Where Facebook Stores 900 Million New Photos Per Day

They could save space by NotQuiteReal · 2015-07-01 03:04 · Score: 3, Funny

They could just delete most of the photos after they age a bit, analyzing it with some of their AI whiz-bang software.

If anyone ever asks to see the image again, they can just show one that is "close enough" and nobody would ever know the difference.

I personally, have never posted a photo to Facebook, so I'd be OK with that.

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This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.

Re:They could save space by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:06 · Score: 1

It's a bit like memory that way. You have some short term memory, and those become long term memory, which you can never really recall exactly. In some ways, this might be the solution to the "problem" of the internet never forgetting.
Re:They could save space by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:28 · Score: 0

I think they should convert the pictures to ASCII art to save on storage space.
Re:They could save space by QuietLagoon · 2015-07-01 03:30 · Score: 5, Interesting

They could just delete most of the photos after they age a bit, analyzing it with some of their AI whiz-bang software....
More than a few of my [real world] friends use facebook as their archive for photos, eschewing local or cloud-based storage for their historical family photos. They would be unhappy if facebook were to randomly start deleting photos just because they've been on facebook for a period of time.
.
Of course, I've told those friends that facebook may not have the same photo-preservation goals as they do, but they seem to be unconcerned.
Re:They could save space by Daniel+Hoffmann · 2015-07-01 03:38 · Score: 1

Yeah computers have a system like that, it is called memory.
Re:They could save space by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:47 · Score: 1

More than a few of my [real world] friends use facebook as their archive for photos, eschewing local or cloud-based storage for their historical family photos.
. If they are storing their photos on facebook, they ARE storing them in the cloud.

Of course, I've told those friends that facebook may not have the same photo-preservation goals as they do, but they seem to be unconcerned.
Why would they be concerned? Ignorance is bliss.
Re:They could save space by QuietLagoon · 2015-07-01 04:00 · Score: 2

.... If they are storing their photos on facebook, they ARE storing them in the cloud....
In a general sense, correct.
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However, when I said "cloud-based storage" I meant the cloud service was a storage service, not a social media service. If I had meant facebook, I would have said cloud-based social media service.
Re:They could save space by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 04:10 · Score: 0

They could just make the compression lossier as time passes, until eventually it's reduced to a vague text thought somehow related to the photo.
Re:They could save space by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 04:24 · Score: 0

Where have all your Myspace photos gone?
Re:They could save space by lgw · 2015-07-01 05:46 · Score: 1

Facebook seems to have your friends in mind, at least for now. They have a system where old photos are store quite cheaply, because they simply fail to display the first time you try to view them. By giving up on storing them in a way that can serve a web page hit, Facebook can be quite cheap (though I hear they use powered-down HDDs, not optical - and Western Digital has a new line of HDDs just for this purpose).

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Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Re:They could save space by bondsbw · 2015-07-01 06:33 · Score: 1

If they are storing their photos on facebook, they ARE storing them in the cloud.
It depends on what you mean "store". Dictionary.com provides this as a definition: "to accumulate or put away, for future use". (emphasis mine)
I don't think Facebook guarantees future retrieval, so it is probably not proper to classify it as storage.

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All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Re:They could save space by ncc74656 · 2015-07-01 07:17 · Score: 1

If they are storing their photos on facebook, they are doing it wrong.

FTFY. I can kinda understand posting stuff to Farcebook so others can view it, but using it as your primary storage medium? That's at least a dozen different kinds of wrong.

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20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Re:They could save space by drinkypoo · 2015-07-01 16:20 · Score: 1

More than a few of my [real world] friends use facebook as their archive for photos
hahahahahahahahahahaha

Of course, I've told those friends that facebook may not have the same photo-preservation goals as they do, but they seem to be unconcerned.
So what makes you think they would be unhappy if facebook started deleting their photos? Apparently they don't care :p

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"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:They could save space by davester666 · 2015-07-01 16:59 · Score: 2

Sure: "Show me the picture of me and my wife on the beach 10 years ago"
Wife: "Who the hell is that in the picture with you? And when did that happen?"

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Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Re:They could save space by KGIII · 2015-07-01 17:49 · Score: 1

Long time passing...

