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#datacenters#infrasound#noisepollution

Datacenters Behaving Like Acoustic Weapons

Benn Jordan

1.4M subscribers • 10 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 5 people: 5 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Benn Jordan
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

1.8M views8 months ago5 recommendations

Cloud and DevOpsHardwareThe tech industry

Benn Jordan investigates the harmful infrasound and low-frequency noise pollution generated by massive data centers and crypto mines.

Join me in another depressing adventure in science and technology. [Research paper from the experiment is a WIP] 💗 Support this channel and join an amazing community: patreon.com/bennjordan 👀 Stalk me on social media for more frequent updates: linktr.ee/BennJordan 🔴 Subscribe To My Streaming Channel. I stream weekly! youtube.com/watch?v=geaIEWGhgsI ⚡Those lovely custom acoustic panels in the background: psyacoustics.com Timestamps: Intro - Infrasound - xAI/Colossus - MARA Crypto Mine - The Permian Basin - Experimenting On Humans - YouTube Data vs Research Data - Recording Techniques -

Why it's here

5 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended for its insightful and scary coverage of data center noise pollution and its physical effects on local communities.

soulofmischiefon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Montana Leads the Nation with Groundbreaking Right to Compute Act”

This research presentation from Benn Jordan will hopefully change your mind on the noise issue and its consequences. I highly recommend it. link to this video

schainkson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Missouri town fires half its city council over data center deal”

Plugging this video about infrasound, which I only recently learned was a thing: link to this video These datacenters can be built in ways to limit this kind of noise pollution, but it appears local leaders do not think about things like this that can truly harm their constituents.

Tornon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200”

This is a really great watch from Benn Jordan on the topic link to this video Some wild things happening with those, and infrasound. Colossus is shown 4 mins in

e40on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Why We've Filed a Referendum”

Watch these link to this video link link Then, tell me if you want to live anywhere near those. Then, tell me of a nuclear power plant that has that bad a repo.

code_biologiston Hacker News • Recommends

On “Meta steals a tactic from Tesla and builds data centers in tents”

Yes, the noise pollution is insane. Benn Jordan's YT video "Datacenters Behaving Like Acoustic Weapons" is an insightful, scary 30 min video covering the datacenter infrasound noise, and the nasty things infrasound does to people: link to this video

subscribedon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Utah greenlights 9GW AI campus using over twice state electricity”

No, it will just burn GWs worth of natural gas. Benn Jordan has captured quite an interesting evidence: link to this video

bobsomerson Hacker News • Mentions

On “xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab”

It's easy to deliver things fast when you don't care at all for the local communities or residents whose lives you ruin in the process. link to this video (@ 4:08)

budududuroiuon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Amazon Announces Multibillion-Dollar Data Center in Missouri”

I'm not an AI booster, nor an AI detractor. I like tech and progress. I'm mortified at the possibility of a data centre being built next to me at some point in the future 1. 1: link to this video

one33sevenon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Nvidia's 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero”

The value of an AI data center in your area is negative, not near zero. Pollution, water use, heat, infrasound ( link to this video ) and so much more... But at least we may get some cheap heat in the future

ffsm8on Hacker News • Mentions

On “GLM5.2 on AMD MI355X at 2626 tok/s/node at over 2x lower cost than Blackwell”

The people having glass literally break from the vibrations would probably disagree with your opinion link to this video Yet here we are, discussing "data center" as if they're standardized and of similar (nose) isolation. There are no meaningful regulations in building them, and they can be incredibly polluting. So your experience with a potentially well isolated one is sadly not the norm going forward. And we don't even know how close you lived, if you're eg talking about "within 5km/3miles" then your experience would also have little value in this discussion in general.