what about the videos of residents showing decibel meters going off and water pressure dropping?

just an anecdote but what exactly do local residents gain here? a handful of permanent maintenance jobs?

bayindirh an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> a handful of permanent maintenance jobs?

No. Permanent sleep deprivation and probably tinnitus. It's sad, really.

Poorly designed cooling infrastructure is indeed noisy. There are lower noise versions exist, but they are expensive, and I don't think they can be that quieter to make a difference at that scale.

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SnorkelTan an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Some municipalities have been able to levy taxes on computer hardware and fund their public services.

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quantummagic an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Of course those are real issues that should be addressed. Just like if a factory producing bicycles is running all night and keeping you awake. But it's not something that should be concerning for anyone outside the area. It's not an existential crisis, just a local nuisance.

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margalabargala an hour ago | parent | next [-]

There's absolutely, obviously a place for data centers in our world and country, just like there already has been this entire century so far.

The issue right now is the boom of data center building has them being built wherever approval can be had, rather than in more reasonable industrial locations.

It's reasonable to not want a data center built next to you in the same way it's reasonable to not want an iron smelter or pit mine built next to you. There are reasonable places to build data centers, pit mines, and iron smelters and it's not residential neighborhoods. Building them in residential neighborhoods anyway because they can, is what is forcing this issue to a head.

That and water usage building them in places with water issues. There are a lot of places in the country that don't have water issues. Data can be moved around the country quickly. The problems are solvable, but the builders are more interested in chasing short-term dollar than solving them. The opposition should hopefully reshape the construction into a more reasonable reality.

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bayindirh an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> But it's not something that should be concerning for anyone outside the area.

Of course. Esp. for the bigger datacenters which generate their own power and release large amounts of emissions to the atmosphere.

It's good that that air never moves and all this emission stays inside the cube formed by the ground, four borders of the datacenter and personal airspace ceiling prescribed by the governments.

Given that the datacenter operators run air purifiers and give the filtered out emissions to government (or licensed 3rd parties) for conversion to carbon credits, there's no harm done.

Just some local noise nuisance, and maybe some heat, but all of them are manageable. Residents can use earplugs and more powerful air conditioners to restore or surpass their previous life quality.

This is not only progress, but how one changes the world for the better.

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bix6 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

How is it not an existential crisis when it’s literally reshaping financial markets? That’s not just a local nuisance.

	▲	quantummagic an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That's a completely separate issue (if it is one at all), but I was addressing the specific concerns in the OPs question.