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"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Re:They could save space by cthulhu11 · 2015-07-02 05:58 · Score: 1

Facebook practices severe compression on uploaded photos, so it's not a great option for archival. I upload family photos there for my wife's friends/family to see, but use CrashPlan for actual archival. These days most people view photos as ephemera, given that so many people can take thousands of good-enough-for-casual-use photos with their phones. Back in the day when taking / printing a photo was an event, people valued them much more.
Re:They could save space by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-02 09:59 · Score: 0

Why not revert responsibility for storage to users? Like in tagging all photos bound to be erased and asking for permission. Lots of details to handle, but I for one would save the pics and videos I like forget about the rest, but I certainly do not want to lose graphical material... and they may not be able to go on indefinitely either.
Re:They could save space by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-04 02:34 · Score: 0

More than a few of my [real world] friends use facebook as their archive for photos ....
You have some very stupid friends.

Datageddon. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:05 · Score: 0

Datageddon.

Replace them by war4peace · 2015-07-01 03:07 · Score: 1

After 3 months of no views, just replace them with a goatse image.
That way, you only need to store one image which replaces 99.999% of all pics uploaded. No need for complex storage solutions!
Another advantage would be that you can serve it really, really fast. No wait time!

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...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)

Re:Replace them by Irate+Engineer · 2015-07-01 03:44 · Score: 4, Funny

After 3 months of no views, just replace them with a goatse image.
Dear God, there is more than one!?!

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Re:Replace them by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:49 · Score: 0

After 3 months of no views, just replace them with a goatse image.
Like the FP said, "close enough"!
Re:Replace them by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 06:05 · Score: 0

After 3 months of no views, just replace them with a goatse image.
That way, you only need to store one image which replaces 99.999% of all pics uploaded. No need for complex storage solutions!
Another advantage would be that you can serve it really, really fast. No wait time!
I don't know, I think we need to see a demonstration.
Re:Replace them by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 07:25 · Score: 0

Yes, actually. It's part of a whole series of photos.
Re:Replace them by KiloByte · 2015-07-01 08:52 · Score: 1

1. Besides hello.jpg, there's giver.jpg.
2. The goatse image (hello.jpg) comes from a set of 40 photos.
You can find more in the proper encyclopedia.

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Delete? by DanJ_UK · 2015-07-01 03:07 · Score: 2

What happens when a user wants to delete an image permanently. If it's stored on an optical disc are they going to destroy the whole disc and burn it again?

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- Dan

Re:Delete? by bill_mcgonigle · 2015-07-01 03:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

What happens when a user wants to delete an image permanently.
What gave you the idea that's a service Facebook offers?

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Re:Delete? by NatasRevol · 2015-07-01 03:16 · Score: 3, Informative

I see you haven't read Facebook's terms of service.
There is no delete.

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Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:16 · Score: 0

Mm. Delete? Yeah... There is no such thing. But it would be cool if someone raided the facility and stole all these disks.
I've never used Facebook but I'm a little curious. Is there a limit on how much you can upload? If so, what is this limit?
Re:Delete? by blueshift_1 · 2015-07-01 03:22 · Score: 1

The ultimate truth of the internet... there is no delete. Just some things are a bit harder to find.
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:29 · Score: 0

Makes me wonder if it is only photos that are stored in this manner.
Either way, some opportunistic privacy advocate will no doubt launch a lawsuit against them over this little tech reveal.
Their policy is pretty clear that state that if you DELETE your ACCOUNT that your photos are deleted as well.
So either these blu-ray libraries are R/W and upon deletion of your account get to pulling out the ###'s of blu-ray with a photo of your here & there, or they don't do what they say they do on deletion.
Personally, I just can't see them tying up the BD drives in the library for per-user requests to delete data which might span multiple disks, libraries, racks, etc. "PLEASE WAIT: Joe Smith just deleted his account... the cold storage library is busy finding and deleting all his data." Although it's plausible that they could delete the deleted account data in a "timely manner" via weekly/monthly batch, but then depending on how they've structured things... they could be moving every single disc around during these batch events. Nope.. my money would be on write once.
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:29 · Score: 0

What happens when a user wants to delete an image permanently. If it's stored on an optical disc are they going to destroy the whole disc and burn it again?
They probably just flag it deleted in the database. I suspect most companies do it like this. They keep it stored for internal company historical purposes, and of course there's the possibility of a crime investigation related to a user where deleted content might provide useful information.
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:35 · Score: 0

Their published policy on how they handle user data including photos.
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:35 · Score: 0

Slashdot doesn't let you edit or delete comments, why should Facebook?

