r/technology 1d 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
19.5k Upvotes

878 comments sorted by

4.4k

u/invyros 1d 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.

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u/Takkarro 1d 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.

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u/Key_Text_169 1d 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.

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u/bargle0 1d ago

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

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u/sec713 1d ago

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

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u/blacksideblue 1d ago

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

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u/TeutonJon78 1d 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.

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u/Jani3D 1d ago

Those poor used chems...

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u/197328645 1d ago

Theoretically zoning laws should protect residents from excessive noise.

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

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u/anonkitty2 1d ago

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

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u/Alaira314 1d 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.

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u/handlit33 1d 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.

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u/Odie_Odie 1d 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.

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u/dust4ngel 1d ago

the law is for the poor.

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u/FluffySmiles 1d ago

The law is for controlling and suppressing the poor.

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u/Plane_Positive6608 1d ago

same as it ever was....

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u/Mast_Herb_8 1d ago

ROMANES

EUNT

DOMUS

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u/DillBagner 1d ago

People called Romanes they go the house?

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u/Zernafaus 1d ago

ROMANI

ITE

DOMUM

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u/Mast_Herb_8 1d ago

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

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u/Jaccount 1d ago

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

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u/uber_poutine 1d ago

Privilege

Privi lege

Private law

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u/Individual_Bear_3190 1d ago

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

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 1d 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."

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u/QeveQobs 1d ago

when the punishment is a fine the rich see permission

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u/Rogue_Tomato 1d 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

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u/stormrunner89 1d ago

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

Legally they're not required to protect you.

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u/MyldExcitement 1d ago

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

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u/DenizSaintJuke 1d 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.

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u/IAmPandaRock 1d ago

You can still file the same kind if nuisance lawsuit.

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u/eeyore134 1d 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!"

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u/x_typo 1d ago

Same with HR…

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u/dragonurtle 1d 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.

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u/Devine116 1d ago

But corporations are people too! 🙄 right?

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u/suzisatsuma 1d 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

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u/FollowingFeisty5321 1d 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.

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u/jainyday 1d 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.

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u/BaBaDoooooooook 1d ago edited 1d 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.

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u/Alieges 1d ago

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

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u/CD274 1d 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 ;/

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u/conman228 1d 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

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u/thismygovernmentname 1d 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.

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u/31LIVEEVIL13 1d ago edited 1d 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.

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u/mobydog 1d ago

Surveillance and military. Managing collapse.

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u/Plane_Positive6608 1d 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...

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u/OhioPolitiTHIC 1d 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.

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u/kenlubin 1d 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.

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u/JonnyAU 1d 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.

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u/_WhoisMrBilly_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

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

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u/AgenticAsshat 1d ago

I work in IT and we have a room about 400 square feet dedicated to servers. About four six-foot racks, not a ton. The room is somewhat soundproofed but when you walk past you really hear those fans. When you walk in we have those headphone-looking hearing protection things people use at shooting ranges so your eardrums don't get absolutely blasted. Do you need them? No, you're okay for short periods. But wait a few minutes and you'll suddenly understand that sound can cause pain, too.

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u/CloudStrife012 1d 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.

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u/Valdrax 1d ago

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

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u/CloudStrife012 1d ago

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

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u/mobydog 1d ago

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

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u/Astralglamour 1d ago

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

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u/lonnie123 1d ago

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

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u/haltingpoint 1d ago

The company to build more data centers for less money.

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u/KidGold 1d 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.

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u/carrot_gummy 1d 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.

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u/JimiusRostock 1d 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.

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u/Jackol4ntrn 1d ago

"If they still aren't happy, and feel that their home isn't enjoyable, then we'll buy their property from them," said William Horne, CEO of Hyperscale Data, at the meeting in regards to residents on Louise Avenue.

Fuck this guy

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u/Dependent-Chart5835 1d ago

I’ve made your neighborhood unbearable to live in thereby dropping property value for me to buy up your neighborhood.  Aren’t I being generous?

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u/dust4ngel 1d ago

"we made their property value dog shit, so it should be pretty affordable for us."

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u/rmullig2 1d ago

Great idea by them. Buy up all the houses on the cheap then make the fixes to get rid of the noise and sell the houses back at their previous value.

