Nov 18
How YouTube Works
Posted in: Today's ChiliYou’re about to watch a video via YouTube. Hell, you watch dozens of videos every day on YouTube. But do you have any idea how it works?
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Sep 13
The eBay auction for the server that once hosted the WikiLeaks documents, including Cablegate, has finally come to a close with a winning bid of $33,000. There’s only one problem: the winner is a 17-year-old boy who used his dad’s account to bid and is in no position to cough up the cash.
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Sep 03
Shopping for a new server? Want a piece of whistleblower history? Want to piss off Julian Assange? You can do all three of these things at once, if you buy the server that hosted hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks a few years ago. And it still works!
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Aug 22
Luckily, most of us don’t have to think about the tangled infrastructure that keeps the internet ticking along. But, as profiled by Wired, that’s the obsession of the crew at CoreOS, who are building an operating system it ambitiously hopes will help make the web tidier and more nimble. It’s underpinned by Chrome OS, which the team aims to fork so that it can run every web service imaginable. That’d give smaller players in the web server game access to modular web infrastructure tech, like that used by Google on desktops and laptops with ChromeOS. It would also keep servers up-to-date automatically without the need to install brand new versions of an operating system — a peril-fraught hassle administrators often postpone as long as possible. If successful, the project could result in better server security, quicker response to evolving web technologies and less downtime. CoreOS is still early in its development, but the group has already sold another of its open source projects to cloud player Rackspace, and counts Linux kernal specialist Greg Kroah-Hartman among its collaborators. For more, check Wired’s in-depth take on it at the source.
[Image credit: Wired]
Source: Wired
Jun 24
Respawn Entertainment talks Xbox Live Cloud, praises its multiplayer servers
Posted in: Today's Chili
Microsoft’s been quick to point out how it’s beefing up the Xbox Live Cloud in preparation for its next wunderconsole, and now Respawn Entertainment is stepping in to detail just what Redmond’s architecture means for multiplayer on Titanfall. The firm’s Jon Shiring, who works with the game’s cloud computing integration, says that the next-gen title boasts vastly improved online play since it leans on Ballmer and Company’s cloud hardware instead of users to host sessions. By taking advantage of Microsoft’s servers, the futuristic shooter benefits from more reliable bandwidth, snappier matchmaking times, extra CPU power and the elimination of latency-based host advantage and hacked-host cheating, to boot. Naturally, using dedicated servers can cost a ton, but Respawn says Microsoft managed to keep things comparatively inexpensive for developers, in part thanks to its Azure tech. For the dev’s comprehensive write-up on just what this revamped Xbox Live architecture may mean for gaming, click the source link below.
Filed under: Gaming, HD, Microsoft
Source: Respawn Entertainment
Jun 19
If you had your heart set on getting back some of the data you had stored on Megaupload, now would be a good time to stop hoping. According to Kim Dotcom, petabytes of user data have already been deleted off old Megaupload servers. Thousands of pirated movies cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
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May 24
Microsoft details how Xbox One cloud servers will tackle processor-intensive gaming chores
Posted in: Today's Chili
One of the Xbox launch’s big reveals was that Microsoft added 300,000 servers to Xbox Live, and now GM Matt Booty has detailed to Ars Technica how that’ll improve game play. He said the improved cloud architecture will speed up GPU- or CPU-heavy chores that aren’t dependent on latency — like lighting or cloth dynamics — by pre-calculating them before applying them to a scene. To make that happen, the Xbox One server cloud will provide three virtual devices for “every Xbox one available in your living room.” It’ll be up to game developers to manage transitions between console-only and cloud assisted graphics, though, since the first few seconds of lighting in a new scene will need to be handled by the console before servers can take over. Of course, that means many titles may look better when you’re online, but he added that you’ll still be able to play if the internet is cut and “the game is going to have to intelligently handle that.”
Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft
Source: Ars Technica
Jan 22
Facebook’s new Graph Search is an ambitious project, and brings with it the need for some serious computational grunt. Here’s how Facebook is taking on that challenge. More »
Dec 10
If you’re hankering for an Xserve, you’ve been out of luck since 2011. But there’s always an alternative. You can make your own by squeezing a whole 160 Mac Minis into a custom rack, for instance. That’s what a fellow named Steve did, and the results are staggering. More »
Dec 10
IBM manufactures light-based ‘nanophotonic’ chips to let the terabytes flow
Posted in: Today's Chili 
IBM’s taken a large step toward computer chips that use photons instead of electrons by manufacturing the first 90nm silicon-based optical processing modules. It did so using the CMOS nanophotonics technology we first saw back in 2010, creating tranceivers capable of 25Gbps transfer speeds. By multiplexing a large number of those streams to a single fibre, “terrabytes of data” per second could flow between distant computer systems,” according to IBM. The 90 nanometer light circuits should allow data-hungry servers or supercomputers to scale up rapidly in speed “for the next decade, and at the desired low cost,” according to the researchers. It’s now primed for commercial development, meaning we could see an end to bottlenecks in systems “a few centimeters or a few kilometers” apart from each other. Check the PR for the detailed technical skinny.
Continue reading IBM manufactures light-based ‘nanophotonic’ chips to let the terabytes flow
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