Category Archives: Storage

News articles and other information as it relates to computer storage technology.

Computer memory can be read with a flash of light

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In 2009, researchers at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, demonstrated2 that the material has a photovoltaic response to visible light — meaning that when it is hit by light, a voltage is created. The size of the voltage depends on which polarization state the material is in, and can be read out using electrodes or transistors. Crucially, shining light on the material doesn’t change its polarization, and so does not erase the data stored in it.

via Computer memory can be read with a flash of light : Nature News & Comment.

It takes less than 10 nanoseconds to write to and read the cells, and recording the data requires about 3 volts. The leading nonvolatile RAM technology, flash, takes about 10,000 times longer to read and write, and needs 15 volts to record.

Bitcoin crashes, losing nearly half of its value in six hours

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On Wednesday afternoon, the Bitcoin bubble appears to have burst. As of this writing, its current value is around $160—down from a high of $260. (It fell as low as $130 today.) There is no obvious explanation for why the digital currency has fallen so far and so fast, although the market correcting after such a huge rise might be a good explanation. (Update 4:05pm CT: Bitcoin seems to have somewhat recovered and appears to be hovering around $200.)

via Bitcoin crashes, losing nearly half of its value in six hours | Ars Technica.

More info from Slashdot and Techcrunch.  From:  Bitcoin Suffers A Correction Amid Apparent DDOS Attacks On Some Exchanges

This also happened last week when Mt. Gox when Bitcoin reached $142 and hackers attacked the exchange. At that point, Mt. Gox said it had suffered ”its worst trading lag ever.”

Massive data leak exposes offshore financial secrets

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The files contain information on over 120,000 offshore entities — including shell corporations and legal structures known as trusts — involving people in over 170 countries. The leak amounts to 260 gigabytes of data, or 162 times larger than the U.S. State Department cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010.

via Massive data leak exposes offshore financial secrets – World – CBC News.

Treasure Data Projects 500 Percent Growth This Year, Launches New “Plazma” Distributed Database

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They’re also launching a new distributed database called Plazma, which offers significant improvements over HDFS (Hadoop Distributed Files System). Plazma is significantly better than HDFS precisely because it’s more efficient and is able to compile and parse data at a much faster rate.

via Treasure Data Projects 500 Percent Growth This Year, Launches New “Plazma” Distributed Database | TechCrunch.

MySQL’s creator on why the future belongs to MariaDB

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MariaDB was created to be a drop-in replacement for MySQL. Widenius says that as long as MySQL has a larger user base than MariaDB, remaining drop-in compatibility will be essential, in order to make the transition between the databases trivial.

“However, being a drop-in replacement doesn’t stop us from changing the underlying code to make it faster and better or add new features,” he says.

via Dead database walking: MySQL’s creator on why the future belongs to MariaDB – MariaDB, open source, mysql, Oracle – Computerworld.

Google BigQuery is now even bigger

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BigQuery is a cloud service that lets users analyze terabyte-sized data sets using SQL-like queries. It’s based on Google’s Dremel querying system, which can analyze data where it’s located (i.e., in the Google File System or BigTable) and which Google uses internally to analyze a variety of different data sets.

via Google BigQuery is now even bigger — Tech News and Analysis.

How SSD power faults scramble your data

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The 2 SSDs that had no failures? Both were MLC 2012 model years with a mid-range – $1.17/GB – price.

via How SSD power faults scramble your data | ZDNet.

Yikes!

This paper reminds us that SSDs are very new technology whose idiosyncracies are still being engineered around. We’re still 5 years away from the average enterprise SSD being as reliable as the average enterprise hard drive is today.

BitTorrent Launches Private and Secure Dropbox Alternative

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Just ask Twitter and Facebook, two major technology companies that rely on BitTorrent technology to distribute files across their networks.

via BitTorrent Launches Private and Secure Dropbox Alternative | TorrentFreak.

I didn’t know that about facebook and twitter.  Bittorrent is a very useful protocol for certain use cases and I’m surprised other cloud storage providers haven’t adopted it yet.