EU's Demands on Google Search is the first step in Regulation

There is all kinds of news out there on how good or bad the EU’s action is on Google to erase search results.

Wall Street Journal

European Court Lets Users Erase Records on Web

New York Times-16 hours ago
The highest court in the European Union decided on Tuesday thatGoogle must, in some cases, honor requests from its search engine users to ...
Google Faces Challenges in Europe After Privacy Ruling
Wall Street Journal-14 hours ago
 
New European ruling game-changing for US companies
In-Depth-USA TODAY-May 13, 2014
 
Google Must Delete Personal Data When Asked, European Court ...
Blog-NPR (blog)-May 13, 2014
 
Europe court ruling reboots Web privacy rules for Google, others
In-Depth-Los Angeles Times-13 hours ago
 
Europe tells Google to delete data. Corrupt politicians will be thrilled ...
Blog-Telegraph.co.uk (blog)-6 hours ago

If this does go away though, there will just be something else that comes back.  Why?  Because this ruling is just the first step in efforts to regulate the operations of a Google and other technology companies.  What comes next after a regulation is compliance which requires a disclosure of data.  This data can then be used to create more regulations and more compliance.

Consider this.  What ability does the EU have to control operations of Google?  

What's More Evil Nuclear Power or the People Who Implement Nuclear Power Poorly?

If you bring up Nuclear Power there are many who are anti-nuclear and bring up the danger of nuclear power.  The attacks are focused on nuclear as a thing and things don’t defend themselves.

Reading The Multidisciplinarian’s post on a Japanese Nuclear Reactor closer to the epicenter of the Mar 11, 2011 earthquake than Fukushima.

The Onagawa Reactor Non-Meltdown

On March 11, 2011, the strongest earthquake in Japanese recorded history hit Tohuku, leaving about 15,000 dead. The closest nuclear reactor to the quake’s epicenter was the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station operated by Tohoku Electric Power Company. As a result of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that destroyed the town of Onagawa, the Onagawa nuclear facility remained intact and shut itself down safely, without incident. The Onagawa nuclear facility was the vicinity’s only safe evacuation destination. Residents of Onagawa left homeless by the natural disasters sought refuge in the facility, where its workers provided food.

The excellent point is how the focus has been anti-nuclear as opposed to the cause by the regulators.

Despite these findings, the world’s response Fukushima has been much more focused on opposition to nuclear power than on opposition to corrupt regulatory government bodies and the cultures that foster them.

For more details check out this report.

Two scholars from USC, Airi Ryu and Najmedin Meshkati, recently published “Why You Haven’t Heard About Onagawa Nuclear Power Station after the Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011,” their examination of the contrasting safety mindsets of TEPCO, the firm operating the Fukushima nuclear plant, and Tohoku Electric Power, the firm operating Onagawa.

Check out this youtube video of Onagawa to get an idea of Tsunami’s impact.

 

Netflix Open Connect Division Staff - 20 SW, 10 Network, & 10 Operations

Arstechnica posts on a presentation by Netflix’s David Fullagar director of content delivery architecture.

There are cool details like the staff.

The network team

Netflix’s Open Connect division has about 40 people, Fullagar said. About 20 are software engineers who either build software for Netflix servers or work on the company's management software, which runs on Amazon’s cloud network and performs functions such as load balancing. Another 10 Open Connect employees are network architects, and another 10 are in operations.

There are two types of hardware used.

Netflix stores video on two types of boxes that it designed, one that’s heavy on HDDs and another that’s all SSDs. Netflix built them in part because it couldn’t find the right mix of compute and storage capabilities in products from hardware vendors.

The HDD unit is a 4U-sized chassis that holds 216TB on 36 drives of 6TB each. It has 64GB RAM, a 10 Gigabit NIC, and some SSD for frequently accessed content.

The smaller, 1U, SSD-only unit contains 14 drives of a terabyte each, 256GB of RAM and a 40 Gigabit NIC. About 75 percent of the cost of both the HDD and SSD boxes is taken up by storage. Each unit uses Intel CPUs.

How many are there?

Netflix stores video on two types of boxes that it designed, one that’s heavy on HDDs and another that’s all SSDs. Netflix built them in part because it couldn’t find the right mix of compute and storage capabilities in products from hardware vendors.

The HDD unit is a 4U-sized chassis that holds 216TB on 36 drives of 6TB each. It has 64GB RAM, a 10 Gigabit NIC, and some SSD for frequently accessed content.

The smaller, 1U, SSD-only unit contains 14 drives of a terabyte each, 256GB of RAM and a 40 Gigabit NIC. About 75 percent of the cost of both the HDD and SSD boxes is taken up by storage. Each unit uses Intel CPUs.

If you didn’t make it to the NY event, it looks like the presentation in repeated for the Uptime Symposium attendees.

Designing Netflix's Content Delivery System
Presenter: David Fullagar, Director of Content Delivery Architecture, Netflix

Tuesday, May 20, 2014
2:35 - 3:05 p.m.

The way people consume video-based content has changed dramatically over recent years. At the forefront of this evolution is Netflix, today's undisputed video-streaming service leader. Due to the personalization of on-demand video delivery service, no two subscribers watch the same content at exactly the same time. Now bits and bytes of this digital content must be ready for delivery on-demand to more than 44 million Netflix customers, placing incredible pressure on the content delivery infrastructure.

To tackle this challenge, David Fullagar, Director of Content Delivery Architecture at Netflix and his team, have custom designed the content delivery network (CDN)—Open Connect. During this presentation, Mr. Fullagar will share the Open Connect hardware design and the open source software components of the server that support these massive streaming demands. These cost-efficient designs are suitable for any high-volume provider of large media files to enable faster, cheaper Internet for all.

 

Data at Center of Gun Purchasing, Requests Information on Supplier's Business Practices

Data Centers are the center of the data for companies.  WSJ has a post on Data being at the Center of evaluating gun purchases.

Jersey City has begun requiring gun companies that supply its police department with weapons to disclose more about their business practices, an effort that is being watched by law-enforcement agencies in other cities.

Gun-control advocates and firearms industry representatives said Jersey City is the first municipality in the nation to demand such information. Questions include how firms dispose of old weapons and comply with background-check laws, and whether they make semiautomatic rifles—often called assault weapons—for sale to civilians, according to bid documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

This is an interesting shift to try and change the gun industry.

Activists hope that public police departments can leverage their purchasing power to push gun manufacturers to invest in safer weapons and not sell to retailers that have track records of selling to criminals.