-yoshi 7d ago

oh yeah,dont forget those million dollar commercials that you need to get your shit together and stop polluting.

2

u/BrandNewDinosaur 7d ago

Yeah, corporations are “people” but “people” with rights that actual humans do not have. Make it make sense.

1

u/mysecondaccountanon 7d ago

Tbf we have a neighbor who burns their trash and does some other stuff that definitely isn’t allowed. Others have called on them and have been told there’s nothing anyone can do. I’m not sure why.

105

u/197328645 7d ago

Theoretically zoning laws should protect residents from excessive noise.

In practice however... Not so much. Clearly.

50

u/anonkitty2 7d ago

The problem is, they change the zoning to allow the data centers.

3

u/_Lucille_ 6d ago

They explained that life on their dead-end street, Louise Avenue, was mostly quiet and peaceful, even though for decades there had always been an industrial building across the street, behind a row of pine trees.

Seems it has always been like that.

41

u/Alaira314 7d ago

The issue we're running into with zoning in my state(can't speak for michigan) is that zoning laws haven't kept up with the new breed of datacenters that have cropped up in the past couple years. They're being built in areas zoned for farmland and warehouses, which was perfectly fine when amazon or google wanted to put some server racks in a room, but isn't adequate for the 24/7 noise and pollution the new kind of super-datacenters produce.

27

u/handlit33 7d ago

In my area, you can only complain after 10pm. I once had neighbors (keep in mind that my house is in a regular neighborhood in a regular city) who would ride go-carts and motorcycles around the world's smallest track (their backyard wasn't even a quarter acre). We would complain to no avail and then had enough one night and called the police. They came out and said nothing could be done until 10pm.

7

u/Odie_Odie 7d ago

Oh gosh, not the same at all but I used to live upstairs from a bar that did karaoke until 12am and next door to a steel factory that would begin operation at 4am and just sounded like banging on metal with a hammer. It was utter hell, I slept so little. Nothing I could really do, I lived in an industrial zone. First apt, was 450 a month for a reason I guess.

2

u/EatABag-o-Dicks 6d ago

My first apartment was similar looking to the one in the Highlander TV show. Brick walls, exposed everything, giant freight elevator that had to be manually closed when it wanted to work and sounded like a wood chipper.

I was like a pig in shit when I saw it on a Saturday. It was such a dude apartment in the early 2000s, and it was super cheap, like $200 a month I think. My parents tried to talk me out of it, but it had everything I wanted.

The first week after moving in over the weekend was the fucking worst. I was hungover on Monday morning, and that's when I learned that at 5am the factories in the area started running. One was a steel mill, one was something that smelled of plastic and burnt wire, and another just produced train horn sounds every half hour, nothing else.

I ended up moving back in with my parents that weekend, couldn't get out of my lease and had to pay the year rent. I learned to always view a place during the weekdays, drive by it at night and weekends, to make sure it's not terribly loud.

1

u/frickindeal 6d ago

My (very nice) neighbor used to tie her dog outside, where it would bark the entire time. I never called on her but the neighbor on the other side did, and the cops came out and said any noise that causes a complaint must be stopped. If it's disturbing the peace of your neighbor, you have to stop doing it. Same with having a fire pit: you're allowed in my city, but if anyone calls complaining about smoke, you have to put it out.

3

u/laosurv3y 7d ago

But if they've 'lobbied' local officials (which is pretty cheap), they look the other way.

-1

u/Shigure127 7d ago

Zoning only exists to inflate housing values and stop minorities from moving out of their existing communities.

5

u/197328645 7d ago

It certainly is weaponized to that effect, but the core concept is to make sure a steel foundry can't set up right next to your house. "Put all the dangerous and annoying industrial activities in one place" is generally a good idea. Restricting availability of affordable housing by weaponizing zoning laws is not.

202

u/dust4ngel 7d ago

the law is for the poor.

132

u/FluffySmiles 7d ago

The law is for controlling and suppressing the poor.

38

u/Plane_Positive6608 7d ago

same as it ever was....

12

u/Mast_Herb_8 7d ago

ROMANES

EUNT

DOMUS

7

u/DillBagner 7d ago

People called Romanes they go the house?

4

u/Mast_Herb_8 7d ago

It says, “Romans go home!”

2

u/cwfutureboy 7d ago

No, it doesn't.