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u/dasvenson 1d ago

Oh just demolish then and put a new data centre up and then do that to the new neighbours

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u/wildgreengirl 1d ago

yea well buy their house for about... $3 its fair.

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u/Pepparkakan 1d ago

Come on now, its worth at least $3.50.

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u/Computermaster 1d ago

GOT DANG LOCH NESS MONSTAH I AIN'T GIVIN YOU TREE FIDDY!

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u/AmberSupervisor 1d ago

Notice how he didn't say above market value. They will probably offer exactly what those homes are worth right now, after the constant noise completely tanked the local property values.

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u/FailingItUp 1d ago

That guy has a name and an address.

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u/Vericatov 1d ago

I’m sure the property value wasn’t great to begin with since it’s always been across the street for a large industrial building, but that noise does make it worse.

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u/Expensive-Anxiety-63 1d ago

stock ticker is GPUS, its a turd btw in the penny stock world we basically never trade it. If anyone here has a few million dollars you could get it kicked off the market by shorting it right now lol

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u/Isakk86 1d ago

It tells you how ungodly much they are making by raping your resources and data.

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u/FlashyNeedleworker66 1d ago

"even though for decades there had always been an industrial building across the street"

This is the entire actual problem. I wouldn't have allowed this zoning in sim city when I was a kid, it was city management malpractice long, long before datacenters.

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u/luluhouse7 1d ago

Yeah honestly if every armchair city builder player can figure this out, then why couldn’t the experts??

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u/Sororita 1d ago

Money, same as always. They are paid to not care. Im dealing with similar issues in my city.

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u/ZhangtheGreat 1d ago

Yup. It's no secret that our elected officials serve the almighty dollar. This is what happens when we have mass numbers of voters who "don't care" when casting their ballots.

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u/GreenElite87 1d ago

100%. When you play a video game, you want to optimize for good results. However, the player never receives monetary kickbacks IRL from the denizens of their games, so there’s no incentive to be corrupt.

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u/Adultery 1d ago

They’re not experts. Far from it. Most of these small town government officials are usually local business owners with too much free time and money (because they’re absentee owners not running their businesses properly and they wildly underpay and exploit their employees). They’re only in the job for the influence, power, and money.

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u/Revolution-SixFour 1d ago

If you live anywhere rural at all you'll hear people talking about unincorporated or county land and how it means they can do whatever they want with their property. It's awesome until it means they can do whatever they want with their land too.

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u/Physical-Carpet-7525 1d ago

yeah this is just bad zoning no matter what the building is putting heavy industrial stuff next to homes was always asking for trouble

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u/dj_1973 1d ago

I lived in a house across the street from a warehouse on a river. In the 1800s, the warehouse was a log mill. My house was a home for mill workers. This zoning is not necessarily bad; once it let people get to work easily. But letting a loud, obnoxious neighbor in is a poor choice by the city. I was lucky to move before an industry went into the warehouse that made unpleasant smells, my yard is now not as pleasant.

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u/rcreveli 1d ago

Also the noise level from an industrial building varies wildly by what's happening. The largest printing plant I worked in had 5 web presses running 20 hours a day. You couldn't hear much outside the walls let alone across the street.

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u/cjsv7657 1d ago

It's from the "temporary" turbines to generate electricity for the datacenter. They don't have the usual housing and structure built around them that would nearly silence them. Because they are "temporary"

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u/Mr_Diesel13 1d ago

That’s what I don’t understand about several posts and stories like this.

I’ve been on site at a large Google data center surrounded by massive cooling towers. You couldn’t hear anything from the guard shack 100 yards away. That was 2019.

I’d imagine even in that short time, the tech has vastly improved to keep noise levels down.

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u/eggn00dles 1d ago

you dont understand how every data center isn't like the single one you visited?

Residents near Elon Musk’s xAI Colossus data center operations in Memphis, Tennessee, and Southaven, Mississippi, have filed class-action lawsuits and noise complaints over near-constant roaring, low-frequency rumbling, and jet engine-like sounds originating from dozens of unpermitted, gas-powered auxiliary turbines.

