Tag Archives: data center

You can buy a Server Rack plush toy that actually emits Data Center noise when you hug it

Posted on by

It’s 2026, and there’s a fair chance any kid born in the next 10 years will see more server racks than they will actual bears. An incredibly twisted reality, but a reality nonetheless… so much so that Rajeev Basu decided to poke fun at this predicament in a way that only artists with a dark sense of humor know how. Meet Bezzy, a stuffed plushie that’s actually a server rack, not a teddy bear. Squeeze it and it emits an incredibly annoying hum, captured from actual data centers around USA.

Bezzy would be cute if it weren’t so pathetic. The toy’s thinly veiled satire on the fact that our AI CEO oligarchs want us to think of their world-ending water-sucking creations as anthropomorphic harmless beings. Meta unveiled Muse, a seemingly cute avatar that hides the fact that it’s selling your data to governments and marketers. OpenAI unveiled Dots, an adorable set of AI assistants that definitely don’t want you to think about the fact that the company’s AI bots have been routinely hacking into organizations, governments, etc. To that extent, Bezzy might be too effective in making AI seem cute. That’s until you hug the thing.

Designers: Big Data & Basura

Take a close look at Bezzy and you start appreciating how much thought went into making him look so deliberately unstudied. The gray sherpa fleece, the floppy limbs, the googly eyes, and that little smile are all pulled straight from the visual grammar of the charity adoption plushie, specifically the kind WWF used to send you after you donated to save a panda. His torso, though, is a different story: a black textured panel with rows of blue LED dots running down it, server-rack iconography dressed up in fur. All 20 were handmade in the US, and the design intentionally avoids looking polished or new, going instead for that lived-in quality of a toy you might find at the bottom of a thrift store bin. The yellow tag dangling from his chest, screaming “HUG ME FOR EAR PIERCING FOREVER HUM,” is doing most of the heavy lifting.

The toy is the physical centerpiece of a bigger satirical project called Adopt A Data Center, which Basura designed to look exactly like a charity adoption portal. Hit “adopt now” and instead of a certificate, you get a page of citations and journalism covering data center noise complaints, water consumption, land use, and the tax incentives that make communities such convenient targets for developers. Stickers in the campaign read “Open your heart. And your power grid.” The tagline for the whole thing is “All they ask for is everything,” which is honestly one of the better lines written about the AI era.

The duo behind the project is a pretty inspired pairing for something this arch. Rajeev Basu runs Basura, a New York studio with a resume that includes stints at Wieden+Kennedy, Spotify, and Maximum Effort, where he wrote for Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. His previous projects have the same DNA as Bezzy: the Hinge Phonebook was a phone-shaped book filled with ideas for getting off your phone that sold out in 24 hours, and the Yerba Madre Dirt Shoes literally crumbled apart mid-walk to spread wildflower seeds. His collaborator is Alan Wilkis, who makes music as Big Data, a project he started in 2012 explicitly to comment on how the internet was mining and monetizing personal data. Bezzy launches alongside Big Data 4.0, Wilkis’s first album in seven years, and a new single called “Rabbit Hole,” which honestly tracks.

The hum inside Bezzy wasn’t recorded in a studio. It was captured by a woman living next to a data center in Virginia and handed over during Basura’s research process, part of six months of conversations with people across the US who live beside these facilities. Northern Virginia alone hosts over 500 data centers handling as much as 70% of the world’s internet traffic, and residents there have been filing noise and health complaints for years with very little relief. A 2026 UN University report found that data centers could consume 945 terawatt-hours of electricity annually by 2030, while AI-related water use could equal the domestic needs of 1.3 billion people. Bezzy, all 20 of them, at $99 each, won’t fix any of that. But he’s a pretty hard thing to ignore while he’s screaming.

The post You can buy a Server Rack plush toy that actually emits Data Center noise when you hug it first appeared on Yanko Design.

A Water Heater That Doubles as a Data Center – and Cuts Your Energy Bill

Posted on by

Most household devices are designed to do their job quietly and disappear into the background. Superheat’s H1 proposes a different role for them. Rather than functioning as a single-purpose utility, it treats the water heater as part of a wider technological and environmental system, one that can turn routine domestic energy use into something more productive.

In one sentence: Superheat H1 is a water heater that replaces heating elements with processors, using their heat to warm water while performing computation at the same time.

Designer: Zhenyang Yan, Andrew Geng, and Superheat design team.

The premise behind the H1 is straightforward. Computation generates heat, and homes constantly need heat. These two realities usually exist separately. Data centers spend large amounts of energy cooling machines whose heat is discarded, while households use energy to produce heat from scratch. The H1 connects these cycles by capturing processor heat and redirecting it into water heating. A single input of electricity is used twice, once for computation and once for domestic use. What is typically treated as excess becomes functional.

Seen from a design perspective, this reframes what a household appliance can be. A water heater is usually considered a fixed expense, yet here it operates more like an active system that can offset part of its own energy cost. Testing suggests reductions of up to 80 percent in hot water energy consumption, which positions the object somewhere between a utility device and an economic mechanism.

The physical design reinforces that shift. The unit is enclosed in a modular aluminum housing that reads more like a deliberate object than a hidden appliance. The modular structure allows internal hardware to be updated as processors evolve, extending the lifespan of the product and reducing replacement waste. The visual restraint and upgradability suggest a design approach focused on duration rather than novelty.

At the same time, interaction remains familiar. Installation mirrors that of a standard heater, and daily use requires no change in behavior. The complexity stays internal to the system, which is arguably what makes the concept compelling. It embeds infrastructure-level functionality into everyday life without asking users to engage with technical systems directly.

Its relevance is closely tied to the present moment. Cryptocurrency mining and high-performance computation have expanded rapidly over the past decade, bringing with them real questions about energy demand and environmental impact. Digital infrastructure often grows faster than the systems designed to support it responsibly. Projects like the H1 sit within that tension. They suggest that emerging technologies do not only require new software or policies, but also new kinds of physical design responses that address consequences as they appear.

Superheat’s broader research points toward a distributed model in which multiple household devices could function as small computational nodes. If scaled, everyday appliances such as dryers or refrigerators could collectively form a decentralized network powered by the energy homes already use. Whether or not that vision becomes widespread, it reframes domestic space as something with infrastructural potential.

After a year of testing and development, the H1 is nearing certification, holds two patents, and has secured partnerships with established manufacturers. Recognition at CES 2026 and growing industry attention indicate that the idea resonates beyond prototype speculation.

What makes the H1 worth paying attention to is not simply its novelty, but the question it raises. If appliances can participate in larger systems rather than operate in isolation, the boundary between product design and infrastructure design begins to blur. In that sense, the project is less about a single device and more about a shift in how designed objects might function within the networks that shape contemporary life.

The post A Water Heater That Doubles as a Data Center – and Cuts Your Energy Bill first appeared on Yanko Design.