Oh, that's right... because Facebook should do everything every two-bit wanna-be tech geek around here thinks they should but Slashdot is sacred land.
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:37 · Score: 0

There is no delete.
How do they deal with people who violate the picture policy then? Let's say someone uploaded a picture of nude underage people. They can't delete it without destroying other pictures, right? Especially if it is in the system long enough to be put on optical disks. Does FB get in trouble for storing that?
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:42 · Score: 0

Where does it say there is no delete? I can point you to where it says there IS a delete...
Search for "How can I manage or delete information about me?"
That plus Mr. Keven McCammon's technical statements on how this cold storage solution works could be enough to get Facebook into some hot water:
“We spin them up, fill them with data and then spin them down. Every now and again we spin them up again to make sure they’re working fine,” said McCammon, who noted the design “doesn’t draw as much power, and you don’t need as much air. In the other data hall, the drives are always going.”
Nevermind that this cold storage solution, according to the article is in a "testing phase" -- which could lend to even more of a cluster fsck. I'm sure they aren't testing with real user data which should be deleted if/when a user deletes their account. :eyeroll:
Yeah, in the other data hall the drives are always going --- and hopefully they're !@#$ deleting user data when they delete their accounts, too.
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:55 · Score: 0

I understand the point you're trying to make, but it's not quite the same.
Facebook, who arguably has user accounts whose numbers represent 1 out of every 5 people on the planet, could make a public policy that says "once you give us your data its mine mine mine and we'll never delete it even if you ask us to." but then they would be exposed for that, privacy advocates would be up in arms, and competition who specifically touts a more user/privacy friendly position would quickly tank their stock to change (as in pennies).
Whereas, Slashdot saying to their comparatively minuscule niche community of technically minded people "once you post it, it's ours" doesn't matter much. I think we get that. Who cares.
Why can a mom & pop corner store treat employees like garbage, cuss at them, whatever... and get away with it? But if Walmart does it, whooo you can expect big news, protests, lawsuits, etc.
"With great power, comes great responsibility". Like it or not.
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:58 · Score: 0

They could do it like deleting files files off any other traditional hard disk. Simply delete the reference/pointer to that particular file.
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:59 · Score: 0

Where does it say there is no delete? I can point you to where it says there IS a delete.
Since you didn't bother to point to anything, here it is.
My reading of fb's policy says the only way to delete anything is to delete your entire account.
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 04:01 · Score: 0

You could always upload every cc0 image on the net until you find out.
Re:Delete? by DanJ_UK · 2015-07-01 04:08 · Score: 1

Facebook's policy is to delete all user data including photos after 3 months of an account being deleted.

There was an uproar about not being able to trace a user account just two days ago regarding a revenge porn case in Holland.

Now, how are they going to physically remove data from a cold storage solution? I highly doubt they'll be using R/W discs as removing the data would require wiping the disc and rewriting 50gb of data again.

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- Dan
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 04:16 · Score: 0

In the rare case when a forbidden image is put in cold storage before anyone notices it and then is still found later I'm sure they will think of something. First they will probably just stop any links to it and then they might save the rest of the images to different storage and destroy the disk.
THis is mostly a problem if something that is legal today becomes illegal to store later.... and that would never happen... ...
Re:Delete? by MightyYar · 2015-07-01 04:25 · Score: 1

So long as there are no links to the image, it is effectively "deleted". Same as magnetic storage. You just null the index, you don't actually go back and wipe the data back to zeros. Technically the offending bits still reside on the disk, but it's close enough if there is no way to access the data short of using forensic tools.

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Re: Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 04:25 · Score: 0

Another implementation would be to encrypt each item with a unique key and destroy the keys, rather than the underlying item, in a delete event.
Re: Delete? by devilspgd · 2015-07-01 04:27 · Score: 2

Another implementation would be to encrypt each item with a unique key and destroy the keys, rather than the underlying item, in a delete event, such that not even forensic tools would have a reasonable chance at recovery once the key-storage media has been re-written.

