Datacenters Behaving Like Acoustic Weapons
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited in data center siting debates as evidence that noise and infrasound can seriously affect people living nearby.
What it is
Benn Jordan investigates infrasound and low-frequency noise from data centers, including xAI's Colossus and a crypto mine, and reports his own experiments on the effects. The video covers the health and community impacts on nearby residents.
Recommended by 5 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2026 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec soulofmischief · 2026-03 · on “Montana Leads the Nation with Groundbreaking Right to Compute Act”
This research presentation from Benn Jordan will hopefully change your mind on the noise issue and its consequences. I highly recommend it. [this video]
Recommends schainks · 2026-04 · on “Missouri town fires half its city council over data center deal”
Plugging this video about infrasound, which I only recently learned was a thing: [this video] These datacenters can be built in ways to limit this kind of noise pollution, but it appears local leaders do not think about things like this that can truly harm their constituents.
Recommends Torn · 2026-05 · on “Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200”
This is a really great watch from Benn Jordan on the topic [this video] Some wild things happening with those, and infrasound. Colossus is shown 4 mins in
Recommends e40 · 2026-05 · on “Why We've Filed a Referendum”
Watch these [this video] [LINK] [LINK] Then, tell me if you want to live anywhere near those. Then, tell me of a nuclear power plant that has that bad a repo.
Recommends code_biologist · 2026-06 · on “Meta steals a tactic from Tesla and builds data centers in tents”
Yes, the noise pollution is insane. Benn Jordan's YT video "Datacenters Behaving Like Acoustic Weapons" is an insightful, scary 30 min video covering the datacenter infrasound noise, and the nasty things infrasound does to people: [this video]
Cites subscribed · 2026-04 · on “Utah greenlights 9GW AI campus using over twice state electricity”
No, it will just burn GWs worth of natural gas. Benn Jordan has captured quite an interesting evidence: [this video]
Cites bobsomers · 2026-06 · on “xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab”
It's easy to deliver things fast when you don't care at all for the local communities or residents whose lives you ruin in the process. [this video] (@ 4:08)
Cites budududuroiu · 2026-06 · on “Amazon Announces Multibillion-Dollar Data Center in Missouri”
I'm not an AI booster, nor an AI detractor. I like tech and progress. I'm mortified at the possibility of a data centre being built next to me at some point in the future [1]. [1]: [this video]