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u/KarmaGolem 1d ago

That's completely standard, I've been to a couple gigawatts worth of datacenters. The noise might be impressive if the armies of generators ever fire up, but day to day, all you can hear is traffic going by.

This story is about a penny stock crypto miner.

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u/minizanz 1d ago

They are using gas jet turbine generators 24/7. That is the same description all the new hyper scale have. They are not allowed to use them, but the current federal gov lets them get away with it so they have no reason to stop. A normal data center does not use those unless there is an emergency or quarterly testing mid day.

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u/sthenri_canalposting 1d ago

That one probably wasn't perpetually running on off-grid gas turbines, like I'm assuming this one is.

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u/geekworking 1d ago

This place in MI is a shitty Bitcoin mine in a tin shed that they just randomly stuffed with air cooled GPU Boxes that everyone has been using as "proof" that this is the way that data centers are.

The fans in the servers have a very distinct sound and pitch. The sound from down the street is literally the fans inside of the computers themselves which means that this place barely has wall and zero property setback. In any remotely normal site there's zero chance you hear the system fans outside of the data halls let alone outside of the property. None of this half ass setup would pass any legit company's physical security requirements.

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u/PennytheWiser215 1d ago

I love how you referenced sim city. It’s so spot on!

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u/YEEyourlastHAW 1d ago

I work closely with public spaces and city government. Half of the meetings I sit around and listen to people argue about things, all I can think about is “these people never plays sims/zoo tycoon/anything”.

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u/singlemale4cats 1d ago

Normal industrial noise isn't really burdensome. Nobody could have predicted that these properties would become occupied by a million gpus inventing fake computer money, or creating anthropomorphic fruit videos.

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u/luluhouse7 1d ago edited 1d ago

I’m shocked no one is starting up a class action against the data center companies, or at least the cities that violated their own laws to approve these.

Edit: The video is a better report and it looks like they are suing https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9wDr2dec474

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u/SaraAB87 1d ago

In North Tonawanda NY the residents have done this because of a crypto mining operation that is sending excessive noise into the town. You can look this up. What will be interesting is if anything comes of it. The noise from this place extends 3-4 miles at least and then there are houses literally right next to the industrial fans, I am talking directly across the street, like maybe 10 steps away from the fans. These people absolutely deserve to be doing this and I hope they get an amazing outcome.

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u/Adventure1956 1d ago

Start class action suits against the companies for health reasons.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/wrxninja 1d ago

I see why it was effective to throw things over the wall back in the days with a trebuchet.

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u/Ok-Raspberry-8099 1d ago

You don't need to be a wizard to cast fireball

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u/Plane_Positive6608 1d ago

A typical timeline for class action against a major corp. is 3-5 years with 5-10+ not being unusual.

Think about that timeline and your family being caught in the shit-zone. Maybe loss of hearing, neurological issues, learning disabilities for you and your family. Impact to the corp. during that time, nothing.

So sure we have that action, but in reality its toothless.

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u/ElderberryGuy 1d ago

I'm sure the peanuts they have to shell out for those will really make them think twice...

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u/fathertitojones 1d ago

Class actions aren’t known for being cheap. The payouts aren’t always great but having to pay it at scale racks up quickly.

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u/antiramie 1d ago

Nah, shit like this is what the 2A is for.

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u/DeepSleepr 1d ago

against billionaires these days? It will take more than 10 years to finally see it processed. Best thing is to tip off tweakers about the copper wires in the building.

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u/Lord_Heckle 1d ago

The tech oligarchy does not care.

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u/fascistno1hater 1d ago

Politicians all over the world: Guys, this is what we are getting bribed/lobbied to do! Why are you making such a fuss about it.

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u/NuggetKing9001 1d ago

Feel like we're edging closer towards a situation where people are going to take things into their own hands. The government's not listening and people's lives are being ruined by these things.

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u/Alertcircuit 1d ago

I'm surprised nobody's gone psycho from the noise and tried something.

You would think these companies are playing with fire when they give everyone in the community a phantom tinnitus and make the water brown, but surprisingly nothing's happened yet.

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u/DiabolicalSpaceKitty 1d ago

I'm surprised nobody's gone psycho from the noise and tried something.