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Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
Re: Delete? by MightyYar · 2015-07-01 04:52 · Score: 1

That is certainly a very secure way to do it - but of course they probably would have a backup of their index, and thus the keys. At some stage, you have to declare "good enough!" - and for 40+ years the removal of the index entry has been a "delete". We go to extra lengths for a "secure" delete, and they would have to take some extra steps here as well... but it is hard to speak intelligently without knowing the details :)

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W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Re: Delete? by PvtVoid · 2015-07-01 04:57 · Score: 1

Another implementation would be to encrypt each item with a unique key and destroy the keys, rather than the underlying item, in a delete event, such that not even forensic tools would have a reasonable chance at recovery once the key-storage media has been re-written.
Then you'll need cold storage for all those keys you never use. Which, of course, can't be deleted unless they're encrypted with yet more keys, which will themselves need cold storage, so you have to....
Re: Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 05:07 · Score: 0

Genius.
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 05:44 · Score: 0

I see. Maybe they actually delete the content then.
Re: Delete? by devilspgd · 2015-07-01 06:18 · Score: 2

No, keys are small enough to store without needing cold storage.

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Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
Re:Delete? by Rasperin · 2015-07-01 07:39 · Score: 2

What the heck are you talking about?! Privacy advocates for years have been screaming about Facebook and their stock remains just as strong.

The average person doesn't care about long term punishments when the short term gains are attractive. This is why I use Facebook. But I treat Facebook like a loud speaker, it's a great place to share my idiotic ideals but I try to avoid saying anything damaging/damning. (btw, this is what we call acceptance, I long ago welcomed our new Facebook overlords).

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Re:Delete? by ksheff · 2015-07-01 09:53 · Score: 1

and once all the images that's on a disc are not linked to anything anymore, it can be shredded. Facebook may also have a plan to perodically copy data from older bluray discs to newer ones. When that is done, they can just copy the images that have links to the new disc.

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the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Re:Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 16:03 · Score: 0

they could have a program that burns the 0's in the image file all to 1's or something to redact them...
Re: Delete? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 16:07 · Score: 0

I thought they could just overwrite the binary image data with all 1's kind of like redacting a text document with a marker
Re:Delete? by dave420 · 2015-07-01 20:04 · Score: 1

They remove the image from the catalogue. The image still exists on disc, but won't be copied to new media or be available for retrieval. This is a solved problem, and has been for decades.
Re:Delete? by ConceptJunkie · 2015-07-02 04:04 · Score: 1

I'm glad to see someone besides me on /, isn't terrified of Facebook.
I use it and I think it's relatively harmless as long as you understand, as Rasperin says, it's a loud speaker. I expect everything I post on FB will be available to everyone, everywhere, forever. I long ago, many years before Facebook was a thing, figured out that if I never posted anything online I wouldn't want my sainted mother to see, I'd never have anything to worry about*. I speak my mind freely, but I would have no problem if my mother, my wife, my boss, my kids or my pastor were to see anything I've posted.
* Now, of course, that doesn't mean some day in the near future agents of the Ministry of Love won't show up at my door to conduct me to a re-education camp for my political views, but at least I know my mother won't be ashamed of me.

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You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

Title is wrong by neilo_1701D · 2015-07-01 03:07 · Score: 2

Should have read:

You won't believe this one weird trick Facebook uses to store data!

Other than that, fascinating look at how all that data is being stored and retrieved.

Re: Title is wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:22 · Score: 0

I dare to disagree. They omitted the most obvious question, what the delay is and how do they handle it...
Re: Title is wrong by Daniel+Hoffmann · 2015-07-01 04:10 · Score: 1

https://xkcd.com/908/
There is a lot of caching

"Open Compute" is a facebook shtick by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:07 · Score: 0

So sony are really paying for a piece of facebook influence.

Cold storage?? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:10 · Score: 0

Are we talking Mr. Freeze (Batman nemesis) cold, Hell-freezes-over cold, inter-stellar-space-cold, atoms-trapped-into-near-motionlessness-by-laser-beams-cold, or CowboyNeal's-super-chilled-CPU-cold?

Just asking.

All I can say... by vortex2.71 · 2015-07-01 03:12 · Score: 1

is that their monthly AWS fees must be ENORMOUS!

computer output to laser disc by maxwells+daemon · 2015-07-01 03:18 · Score: 1

is it cold in here or what?

Going on for a while by Alomex · 2015-07-01 03:23 · Score: 3, Informative

I've noticed large latency for rarely used pictures in FB for over eight months now, and by large latency I mean visit the page, then come back the next day to see the next batch of > 5 year old pictures and wait another day for the final batch of ~10 years ago pictures.

Re:Going on for a while by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 11:03 · Score: 0

Exercise for tonight -- script a loop to touch all the old images, using asynch calls let the delays occur. Then get me a few free VMs in the cloud to use.

