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Data Center Emits Constant Screeching Noise Directly Into Man’s House (www.yahoo.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 73 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The sound: https://www.tiktok.com/@ayathetigress/video/7650601803972627726

According to Billy Finn, the noise is actually getting louder. He's been tracking the decibel levels on Louise Avenue since 2022, when Hyperscale Data began operating. Back then, the sound level was around 52 decibels. Today, they're typically around 61 decibels, and sometimes go as high as 78 decibels, he told the paper.

Inside his house, it goes down to 39 decibels, which is about the level of a quiet office or library, according to the American Academy of Audiology. But it jumps to 62 decibels when he opens the door, sounding a bit like a passenger jet taxiing on the runway in the distance.

And that's 24/7/365.

Remember that the next time you "ask ChatGPT" instead of making a web search.

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

    ...sounding a bit like a passenger jet taxiing on the runway in the distance.

    That could be because they use turbine generators for power when/if the local grid can't support what they want. The major difference between the turbines used in aircraft and the ones for datacenters is the load. Giant fans for planes, generators for datacenters.

    Please ignore the obvious onesidedness of the link below. Its there to show I'm not making this ip. It's shitty that this is allowed and they aim to siphon off as much money as they can.

    https://www.greengasturbines.com/blog/gas-turbines-for-data-centers-hyperscaler-power

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

    "green" gas turbines, what the fuck?

    Mmm, nice clean diesel 🥴

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

    He must have a well-insulated house if opening and closing the door makes a 23 decibel difference.

    Too bad he can't open his windows, though. Or enjoy his yard.

    Can't wait for the backlash to tear these datacenters down, or the economic cliff to shut down their operations.

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

    Not at the range of things under 70 decibels.

    Decibel scale is logarithmic, so down at around the 60 level, the difference between 30 and 60 is basically the difference between a normal conversation and someone whispering.

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  • [+] -16 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Are you under the impression that a web search does not use data centers?

    Google in particular has a lot of infra to support their search, which actually used to be good

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

    It doesn't need nearly as many. AI inference is orders of magnitude more expensive than a single search query (ignoring the fact that Google does it's own inference with search queries now). And that doesn't even include training, which is stupidly expensive to do.

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

    It does not use AI data centers. Those are not remotely on the same scale as what we called a data center before this LLM hype started. This infrastructure will not have another use once the bubble pops.

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

    There is a difference between using X amount of resource to provide an actual output that justify spending X amount of resource, and using X*1000 resources to provide zilch.

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

    Citation on it being zilch because they do a fair bit of actually useful work these days while the search engines mostly seem to be going downhill (Kagi being an exception)

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Search engine going downhill is mostly a side effect of AI enshitification getting in the way. Even google, which people keep saying is "dying", works as well as before as long as you're not using their default page which is filled with AI garbage and other automated content.

    Also, Large AI models from large provider doing a fair bit of actually useful work would have to be confronted with other way to do said work. People burning tokens to edit PDF isn't exactly that efficient compared to opening a god dawn editor.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago

    Government propaganda making people think it's AI chat bots why all these data centers are being built

    They are to process the enormous amounts of data the government, flock and the rest are gathering to monitor citizens

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