6 ms·

> Part of the issue is related to Prince William’s 33-year-old noise ordinance, which in residential areas like Great Oak limits daytime noise to 60 decibels, o

> Part of the issue is related to Prince William’s 33-year-old noise ordinance, which in residential areas like Great Oak limits daytime noise to 60 decibels, or what a normal conversation sounds like from about three feet away, and 55 decibels at night. But the ordinance exempts air conditioners, which are what the data center cooling systems and exhaust fans technically are. Okay, so the real issue is inadequate regulation. Amazon is many negative things but one thing they will do always is stick to the minimum effort required to adhere to the law. Want to change their behavior? Change the law. Enact noise abatement requirements and they will make it happen.

bayindirh 4y ago
Making low noise, highly efficient, actively cooled heat exchangers is hard. Also, even if you use ARM processors, you use a lot of them, again creating a lot of heat. So at the end, you either need much more heat exchangers, make some noise, reduce capacity or invent better cooling tech. So, changing the law is not enough. You need to motivate right people to innovate, too. Also, on US; good luck trying to change their behaviors through law. This is why companies have lobbyists. Disclosure: HPC admin sitting on top of a datacenter.
- ryanianian 4y ago
  Making things very expensive is precisely how to motivate people to innovate.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    It's one of the worst ways. But it is a way.
    - notacoward 4y ago
      So what's a better way, when persuasion and appeals to conscience have already failed? Surely you don't suggest that raw force is better.
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        I was replying to this: > Making things very expensive is precisely how to motivate people to innovate. That statement has no caveats around persuasion and appeals to conscience.
        notacoward 4y ago
        If it doesn't then it's drifting off topic, which I don't actually think was your intent, but let's follow along a bit anyway. What does motivate people to innovate? Obviously one motivation is internal, basically curiosity (which someone not trying to be so argumentative might have considered equivalent to persuasion). And another is profit. But what if a innovation in a particular area would only be necessary to maintain profitability, because current methods are already cheaper but damaging (e.g. environment) or otherwise unacceptable (e.g. privacy)? Then we're back to making that activity as it is currently done more expensive. "That's a bad way to motivate innovation" still begs the question of what would actually be better in the real world for cases where sufficient motivation is currently lacking. The case where no "spur" is needed isn't even interesting in this context.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        You're welcome to retroactively apply a test for whether you find something interesting. I wasn't talking in that context, though. I just took the statement as written and wrote a brief comment on it, without reading anything else into it.
        notacoward 4y ago
        > I wasn't talking in that context, though. Yes, you were, whether you acknowledge it or not. You can't just ignore the existing context and expect everyone to follow you into a new one that you supposedly created out of nowhere. That's not only the height of hubris, but it's also not how curious conversation works. Please see the guidelines.
    - bastawhiz 4y ago
      No, it's just shifting the cost of dealing with waste (pollution, sound) back to the producer rather than allowing them to make it someone else's problem. The cost isn't high, it's what it needs to be to run the operation in a way that's agreeable to the everyone in the area. If you don't want to operate a business that deals with those costs, move or don't build a data center.
      - notdonspaulding 4y ago
        I'm not the GP, but I agree with this stance. But the specific policy proposed really matters if this is your goal. Politicians often want to write very narrow regulations which are intended to tweak some small behavior by some specific business they find distasteful (or politically desirable to modify). So they play whack-a-mole with problems like this by writing policies that look like: "in Zone 5, businesses operating as data centers must operate cooling equipment that does not increase ambient noise levels above X decibels within Y meters of their property. " This kind of policy does not accomplish the cost-shifting you talk about. Rather, a cost-shifting policy looks like: "in Maricopa county, a business may make as much noise as it likes, but must pay fees to the owner of any plot of land which has its ambient noise levels raised in the amount of $X per Y decibels per minute per square meter experiencing increased noise. " I'm not aware of much regulation in the latter vein, at least not where I live. But it has the advantage of cost shifting, from ANY business, to those affected by the negative externality. That reinternalizes the cost without hampering freedom of businesses to operate in whatever way most efficiently accomplishes their goals, and helps C-suite execs see the true cost of their operations, which incentivizes them to innovate that cost away. It's also not specific to the cause of the noise, so church bells pay the same as the data center which pays the same as the glass factory which pays the same as the concert venue. My $0.02 anyway. Vote notdonspaulding 2024!
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        I think the reason such broad brush stroke laws aren't made is probably partly a lack of system thinking, but also partly a result of it. If you try and monetise church bells, people will oppose it. Easier to monetise the evil corporations.
    - DonHopkins 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - incone123 4y ago
        Not all Rand fans live in basements. Larry Ellison is one, and a few other famous names are too. Nothing against your general point about public services though.
        DonHopkins 4y ago
        Yet the grown up ones still act like angry spoiled incel teenaged boys who don't know the price of a bar of soap, like Elon Musk as an archetypical example. Which is my point exactly. Anyone who hasn't grown out of being a foaming-at-the-mouth libertarian after they've reached puberty and moved out of their mother's basement is suffering from arrested development and a nihilistic lack of empathy for their fellow human beings.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        The only person angry and foaming at the mouth appears to be you. If you're this aggressive based just on what I said then it's worth considering if you also interpret various other very normal things people say in the worst way possible, and the problem is mostly in your own perception. If so: don't be a libertarian, and get help.