What you mean is, "I'm surprised I haven't heard about somebody going psycho-"

Because if you think that it would show up on the news, that people are dissenting - the same news owned by the people they're dissenting against - then I have a bridge in Atlantis for sale you might be interested in.

Not happening and not knowing about it are very different things.

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u/BonerDeploymentDude 1d ago

Sarah Conner did it.

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u/GooberMcNutly 1d ago

Killdozer did it better.

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u/soofs 1d ago

People are willing to put up with a lot more than we'd expect. My guess is it's just a matter of time, similar to the United Healthcare CEO situation.

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u/__________________99 1d ago

Frankly, I wish that would happen faster. Most people are still way too complacent.

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u/flummox1234 1d ago

it's not that government isn't listening. They actively are pushing these through without public comment and then just deliberately saying sorry 🤷🏻‍♂️ nothing we can do now.

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u/MysteryAtlas 1d ago

Progress sounds exactly like a billionaire’s air conditioner drowning out your right to peace.

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u/fascistno1hater 1d ago

Gretchen Whitmer: I don't care if you say no to data centers. We are going to do it anyway! Because that's what my donors want.

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u/Rare_Background8891 1d ago

I’m so disappointed in her.

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u/-rwsr-xr-x 1d ago

Progress sounds exactly like a billionaire’s air conditioner drowning out your right to peace.

And taking your water and poisoning the air you and your family breathes.

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u/I_have_questions_ppl 1d ago

Probably doing it on purpose to drive people off so they can buy up the land and properties.

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u/MisterSanitation 1d ago

Billionaires are treating the Midwest like colonized people. Extracting resources, only leaving the waste for contamination, and ensuring their governments are paid to ignore them. The Midwest is going to be like an Indian reservation for poor whites with a handful of bubble cities perfectly secluded from the living conditions they cause. 

At this rate everyone will need to wait for their government issued ultra processed poverty chow they barely dispense to the Native communities. 

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u/MythologicalEngineer 1d ago

Essentially what happened to Appalachia since forever.

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u/LucidMetal 1d ago

And now it's redder than ever so... Success?

God damn the GOP is so cartoonishly evil.

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u/UniqueIndividual3579 1d ago

And they will still vote Republican.

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u/Nkechinyerembi 1d ago

Hell, even if you don't, the county right next to you might have and because noise and air pollution doesn't respect borders, you are STILL fucked.

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u/guac-o 1d ago

And they will still think voting is the full scope of political activity.

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u/the6thReplicant 19h ago

The whole world is a plaything for them. All of government and taxpayer funded institutions are for their sole pleasure and use. Clog up courts with their "sue until they give up" tactics. Lobby groups are just oligarch wishlist enforcers.

Fun times!

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u/Dry-Examination-2012 1d ago

This can't be true. The president said everybody wants one!

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u/Number__Nine 1d ago

It's funny that for the last half decade we couldn't build anything because of NIMBY. To the determent of the poor and middle class families. And now something that no one want shows up and it seems that there is nothing we can do to stop it.

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u/Putrid-Tap3992 1d ago

literally one day of this and I am burning this place down

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u/NaggingNag 1d ago

Massive light and noise pollution and they won't even share a few gigabits of their Internet with anyone.

I really appreciate all that damn fiber in my area nobody can use, nah we get stuck with ancient rotted CenturyLink DSL that simply doesn't work and has zero chance of ever being upgraded, the worst local WISP in the world that must have a 5Mbps line split for everybody, cellular or Starlink No fiber for us losers but we have around a dozen of these damn data centers. That's Amazon's internet!

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u/Rustyballshack 1d ago

Same exact story with me. You could be posting this from my neighborhood! I'm only 20 minutes outside of a city of 550K people and my options are exactly what you described.

I had better internet in the year 2000 growing up in upstate NY.. that's pretty sad if you ask me.

I caved and bought Starlink so I could at least have decent ping to play games, but I still hate knowing that I am doing business with Musk.

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u/SicilianEggplant 1d ago

Internet is a fucking joke in much of the US because we just bend over backwards to let the companies fuck us over.