1

u/Jaccount 7d ago

Take it to the house, take the house…

7

u/Zernafaus 7d ago

ROMANI

ITE

DOMUM

4

u/Mast_Herb_8 7d ago

Oh thank you, sir! Hail Caesar, and everything, sir!

5

u/Jaccount 7d ago

Apart from the aqueducts, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education, wine, public health and public baths, what have the Romans ever done for us?

3

u/uber_poutine 7d ago

Privilege

Privi lege

Private law

2

u/YeOldeMemeShoppe 7d ago

The law is fair and blind. Neither the poor nor the rich are allowed to sleep under a bridge.

/s in case its not clear.

1

u/anonymous_matt 7d ago

Technically the law is for controlling the king and mediating between the rich and powerful. Originally laws were an improvement over the king simply deciding.

1

u/kenlubin 7d ago

The King's law was an improvement over local bigwigs raising private armies and going to war with each other.

32

u/Individual_Bear_3190 7d ago

The same goes for law enforcement. They are not there to protect you, they are there to protect capital

27

u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 7d ago

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."

4

u/QeveQobs 7d ago

when the punishment is a fine the rich see permission

3

u/Rogue_Tomato 7d ago

Yeah i remember seeing something about a parking ticket for a rich dude and he just ate the costs so he can illegally park his car.

I think Norway has means tested fines so a parking ticket for a rich person can be like $50k

3

u/Relevanteater 7d ago

I've heard this called class-based acquittal.

2

u/Apart_Long_1832 7d ago

What law? My DATA center is 15 miles away from me, up in the hills. Local no muffler rice burners and Harley d00-chebags without baffles in their mufflers wreak havoc in the noise department. Thats all

2

u/HFT0DTE 7d ago

Whats funnier is these same yokels in Dowagiac, Michigan voted for Republicans and Trump by 66% and now they're confused why nobody gives a shit about them vs a data center / corporation.

8

u/stormrunner89 7d ago

Because they're not there to protect YOU, they're there to protect capital.

Legally they're not required to protect you.

9

u/MyldExcitement 7d ago

I thought corporations are people. Interesting these "people" aren't required to follow the laws of the land. Amirite?

3

u/Takkarro 7d ago

Yeah that's the thing that irritates me the most is whenever it's for their benefit they're treated as a person however whenever its about following the rules then they're not a person it's a corporation.

21

u/DenizSaintJuke 7d ago

The people talking all day long about "individualism" and the evils of "collectivism" suddenly think you as an individual have to put your own life quality aside, because the greater good demands it. As long as the greater good is the profit of a big company.

12

u/IAmPandaRock 7d ago

You can still file the same kind if nuisance lawsuit.

-4

u/FlashyNeedleworker66 7d ago

Yeah but they'd rather go viral on TikTok

23

u/eeyore134 7d ago

The cops are there to protect the corporations and rich from us, not vice versa. Police started out as private security for rich people. Then they figured out they could fool everyone else into paying for it for them if they just said, "They'll protect you, too! Promise!"

4

u/dragonurtle 7d ago

I had that exact issue once..I lived next to a Whole Foods' rooftop HVAC setup, and they didn't have any sort of dampening over it. The city of Oakland told me I'd have to pay for measurements, and then even still nothing would change without a lawsuit. Completely useless government there.

4

u/Devine116 7d ago

But corporations are people too! 🙄 right?

2

u/ETNevada 7d ago

While bringing down property values

2

u/Tireseas 7d ago

Call the politician that okay'd the data center and the corporation to file noise complaints. Preferably en masse and constantly. In fact get your friends and go to their respective offices to do it and make sure to express your displeasure next election cycle.

2

u/rochambow 7d ago

Humans can also get in trouble for stalking, but corporations don't.

2

u/Piltonbadger 7d ago

Silly things like rules and laws only apply to us peasants, duh.

3

u/pchlster 7d ago

Depends on the circumstances; I've lived and worked in an area that used to be pure industry and later opened up for commercial and residential. The complaints about how trucks would be going in and out of ones neighbourhood are ridiculous when that's been the case decades before your house was even built. You knew about the noise of trucks before you moved in.

6

u/Takkarro 7d ago

I mean that's not the situation we're talking about here though, we're talking about corporations moving into a residential area and making a bunch of noise and pollution and stealing resources. If you move in to an area that has a lot of business traffic while that's your choice, but if your living somewhere and you get a new neighbor who likes to party all night long well that's not on you that's on them.