Lets browse old photos! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:23 · Score: 0

Let start browsing old photos at once to drive their bluray system crazy! :D

Shoeboxes by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:25 · Score: 0

I went to my bank once about 15 years ago to ask a question about my account. The teller turned around and pulled what looked like a shoebox off of a shelf and leafed through it to find the information.

If shoeboxes are good enough for banks, they should be good enough for Facebook.

Re:Shoeboxes by Viol8 · 2015-07-01 04:17 · Score: 1

Joking aside - its always good practice to have electronic AND hard copies (optical disc, microfiche paper) of all critical data including copies off site. That way even if some hackers from somewherestan manege to totally trash the companies electronic systems the data can still be recovered.
Re:Shoeboxes by Ravaldy · 2015-07-01 04:40 · Score: 1

What critical data? Personal? Business?
At what point is it critical enough to go out of your way to store terabytes of data on CD/DVDs? Isn't an offline HD good enough?
I have done the following for a long time and I believe this is more than enough for most businesses
1. Backup to NAS (or equivalent)
2. Backup to offline disk (done monthly but could be done more often depending on business requirements)
3. Offsite Backup on the west coast (We are on the east coast)
At what point are you spending too much money securing data?
At what point are you being paranoid?
Those are all questions that will have different answers depending on the company and it's IT/Ownership.
Re:Shoeboxes by mlts · 2015-07-01 06:47 · Score: 1

What I don't get is why FB doesn't just use tape. Tape drives are expensive, but the media itself is cheap -- LTO-4 cartridges are $15 apiece, and tape is a true archival grade media.
Plus, with tape, you copy it to that, yank the tapes out of the autochanger, and toss them in an unused corner of a room. Tapes take 0 watts in storage (other than what it takes for HVAC), so other than physical access concerns, they are easily stashed and will remain usable for quite a long time.
If any industry needs a kick in the pants with regards to capacity improvements, it is the tape media industry. A tape has far more area to put data on than a HDD platter, so there is a lot of room to add capacity, as well as reduce price with cartridges and drives, especially if mass produced so economies of scale kick in. Back in the 1990s, almost any business had some form of tape drive, which worked fairly decently for backups (although 4mm/8mm drives are nowhere near as reliable as a LTO drive.)
No, tape isn't trendy... but it functions well, and with WORM media or hardware write protection, it is resistant to malware. With hardware encryption in newer revs (LTO-4 and newer), it is trivial to just set a password and call it done when it comes to that security... that way, if a tape falls off the Iron Maiden truck, it is just a hardware loss... no worry about compromised data.
Re:Shoeboxes by Ravaldy · 2015-07-06 05:56 · Score: 1

What I don't get is why FB doesn't just use tape
Because of the seek time. They still want the content available and the BlueRay method yields a 10 second delay from what I read (I may have read that wrong).

Plus, with tape, you copy it to that, yank the tapes out of the autochanger, and toss them in an unused corner of a room. Tapes take 0 watts in storage (other than what it takes for HVAC)
They can't just toss it. That's the whole point of the article. They still need access on demand.
I think that the BlueRay solution is cheap too. The article was making reference to how much colder that area was (because of the lower HVAC requirements I assume).

How do they do this? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:35 · Score: 0

FTA:

When it springs into action, the arm travels along tracks on either side of the rack, fetches a Blu-Ray disk, pulls data off the disc and writes it to a live server.
“In a BluRay scenario, you don’t even need to spin them up,” said McCammon

Why wouldn't they need to spin them up? Is there some technology that can read a Blu-Ray without spinning it?

Re:How do they do this? by pla · 2015-07-01 03:49 · Score: 2

I think he just means that optical disks don't have quite the same amount of inertia or need to do internal self-checks as HDDs, before you can actually access them. They still "spin them up", but it happens in a few ms rather than on the order of 5-15s.

There are not 900 million unique pictures per day. by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:38 · Score: 1

People upload the same memes all the time. Just hash and store the common images and you'll reduce the unique photos to one or two unique images per day. :)

Does Facebook compress pictures? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:41 · Score: 0

I wonder if Facebook does something similar to what Google has done with its picture service. I know Google has said, they slightly reduce the quality to save space. Some photographers have come out protesting Google's defaulting this reduction rather then allowing the user to decide quality. You obviously can opt in to not have pictures compressed. Facebook to me is not anymore trustworthy with personal property then Google. Storage is so cheap to buy to carry around you can store plenty of pictures on small drives that fit in a pocket. I get Facebook is a social site and easy access is probably a point to make here with using Facebook. I just wonder as users get more and more drawn into Facebook services. When Facebook will begin to add fee's to these services?