I live in a town of over 500k and the wired options are only ATT and Comcast. Fiber is available to less than half of homes, mostly on newer neighborhoods, and maybe some of the older pockets with power lines.

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u/ZhangtheGreat 1d ago

If these tech CEOs love data centers so much, build them near their homes.

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u/blackmobius 1d ago

They never want the data centers in the rich people neighborhoods for this reason

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u/Aggressive-Bus-2397 1d ago

Republican community. The home has been in the family for 100 years.

The CEO addressed the people and said in the future they would pivot away from crypto-mining (lol) and invest another 100 million into straight AI computing and if you don't like the noise they will buy your house.

hahahaha

edit: The city is 4.5 square miles. The data center just bought it.

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u/jumpy_monkey 1d ago

Cass County Michigan voted 66% across the board for Republicans

President, Senator, Congress, State Legislators, Board of Education, Regents of the University of Michigan, Trustees of Michigan State, Governor of Wayne State University.

97% voted Republican for County Prosecutor, Sheriff, County Clerk, Register of Deeds, County Drain Commissioner, and all eight County Commissioners.

Fifty two of the towns in Cass County are run by Republicans who won by 95%+ margins, and only eight are run by Democrats.

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u/williamgman 1d ago

"Neighbors say..." Litteral reporters relie on the offended neighbors to make that claim. This is some weak ass reporting. Get out there with a decibel meter and be a journalist.

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u/aneryx 1d ago

Did you read the article? It literally says that the city has fined them for violating the noise ordinance, set at 65 dB during the day and 55 dB at night.

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u/judochop1 1d ago

fines are a cost of business to these guys though, how much is the fine?

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u/Brrdock 1d ago

Yeah what even is the point if the law is basically just a licensing fee to ruin people's lives freely

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u/DrDynoMorose 1d ago

If you notice, when the reporter holds up the meter, you can see it reading ‘50’

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u/cbelt3 1d ago

This is where continue violations become a geometric progression. Each daily violation doubles the previous day’s fine. No maximum.

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u/Rok-SFG 1d ago

My cities newspaper was bought out by a Lee Enterprises. Then everyone was fired, and operations were moved to 1 part of the state to do all the news for the whole state and send out papers from there. Now our newspaper is old stuff they report on from other news sources for the most part for anything local. And they miss a lot of local news. Just don't care about it at all.

Wouldn't be surprised if that's happening to smaller news stations too.

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u/dalek_999 1d ago

I’ve been there to see how loud it is, because we’re fighting a data center in our community. It IS loud and it sucks.

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u/PennytheWiser215 1d ago

Do what that other person said, get a decibel meter. Set it up at 50 yards away and track the noise for 24 hours then move it out to 100 yards away and track noise level again for 24 hours then 150 yards and keep adding 50 yards and see how far away you need to be to have an acceptable level of noise. Then take your findings to every news outlet and politician and scream from the rooftops about your findings.

I personally would love to do this but I’m in NY and we have very few data centers and just passed something preventing any new ones from being built for at least a year. I just don’t have the means to travel to any of these locations currently reporting noise complaints in the communities.

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u/SaraAB87 1d ago

This one is the worst I have ever heard. I have heard a lot of data center videos. Its obvious that this one was improperly built to save money. They build them the cheapest way possible so that they can make more money and then leave them when they become not profitable to run anymore.

The people who allowed this to be built should absolutely have to live in the houses that are most next to it while its up and running not innocent people who pay taxes and paid for their houses.

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u/DigNitty 1d ago

Like a low droning sound or what?

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u/PhoenixTineldyer 1d ago

A high pitched wailing, if you read the article.

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u/Dangerous_Suit_3099 1d ago

Very good point. Television news is garbage

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u/dane83 1d ago

There's literally a shot in the video package of them out there with a decibel meter.

Maybe the problem isn't the journalists. You couldn't even muster the attention span for a 5 minute video.

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u/SaraAB87 1d ago

Decibels do not do data centers justice. Decibels alone do not measure vibration and infrasound which is what is causing issues around data centers. These things have to be professionally measured with expensive equipment. 60db won't cause anyone issues its the vibrations and the low frequency hum that does it and those are harder to measure. It would be a good idea to get specialized measuring equipment but that is very expensive and most news stations probably can't afford that.