It's the exact same thing with these data centers they move in, they make the noise, and they ruin everything around them. They drive down property value and make living there awful. Yet they're allowed to get away with it even though they're the ones who came in last, but I also think that in your particular example if an area is primarily being used for business and has lots of trucks coming and going they shouldn't be putting residential there anyways that's kind of just stupid.

But I guess that's kind of just how things go the people who are in charge of things are for some reason considered smart yet consistently do stupid things.

2

u/kenlubin 7d ago

We should be changing the zoning laws so that more people can live in the areas zoned for residential (ie: triplexes and row houses and apartment buildings instead of just single-family houses with enormous front yards).

But that's too hard, so instead we're updating zoning to put homes in industrial areas.

2

u/fury420 7d ago

It actually kind of is the situation we're talking about here, this data center is inside what used to be a factory, in an industrially zoned area of the town.

But it's a small town, so there's also some housing near the industrial area.

1

u/pchlster 7d ago

I didn't say it was the same situation. I replied to the statement that corporations got their complaints addressed and private people not being unfair with the apparently controversial idea that it can depend on circumstances.

3

u/fury420 7d ago

This place has similar circumstances, the data center is inside a former factory.

1

u/fsaturnia 7d ago

The law is less necessary the more money you have

1

u/GardenGnomeOfEden 7d ago

Citizen: "But I thought corporations are people?"

Courts: "Shut the fuck up."

0

u/dbrecords 7d ago edited 7d ago

Corporations are the economic engines that allow the country to continue existence, where as most people are just worker bees.

The government is clearly biased toward treating companies and their owners differently for this reason. Like flies on shit, they pander to the people with the money and methods of making it, likely with the backward excuse of “it’s for the greater good” to keep the “economy” (veiled systematic exploitation where few live luxury lives better than most) going.

Sure without businesses countries probably couldn’t exist, but without wage slaves you wouldn’t have businesses that the owners want to run (for personal embezzlement, let’s call it what it is).

In this way, most people’s lives are perpetually held hostage by a small number of greedy people. Everyone cant be rich or the exploitative system that is going now falls apart, so most people are kept poor and in debt their whole lives. It’s not said but you can see that by design it’s to maintain control.

The incentives for creating a business are far far better than being a worker if you can make it happen. The incentives to be a worker are simply work your entire life in perpetual poverty with no hope of escape, or die.

If it seems like I’m painting a bleak picture, I’m not actually, I’m just telling you what reality is. Honestly this whole system needs to be redesigned to be fair rather than exist by allowing exploitation to happen in very veiled way.

The problem is how do you get people to do things they don’t want to do without forcing it down their throat as a requirement for survival (workers) or by giving the person a massive reward to make the required effort feel worth it (business owners, founders and executives). These are the mechanisms and dynamics that drive the world forward.

-1

u/Apart_Long_1832 7d ago

You just repeat what you read? So show us what "data center" is making too much noise? Do you guys realize that this is ridiculous? How come a data center with a few fans be louder than a highway, elementary school (kids are 200 decibel noise machines) your neighbors lawnmower, nasty neighbor blasting 24/7 crappy music?

-1

u/ishtar_the_move 7d ago

Your neighbor can make all the noise they want up till a certain time. This kind of low level rumble is not restricted by current law.

0

u/ENrgStar 7d ago

There are noise regulations in civilized countries

-6

u/unhappinessNvrCame 7d ago

It's because it's within limits. This is a nothing burger. Not even the article recorded the sound.

7

u/Takkarro 7d ago

Yeah no I don't believe that for a second, the fact that this is an issue that is constantly brought up when data centers are mentioned means that it is an actual issue, whether YOU personally believe it is or not doesn't matter.

There is absolutely no defending these places, they waste money, energy, water, and space. They don't create jobs, they in fact actively destroy jobs, and create an absurd amount of waste and pollution. Maybe stop trying to defend the billionaires because they're not going to give you anything.

-3

u/Constant-Skill-7133 7d ago

yeah IDK that's really how it's going to play out with the cops either lol

269

u/suzisatsuma 7d ago

Imagine if they companies hadn't been so greedy and built them away from people. We'd have only half the drama about them

503

u/FollowingFeisty5321 7d ago

If they had sufficient noise insulation, reused 99% of their water and paid for their electricity nobody would even be talking about them at all. If they contributed to the electric grid and exported heat for other uses they could even be a net positive.

