Live data from Hacker News

Google Invests in $300M Submarine Cable to Improve Connection Between Japan, US

techcrunch.com

51–60 of 74 posts

Re: Google Invests in $300M Submarine Cable to Improve Connection Between Japan, US

#51

Anyone want to take a guess at Google's motive (other than goodwill)? Better access to East Asian customers?

I've been living in Japan and access across the pond is a bit flaky at times. Most of the time I can blame my local service provider (a sharehouse) for their piece of shit router, but there are countless numbers of times when a stream will suddenly cut or a connection will just time out for no good reason (while other simultaneous connections even across the ocean are fine).

Re: Google Invests in $300M Submarine Cable to Improve Connection Between Japan, US

#52
post #38

On a slight offtopic note, I wonder why Japanese websites are still stuck in the mid 90s to early year 2000 style. One example of this is the imageboard type of websites, which interestingly enough has caught on here in the US. I wonder if these better connectivity will bring more cross culture web designs or applications to both places.

Japanese are very egocentric and insular. There was a story on Hackaday about Japanese Hackers simply ignoring English speaking part of the internet. Those are Hackers hacking on something in a Hackerspace, people on the forefront of open minded thinking.

Am I to understand then that there is a parallel online hacking community populated by Japanese-speakers? I have never really run across this, just blogs randonly-dispersed.

Re: Google Invests in $300M Submarine Cable to Improve Connection Between Japan, US

#53

On a slight offtopic note, I wonder why Japanese websites are still stuck in the mid 90s to early year 2000 style. One example of this is the imageboard type of websites, which interestingly enough has caught on here in the US. I wonder if these better connectivity will bring more cross culture web designs or applications to both places.

In some ways it's cultural, but in many ways it's political. That sort of overhaul would have to come from the top. No-one wants to be the person who suggests it since, if any income drops as a result you'd be in a hard position. So, many lower sections jostle for space and they all get in. (I heard this from a Rakuten frontend performance engineer. Other companies may vary.)

Edit: it's also extremely unlikely for a designer with a strong vision and skills to rise in a large company. Most will turn freelance long before they get there. Most upper management seems to come from eigyo - sales. I don't think engineers (basically just troops to implement the sales guy's vision and take the blame when something goes wrong) are in a position to easily climb the ranks either.

Edit2: I don't think the feature phones argument still holds water. Most sites will redirect for feature phones on the user agent level - they have too. Many models and carriers have their own quirks (eg only tables allowed, only inline styles allowed, different emoji codes) around which a large but dwindling infrastructure exists, catering for normalizing across models using template generated html. The browser versions are separate.

Re: Google Invests in $300M Submarine Cable to Improve Connection Between Japan, US

#54
post #38

On a slight offtopic note, I wonder why Japanese websites are still stuck in the mid 90s to early year 2000 style. One example of this is the imageboard type of websites, which interestingly enough has caught on here in the US. I wonder if these better connectivity will bring more cross culture web designs or applications to both places.

Japanese are very egocentric and insular. There was a story on Hackaday about Japanese Hackers simply ignoring English speaking part of the internet. Those are Hackers hacking on something in a Hackerspace, people on the forefront of open minded thinking.

I don't see why that's "egocentric". They just don't speak English...

Re: Google Invests in $300M Submarine Cable to Improve Connection Between Japan, US

#55
The Chinese mainland will not see significant international speed improvements until the government decides people should see significant international speed improvements. Keeping things slow and unreliable, especially in peak times, is a form of subsidy for local internet-related business and therefore for government control. Subtle, but hugely effective when push comes to shove: more so than firewalling.

Re: Google Invests in $300M Submarine Cable to Improve Connection Between Japan, US

#56

I wonder what the difference is in the technology of the 3.3TB/s cable and the 60TB/c cable, just strands? (approx 20 more?)

Your capitalization is incorrect. You wrote TB (terrabyte) when you meant Tb (terrabit). This equates to a 8x difference.

Re: Google Invests in $300M Submarine Cable to Improve Connection Between Japan, US

#58
I would love to see Google do this for Australia and New Zealand as well. Both countries are at the end of the line (so-to-speak) and would benefit greatly from something like this. Our Internet is pretty rubbish and expensive, and while that might be in part due to limited choice of ISP's, archaic Government policies and equipment, bandwidth is a HUGE problem.

Re: Google Invests in $300M Submarine Cable to Improve Connection Between Japan, US

#59
post #41

This might be an absurd question, but I can't think of a better place to ask it. In my mind there's a huge mental disconnect between computers (servers/personal computers) and infrastructure like this. Could someone provide insight on when/how these types of high-throughput cables are used? How the process is managed, by who, and how on earth all those bits are lined up at such a high speed. I understand they're core…

You'd probably find the book Tubes interesting.

Re: Google Invests in $300M Submarine Cable to Improve Connection Between Japan, US

#60

Obligatory link to "Mother Earth, Motherboard" whenever submarine cables are mentioned: http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html Best 50 page article you'll read this year.

Nicer link for mobile reading:

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html

Post reply on HN