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I grew up in Northern Virginia, (of AWS US-East-1, MAE-East, and Equinix fame), where there are more data centers than anywhere else in the world, and I never h

I grew up in Northern Virginia, (of AWS US-East-1, MAE-East, and Equinix fame), where there are more data centers than anywhere else in the world, and I never heard organized opposition to them until the last couple of years. They were mainly viewed as a way for Loudoun County to build their industrial tax base without the downsides of having industrial workers, and allowed them to consistently lower property taxes while having excellent schools. Data centers are unsightly and use electricity and water, but so does literally any kind of industrial facility. They are also pretty quiet, if you exclude the ones using on site gas turbines for electricity. Property values have consistently gone up in that region for decades, and are up to $6 million an acre if there's enough contiguous land to put another data center on. Many of the people complaining about datacenters would also complain about literally any kind of development.

majormajor 4mo ago
The new gen of AI-boom-construction datacenters seem to be substantially different than the ones I used to go when working at companies whose software ran inside them. Those were running air-cooled rack servers, which is a whole different world from these things. The couple of the new gen I've seen have been much larger and much more turbine-happy.
juneyi 4mo ago
i'm confused on the humming part, i've driven by them many times and they're just...large, sorta ugly, buildings. but that's really it. i wonder if i walked up to a building i'd hear the humming. quite surprised to learn that they emit a humming that bothers nearby folks
- audunw 4mo ago
  Maybe those complaints are for datacenters using gas turbines for power. I think some of the recent ones (xAIs?) was built without sufficient power from the grid.
  - mukbangpervert 4mo ago
    xAI colossus was built without sufficient grid power, so uses "mobile" gas turbines to generate power. It's absurd, and serves as evidence that we need a confiscatory wealth tax, if we want to maintain a society.
    - inglor_cz 4mo ago
      For me, it is evidence that our ability to build new power stations has seriously eroded, mostly due to bureaucracy, and that we need to fix this if we want to maintain competitiveness. Consider the following graph which shows the power generation capabilities of China vs. the US during the last 40 years. https://www.notboring.co/p/the-electric-slide?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=10025&embedding_post_id=171945788 https://www.notboring.co/p/the-electric-slide?utm_source=sub... The fact that data centers need to resort to gas turbines is downstream from this bureaucratic, NIMBY-driven impotency.
      - mukbangpervert 4mo ago
        There is power available in the country. It is not available in arbitrary quantity, to arbitrarily selected buildings, on arbitrarily short timelines. That said, I agree we need more power generation in this country. Massive rollouts (like in China) would bolster industry while being beneficial to nearly every citizen except those dependent on legacy energy technologies. Sadly, the party in power opposes the most scalable approaches to this because greatly expanded power generation would hurt margins for a few special interests.
    - rjmunro 4mo ago
      I agree it's absurd and I'm in favour of some kind of wealth tax, but I don't get the connection here. This feels like a failure of infrastructure planning laws and things like noise regulations.
- al_borland 4mo ago
  I haven’t been in an AI data center, but have been in several others, and worked in a smaller one. I never really hear anything until I open the door to a computer room… and I’m one of those people who is bothered by the electrical noise in my walls.
amiga386 4mo ago
You got good data centres, and their construction and operation were likely regulated. The problem is that apparently you can just ignore that by building in poor places that won't hold you accountable and perhaps don't even have the regulations. If they do, just don't comply with them. Then your gas turbines can be as loud as you like, nobody will stop you. There's this one weird trick where you can pretend your generators aren't turned on, but they are, and they pollute badly. Nobody will call you out on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw Also you can take people's drinking water to cool your data centre, and promise a water recycling plant, and then just not build it. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/05/xai-water-reuse-project-musk-ai-spacex-ipo-environmental-project-ee-00896170 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/05/xai-water-reuse-pro... What I forgot to mention is this one weird trick only works if you're a turbo-bastard with an enormous bank account, and the government of the poor place thinks it's in line for a payday.
- senordevnyc 4mo ago
  Well yeah, if you vote to have fucktards run your state or county, you’re going to live under fucktard conditions.
lbriner 4mo ago
The US is very different from Europe. You have enormous amounts of space so even a Data Center that is "close by" is probably still a mile or more. In smaller places like European countries, the data centre wall might only be 100 yards or less from the back of your house so the proximity blocks light and makes you feel encroached on, even if no-one is peeping. In lots of cases, the center might have been built on open land so it is not surprising people don't appreciate their view changing from open land to "very large and tall building"
- square_usual 4mo ago
  No? I live very close to Loudoun county, there's DCs across the road from homes.