Re:Does Facebook compress pictures? by aitikin · 2015-07-01 03:57 · Score: 1

Facebook has always compressed pictures. Nothing is stored at full size.

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Re:Does Facebook compress pictures? by Ecuador · 2015-07-01 04:21 · Score: 0

Still, they could benefit from some proprietary algorithm that better compresses common facebook-photo features. E.g. a duck lip algorithm.

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Re:Does Facebook compress pictures? by Whiteox · 2015-07-01 09:16 · Score: 1

They resize them first, then compress. A 3~5mb pic is stored around 10% of the uploaded size.

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Re:All I can say...(question) by willworkforbeer · 2015-07-01 03:48 · Score: 1

An interesting question is at what point does it become viable for FB to follow Amazon's model to scale its own system as a business unit...

As in, when will FB conclude that it again needs to widen its revenue stream portfolio, and it therefore makes sense to offer its own version of AWS?

Any predictions on FBWS?

And there's the FB hardware development division, a business unit that so far has also remained in-house but has its own revenue potential. I think people tend to underestimate MZ's ambitions to leverage the FB core to create a broad spectrum business. (following Google's leverage of search revenue to devour the advertising business, etc., and Amazon's leveraging of book sales to devour retailing and then logistics, etc.)

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Re:There are not 900 million unique pictures per d by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:52 · Score: 0

I can pretty much guarantee they already do that.

NSA by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 03:54 · Score: 0

The NSA won't be happy about this... they need instantaneous access to every cat photo ever posted, so they can mine it for "intelligence" to save us from the terrists. A search algorithm that has to pull data from DVD's moved around by robots is really going to hinder this!

Amazing by bws111 · 2015-07-01 03:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

Wow, they discovered HSM only 40 years after it was introduced. Amazing.

Re: Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 04:12 · Score: 0

So all the patents have expired
Re:Amazing by Ravaldy · 2015-07-01 04:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

Pointless arrogant comment.
Nobody claimed it was new or that they had reinvented anything. They just applied modern technology to a well know strategy to solve a known problem. In the modern age of storage and data centers I have yet to see this (not to say that nobody has done it).
When someone shows you an electric car do you tell them cars have had 4 wheels since before 1903? I assume you do.
Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 12:59 · Score: 0

It does. Facebook haven't done this before. Thus it is new for Facebook to use large scale blu-ray storage. If you expect everything in the news to be literally new in every sense of the word, then you'll be disappointed 99% of the time. Oh, a war? We had one of those last year, that's not news.
Which probably wouldn't be a bad thing, but you should stop being a dick anyway.

Facewhat? by JustAnotherOldGuy · 2015-07-01 04:29 · Score: 1

Is facebook still a thing? People still use it after all the security problems and personal information screw-ups?

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Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...

And one well-crafted discovery motion ... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 04:29 · Score: 0

And one well-crafted discovery motion ... bankrupts Facebook.

Sounds good!

blu ray? by stoned_ritual · 2015-07-01 04:37 · Score: 1

How is using blu ray cheaper than hard drives? Not only is it slower, but the medium + the hardware to burn them + the robotic retrieval system..
Seems like there could be an easier solution to this: hard drives in racks. No robots, no optical drives, and no blu ray discs.
One 500gb hard drive already has 10x the amount of storage as a dual layer bluray. In fact, a 10 pack of dual layer blu ray discs on amazon costs twice as much as a 500gb 3.5" drive. Am I missing something?

Re:blu ray? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 04:51 · Score: 0

Yeah, the part where 10 blu-ray disks use 0 energy in storage compared to that 500gb hard drive. Also ... "Frankovsky and Sony are developing discs that house as much as a terabyte (1000GB)"
Re:blu ray? by jp10558 · 2015-07-01 05:12 · Score: 1

Electricity use - did you even watch the video? Of course not. Also, the data survives a drive failure.
What I wonder is why they think this is better than LTO6, which already has robots etc COTS solution. It's possible, maybe, that it takes less space. It is resilient to stray magnets in a way tapes maybe wouldn't be - but is that a common issue with LTO?

