Cutting the Cable TV cord

I am sure all of you have thought about cutting the cable TV cord. Yesterday I did. Keeping my fingers crossed that everything works. Worst case go back to the cable TV vendor. There are plenty of reviews on cable TV alternatives, but the guidance is mostly for non-technical people and they focus on things like getting an HDTV antenna.  I can’t use an HDTV antenna because all the trees, mountains, and houses that get in way of a signal. And the same applies to satellite TV options.  Anyway most important part if you are going to cut the cable TV cord is how good is your internet connection and your network gear?

I have a Comcast Business Internet connection which gives me about 65mbps down and 12mbps up. PFsense running on Netgate gives me performance statistics and the ability to do traffic shaping.  Here is a daily total network performance.

I can see hourly data and get other statistics like the queues. What are queues? Queues are what you set up as how to manage the traffic allocation. One of ways I get customer feedback for how well network is working is whether my son has any problems playing Xbox One games. In the queues there is a specific one for games. Also can see when facetime is being used as well.

So network is set and I can check how well things work.   Back to cutting the cord. Checked out DirecTv Now, Hulu, Google, Sling TV, and Playstation Vue.  After going around I decided on Playstation Vue. Not the lowest cost, but it has all the broadcast stations which I needed given I couldn’t get an HDTV to work. Got it running on Apple TV, iOS mobile devices, and Amazon Fire TV.  Not running on Xbox One of course. :-)

What is nice is I knocked a hundred dollars off my cable TV package. Part of that cost was $30 a month to rent the set top box devices. For $10 a month I could easily justify spending $200 for a new Apple TV 4K, but don’t have a 4K TV yet.  

One reason I can make this switch is I have business comcast Internet at home which doesn’t have any data caps. If you do have data caps then you need to worry about your data usage when cutting the cord. 

Car Companies tracking you like Google, Amazon, Facebook and others

Washington Post has an article on how car companies are now tracking drivers.

“Honda wanted to track the location of his vehicle, the contract stated, according to Dunn — a stipulation that struck the 69-year-old Temecula, Calif., retiree as a bit odd. But Dunn was eager to drive away in his new car and, despite initial hesitation, he signed the document, a decision with which he has since made peace.

“I don’t care if they know where I go,” said Dunn, who makes regular trips to the grocery store and a local yoga studio in his vehicle. “They’re probably thinking, ‘What a boring life this guy’s got.’ ”

Dunn may consider his everyday driving habits mundane, but auto and privacy experts suspect that big automakers like Honda see them as anything but. By monitoring his everyday movements, an automaker can vacuum up a massive amount of personal information about someone like Dunn, everything from how fast he drives and how hard he brakes to how much fuel his car uses and the entertainment he prefers. The company can determine where he shops, the weather on his street, how often he wears his seat belt, what he was doing moments before a wreck — even where he likes to eat and how much he weighs.”

There aren't many who think that in order to hide their activity they shouldn't use their car. Turning off your phone is another thing you would do to hide your activity, but how many would do that.

Tracking your activity is still in the early stages and will grow fast as so many companies' business models are built on analyzing your activity and monetizing it.

Chayora announces Data Centers for Beijing and Shanghai

Chayora has a press release announcing its China data centre campuses.

Beijing is currently under construction.

“it has finalised agreements with the government of Beichen, Tianjin, to begin construction of the company’s first hyperscale data centre campus in China. The 300MW, 32-hectare / 80-acre campus will serve the greater Beijing region that is home to more than 150 million people in the JingJinJi mega-metropolitan area of northern China.”

And soon the 2nd data center will start for Shanghai.

“Forthcoming in the second quarter of 2018, Chayora will begin construction of its second hyperscale campus, a 280MW data centre to serve the greater Shanghai region. Unlike most other options for Shanghai, Chayora’s facilities will be newly-built and designed from the ground up to international standards with all necessary permits to enable global corporates to access Shanghai and the surrounding provinces of eastern China, a population of more than 200 million. Shanghai is a key location for global organisations, including financial services, e-commerce and cloud service providers, and is in need of significant high performance data centre capacity.”

Jeff Dean publishes Part 1 of Reflection of 2017 Google Brain results - ML, ML, and more ML

Jeff Dean posted part 1 of his reflection of Google Brain’s 2017 achievements. https://research.googleblog.com/2018/01/the-google-brain-team-looking-back-on.html

If you don’t know what Google Brain is you can check out this wiki post.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Brain

When you read the post you can see the work is lots and lots of ML. Using the below infrastructure.  Well they are probably using some really amazing stuff that Google won’t share for a long time. This is the elite Google Brain team they can get anything they want.

As an example of some of their work Jeff references this text to speech work. https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/tacotron2/index.html 

Check out this graphc that shows where TensorFlow is used. 

Compass Data Centers 2018 Predictions

Chris Crosby has a post on his 2018 predictions. https://www.compassdatacenters.com/predictions-for-2018/ 

At first I was tempted to go through each one and add my own opinion. But I am writing this blog post sitting in Black Raven Brewery http://blackravenbrewing.com/

So after a beer thinking I should just write what comes to mind after a pint. 

What Chris is missing is the impact of AR. It will be huge and people are excited. What is funny is where I am drinking a pint is within walking distance to Facebook’s Oculus new facility which is a lot of ex-Microsoft people  https://www.geekwire.com/2018/facebook-microsofts-backyard-building-purchases-point-oculus-expansion/

“It is unclear what the sites will be used for, and Facebook and Oculus representatives did not return requests for comment. GeekWire reported recently that Oculus is looking for a couple hundred thousand square feet of research and development space in Redmond as well as a huge chunk of office space in the Seattle area.

Job listings also point to an Oculus expansion in Redmond.Facebook lists 123 open positions in Redmond, and almost all of them are for Oculus. Aposting for an Oculus facilities project managerincludes “work on multiple expansion and renovation projects in its Oculus facilities in Redmond. Projects are all on a fast track schedule to support the planned growth in the area.”

What I agree totally with on Chris’s prediction #6 is DCIM will create a new acronym as it tries to gain traction. There so many flaws in DCIM. And the top is they don’t get abstraction. There way too many failed DCIM implementations out there.

The big are growing so much faster than rest. Amazon is rumored to be testing their advertising efforts. Which is direct blow to google and facebook. 

Actually I agree with all of Chris’s points. 2018 is going to be interesting and confusing because as the last point made #10

10) Data center publications will continue to publish articles speculating on the future demise of enterprise data centers in relation to the cloud when there is nothing else to talk about.