Another video of the same data center:

https://www.reddit.com/r/interesting/comments/1uleoa2/sound_...

Sound meter shows "only" ~60 db, but that constant audible hum is, IMO, the data center actually assaulting those residents and apparently doing so 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

If someone who lived near that place set fire to the data center and I ended up on the jury and heard these recordings I would do everything in my power to nullify because that seems like a completely justified response to me in the face of the company running the data center not shutting down until the problem is fully fixed.

Also, that was probably dbA, dbB would be higher

This is so much worse than I was expecting. You'd pretty much have to move out, and your property would be worthless for anything but industrial use at that point.

Is this something that happens by accident in the sense that the decision makers didn't know how it would sound or is there actually someone in a room at some point going "fuck it".

The people building this stuff literally don't give a fuck. So it's probably the latter.