Top 5 Data Center Stories, Week of June 15

A look inside Facebook’s new data center in Sweden. Blue lights are important in helping the servers look cool, as well as feeling cool. In the row at right, UPS units occupy the space between the “triplet” racks.(Photo: Facebook)

For your weekend reading, here’s a recap of five noteworthy stories that appeared on Data Center Knowledge this past week.

Live in Lulea: Facebook Goes Global and Gets Greener – Facebook has gone live in Lulea. The company’s huge new data center in Sweden is now handling traffic from around the world, marking the first expansion of Facebook’s infrastructure beyond the United States. The international presence reflects the changing nature of Facebook’s users base. About 79 percent of the company’s 1.11 billion users are outside the U.S. and Canada.

PlayStation 4 DRM policies get a bit more complex: third-party publishers can dictate terms

Not so fast, vaquero. While Sony was cheered in heroic fashion for proclaiming that used games would be free and clear to operate on the PlayStation 4, it appears that the reality is actually a bit more complicated. Sony America CEO Jack Tretton has made clear today that while first-party titles will fit in with yesterday's "hands-off" approach, third-party publishers will be allowed to throw some curveballs.

    "There's gonna be free-to-play, there's gonna be every potential business model on there, and again, that's up to their relationship with the consumer, what do they think is going to put them in the best fit. We're not going to dictate that, we're gonna give them a platform to publish on. The DRM decision is going to have to be answered by the third parties, it's not something we're going to control, or dictate, or mandate, or implement."

Nintendo’s E3 message: Wii U games are coming, just not quite yet

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Nintendo may not have had a traditional press conference at this year's E3, but it used a Nintendo Direct video presentation this morning to prove that the Wii U isn't shrinking away from new competition in the form of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The 45-minute-long presentation showed quite a variety of new and old franchises for the Wii U from both third-party developers and Nintendo itself. The only problem, as far as Wii U owners are concerned, is that some of the most interesting announcements won't become actual games until next year.

Acer's flagship Aspire S7 may be 2013's ultrabook to beat, S3 needs low price to succeed

At Acer's press conference in Taipei yesterday, the company announced some very welcome changes to one of our favorite ultrabooks of 2012: the Aspire S7. Our two primarily complaints with the machine — battery life and limited RAM — have been addressed, while everything we loved about the laptop — its solid construction and Gorilla Glass lid — has remained the same. It's a promising combination, and after handling the Aspire S7 here at Computex, it looks like Acer may have a winner on its hands.