        DonHopkins 4y ago
        It seems you need to get help to explain what to do after persuasion and appeals to conscience have already failed, if not simply making it too expensive to not innovate with taxes and regulations. As notacoward asked: surely you don't suggest that raw force is better? Or do you have a better and proven solution? Then share it with us! Now go reply to his question above and the others that you're pointedly ignoring (unless you still don't have any answers): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34774934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34774934
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Or just move elsewhere where it isn't a problem. Hell, they shouldn't be built near the housing in the first place but someone probably lobbied their way into it...
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  I think the implication is that you do noise abatement on the AC units (i.e. earthen berms, better site planning, etc.).
  - blamazon 4y ago
    As you pointed out, even just dirt works. Noise abatement is done for urban freeways all the time, without changing the trucks, cars, road surface, et cetera.
    - reaperducer 4y ago
      Noise abatement is done for urban freeways all the time, without changing the trucks, cars, road surface, et cetera. One of the reasons the Kennedy Expressway in downtown Chicago is zoned for skyscrapers on both sides is to block the traffic noise from getting into the rest of the area.
      - RC_ITR 4y ago
        Dallas does the same thing with 75 and it's so wild because it seems like you're in an intensely urban area for miles, but really it's a wall of 10-15 story buildings surrounded by single family homes.
    - duped 4y ago
      That's not true at all, automobiles and road surfaces are engineered for their acoustics in addition to noise abatement along roadways. Otherwise we wouldn't require mufflers or design better performing asphalt/cement mixtures and groove patterns that balance friction and noise. And even with all of that it's not great.
      - blamazon 4y ago
        To make my statement more precise, I know what you're saying is true but what I mean is, in a three month span one can put noise abatement panels along a freeway, in say, Charlotte North Carolina. (Just to be optimistic in this hypothetical) Three months isn't enough time to propagate effects from the long term changes that you correctly mentioned are responsible for reducing auto noise on a larger scale, and those panels aren't going to make the sound go away entirely, but they will abate the noise on the other side. That's what I'm saying is happening all the time and is analogous to the conditions in the article which seem to be newly constructed data centers. Of course there will be changes over time inside the data centers that make them more efficient and whatnot, but if there's a nearby residential zone when a new one is being built, just put some abatement into the site design. That takes no R&D, but it does take more capital.
- rhacker 4y ago
  What about blocking the sound from getting out into the world
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    Blocking the press coverage is more efficient.
- cm2187 4y ago
  Or don't build datacentres in populated areas, it's not like a few km will matter in term of latency.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    But think about that 5 minutes extra commute datacenter workers would need to have! /s
  - tonyarkles 4y ago
    While it's not data centres, locally we've had this issue but flipped on its head a bit: big electrical facilities were built out 5 minutes out of town on farmland... and then the city grew and now has critical electrical facilities right in the middle of residential areas. Edit: funny enough, we had a similar situation with a rural gun range. In that case, at least, when they built the suburban neighbourhood next door the buyers did have a clause in the purchase contract that acknowledged that they were purchasing property next to an existing range and that there would be noise. They were generally fine with it until the national police force started renting the range and doing full-auto practice on Saturday mornings :D
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    It's not a matter of latency, or travel time as some of the latter comments mention (albeit sarcastically). It's mostly about power. You can't just select a place and say "I want 5MW (or 10MW) of electricity, just here". Fiber is thin, easy to lay down and flexible. Power cables are not. Also power planning is apparently hard.
wahnfrieden 4y ago
Btw, Amazon frequently breaks laws it understands well - latest from 2 weeks ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-union-staten-island-nlrb.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-u... Their behavior hasn't changed, this isn't the first time. Not even laws save us from power.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Absolutely, Amazon famously push anti-union propaganda in their workplace (just talk with anyone working either at corporate or at the shipping centers) and move centers just to avoid union-heavy regions. Also worth noting, blamazon (parent commentator) seems to work for Amazon (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25758868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25758868), or at least previously worked for them so probably sitting on a bunch of AMZN stock, but they never disclosed that, so might want to take their positive views of Amazon with a bit of salt.
  - blamazon 4y ago
    Previously, yes. I try to avoid talking about the labor issue because well, exactly what you pointed out. My comment above deserves an asterisk in this regard, it occurred to me but I figured repliers would suredly provide worthy counterexamples that I could just upvote, which was intellectually lazy of me and I do apologize. To future readers, consider this reply chain the asterisk I guess.
  - deltree7 4y ago
    Why is it propaganda when it is anti-union and not when it is pro-union?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - blamazon 4y ago
      As a tangent that I found intriguing, here's some pro-union propaganda from the 40s in the USA: https://dlg.usg.edu/record/gsu_mhross_8075?canvas=3&x=628&y=1041&w=2342 https://dlg.usg.edu/record/gsu_mhross_8075?canvas=3&x=628&y=... Interesting to see the Unions vs. Communism messaging.
WirelessGigabit 4y ago
Holy cow, that noise ordinance sounds (ha!) amazing! So much noise pollution around here!

