- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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I remember when people complained about sound coming from wind turbines. That was bad
This? Good
Just looked up, a windturbine has less infrasound then cars. (german Source) I would guess the datacenter could have more infrasound and thus be a bigger problem. They mention a study about windturbine infrasound and they point towards nocebo effect, but maybe windturbines are at a border where the health effects are very difficult to measure. So maybe studies about the infrasound of datacenters could find something. On the other hand, datacenters bring a lot more pollution factors, like light-, air- and waterpollution.
It does matter if the complaints are real or fabricated, turns out. Research on that topic confirmed that wind turbines generate very little infrasound, further reduced by their great distance from the ground. The amounts in question are less than that generated by other ubiquitous machines, so it is very safe to conclude that those complaints are phony, advanced by enemies of alternative energy.
I can’t speak to the validity of these complaints, but there are a lot more motors running a lot faster in a data center than in a wind power generator, so it is at least plausible. The research will demonstrate if this complaint is valid or just more activism.
I dislike hypocrisy as much as the next person. So I feel where you’re coming from. At the same time, the wind turbines are generating power that everyone benefits from, whereas these things are consuming power for a product that very few people actually like or even want to exist. So I think its fair to say that maybe the noise is tolerable when you’re getting something you actually want out of it. Also, wind farms are usually built further away from large population centers, whereas data centers are because it’s cheaper to build them in areas with lots of people around. So the concern does seem a little more irrelevant to wind farming as a whole than data centers.
Just out of curiosity, what makes them cheaper to build in populated areas? Doesn’t that mean the land value is higher when purchasing/leasing the site?
The article alludes to it: “The United States does not lack flat, open land away from population centers on which to build data centers. However, AI hyperscalers prefer to locate their campuses near existing infrastructure so they don’t have to spend massive amounts of time and resources building everything from scratch.”
It costs a lotta money to run electricity and water to the middle of nowhere.
Also, companies are doing research to specifically build in areas where they believe the local community is not politically empowered to prevent it from being built. This guy goes into some more depth at this timestamp: https://youtu.be/1CpVmPh3BDE?t=831
Fascinating thank you. Brings me back to ArcMap training days. I wonder if they have some data layer for “local population acceptance factor”.
I’m sure they do. Probably using an AI model to calculate it tbh
There’s a wind farm near my house and I suppose they do make sound although the only time I was ever able to hear it was during the height of the lockdowns because there’s a massive highway between me and them and that’s definitely louder. They definitely don’t produce infrared sound though, but way too big and the blades move way too slowly.
There’s a local council in my community that is gunning for an AI data center in my county. People are livid, but I don’t think it’s going to be enough to stop the construction. It’s shady as fuck with hidden shareholders that nobody will reveal.
I’m open to any and all suggestions on how to prevent this data center from being built. Peaceful ideas or otherwise.
they likely paid off the politicians before hand, remember janet mills in maine, she basically allowed one to be built and vetoed any measure to block it.
When they come up with it on their own, and push it relentlessly despite obvious and enormous resistance from the citizens, you know they been paid off handsomely.
If you can’t come up with ideas in the “otherwise” category, you probably aren’t very serious.
If they don’t respect the law or the will of the people when they put the god forsaken thing up, why are we beholden to the law and the will of the shareholders when we insist that doing it in spite of us is a Bad Idea?
exactly. either the law applies only to The Poors, or it applies to everyone.
if the law applies to everyone, then it needs to be applied.
if you can’t apply the law, maybe apply something else.Absolutely. We are not beholden to the law and the obvious alternative is violence, which the poster is either being obtuse about, or really isn’t serious about being part of a solution. History shows that violence has always been the answer.
Silly take. Almost nothing will stop it long term if they want it, illegal or not. And thinking of ideas that potentially could, that a single person could genuinely pull off, is not simple, no matter how serious you are.
Sure, that’s why it takes the multitude with the fortitude to carry on with the “other” actions. It is inane to skirt around the violence option as it is ever present in our history, and has really been the only solution for radical changes or shift in policy.
Otherwise, where is your solution? Haranguing me for my silly take and nothing else to offer to the original petitioner?
Let’s use science to determine what is happening.This can be measured. Use a blind study to evaluate the impact.
aren’t blind people more susceptible to auditory stimulus? wouldn’t that skew the numbers?
/s
Include that as a variable. It’s done all the time.
but how could they make sure since it’s a blind study? maybe they’re only pretending to be blind.