majormajor 4mo ago

The new gen of AI-boom-construction datacenters seem to be substantially different than the ones I used to go when working at companies whose software ran inside them. Those were running air-cooled rack servers, which is a whole different world from these things. The couple of the new gen I've seen have been much larger and much more turbine-happy.

juneyi 4mo ago

i'm confused on the humming part, i've driven by them many times and they're just...large, sorta ugly, buildings. but that's really it. i wonder if i walked up to a building i'd hear the humming. quite surprised to learn that they emit a humming that bothers nearby folks

audunw 4mo ago
Maybe those complaints are for datacenters using gas turbines for power. I think some of the recent ones (xAIs?) was built without sufficient power from the grid.
- mukbangpervert 4mo ago
  xAI colossus was built without sufficient grid power, so uses "mobile" gas turbines to generate power. It's absurd, and serves as evidence that we need a confiscatory wealth tax, if we want to maintain a society.
  - inglor_cz 4mo ago
    For me, it is evidence that our ability to build new power stations has seriously eroded, mostly due to bureaucracy, and that we need to fix this if we want to maintain competitiveness. Consider the following graph which shows the power generation capabilities of China vs. the US during the last 40 years. https://www.notboring.co/p/the-electric-slide?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=10025&embedding_post_id=171945788 https://www.notboring.co/p/the-electric-slide?utm_source=sub... The fact that data centers need to resort to gas turbines is downstream from this bureaucratic, NIMBY-driven impotency.
    - mukbangpervert 4mo ago
      There is power available in the country. It is not available in arbitrary quantity, to arbitrarily selected buildings, on arbitrarily short timelines. That said, I agree we need more power generation in this country. Massive rollouts (like in China) would bolster industry while being beneficial to nearly every citizen except those dependent on legacy energy technologies. Sadly, the party in power opposes the most scalable approaches to this because greatly expanded power generation would hurt margins for a few special interests.
  - rjmunro 4mo ago
    I agree it's absurd and I'm in favour of some kind of wealth tax, but I don't get the connection here. This feels like a failure of infrastructure planning laws and things like noise regulations.
al_borland 4mo ago
I haven’t been in an AI data center, but have been in several others, and worked in a smaller one. I never really hear anything until I open the door to a computer room… and I’m one of those people who is bothered by the electrical noise in my walls.

amiga386 4mo ago

You got good data centres, and their construction and operation were likely regulated. The problem is that apparently you can just ignore that by building in poor places that won't hold you accountable and perhaps don't even have the regulations. If they do, just don't comply with them. Then your gas turbines can be as loud as you like, nobody will stop you. There's this one weird trick where you can pretend your generators aren't turned on, but they are, and they pollute badly. Nobody will call you out on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw Also you can take people's drinking water to cool your data centre, and promise a water recycling plant, and then just not build it. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/05/xai-water-reuse-project-musk-ai-spacex-ipo-environmental-project-ee-00896170 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/05/xai-water-reuse-pro... What I forgot to mention is this one weird trick only works if you're a turbo-bastard with an enormous bank account, and the government of the poor place thinks it's in line for a payday.

senordevnyc 4mo ago
Well yeah, if you vote to have fucktards run your state or county, you’re going to live under fucktard conditions.

lbriner 4mo ago

The US is very different from Europe. You have enormous amounts of space so even a Data Center that is "close by" is probably still a mile or more. In smaller places like European countries, the data centre wall might only be 100 yards or less from the back of your house so the proximity blocks light and makes you feel encroached on, even if no-one is peeping. In lots of cases, the center might have been built on open land so it is not surprising people don't appreciate their view changing from open land to "very large and tall building"

square_usual 4mo ago
No? I live very close to Loudoun county, there's DCs across the road from homes.