bayindirh 4y ago

Making low noise, highly efficient, actively cooled heat exchangers is hard. Also, even if you use ARM processors, you use a lot of them, again creating a lot of heat. So at the end, you either need much more heat exchangers, make some noise, reduce capacity or invent better cooling tech. So, changing the law is not enough. You need to motivate right people to innovate, too. Also, on US; good luck trying to change their behaviors through law. This is why companies have lobbyists. Disclosure: HPC admin sitting on top of a datacenter.

ryanianian 4y ago
Making things very expensive is precisely how to motivate people to innovate.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  It's one of the worst ways. But it is a way.
  - notacoward 4y ago
    So what's a better way, when persuasion and appeals to conscience have already failed? Surely you don't suggest that raw force is better.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      I was replying to this: > Making things very expensive is precisely how to motivate people to innovate. That statement has no caveats around persuasion and appeals to conscience.
      - notacoward 4y ago
        If it doesn't then it's drifting off topic, which I don't actually think was your intent, but let's follow along a bit anyway. What does motivate people to innovate? Obviously one motivation is internal, basically curiosity (which someone not trying to be so argumentative might have considered equivalent to persuasion). And another is profit. But what if a innovation in a particular area would only be necessary to maintain profitability, because current methods are already cheaper but damaging (e.g. environment) or otherwise unacceptable (e.g. privacy)? Then we're back to making that activity as it is currently done more expensive. "That's a bad way to motivate innovation" still begs the question of what would actually be better in the real world for cases where sufficient motivation is currently lacking. The case where no "spur" is needed isn't even interesting in this context.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        You're welcome to retroactively apply a test for whether you find something interesting. I wasn't talking in that context, though. I just took the statement as written and wrote a brief comment on it, without reading anything else into it.
        notacoward 4y ago
        > I wasn't talking in that context, though. Yes, you were, whether you acknowledge it or not. You can't just ignore the existing context and expect everyone to follow you into a new one that you supposedly created out of nowhere. That's not only the height of hubris, but it's also not how curious conversation works. Please see the guidelines.
  - bastawhiz 4y ago
    No, it's just shifting the cost of dealing with waste (pollution, sound) back to the producer rather than allowing them to make it someone else's problem. The cost isn't high, it's what it needs to be to run the operation in a way that's agreeable to the everyone in the area. If you don't want to operate a business that deals with those costs, move or don't build a data center.
    - notdonspaulding 4y ago
      I'm not the GP, but I agree with this stance. But the specific policy proposed really matters if this is your goal. Politicians often want to write very narrow regulations which are intended to tweak some small behavior by some specific business they find distasteful (or politically desirable to modify). So they play whack-a-mole with problems like this by writing policies that look like: "in Zone 5, businesses operating as data centers must operate cooling equipment that does not increase ambient noise levels above X decibels within Y meters of their property. " This kind of policy does not accomplish the cost-shifting you talk about. Rather, a cost-shifting policy looks like: "in Maricopa county, a business may make as much noise as it likes, but must pay fees to the owner of any plot of land which has its ambient noise levels raised in the amount of $X per Y decibels per minute per square meter experiencing increased noise. " I'm not aware of much regulation in the latter vein, at least not where I live. But it has the advantage of cost shifting, from ANY business, to those affected by the negative externality. That reinternalizes the cost without hampering freedom of businesses to operate in whatever way most efficiently accomplishes their goals, and helps C-suite execs see the true cost of their operations, which incentivizes them to innovate that cost away. It's also not specific to the cause of the noise, so church bells pay the same as the data center which pays the same as the glass factory which pays the same as the concert venue. My $0.02 anyway. Vote notdonspaulding 2024!
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        I think the reason such broad brush stroke laws aren't made is probably partly a lack of system thinking, but also partly a result of it. If you try and monetise church bells, people will oppose it. Easier to monetise the evil corporations.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - incone123 4y ago
      Not all Rand fans live in basements. Larry Ellison is one, and a few other famous names are too. Nothing against your general point about public services though.
