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How a Redditor Ended Up With an Industrial-Grade Netflix Server (vice.com) 40

A Redditor says they've managed to get a hold of an old Netflix server for free, and has posted a detailed online look at the once mysterious hardware. The devices were part of Netflix's Open Connect Content Delivery Network (CDN), and can often be found embedded within major ISP networks to ensure your Netflix streams don't suck. From a report: Reddit user PoisonWaffle3 said the ISP he currently works for has been offloading old Netflix servers as they upgrade to more modern equipment. In a Reddit thread titled "So I got a Netflix cache server..." he posted a photo of the server, which is bright Netflix red, and explained how he was curious about what's inside the boxes given how little public information was available.

"All I could find online was overviews, installation/config guides for their proprietary software, etc.," he said. "No specs, no clue what was inside the red box." Dave Temkin, Netflix's former Vice President of Network Systems Infrastructure told Motherboard there's nothing too mysterious about what the servers can do, though they significantly help improve video streaming by shortening overall content transit time. "They're just an Intel FreeBSD box," he said. "We got Linux running on some of the generations of that box as well."

Netflix's Open Connect Content Delivery Network hardware caches popular Netflix content to reduce overall strain across broadband networks. Netflix lets major broadband ISPs embed a CDN server on the ISP network for free; the shorter transit time then helps improve video delivery, of benefit to broadband providers and Netflix alike. It took all of three screws for PoisonWaffle3 to get inside the mysterious red unit, at which point users discovered a "fairly standard" Supermicro board, a single Xeon E5 2650L v2 processor, 64GB of DDR3 memory, and a 10 gigabit ethernet card. They also found 36 7.2TB 7200RPM drives and six 500GB Micron solid state drives, for a grand total of 262 terabytes of storage.

Comment Re:Windows RT 2.0 (Score 1) 76

Windows 10 isn't an OS. It's a fucking kiosk. Soon it will be a pay-by-the-hour service. I know Apple under Tim Cook is slowly headed this way, but damn is Windows 10 a hot fucking mess and a great look into our dystopian future. Fortunately I'm hardly ever forced to use it, only on the rare occasion when I need to participate in some company meeting on skype for business, and I get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

Comment Re:Firefox may not survive WebExtensions. (Score 1) 129

Fucking formatting....

It is now official. Anonymous Coward has confirmed: firefox is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered firefox community when Anonymous Coward confirmed that firefox market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 3.75 percent of all browsers. Coming on the heels of a recent Anonymous Coward slashdot post which plainly states that firefox has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. firefox is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Anonymous Coward comprehensive slashdot post.

You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict firefox's future. The hand writing is on the wall: firefox faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for firefox because firefox is dying. Things are looking very bad for firefox. As many of us are already aware, firefox continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

There can no longer be any doubt: firefox is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Anonymous Coward states that there are 700 trillion users of Chrome. How many users of firefox are there? Let's see. The number of Chrome versus firefox posts on slashdot is roughly in ratio of 5,000,000,000 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 firefox users. Opera posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of firefox posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Opera. A recent article put firefox at about 0.000001 percent of the non-Chrome market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 firefox users. This is consistent with the number of firefox slashdot posts.

Due to the troubles of firefox, abysmal design and so on, Mozilla went out of business and was taken over by Opera who offer another troubled browser. Now Opera is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major Anonymous Coward posts show that firefox has steadily declined in market share. firefox is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If firefox is to survive at all it will be among browser dilettante dabblers. firefox continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, firefox is dead.

Comment Re:Firefox may not survive WebExtensions. (Score 1) 129

It is now official. Anonymous Coward has confirmed: firefox is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered firefox community when Anonymous Coward confirmed that firefox market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 3.75 percent of all browsers. Coming on the heels of a recent Anonymous Coward slashdot post which plainly states that firefox has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. firefox is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Anonymous Coward comprehensive slashdot post. You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict firefox's future. The hand writing is on the wall: firefox faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for firefox because firefox is dying. Things are looking very bad for firefox. As many of us are already aware, firefox continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. There can no longer be any doubt: firefox is dying. Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers. Anonymous Coward states that there are 700 trillion users of Chrome. How many users of firefox are there? Let's see. The number of Chrome versus firefox posts on slashdot is roughly in ratio of 5,000,000,000 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 firefox users. Opera posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of firefox posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Opera. A recent article put firefox at about 0.000001 percent of the non-Chrome market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 firefox users. This is consistent with the number of firefox slashdot posts. Due to the troubles of firefox, abysmal design and so on, Mozilla went out of business and was taken over by Opera who offer another troubled browser. Now Opera is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house. All major Anonymous Coward posts show that firefox has steadily declined in market share. firefox is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If firefox is to survive at all it will be among browser dilettante dabblers. firefox continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, firefox is dead.

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