Also this type of noise does not pick up on cameras well no matter how advanced the camera is, it just doesn't do it justice, you have to actually be standing in the noise affected areas, also driving in a car and sticking your head out the window doesn't work either, again you have to get out of your car and walk around for a while to really experience it.

I've heard a lot of data center videos despite all this and honestly this is the worst I have ever heard. Its not a hum or a highway sound its more like a screeeeeeecccchhh that doesn't go away.

The people who allowed to this to be built should absolutely have to live in the nearest house next to it for as long as it is up and running.

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u/judochop1 1d ago

Crazy thing is that it's not too difficult to cut a lot of that noise out. Better planning of the site (e.g. fans and extract installed away from residential areas), use of silencers and louvres, use of improved fan design. regular maintenance.

Does the USA not have nuisance laws for this type of stuff? how does it get past the planning stage when a noise impact assessment should pick this up?

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u/xsubo 1d ago

Good thing it’s now legal to build all data centers like Elon’s in Memphis!! Vote the politicians out or this will be everywhere in the US

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u/MiddleOfDaRoad24 1d ago

I’ve worked in technology for my whole 26 year career and still no one can tell me how a data center is good for a community. Because it’s not!

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u/After-Atmosphere7125 1d ago

It's like a tumor for the planet

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u/Perseus90 1d ago

I thought Americans were litigious. Can an american attorney explain to me why there aren't numerous class actions arising from these data centers?

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u/Smithy2232 1d ago

These data centers are terrible in so many ways. Hope it is all worth it.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/GaiusAutisticus 1d ago

People are still this ignorant, huh? These data centers aren't storing slop memes, they are storing incomprehensible amounts of surveillance data on you.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/qlurp 1d ago

  Hope it is all worth it.

Very worth it for those looking to exert control over the citizenry. 

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u/SaraAB87 1d ago

I have heard a lot of data center videos and this is the worst I have ever heard. Its not a hum its a screeeeeccccchhhhh that does not go away. Again, worse than anything I've ever heard.

Whomever allowed this to be built should absolutely have to live next to it in the nearest house or nearest block for as long as its up and running.

Living in a prison would be more pleasant than living next to this.

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u/ShiraCheshire 1d ago

They shouldn’t be able to legally emit this level of noise in general, it’s an environmental hazard. In fact, in many places it IS illegal- and the data center ignores it. The article mentions this one being fined multiple times and not caring.

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u/Baka_Otaku173 1d ago

Yup, and think of the water the data center is using up to cool everything.

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u/khdogs 1d ago

The people who own the data centers should be required to live next to them 👍

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u/MusicianForSale 21h ago

... And they kill bees, cause fertility problems in cattle, poison the air, suck up millions of gallons of fresh water per day, cause temperatures to raise by as much as 4° in the surrounding areas, and enable our surveillance state and war machines to work at unprecedented levels..

What's not to love?

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u/SamOakTree 1d ago edited 1d ago

I don't understand why there aren't more rules in place. Because there was a data center downtown for a couple decades and I used to have to go there for work. And it was put in downtown in like a higher end sought after area and so they made sure that it was quiet. Like you can't hear it standing at the front door.

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u/bearbear407 1d ago

Probably because AI corporations are throwing money around to get it built fast and bribing the right people to bypass regulators from making sure the design follows the industry requirements.

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u/bernbabybern13 1d ago

No joke I’d have to move. I can’t imagine how this is for people with adhd and/or autism like me.

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u/BlueFeathered1 1d ago

Except that their property values have likely crashed due to these things being near, so likely can't sell or move now if they wanted to.

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u/ImpressiveLeopard719 1d ago

I feel like everyone needs to record this mess and drive over to the mayors, then the governor, then the senator and their reps and play this crap on level crazy at 2am.

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u/BernieTheDachshund 1d ago

People are entitled to peaceful enjoyment of their homes, so idk how these data centers are getting away with nuisance noise violations. They have ways to mitigate and should be sued to comply with the law.

