
The mobile device lab at the Prineville data center - slyall
https://code.facebook.com/posts/300815046928882/the-mobile-device-lab-at-the-prineville-data-center/?hn=1
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oofabz
Prineville is a lovely place and as an Oregonian I'm thrilled that high tech
jobs have come to a rural town that does not get many opportunities like this.

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danielrhodes
The promise of jobs from these data centers usually comes in the form of
construction work. After that, there are very few people who actually work at
these places - if they could keep the lights off they would.

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stuff4ben
Yep. The datacenters in the western part of NC for Apple, Google, and Facebook
are all the same. Lots of incentives from the local government with very few
high-tech/high-paying jobs going along with it. So basically the company gets
the land really cheap, doesn't have to pay much if any taxes, cheap
electricity, and few people to hire. What's not to like if you're a high-tech
company? Still, I'm sure the local construction companies benefited. And
there's something to be said for raising the profile of the area.

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yardie
Honestly, what's the alternative. The land would sit unused otherwise. If they
did build it in a more developed area they would be competing against
commercial and residential interest, and for what gain? Servers don't care
about a 2 hour commute, or how far they are from the airport. In the sticks or
downtown, it's the same to computers.

Now that one company has done the research of getting electricity, network
backbone, roads, and other infrastructure built. Now, others can come along
and build their datacenter next door because they know the infrastructure is
there. Which is exactly what's happening in NC.

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neilk
My team builds something similar at Sauce Labs. With the added fun of making
it a SaaS. (HaaS?)

Our design is totally different though. Really looking forward to seeing the
specs Facebook is promising, although I suspect it will be hard to apply it to
different environments.

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mkj
I wonder if the 4ft gap could be eliminated by reducing the TX power on the
AP. Most data must be AP->phone direction.

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ivmi
This reminds me of game development when we had racks filled with PCs with
every graphics board on the market.

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mackross
The camera attachment -> Ethernet USB hack seems like it might have been
useful here.

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seany
The software automation part of this seems potentially more interesting than
the hardware imho.