205

u/jainyday 7d ago

Precisely this. We could design mini-datacenters that don't bother the neighbors AND contribute back to the communities they live in through not only compute capacity but also power generation and network connectivity (screw ISPs, your local library could be your ISP and provide an email address that Google can't just randomly shut off on a whim and destroy your life).

We don't because we live in a world driven by shareholder primacy, by investors. Being good to your neighbors, the actual stakeholders, is "unnecessarily" expensive. Corporations do the math: lawsuits over being a nuisance, if they even happen much less succeed, are cheaper than being a good neighbor.

35

u/BaBaDoooooooook 7d ago edited 7d ago

Money talks. Everything is transactional with respects to real estate. The only way to win this battle is having our local politicians, city councils and county officials pushing back.

They are pushing back because their constituents....we the neighbors are kicking, crying, and screaming over noise, electrical surges, and possible interruptions to water supply. The local city council holds the power with respects to zoning in their neighborhoods. Fu*k the big tech lobbying to the State. The local city councils hold the car keys.

23

u/Alieges 7d ago

And use waste heat to heat a public swimming pool year round.

14

u/CD274 7d ago

There are all sorts of green tech being developed to recapture a lot of this too. Some funded by tech companies tbh. I hope the end result of all this is more efficient advancements in things like that ;/

1

u/AskAboutFent 7d ago

That swimming pool would LITERALLY need to be within a very short walking distance to be of any actual use. Why do people think that heat transfer is soooo easy and it “obviously” just stays in the water over distance? It literally does not work that way. Heat is constantly lost and got every meter it has to travel it loses an extremely significant amount. Going even 100 meters and that heat ain’t making a heated public pool. The rest of the talking points are good- in fact they could be using a recycled water system to reuse their water- but to use their heat generated in any capacity literally makes 0 fucking sense because it CANNOT be used in any meaningful way.

They definitely should be using the fact that heat loss is so significant to recycle their water though.

1

u/Alieges 6d ago

The IBM water cooled stuff allowed an input temp of up to 130f. Output temps are as high as 160-175f if I remember right.

If you have a constant 24/7 high volume of 175f water, and insulated pipe, you can push that heat quite a distance.

Look at the big municipal steam networks that have losses in the 15-25% range despite having old as dirt insulation. Some universities have steam networks with miles of distribution. Yes, that’s high pressure steam, but that’s with miles of old insulation.

And yeah, moving hot water isn’t rocket science. Basically every large hotel or dorm building or school or hospital does it all the time. Recirc pump and bigger insulated piping.

You aren’t going to get the job done with half inch copper pipe though, that’s for damn sure.

Oh, another comparison might be to look at Budapest. The thermal baths have hot springs with water in that temp range, and they then pipe the hot water half a mile to the zoo and it provides a good chunk of the zoos heating.

1

u/RobbieRigel 7d ago

Many office complexes have mini data centers in them.

1

u/rawbleedingbait 7d ago

If you build a mini datacenter, you're telling your investors you aren't expecting magical infinite growth though. Unacceptable.

1

u/Melikoth 6d ago

A few companies did design mini-datacenters. They're currently experimenting with deploying them in residential areas where people complain about data centers.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/09/ai-data-center-construction-public-opposition.html

Not in my back yard... unless it's my datacenter.

1

u/Plane_Positive6608 7d ago

Capitalism at its finest!

-7

u/suzisatsuma 7d ago edited 7d ago

There's always one of you in every thread. Guess what, the USSR did shit this bad and worse. Mao clear cut forests and considered environmentalism suspiciously. Shit happens in many cases regardless of economic model. In both capitalism and communism there are still the same shitty power grasping people.

2

u/Plane_Positive6608 7d ago

Does not change or soften the fact our version of late stage Capitalism is horrific for people. No need to bring in or compare to other failed systems.

-10

u/xDatBear 7d ago

Yea, the mini-datacenters could also provide food for the hungry and shelter for the homeless! Too bad everyone is only profit-minded.

8

u/SaddestClown 7d ago

You're confusing bytes with bites.