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Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Re:blu ray? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 05:19 · Score: 0

One consideration is how you are going to connect up all those hard drives. If you're going to connect them up permanently, you're going to need a lot of other hardware to connect them all up to. If you're not going to connect them up permanently, then you're probably going to have to pay for some sort of heavy-duty connector to attach to each drive, that can withstand many mating cycles without compromising on signal integrity, in addition to the same kind of robot storage system they have for the Blu-Rays. If you've ever looked at the BOM costs of electronic items, you'll know how expensive specialist connectors can be.
With the Blu-Ray, you need many fewer drives (even though you need more discs to put in them), and therefore much less server hardware to connect the drives to. I would expect the robots to work out cheaper than the server hardware overall, because they are not as densely packed with expensive electronics (the bulk of the assembly will be standardized mechanical parts). If your project is large enough that it's worth paying the development costs for a giant robotic Blu-ray archive, and it fulfils the technical requirements, then it probably makes sense to use one.
Re:blu ray? by stoned_ritual · 2015-07-01 06:19 · Score: 0

Thanks for explaining it in a way that doesn't make you look like a ravenous, belligerent shit bag. Unlike the other sarcastic and unhelpful mother fuckers in here. There are some people that don't actually know everything about everything and that seems to really piss these old codgers off. Oh well.
Re:blu ray? by stoned_ritual · 2015-07-01 06:20 · Score: 1

No I didn't watch the video. I'm at work. But I did skim the article, and apparently I missed some details, because the comment police are crawling all over the place.
Re:blu ray? by ncc74656 · 2015-07-01 07:46 · Score: 1

How is using blu ray cheaper than hard drives?

3 TB will fit on 120 25-GB BD-Rs. At 40 cents each, that's $48 in media costs. If you do like I do and reserve 20% for dvdisaster error-recovery data, you're still only looking at $60.
A 3 TB WD Green will set you back $95. (Want to spring for the NAS-rated Red drives instead? That'll be $119. Their absolute cheapest 3 TB hard drives are a couple of models from Seagate and Toshiba at $90 each.)

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20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Re:blu ray? by Whiteox · 2015-07-01 09:20 · Score: 1

You are right. There's no reason for why you can't 'spin down' a rack of cheap server grade HDs to save power.
What happened to Bernoulli disks anyway?

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Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Re:blu ray? by dave420 · 2015-07-01 20:55 · Score: 1

Plus these discs are rated for a much longer shelf life than HDDs.

They could... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 04:39 · Score: 0

Store them in /dev/null and do the world a favour.

I have a better place to store them by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 04:39 · Score: 0

In my ass.

This article gave them free load testing by Barlo_Mung_42 · 2015-07-01 05:12 · Score: 1

First thing I did was open facebook and look to see what my oldest picture was. I don't have that many and it came up pretty quickly but I'm sure lots of other people had the same impulse.

Re:There are not 900 million unique pictures per d by bigfinger76 · 2015-07-01 05:21 · Score: 1

Replace images of people's food with a stock image, and they could dispense with this whole system.

Wait a minute... by bigfinger76 · 2015-07-01 05:24 · Score: 1

Didn't we see a story about this last year?

FB hardware may be lucrative... by mlts · 2015-07-01 05:35 · Score: 1

It might be that using Blu-Ray autochangers may be a very useful thing to have, especially for something that can fill the gap between HDDs and LTO tapes for backups [1].

The pathetic thing is that this technology isn't new. We used to have 100, 200, even 400 disk CD and DVD carousels. By replacing the CD reader with a burner, and using 128 GB BDXL media, that means tens of terabytes of tamper-resistant (important with all the ransomware out there) WORM storage.

The trick is getting BD media into the terabytes and getting it at a price point where it is decently affordable. For example, a 100 GB BDXL disk is $65, but it should be about 10% of that price in order to be a viable backup medium.

[1]: The cloud isn't an option in a number of cases (WAN bandwidth isn't cheap), and it is only a matter of time before a major provider gets hacked.

Re:FB hardware may be lucrative... by willworkforbeer · 2015-07-01 05:40 · Score: 1

I was actually thinking of the potential of FB's networking hardware initiative, though you make a good point about this storage angle.