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The article states it is sound frequencies “not normally measured”. It doesn’t say “can’t be”, so the first step is an objective measurement
Of course it goes further to point out that some things can only be heard/felt by a tiny percentage of people - the hard part is setting the allowed threshold and not perhaps that’s where your blind study idea would be helpful
Funny how they look so flammable
You have to use the correct messaging - data centers are making kids gay and entitled! and are owned by progressive libs
/s
As if Americans would ever lift a finger
It’s like they’ve been genetically modified to be stupid and lazy for 40+ years with a firehouse of corn syrup and
poor educationpropagandaExcept the ones who are supposed to be fighting back have spent the last few decades doing little else but loudly proclaiming how much more intelligent and capable they are than the Americans you’re describing.
Come over here and lift my finger for me, jackass.
Coward.
even if the infrasound is debunked, the pollution, the power usage, cost would be much more annoying.
Here is the actual study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0079610724001160?via=ihub
Notably study detail:s say it was funded by whack jobs. Notably mice are exposed to much stronger fields than you are in your home or work unless you literally have a high tension line running through your kitchen by the coffee maker on its way to power the adjacent factory.
It does not in any way suggest that the EM radiation people are exposed to has any effect on them.
There is limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of 50 Hz magnetic fields in relation to childhood leukaemia (from epidemiological studies). This is why IARC classified them in group 2B, as possibly carcinogenic to humans. This is from the website that funded the study against the “whack jobs”.
Possible. Based on an extremely liberal criteria intended to leave open any possibility for research for safety’s sake, regardless of how implausible it may be.
Epidemiological research in this case is unable to destinguish health effects due to the miriad of socioeconomic factors that lead people to live in undesirable properties extremely close to high tension power lines.
Well I’m glad we’ve gone from no possibility whack jobs to scientific investigation for safety sake.
If the effect were meaningful it should be possible to establish it. What it means is that the effect is probably nothing. The burden of proof is on those asserting there is an effect and it hasn’t been met. The problem is of course that we are dealing with the assertion that there is a possibility of a too small to measure increase in one disease in the entire pop whereas the EMF crowd is busy asserting their is a massive effect in a small population of users.
The first asks should we spend more money investigating the complex intersection of technology and biology on the off chance something useful is found the answer for which is almost always yes and the second is looking for real harm for which is being done by their hallucinations to which the answer is pretty obviously to medicate their schizophrenia rather than investigate what the voices are telling them.
If the effect were meaningful it should be possible to establish it
Effects have been established in mice. Do we want to risk lives by establishing it in humans, or just recommend that people not live close to high voltage lines.
EMFs are very dangerous. Particularly at the gamma end of the spectrum.
Good thing I’m not a Mouse. And I say that kind of as a joke because if you look at the findings it didn’t increase the odds in rats. So does it effect humans or is it because mice are small and rats are big enough to not be effected. Or do rats have something else going on? Or is it because mice have short lifespans. Just because something effects mice does not mean it effects other animals.
If you mutate rats then they start training turtles ninja skills.
Garbage article. Follow the link to a meta analysis that shows EM has no effect in rats. mouse effect: one poorly done paper.
No, power lines do not cause disease.
Me when an AI data center is too close:
Data centres are the new windmills?
Here’s a short video that goes into the specific and how this affects surrounding neighborhoods.
Datacenters Behaving Like Acoustic Weapons
The researchers he ‘cites’ in that video have said he misinterpreted their findings.
This whole blog seems extremely pro-AI and their entire site is full of articles supposedly debunking why data centers aren’t actually bad after all…
This specific article has some pretty crazy conclusions about Benn Jordan’s own double-blind study. They’re saying it wasn’t double blind because he might have noticed water shaking, but in the actual video he explicitly says he threw out any of the data points where he knew if the sound was on. The results seemed pretty conclusive to me.
The other thing is it talks a ton about wind turbine infrasound, and how dangerous levels are thousands of times louder. But the actual measured level of sound ARE thousands of times higher. Measurements have been taken at 96dB, which is significantly higher than the 50-75dB this article is referencing as safe. If the 96dB infrasound is loud enough to shake a glass of water as above, it’s not “imperceptible” like the safe levels.
As with all loud sounds in general, exposure time is a factor. A brief burst above 100dB won’t damage your hearing, but extended exposure will. I don’t see why the same wouldn’t apply to infrasound. All these studies are 72h or less of exposure, but there’s people living next to these datacenters 24/7.
Personally I’m waiting for more research to be done. There’s not enough data to be calling things fake or debunked here.