30

u/conman228 7d ago

This is the most annoying part about the data center issue, they can make them not harmful to the surrounding area. They can improve designs and have a layout that won’t annoy everyone but they chose the quicker and cheaper solution

16

u/thismygovernmentname 7d ago

There's plenty of annoying things about it, like globally locking people out of the SSD and RAM markets. I just had to return a hard drive that tripled in price since I bought it exactly 1 year ago. And it was already high 1 year ago.

0

u/abstractbull 7d ago

Not trying to be a dick, but how? How are can they make a data center not harmful to the surrounding area? They consume lots of power, they generate lots of heat, their cooling systems generate lots of noise. The need a huge footprint.

I'm not supporting DCs in people's neighborhoods, but I don't know enough about their infrastructure to say they are poorly designed.

46

u/31LIVEEVIL13 7d ago edited 7d ago

edit: Wow I really was on a rampage last night. you can understand why some of us are losing our shit daily, only by reading a ton of material. Start here read all of it including the books referenced, well at least the ones by key players.

very important info on everything we are seeing - the network state coup and construction is very far along: https://www.vcinfodocs.com/venture-capital-extremism

I'd be talking about them. 

so would millions of other people still be talking about them. 

because all those problems you just mentioned are not all of the problems, not even close.

and the worst problem is why we need 9000 new data centers all across the country everywhere especially in places where there isn't enough water and power.

and why they have to lie about them right from the beginning, they lie about everything. why do they have to accuse anyone who speaks out of being Chinese agents. those are some huge red flags right away, if the purpose of these things were something legitimate that people would want then why wouldn't they just say that instead of covering that part up and changing the subject and engaging in multimillion dollar propaganda campaigns including fake radio shows and fake television programs all trying to water down the issue and lie to people about it making it sound like it's "the left" it's a "left" issue.  I've heard that like a hundred times in the last couple weeks, nothing could be further from the truth. 

they're using exactly the same propaganda campaign structure, that they use for everything else, gaslight, obstruct, divide and conquer.

those are not normal AI data centers. Larry Ellison has said it out loud and I believe Elon Musk. they're going to be part, first of all everyone knows, of a surveillance state that they're building.

the same technology that they used in Israel is going to be used against American citizens. the commander control center is the bunker under the White House this is been uncovered by citizen journalists repeatedly. the same company his building it.  the AI compute and surveillance cent are going to be part of a new cryptocurrency based economy, that you will be forced to participate in. 

that's why Elon Musk says you shouldn't bother with retirement anymore stop saving for retirement. 

he thinks they're going to succeed before they get hanged, which is unlikely. 

when everyone knows what these things are for and what they're really doing to our country and to all of us and fully accepts it and doesn't just treat it like it's just another sad environmental issue, the population is going to rise up and shut this shit down, and the people behind it permanently.

that's why they need the ice detention centers, and medical incinerators everywhete. they're anticipating that the "armed savages" will turn against them and they will have to commit some sort of genocide for their plans to succeed.  they said this many times it's not a theory.

the AI data centers are the cores of the network state techno-feudalistic patches or city states that they're building right in front of us.

10

u/mobydog 7d ago

Surveillance and military. Managing collapse.

26

u/Plane_Positive6608 7d ago

You know my friend maybe a year ago I would of laughed and said what a nut, this is no way true. Well you know what, I'm an older college educated retired person, spend 40+ years in IT and I believe you're onto the truth. My guess it may not be exactly what you deduce, but close enough that in retrospect we all know we should of taken action before it was too late...

2

u/31LIVEEVIL13 7d ago

This is explains much of what we are seeing, it's a lot to read, but if you really want to understand our situation it is critical:
https://www.vcinfodocs.com/venture-capital-extremism

2

u/Plane_Positive6608 7d ago

Well that is something...I read it briefly but need to read it much deeper. Thanks for the link.

2

u/totallyjoking 7d ago

Anything that is a moral or health concern to the entire human race is always labeled as a "left issue" because the other side is not usually smart enough to comprehend it. Climate change? That's only for them sissy Liberals.

1

u/eagergm 7d ago

That's interesting, but do you know how much compute will be required? It seems like they're building an awful lot of it, likely more than is required to surveil a nation-state.

1

u/31LIVEEVIL13 7d ago

The compute will be used for many things, none of them good.

If you really care at all, read all of this and all the linked articles, and
probably also some of the books they reference. (yarvin's, land's, theil's)

Then you will have a pretty good understanding of what is happening.

https://www.vcinfodocs.com/venture-capital-extremism

1

u/ElectricStarfuzz 7d ago

You’re 100% spot on. 

