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Box Accelerator may triple cloud upload speeds versus its rivals, comes to syncing apps soon (video)
Upstream speeds are frequently the bottlenecks for cloud storage: an entire company might be held back waiting for that last presentation video to go online before the big meeting. Box wants much more parity through Accelerator, a custom infrastructure that should make uploads hum. It uses Amazon's EC2 for help, but the real magic comes through a mix of Box's own network and special prioritization. Accelerator goes beyond just location to factor in the browser, OS and other criteria that could affect a data packet's journey. The company claims through outside studies that its average 7MB/s speeds make it the upload king by a wide margin, to the tune of 2.7 times its fastest worldwide rival and 3.1 times any of its American counterparts. Peak speeds are up to 10 times faster than before, if you go by the company's word. Most of the focus is on corporate customers and speeding up access near the provider's ten global access points, but Box is planning both to ramp up performance in more areas and bring Accelerator to the company's syncing platforms in the near future -- an obvious lure for would-be Dropbox customers.
Amazon stores 1,700 human genomes in the cloud
Not content with speeding up web browsing and hosting federal data, Amazon Web Services are now helping in the fight against disease. Bezos' crew is donating a chunk of free cloud storage to the 1000 Genomes project, which aims to make it easier for scientists to search for genetic variations linked to diseases. These gene-hunters can also use Amazon's Elastic Cloud Compute service to analyze data and discover patterns, although those functions won't come gratis. The DNA sequences of 1,700 mostly anonymous Homo sapiens from around the world have already been logged, but the project has to upload another 1,000 samples before it meets statistical requirements. If it ever needs fresh volunteers, perhaps a free USB gene sequencer and a Prime subscription might do the trick?
OpenSUSE is 12.1 versions old, and the .1 is important
With the sea-salt whiff of Fedora 16 still hanging in the air, we now have another updated Linux distribution based on the new 3.1 kernel. OpenSUSE 12.1 offers the GNOME 3.2 shell along with KDE, Xfce and LXDE desktop flavors should you prefer something different. There are goodies like Chromium 17 and Firefox 7 and improved server side tools including WebYaST, Horde 4 apps and the ability to run on the Amazon EC2 cloud. The source link below lists plenty more improvements and of course they're all free. Download now and debate the economics later.
'Monster Cat' 30,472-core supercomputer can be yours for $1,279 an hour
Nicknamed after the magical "Nekomata" cat of Japanese nightmares, Cycle Computing's monstrous new supercomputer can now be yours to rent for the low price of $1,279 an hour. By fusing together the face-melting power of 3,809 eight-core Amazon AWS Elastic Computer 2s, the company was able to create the world's 30th fastest computer with 30,472 processor cores and 27TB of memory -- primarily used for complex modeling rather than Facebooking. Components of the beast hide out in three of Amazon's EC2 data center lairs located in California, Virginia and Ireland, and communicate using HTTPS and SSH encrypted with AES-256 to keep its secrets safe and secure. Compared to the company's previous 10,000-core offering ($1,060 / hour), the new version is far more powerful and minimally more expensive, mostly because it uses spot instances (where customers bid on unused EC2 capacity) rather than pricier reserved instances. Good on you Cycle Computing, not everyone has access to a Jeopardy champ.
Simulated monkey typing project is the best, blurst of times
Like many great things, Jesse Anderson's latest project was inspired by a classic Simpsons line. Of course, the cartoon didn't come up with the idea of a lot of monkeys sitting around, banging out some of the great works of Western literature. The concept of infinite primates being able to generate Shakespeare predates even The Simpsons' Tracey Ullman days, believe it or not. Anderson used Ubuntu, Hadoop and Amazon EC2, with his simulated monkey creating random data sets. Millions of virtual monkeys (not quite infinite, but still something) are participating in the project. Their outputs were mapped and are checked against all of Shakespeare's work. Not surprisingly, they've still got a ways to go. Looks like the project, like The Simpsons, may have to go on forever.
