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Comment by joe_mamba | Hacker News Reader

>Do you live near a datacenter? Property value goes down, constant humming

I don't live next to one but I'd take constant humming over the constant stop/go traffic noise, honking, squeaky brakes, slamming doors and revving engines I now have on my western side of the apartment, thanks to the unemployment office the city opened on my street not too long ago.

So how come constant humming is somehow an illegal nuisance, but we've been expected to put up with the much more annoying urban traffic noise for decades just fine?

My parents apartment have constant humming anyway thanks to the HVAC system on the roof of the nearby supermarket and white/brown noise is far more tolerable and easy to tune out than traffic noises.

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> we've been expected to put up with the much more annoying urban traffic noise for decades just fine?

For one, there tends to be little traffic at night when most people want quiet in order to sleep. Driving is also something (nearly) everyone does and benefits directly from, so negative externalities are easier to accept. It is much harder to accept a new source of noise near your home you haven't asked for and don't directly benefit from.

I live nearby a road going down a coulee that dickheads love to speed down in warmer weather at night. I'd trade that for a hum any day.

> Driving is also something (nearly) everyone does and benefits directly from, so negative externalities are easier to accept.

This reads a little too close to driving being an inherently good thing or some sort of objective requirement, but it's only that way in certain urban places because the built environment makes it as arduous as possible to do those things without.

Something that pisses me off about many urban places that don't even otherwise require people to drive, is that many who do use their cars the most often have their neighborhoods protected from the noise they contribute to everywhere else. This whole thing of putting apartments only where there's already the most disgusting car-infested thoroughfares; "sorry, can't have an apartment one street in off the main drag, that's only for bungalows! Don't like it? Get richer. Excuse me while I drive through your bedroom and park for free in front."

>s that many who do use their cars the most often have their neighborhoods protected from the noise they contribute to everywhere else.

This, so much this. All the noise producing infrastructure in cities is dumped in the highly dense poor areas, and the rich people living in the quiet suburbs in single family home who need to drive in front of your home, are protected by this externality.

Politicians also like to pat themselves on the back for things like zoning density "particularly along transit corridors" as if only the immediately stroad-adjacent parcels are viable for accessing the bus and anyone who makes less than $300k a year should be grateful.

Like thanks, I guess, for doing the absolute minimum that should have already been the default policy for 50 years

More noise categories should be illegal or fined in dense areas, not less

Agree, but data centers are no inside dense areas though.

They're being built in the US next to people's houses with gas turbines

https://xcancel.com/BrianEntin/status/2067930868191035474?s=...

To me that only makes clear that gas turbines are the noise issues, no data centers. Surely there exists data centers that work off the main power grid and don't have a natural gas turbine as their own power source.

How dare those nasty, dirty, unemployed live their lives under likely desperate circumstance. They are so much worse than corrupt oligarchs pumping and dumping their way into the greed hall of fame.

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