Writer pic is AI generated. It’s arguments are invalid.
That’s a logic error. The merit of what is said determines truth, not that you don’t like the author.
worse. but this is just people trying anything they can to keep these pieces of shit from wrecking their communities.
“3.7 MWh of power annually” - With authors like this, it’s no wonder some people find math and science confusing. I actually thought Toms Hardware was a quality site.
Ok technically it’s energy not power, big deal. Sometimes electricity is colloquially called power.
Both energy and power relate to electricity formally. Power is energy over time. There is no reason to confuse the two in writing, especially if they know enough to use MWh.
Toms used to be solid. I can’t place my finger on it, but sometime around the 2010’s everyone stopped using them as references and they slid somewhat into obscurity.
It is a flavour I have not tasted, a colour I have not seen and an argument I can not think of so I convince myself of this.
It’s Cuba using Russia’s secret sonic weapons obviously
They should announce a day they plan on cranking up the power, and instead turn everything off. See how many people can “feel” the increased activity.
It’s a very real phenomenon with documented health effects. You have to use a decibel meter that’s capable of detecting sounds just outside of audible range. Benn Jordan on YouTube recorded infrasound at the edge of the property line at Collosus XAI peaking at -96 dB.
https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuoactually it’s inauduble and therefore can’t hurt you, like how gamma rays are invisible and therefore harmless
Like how before microscopes bacteria couldn’t hurt people!
Like how John cena cant hurt me cause I can’t see him.
Is this sarcasm? Sorry sarcasm detector broke.
Edit: Yes, it has to be. No one would think gamma rays are safe right? Right?
Yes. I had a vibratory roller compacting the lot beside my old office a while back and there were very low frequency vibrations that made me feel like dogshit. Earplugs didn’t help. I am therefore a believer
Alright so I watched him break down the data at the end, and the best that this proves is that it should be studied further to verify his experiments. Thousands of people should be studied in universities all over the world. My own distaste for datacenters not withstanding, if those future studies indicated and even maybe found the mechanism for these issues, that would not translate to datacenters ought not be built. It will and should be translated to a public health and engineering problem. We put shielding on nuclear powerplants to protect people from radiation, and we can likely do something similar to prevent infrasound, if the claims of some papers and this youtuber are proven to be correct beyond a reasonable doubt. This whole thing just stinks of “wifi sickness” and I am highly skeptical 🫤
We will all be picking up the tab to shield these places in the future in the name of public health and safety. The hyperscalers won’t pay when they can plead ignorance and have the tax payer pay to fix it for them. Problem with data centres is once they are online, changes are very slow. Any datacentre with five 9’s or above will only allow small incremental change each year. While this is faster for single tenant datacentres, it won’t be a quick fix.
It’s still just a matter of political will.
You would be AMAZED at how quickly things would be fixed. At rates previously claimed “beyond impossible”, IF governments “pulled the plug” until things were fixed… rather than issuing fines or providing grace periods (and subsequent extensions).
I’ve worked at places that would just eat compliance fines (not for health). Just straight up eat them. They put a token team on it… but continually divert that time to other tasks.
The companies that claim these things cannot be done are the same ones who said they couldn’t survive without slavery, with any environmental regulations, with a 5 day work week, without being able to use child labour, with a minimum wage, without strikebreakers etc etc etc. It’s literally industries job to push back on anything that cuts into thier bottom line at all. It’s governments job to say “bullshit”
I hear you that these companies would make excuses just to make the executives more money. Wish someone in my government had the balls to yell bullshit but they all just see the project dollars and know they can use that number to get re-elected. Politicians are cunts
humans cant percieve, elephants can sense it, percieve, cats,dogs, and mice might able to, and also bats.
Homemade mortars have a very high CEP but thankfully, data centers have a large footprint.
sounds like crowd control weapon research
Jfc sounds like opportuniatic capitalists cutting corners and not caring about the populace
infrasound as a health worry has been debunked. This is just the same old “power lines are making me sick” type of hypochondria.
Given the lack of true understanding in the medical field… I wouldn’t bet on that. The list of things they don’t know the cause of is really long.
That said, I don’t care if someone claims they can feel it. If it can be reliably detected at distance from the facility, then it shouldn’t be allowed. Just because it has no proven impact doesn’t mean it has no impact.
I invite you to shine a powerful infrared light on your eyes for extended periods of time. Since the light is invisible and your eye doesn’t hurt it must be safe right?
I invite you to abstain from putting words in people’s mouths in order to make faulty arguments.
Oh. I think i did a twitter
