To be clear, this isn't a news article written by our journalists - it is a piece written by the team themselves that we felt may be of interest to others, and that might help us do things better in the future. While I enjoyed reading it, I can assure you that SSD performance testing doesn't move the BBC PR needle compared to the identity of the new Doctor Who.

We're acutely aware that we've still got much to learn in this space, so if there are thoughts you have on how we could do better we're all ears.

Finally, while I assured you it wasn't a PR piece we're always looking for engineers in this area (and across the whole BBC) so if you'd be interested in helping us improve, get in touch.

Do you accept American Engineers? /s

I found the piece to be wonderful. I don't do large scale storage work, so I'm very un-knowledgeable in the area, but it's great to see someone else's struggles other than Amazon or a backup service. And it is yet another indicator that the BBC cares about quality content instead of just pushing up some stock price.

Thanks for you write up

Don't let the gratuitous negativity get to you! I may only see a very small slice of what the BBC does, what with being one of those continental imperialist and all. But what does find its way to me has always seemed to be excellent.

(Not a job application. Unless you know something about the EU/British future that I don't.)

It's having to look away from the primary activity of getting through the barrier that is the problem. Not sure how this will go down at 8am at Waterloo.

No different from now. Plenty of people have eyes down watching videos or reading while walking towards the barriers on both sides. Annoys the bejeezus out of me every single day.

If this slows people down going through barriers on the tube there will be barely (but just) contained rage across London

After spending a week in London this spring, my (already high) appreciation of my Apple Watch went way up. Paying for my tube rides using my watch - even through sleeves and jackets - was really like magic. Don't think I could live there without one...

It's funny how the acceptable level of comfort changes. Having an oyster card in your pocket wasn't a huge issue before. It's slightly less convenient, but not really life changing.

I wonder if it works with scarves and hats covering everything but your eyes. It seems like an obvious oversight, but it's a Californian company that launched a maps app without any transit support...

It's not just the accuracy, but the context switch. Apple Pay only works because you don't need to look at your phone to make it work.

their website shows people with cold weather gear

https://www.apple.com/iphone-x/

A scarf that's barely covering the bottom of the guy's face? They don't know true winter. (or, like, Muslims)

It's a tiny minority of Muslim women who cover their faces, just for the record. (I assume a head scarf wouldn't interfere.)

I'm curious: can you suggest a source for this statistic?

It's really not a controversial point. I don't know how one would get precise statistics on it, but see e.g. the Wikipedia article:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niqāb

The keynote did say it works with hats, scarves, and glasses. It also works with face changes like growing out a beard.

How about a big helmet? I imagine snowboarders/alpine skiers/motorcyclist will have to take off the helmet to unlock. As someone who goes snowboarding in the winter, it sounds really annoying to not only have to remove a glove, but also the helmet, to unlock the phone (or unlock with a passcode, which is still a downgrade from using the fingerprint).

It's starting to sound a lot like:

    if (true) {
      unlock_phone();
    }

Not tried google home, but Spotify support on the Echo is pretty good - aside from the ability to create an on the go playlist (please add this!) its actually working really well for me.

Hmm, the lack of installation on the skill is interesting and an obvious contrast to Alexa/Echo. Should we be expecting an arms race here for sensible invocation names?

Seems like names on the "App Store" [are going to be regulated by Google][1] to prevent that:

> There will be app store-like policies in place to prevent things like keyword camping — one developer using another company’s name for their action or another developer trying to jump on owning important keywords like “shopping.” Douglas says that “this is a large reason for there being a review process. Much of the policy compliance is this process of name selection. “

[1]: http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/8/13878444/google-home-devel...

Great question - we are under NDA, but I can share that Google is going to make priority 1 -> 10 the consumer experience, and priority 11 how to improve visibility through SEO. Think SEO to get the lion share of traffic.

One thing I am interested in is this. Will there be an ability for users to create aliases for their apps or set preferences for which apps they want to use?

For an example, say a user had a specific recipe app he wanted to use, instead of referring to either its exact name or hoping that when asking what recipe they should make that he gets the right app will they be able to go into their settings either online or in an app and assign the app as his preference or rename it to just "chef" or something simple?

Will be interesting to see how that pans out. If google makes a different search ordering solution for me its ok because i get to choose on the results page, whereas with this its like pressing I'm feeling lucky every time.

What so if I say "Ask Lyrics for the lyrics to Yesterday by the Beatles" it will do some kind of ranking on all the skills that have 'Lyrics' as their invocation trigger and choose the 'best' one?

First, a shameless plug for an alternative implementation: https://github.com/BBC/chaos-lambda

Seems unfortunate that it requires the coupling with spinnaker - although i can see how it helps with the cluster definition features.

Edit: I'll add that we've been using the original chaos monkey and chaos lambda extensively in production for some time with very few problems.

That sucks.

Does Instagram support MFA - i can't see a configuration mechanism for it on my account. Seems like a bit of a gap in their identity system?

I have MFA set for the same Twitter handle but couldn't see it on Instagram. I thought that by reporting all the erroneous "password request" emails they might have flagged something (not sure why they have that link in the email if it doesn't do anything). Obviously I'm seriously small-fry so wouldn't expect any kind of special treatment but not having MFA does seem to be a bit lacking.

Absolutely, without it i'm amazed that accounts aren't being brute forced by the thousand? Maybe i'm missing something in the UI

If video conferencing wearing a VR headset, don't you necessarily lose the eye contact piece, seen as a key part of high end VC hardware/software?

No, treat your infrastructure as code. Define it programatically, version it, have a standard, automated process for recreating it.

If you're using AWS then Cloudformation (maybe with an abstraction like troposphere), will do what you need.

If you are pressing the big blue 'launch instance' button, you are doing it wrong.

"No, treat your infrastructure as code."

Agreed. Advantage is clear and understood.

My point here is: there exists something called 'Amazon Console'. I argue it is a good thing to have if done properly easing the service management as visualized management is more human friendly and APIs more computer friendly. If there exists a bad visualized service management (e.g. Amazon Console) it is the lack of skills of the humans developing it not because managing a vast complex clusters is easier through APIs/CLI and impossible/wrong via UI.