      - DonHopkins 4y ago
        Yet the grown up ones still act like angry spoiled incel teenaged boys who don't know the price of a bar of soap, like Elon Musk as an archetypical example. Which is my point exactly. Anyone who hasn't grown out of being a foaming-at-the-mouth libertarian after they've reached puberty and moved out of their mother's basement is suffering from arrested development and a nihilistic lack of empathy for their fellow human beings.
        robertlagrant 4y ago
        The only person angry and foaming at the mouth appears to be you. If you're this aggressive based just on what I said then it's worth considering if you also interpret various other very normal things people say in the worst way possible, and the problem is mostly in your own perception. If so: don't be a libertarian, and get help.
        DonHopkins 4y ago
        It seems you need to get help to explain what to do after persuasion and appeals to conscience have already failed, if not simply making it too expensive to not innovate with taxes and regulations. As notacoward asked: surely you don't suggest that raw force is better? Or do you have a better and proven solution? Then share it with us! Now go reply to his question above and the others that you're pointedly ignoring (unless you still don't have any answers): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34774934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34774934
- ilyt 4y ago
  Or just move elsewhere where it isn't a problem. Hell, they shouldn't be built near the housing in the first place but someone probably lobbied their way into it...
RC_ITR 4y ago
I think the implication is that you do noise abatement on the AC units (i.e. earthen berms, better site planning, etc.).
- blamazon 4y ago
  As you pointed out, even just dirt works. Noise abatement is done for urban freeways all the time, without changing the trucks, cars, road surface, et cetera.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    Noise abatement is done for urban freeways all the time, without changing the trucks, cars, road surface, et cetera. One of the reasons the Kennedy Expressway in downtown Chicago is zoned for skyscrapers on both sides is to block the traffic noise from getting into the rest of the area.
    - RC_ITR 4y ago
      Dallas does the same thing with 75 and it's so wild because it seems like you're in an intensely urban area for miles, but really it's a wall of 10-15 story buildings surrounded by single family homes.
  - duped 4y ago
    That's not true at all, automobiles and road surfaces are engineered for their acoustics in addition to noise abatement along roadways. Otherwise we wouldn't require mufflers or design better performing asphalt/cement mixtures and groove patterns that balance friction and noise. And even with all of that it's not great.
    - blamazon 4y ago
      To make my statement more precise, I know what you're saying is true but what I mean is, in a three month span one can put noise abatement panels along a freeway, in say, Charlotte North Carolina. (Just to be optimistic in this hypothetical) Three months isn't enough time to propagate effects from the long term changes that you correctly mentioned are responsible for reducing auto noise on a larger scale, and those panels aren't going to make the sound go away entirely, but they will abate the noise on the other side. That's what I'm saying is happening all the time and is analogous to the conditions in the article which seem to be newly constructed data centers. Of course there will be changes over time inside the data centers that make them more efficient and whatnot, but if there's a nearby residential zone when a new one is being built, just put some abatement into the site design. That takes no R&D, but it does take more capital.
rhacker 4y ago
What about blocking the sound from getting out into the world
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  Blocking the press coverage is more efficient.
cm2187 4y ago
Or don't build datacentres in populated areas, it's not like a few km will matter in term of latency.
- ilyt 4y ago
  But think about that 5 minutes extra commute datacenter workers would need to have! /s
- tonyarkles 4y ago
  While it's not data centres, locally we've had this issue but flipped on its head a bit: big electrical facilities were built out 5 minutes out of town on farmland... and then the city grew and now has critical electrical facilities right in the middle of residential areas. Edit: funny enough, we had a similar situation with a rural gun range. In that case, at least, when they built the suburban neighbourhood next door the buyers did have a clause in the purchase contract that acknowledged that they were purchasing property next to an existing range and that there would be noise. They were generally fine with it until the national police force started renting the range and doing full-auto practice on Saturday mornings :D
- bayindirh 4y ago
  It's not a matter of latency, or travel time as some of the latter comments mention (albeit sarcastically). It's mostly about power. You can't just select a place and say "I want 5MW (or 10MW) of electricity, just here". Fiber is thin, easy to lay down and flexible. Power cables are not. Also power planning is apparently hard.