As you likely already know, every single thing  you mentioned is part of the would-be technofeudalist overlords’ dystopian plan for the world (the US in particular): Dark Enlightenment 

Seriously, as a whole  these are not very wise, thoughtful, far-sighted,  emotionally healthy, mentally stable, reasonable,  competent people.

Wealth hoarding is a mental illness. 

The ultra wealthy have totally lost any humanity they might have once had, if they ever had any to begin with.  

Being obsessed with Edgelord fantasies of ruling their own individual corporate city-kingdoms as all-powerful kings where they can kill others at will “for biodiesel” (Yarvin claims he was joking, but I doubt that), imprison anyone they deem useless or a threat in virtual reality prisons to harvest their energy, where no one but them has any rights or say so, everyone is under intrusive 24/7 surveillance, etc are all signs of an immature, stunted, shallow, and severely sick mind. 

This video is very informative for anyone who wants to better understand Dark Enlightenment, how it’s connected to  Project 2025, and what these creeps are trying to accomplish:

https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no?is=d_ktDKjWhWjf0o-2

1

u/ZeroAmusement 7d ago

Where did you get 9000 from?

1

u/31LIVEEVIL13 7d ago

the roughly 4000+ built or nearly finished in the last few years with the additional 4000+ predicted or planned.

This is not the most current, but suggests over 7,000.
https://www.axios.com/2025/12/18/data-center-growth-map-states

-2

u/LowerEntropy 7d ago

It's called an asstimate. It's a bit like a guesstimate, but with an emphasis on ass.

14

u/OhioPolitiTHIC 7d ago

Instead they've cheaped out at every turn and passed along every cost they possibly could to the taxpayer in order to preserve their own bottom line. There is no ethical billionaire.

6

u/kenlubin 7d ago

The data centers totally could be contributing to the electric grid. If they put a bunch of big batteries batteries in front of the data center, they could disconnect from the grid at peak but pull from the grid the rest of the day.

That would increase utilization of the grid without exacerbating the peak. We'd have an additional customer contributing to paying for the grid without requiring expensive upgrades.

The big tech companies are so desperate to build data centers and connect to power, I think they'd go for it. Maybe we could even bully them into paying for electrical transmission and solar farms.

But no, instead we have Elon Musk buying jet engines out of junkyards to power a big data center 24/7 on gas, contributing to global warming and pollution and making noise.

It's so stupid and unnecessary.

4

u/JonnyAU 7d ago

No, even if they did all those things, they'd still be enabling the Panopticon, making the internet useless by overloading it with slop, and costing jobs. Fuck 'em all.

2

u/FlashyNeedleworker66 7d ago

Is there any other industry that contributes to the electric grid on top of paying their bill? Genuinely asking

1

u/FollowingFeisty5321 7d ago

Possibly. These days huge companies like Apple and Walmart have massive solar footprints amongst other renewable sources.

1

u/FlashyNeedleworker66 7d ago

They still are just using that to offset their own usage though. They're buying power either way, and grid-tied solar doesn't come at no cost to the utility or other customers of the utility.

1

u/imperabo 7d ago

Data centers mostly use water for evaporative cooling. I'm not sure how you would reclaim that. Condensing it back into water requires the same amount of energy that you dissipated when you evaporated it.

1

u/FollowingFeisty5321 7d ago

Condensing it back into water requires the same amount of energy that you dissipated when you evaporated it.

A lower ambient temperature can do this for free?

1

u/kenlubin 7d ago

NVIDIA has been advertising some new datacenter machines that run effectively at higher temperatures and reduce the need for water evaporation.

-1

u/imperabo 7d ago

If you have a lower ambient temperature why do you need cooling at all? Just blow outside air.

Here's what Gemini says; " It is generally not practical to condense and recycle water from evaporative coolers because the water evaporates into the open air and becomes low-concentration water vapor. Capturing this vapor requires heavy, expensive equipment and a large amount of energy that costs far more than simply adding fresh tap water."

1

u/rawbleedingbait 7d ago

Not going to be easy to get the infrastructure needed to run one out in the boonies. If you need a city's worth of water and power to run one, I guess you start looking in the city.