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Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
Re:FB hardware may be lucrative... by ncc74656 · 2015-07-01 07:33 · Score: 1

The trick is getting BD media into the terabytes and getting it at a price point where it is decently affordable. For example, a 100 GB BDXL disk is $65, but it should be about 10% of that price in order to be a viable backup medium.

My last spindle of 25 GB BD-Rs cost me maybe $0.60 each or so. I could drive down to Fry's right now and pick up a spindle for about $0.80 each. A 4x increase in storage density isn't worth a two-order-of-magnitude increase in price. I would be surprised if Farcebook didn't arrive at the same conclusion.
Going by the numbers from the video in TFA, they're getting over 10k BD-Rs in a rack. While the basic concept isn't new, they appear to have developed it to a considerably higher density.

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20 January 2017: the End of an Error.

Duh by wonkey_monkey · 2015-07-01 06:14 · Score: 2

In the cloud, obvs.

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systemd is Roko's Basilisk.

shoulda read the article, bro by Ionized · 2015-07-01 06:17 · Score: 1

it would have answered your questions, and you wouldn't have looked like a tool, and i wouldn't have mocked you. the world would have been a better place! if only.

Re:shoulda read the article, bro by stoned_ritual · 2015-07-01 06:24 · Score: 1

Yeah, you sure showed me.
Re:shoulda read the article, bro by stoned_ritual · 2015-07-01 06:42 · Score: 0

Blech. You've effectively banned me from slashdot by being such a rabid bag of dicks. I'm deleting my account and wont show up here ever again. Have fun stroking your ego, while you're at it you should try suicide. "The world would be a better place" See you never, asshole. Make sure you never mentally surpass age 12, otherwise you might not be such a dick head.
Re:shoulda read the article, bro by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 10:28 · Score: 0

Bye! Don't let the door hit you on the way out, bitch.

You don't think by WillRobinson · 2015-07-01 06:56 · Score: 1

The nsa built that huge data center in Utah for nothing?

Now if the nsa would just open an api to retrieve it....

Re:ohmigosh stop the presses! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 07:49 · Score: 0

You've only proved that you both can be sarcastic mother fuckers (to use your words from below).

Security? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 10:42 · Score: 0

So, being somewhat archived, are they secure from Web crawling? Can some hacker guess a web address and browse the collection?

Do they use BluRays in RAID? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-01 16:29 · Score: 0

The dyes in DVDs and BluRays that can be written to by consumer grade equipment degrade over time to the point where in a decade or two, it might be impossible to read that DVD or BluRay. The M-Disc might be the solution to that but the story doesn't talk about that...

What I post's nonsense dave420? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-02 05:46 · Score: 0

"I just reply to you when I see you spamming Slashdot with your nonsense"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)

Why'd you agree w/ my points on hosts then? Quoting you:

"I'm not denying all those things" - by dave420 (699308) on Wednesday September 17, 2014 @11:39AM (#47927435) FROM -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...

Of course not: It's impossible to dispute HOSTS FILES superiority to other methods!

Since my points in favor of hosts SINGLE FILE native kernelmode faster part show hosts doing more w/ less vs. so-called 'competitors' many part messagepassing + cpu/ram use overheads laden slower usermode FAR MORE COMPLEX 'solutions' doing less than hosts do for more security, speed, reliability, + anonymity!

I make creating a superior more efficient solution EASIER!

(That's more than a mere trolling stalking harassing "ne'er-do-well" like yourself could *EVER* manage).

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"I'm simply pointing out that it takes an AdBlocker to block your spamming"- by dave420 (699308) on Friday June 19, 2015 @10:31AM (#49945047)

I bother you? Then WHY DON'T YOU DO IT & use 'em? Answer that!

(You stalk/harass me instead!)

OBVIOUSLY you don't & you're a "ne'er-do-well" troll & you have "other motivations" (next):

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* QUESTION:

DO YOU WORK FOR AN ADVERTISING FIRM, or ARE YOU A WEBMASTER/WEBCODER http://slashdot.org/comments.p... , or a MALWARE MAKER, or ARE YOU AFFILIATED WITH 1 OF MY COMPETITORS?

Answer it!

As per your usual you'll avoid every question, or lie & You've been EXPOSED in your "motives" in the last link just above, lol!

APK

P.S.=> See Dave420 the "pot puffing clown" SQUIRM - evasions galore will ensue (as well as effete downmods via sockpuppets to *try* vainly "hide it" -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )... apk

What I post's nonsense dave420? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-07-02 05:47 · Score: 0