Your Data is Stored in Here

This is a data centre.

If you store stuff in the cloud,
this is what those photos & files
look like in real life

1 – housed in a well-ventilated building
2 – a backup power supply, to ensure continuity
3 – through the doors is your stuff

This would be considered a small-ish data centre.

A big one, probably like Facebook’s, would use the same amount of electricity as a small town.

There’s environmental controls like air conditioning (these places get very hot), and fire suppression systems.

Even if you use the cloud to back up your stuff, it’s a good idea to make your own physical back up, and to make two.

 

 

First CVT I’ve Ever Liked

Found in Subaru’s 2015 WRX.

Non-car nerds: CVT – Continuous Variable Transmission, a new type of engine that’s en vogue. Instead of fixed, mechanical gears, it uses a belt that can be programmed to have an infinite number of gears.

You can identify a CVT in 2 ways:

1 – when you stomp on the gas, it’s one second two second, and then the engine kicks in and launches

2 – the high-pitched, loud whine it emits

That whine is the sound of “improved fuel economy”, which is why automakers are switching to them; CVTs claim better fuel consumption than their mechanical counterpart.

I don’t like CVTs because of points #1 and 2.

But Subaru masked the loud whine, and instead there’s a little boxer engine growl, and they definitely solved the launch lag, because over and again I was, “woah I’m at 80 already? Nice.”