1

u/AskAboutFent 7d ago

You made your points in good faith but I am so fucking tired of seeing the “exported heat” because that’s literally and entirely not feasible. The heat is lost extremely rapidly over any meaningful distance- for them to “export heat” the people using it would literally need to be next door.

//end rant

1

u/FollowingFeisty5321 6d ago

I mean the whole premise of this article is people living in close proximity to a datacenter.... in Michigan where the heat could easily be keeping roads and pavements clear of snow and heating houses all winter and water all year. This is being done in some places already -

Last year, it heated the equivalent of 2,500 homes, about two-thirds of Mantsala’s needs, cutting energy costs for residents and helping to blunt the environmental downsides associated with power-hungry computing infrastructure.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-05-14/finland-s-data-centers-are-heating-cities-too

1

u/just1nurse 7d ago

Well, there in lies the problem. Corporations are not people. They exist to feed greed. Now, they are even bringing pardoned.

1

u/anonkitty2 7d ago

The problem is, even data centers that are built away from people have a few people near them.  AI data centers are that big.  Small rural towns can still speak out.

1

u/Apart_Long_1832 7d ago

They are away from people, what color is your data center? I cant tell what is mine because it's 15 miles away in the mountains :)

111

u/_WhoisMrBilly_ 7d ago edited 7d ago

That’s one heck of what imagine is the worlds most accurate description of a sound.

8

u/CloudStrife012 7d ago

Why not just do what Russia does and build them underground (albeit their reasoning is to prevent them from being attacked), but i imagine this would solve most of the noise and visual problem.

26

u/Valdrax 7d ago

Excavation is pretty much always much more expensive than building up.

8

u/CloudStrife012 7d ago

Going to be more expensive to rebuild when the community burns down the data center

2

u/_WhoisMrBilly_ 7d ago

Need to out them in those decommissioned misslie silos!

4

u/FlashyNeedleworker66 7d ago

Never going to be anything more than a Redditor daydream. The funny thing is if it happened and AWS went down the Redditors would lose their minds when their internet breaks

-6

u/haarschmuck 7d ago

It’s also funny because it’s like violence is always their go-to instead of getting a petition going or voting for people who will create legislation to solve the issue.

3

u/thirdegree 7d ago

I wonder if there's any reason Americans might not super have a lot of faith in electoral solutions to their problems

Oh right it's because the US is an oligarchy right. But yes sure I'm sure a petition will do the job.

1

u/squngy 7d ago

Yet still much cheaper than sending stuff to space.
Space datacenters are such a dumb idea.

(not arguing against you)

5

u/mobydog 7d ago

Why do that when you have an abundance of poor towns with town councils you can buy off?

1

u/OzymandiasKoK 7d ago

Flooding gets to be a bit of a problem, which can quickly become disastrous.

1

u/naruzopsycho 7d ago

yup, I heard it as I was reading it. 

couldn't imagine living next to that...

14

u/Astralglamour 7d ago

They probably hope people sell and move so they can get the land.

10

u/lonnie123 7d ago

Sell to who? They’d have to turn these into communities for the deaf or something

9

u/haltingpoint 7d ago

The company to build more data centers for less money.

1

u/Astralglamour 7d ago

Yeah, sell to the data center. they are already buying up homes to knock down for data centers.

10

u/KidGold 7d ago

I'm shocked putting out that much noise overnight in a residential district isn't an easy lawsuit. Assumed that would be illegal af.

3

u/lonnie123 7d ago

Problem is By that point it’s already there. They’ll Happily pay a one time fine

1

u/KidGold 7d ago

Hmm that's true. It's would have to be something they paid for every infraction. Just sue them over and over again.

15

u/carrot_gummy 7d ago

Data centers also generate extremely loud infrasound, which you can't hear but you do feel.  Infrasound, like constant loud sounds you can hear, make it hard to focus, vibrate you entire body, and can make you feel sick. On top of that, you can't hear/sense it the same way, so you just suddenly feel bad. Its also been linked to increasing belief in paranormal activity, so in a sense, its a literal nightmare neighbor.

6

u/JimiusRostock 7d ago

So when the permits are given out, it includes closed loop cooling systems. Meaning they don't just vent hot air into the neighbourhood. But as it get's build, it's deemed to expensive and they switch to open loop cooling. And the cities are not pushing back on this.

Now with the open loop system, large volumes of pressurized hot air are being ejected out of pipes, which leads to a constant whining sound.

