Category: Latest News

Function28 are running 10k in aid of CLIC Sargent!

The Function28 team have pledged to take part in the yearly event that help raises money for chairty CLIC Sargent. This year the vent is slightly different beacuse of the current climare. Normally the canal would be full of runners/walkers helping do their bit, but this year its virtual. We will be running 10k and logging this on a app to help show we have completed the challenge. We have a JustGiving page where you can help us rasie a target of £250!

CLIC Sargent is the UK’s leading cancer charity for children and young people and their families. They provide clinical, practical, financial, and emotional support to help them cope with cancer and get the most out of life. They are there from diagnosis onwards and aim to help the whole family deal with the impact of cancer and its treatment, life after treatment, and, in some cases, bereavement.

Our new office neighbours Adopstar get invloved with rasing money for this great cause every year. They have had brave team members shave their hair to raise money. Other activities include half marathons, gameathons, collecting easter eggs for hospitals and more. So far, across everything they do for CLIC Sargent, they’ve raised over £77,000.

Yes, that’s right, we have sponsored a local Cullompton Ladies RFC player for her next full season at the club.

Function28 is delighted to announce that we will be sponsoring Jen Hamer from Cullompton Ladies RFC for her next full season at the club.

Jen is a winger/centre and is known for the vast amount of carries she completes. With the events in 2020, the 19/20 season was unfortunately cut short. Jen played 11/13 games that season racking up 36 tackles, and 65 carries (half of the games only recorded).

Once the first lockdown was eased the Cullompton Ladies RFC started preparing for pre-season with most picking up the ball for the first time for a few months, with plenty of cardio being completed over that time. Jen and her teammates then found out that the return to competitive playing delayed until 2021 after it was announced in late September.

We hope Jennie and her team will be back playing competitively very soon, and Function28 is glad to be supporting her when this happens.

Here is what our MD Russ Murch had to say about the sponsorship with Jennie:

“Anybody who knows me understands my passion for community and sports 9 more so boxing than anything else), however when I was asked if function28 would be interested in sponsoring Jennie I was delighted to be in a position to say yes. Particularly at this point in everybody’s lives where Covid19 is effecting us all showing our support for one another is so important.

I only hope that the ladies actually get to play some rugby this season and when they do, you can be assured the f28 team will be there cheering them on.”

 

Cullompton Ladies RFC Facebook Page: CLICK HERE

Two years on, and Microsoft’s underwater server experiment resurfaces! Success?

Back in 2018, Microsoft sunk an entire data center to the bottom of the Scottish sea, plunging 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes of storage 117 feet deep in the ocean.

Earlier this month, they reported that its latest experiment was a success, revealing results that show that the idea of an underwater data center is actually might work.

It might seem a strange idea throwing an entire data center to the bottom of the ocean, but Microsoft’s Project Natick team figured that this would result in more reliable and energy efficient data centers in the future.

Data centers run into issues like corrosion from oxygen and humidity and controlling shifts in temperatures when they are placed on land. But in a water-tight environment with tight temperature control, far fewer issues pop up. The idea is that these kinds of servers can be easily deployed in sizes big and small near the coasts of areas that need them.

The benefits are huge. Microsoft says thetested  underwater data center had just 1/8th the failure rate of a regular land based data center. That lower failure rate is important, given that it’s much harder to service a broken server when it’s in an airtight container at the bottom of the ocean.