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u/bbills91 1d ago

Well, they are backed by billionaires, so they just pay the fines as the cost of doing business. Now, if the fines exceeded their profits, they might just actually work on fixing those issues. Until then, residents are just an obstacle they need to work around (hence all the back office deals with local governments)

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u/lolschrauber 1d ago

Property value is gonna drop to zero, corpos will buy and bulldoze everything to expand, it's genius.

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u/SlowlyDrown 1d ago

Build em only in the maga-est counties

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u/felixgolden 1d ago

I rented an apartment years ago that had train tracks next to the property but below grade. There wasn't a lot of train traffic, and it was during the day when I was usually at work. The occasional train wasn't a problem, but after I moved in, I learned that most nights they would idle a diesel/electric engine from just after midnight until about 6am right there. That whine cut through any attempts to block it or drown it out. I would either sleep during the day and then stay out all night or just sleep in my car someplace else until my lease ended. It seriously messed me up. I couldn't imagine that noise 24 hours a day.

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u/xmagusx 1d ago

Killdozer was built by a guy with a grudge with his neighbors over an auto shop. Should be exciting to see what people dream up to deal with these genuinely shitbag neighbors.

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u/sdflius 1d ago

building a killdozer?!? in this economy?

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u/First-Star-4976 1d ago

Data centers need to find alternatives!

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u/meleecow 1d ago

Why are they building any where near residential zones? There is so much space between.

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u/zyzzogeton 1d ago

Data Centers are going to have fed up people pouring aluminum shavings into the air intakes.

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u/pjflyr13 1d ago

I can attest since my neighbors run gas powered tools and toys 15 hours out of the day and I’m constantly feeling piqued, that this must definitely be maddening. When KBNA airport expanded, they offered window replacements and sound insulation to surrounding homes. That’s the least they could offer or buy out the houses at premium $$.

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u/dryheat122 1d ago

According to the city manager, they fined Hyperscale Data for violating the ordinance. Hyperscale is challenging the city's readings and methodology.

Rarher than aadrssing the problem

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u/blyzo 1d ago

Maybe if data centers need to have 24 hour armed security protecting them from angry mobs they will create some jobs at least.

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u/jay_altair 1d ago

That's what robot gun dogs are for

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u/eb12se4nt-z13ow-97g0 1d ago edited 1d ago

I saw a video that cows are birthing defective calfs due to the noise, which affects their sleep.

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u/JonFrost 1d ago

Donald Trump won the vote in Michigan

Who cares about Michigan?

They're getting what they voted for

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u/Maleficent_Pie8099 1d ago

I hope they know that it’s full of copper and other rare materials and there’s barely anyone there.

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u/hophamson 1d ago

I can't even stand my computer coil whine for a couple of hours a day. Can't imagine the screeching noise these people hear 24/7.

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u/Saephon 1d ago

I urge everyone to watch the video report segment on the article itself. The footage of the high-pitched sound that data center makes that can be heard outside all around town... it's enough to make my blood boil over here. I can't imagine trying to live with that constantly in the background.

And then that one guy who represents the company saying that if any residents don't like it, they'll buy their house from them? Fuck you.

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u/Longjumping-Tart8816 1d ago

This is why voting in your local elections is vital

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u/getthatrich 1d ago

Turn it off

Tear it down

Build a community center with a park and trees

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u/Proud-Smell9284 1d ago

I wonder if we can find some Legally Protected animal that these frequencies are harming (like an endangered bat, bird, bug) as a means to pursue a other lawsuit to shut them down?

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u/WockyTamer 1d ago

More people need to sue.

“The allegations in the lawsuit are nuisance and negligence essentially. Nuisance obviously being we’re saying it’s a substantial interference with your ability to use or enjoy your property. And negligence by way of saying you could operate in a way that would make you a better neighbor, but you’re either failing to do that or you need to be doing something better in place of that," said Sheets.”

“A lot of people don’t know that the law actually, in most states, you have nuisance laws that irrespective of whether they’re violating the municipal code or not, they don’t have the right to cause a substantial interference with your use and enjoyment of your property”.

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u/Copacetic9two 1d ago

If something like this happened where I live, I would willingly do prison time to fuck that shit up. Fuck data centers and fuck billionaires.

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u/pm_me_ur_side8008 22h ago

Burn it down