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Facebook opens a giant hardware lab to build its future
Hardware will play a big role in Facebook's future between Oculus' VR headsets, internet drones and open source networking gear, and the social network wants to give that technology the best start possible. It just opened Area 404 (yes, a play on "site not found"), a massive 22,000 square foot facility at its Menlo Park headquarters that will handle the brunt of Facebook's hardware "modeling, prototyping and failure analysis." Unlike some labs, it's not segmented into product-specific divisions -- instead, there are only electrical engineering and prototyping workshop sections. It's designed to encourage cross-team collaboration that could lead to discoveries that might not happen in an isolated group.
