With Netflix accounting for 30% of end-user ISP traffic, Netflix came out with an appliance ISPs could place inside their networks, to reduce the amount of upstream bandwidth they use serving Netflix videos to their customers.

It is pretty insane. It’s a custom-designed 4U box, with 36x 3TB disks, presenting 100TB of capacity. They also threw a terabyte of SSDs in for the most popular content, and gave it dual 10 Gbps uplinks. Beyond the impressive hardware specs, they also share information on its software.

Cloud provider Rackspace seems to be in the Halloween spirit, judging by the photos in their header.

Google has a nifty new gallery of its data centers online, with some really impressive photography. This is a bit… colorful… compared to the white, windowless, fluorescent-lit rooms I’m used to.

Cambridge software firm Dimagi agreed to its employees’ request to spend part of the winter working in Brasil. The results? “By and large, the close quarters improved communication among co-workers, and bickering was rare. ‘There was a lot more casual asking questions across the table,’ says Zue. ‘And we tended to work later in the day than we would at home, since we were having dinner together almost every night.'”