wahnfrieden 4y ago

Btw, Amazon frequently breaks laws it understands well - latest from 2 weeks ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-union-staten-island-nlrb.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-u... Their behavior hasn't changed, this isn't the first time. Not even laws save us from power.

capableweb 4y ago
Absolutely, Amazon famously push anti-union propaganda in their workplace (just talk with anyone working either at corporate or at the shipping centers) and move centers just to avoid union-heavy regions. Also worth noting, blamazon (parent commentator) seems to work for Amazon (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25758868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25758868), or at least previously worked for them so probably sitting on a bunch of AMZN stock, but they never disclosed that, so might want to take their positive views of Amazon with a bit of salt.
- blamazon 4y ago
  Previously, yes. I try to avoid talking about the labor issue because well, exactly what you pointed out. My comment above deserves an asterisk in this regard, it occurred to me but I figured repliers would suredly provide worthy counterexamples that I could just upvote, which was intellectually lazy of me and I do apologize. To future readers, consider this reply chain the asterisk I guess.
- deltree7 4y ago
  Why is it propaganda when it is anti-union and not when it is pro-union?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - blamazon 4y ago
    As a tangent that I found intriguing, here's some pro-union propaganda from the 40s in the USA: https://dlg.usg.edu/record/gsu_mhross_8075?canvas=3&x=628&y=1041&w=2342 https://dlg.usg.edu/record/gsu_mhross_8075?canvas=3&x=628&y=... Interesting to see the Unions vs. Communism messaging.

WirelessGigabit 4y ago

Holy cow, that noise ordinance sounds (ha!) amazing! So much noise pollution around here!