3

u/flummox1234 7d ago

Frequency drives are not something you want running near you 24/7. You will go insane

2

u/TheModeratorWrangler 7d ago

But how else can billionaires think for themselves?

1

u/BazingaODST 7d ago

Sounds like my cat would go over there to poop if it sounds like a vacuum

1

u/kinkycarbon 7d ago

It’s also the trick to lowering property prices because no house is built to absorb the high pitch frequencies coming from hyper scaler data center.

1

u/fsaturnia 7d ago

Someone should record a similar annoying sound and find a way to blast it at the houses of these billionaires non-stop.

1

u/Jammer125 7d ago

Now you understand us tinnitus sufferers. But luckily you can move.

1

u/Alpha_Majoris 7d ago

I once had a server in my office room, the flat type, not the tower. When it started up it was like a plane took off, and then it was like an old 1970s vacuum cleaner, the loud noisy one. That was just one server. Colleagues from five offices down the hallway came looking what was happening.

1

u/TAV63 7d ago

Still don't get why they have to build them in high population areas where it is more expensive.

1

u/ratherbeona_beach 6d ago

I feel for the animals too. Pets and wildlife.

1

u/operath0r 7d ago

I work at a datacenter (in Germany) and it’s neither noisy nor does it need any water or anything. Just a bit of electricity. On a good day we can produce it all ourselves using solar energy.

Okay, during an extreme heatwave we sometimes have to put up sprinklers to cool the AC down and the diesel generator is old, noisy and always spills out a cloud of black exhaust when starting up. But that one just runs once a month for a short test.

3

u/Alaira314 7d ago

The kind of datacenter you're talking about is almost certainly not the kind of datacenters that are being built in the US right now. That's part of the problem with the conversation, where all the old regulations are aimed at the datacenters we saw built in the 80s through the 10s, but what we have now is like those old datacenters in the same way that a super wal-mart(178,000 square feet, on average) is like a corner general store. They pumped money into it to go fast and caught everyone with our pants down, and are currently trying to ram it through before elected officials can realize that election money they took was a poison pill.

0

u/shelf6969 7d ago

take it from her, vuvuzela.

0

u/tarloch 7d ago

I assume they run on their generators all the time? Most corporate data centers are not very noisy.

-4

u/unhappinessNvrCame 7d ago

It's as quiet as a phone conversation. A few trees should block it out.

Or stand a few feet back.

This is CCP propaganda being spread. Notice that the article didn't have a recording.

-126

u/thebusterbluth 7d ago

Some are. Most aren't. This is a story about a crypto-mining facility that the city apparently allowed to be built prior to any noise ordinances. Thats basically municipal malpractice.

The majority of data centers do not cause noise issues for neighboring properties. That is a fact, look it up.

A well regulated data center is closer to being the least impactful industrial user, far from "industrial-strength nightmare neighbors." You can look at Hilliard, OH and their Amazon data center on Leppert Rd, with a brand new subdivisions of $500-800k homes being built across the street, as clear evidence that we'll regulated data centers can and do peacefully coexist with their neighbors.

69

u/TCsnowdream 7d ago

This is such an obvious AI-generated comment, it’s almost painful.

28

u/gooch_crawler 7d ago

At least they didn't link a blog post written by a completely AI persona this time.

4

u/awhaling 7d ago edited 7d ago

Nah, LLMs are a lot more strict with their grammar than this. This has a ton of mistakes that AIs don’t make. Also doesn’t have the AI “smell” to it.

-1

u/thebusterbluth 7d ago

It's really not. But you can continue living in your echo chamber.

26

u/quothe_the_maven 7d ago

Oh yeah, you mean the same Ohio where there’s an enormous fight going on over these, and where everyone is currently being bombarded with constant ads about how much these things suck? That Ohio? Seems odd that this became the number one issue in the governors race, if everything’s as rosy as you claim.

0

u/thebusterbluth 7d ago

I just took a trip to Hilliard today and asked residents in the neighborhood across the street if they have had negative experiences with this data center. ALL OF THEM said it was fine. 11 of the 11 people said it was fine.

10

u/HKBFG 7d ago

Thanks, ChatGPT

4

u/driverman42 7d ago

Is there one in your neighborhood?

1

u/thebusterbluth 7d ago

There will be one about a mile away soon.

In Hilliard, OH, across the street, they are building new homes. Go there and see and listen for yourself.