Netflix plans to reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion by 2030 , The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported this week, citing anonymous people who attended an “annual business review meeting” that Netflix held in March. Netflix's current market capitalization is nearly $400 billion.

Netflix is reportedly partnering its market cap goals with plans to double revenue within the same time frame. For 2024, Netflix reported $39 billion in revenue, meaning the company aims to raise its annual revenue to $78 billion in five years.

Compared to the prior five years, Netflix’s revenue grew 93.5 percent from 2019 ($20.16 billion) to 2024. However, that time period represented a different market, one where streaming subscriber counts were rising rapidly, and Netflix faced less competition than it does today. However, Netflix's 2030 revenue goals are also dependent on its advertising business, something Netflix lacked in 2019.

Read full article

Comments

Dig deep on Google Earth and you'll inevitably find a surprise or two. Maybe you're looking at far-flung islands in the middle of an ocean or checking in on something closer to home.

A few years ago, online sleuths found an image of a B-2 stealth bomber in flight over Missouri. The aircraft is smeared in the image because it was in motion, while the farm fields below appear as crisp as any other view on Google Earth.

There's something else that now appears on Google Earth. Zoom in over rural North Texas, and you'll find a satellite. It appears five times in different colors, each projected over wooded bottomlands in a remote wildlife refuge about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Dallas.

Read full article

Comments

Nvidia is rounding out its GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards today with the official announcement of the mainstream RTX 5060 series. The company is announcing three new GPUs today: The 5060 Ti will launch on April 16 in both 8GB and 16GB variations, for $379 and $429, respectively. The regular RTX 5060 will follow at some point in May for the same $299 MSRP as the last-generation RTX 4060. It is also sticking with 8GB of RAM.

Obviously, it remains to be seen whether the company and its partners can actually stock these cards at these prices. GPUs from the top-tier RTX 5090 to the mainstream RTX 5070 have been difficult to impossible to buy at their announced MSRPs. And it's not just Nvidia's problem or a high-end problem— AMD's Radeon RX 9070 series GPUs have also been hard to buy, as have Intel's Arc B580 and B570 cards.

The new graphics cards' specs essentially match numbers that have been floating around for a couple of months now. Both models include modest increases in the number of CUDA cores compared to the last-generation 4060 and 4060 Ti models, with the same amount of RAM and the same 128-bit memory interface. But an upgrade to GDDR7 instead of GDDR6 provides a healthy bump to memory bandwidth and is probably also partially responsible for an increase in peak power consumption. The 4060 Ti in particular was memory bandwidth-constrained at higher resolutions, so hopefully some extra bandwidth will make it a better choice for a decent 1440p gaming PC.

Read full article

Comments

A silent update rolling out to virtually all Android devices will make your phone more secure, and all you have to do is not touch it for a few days. The new feature implements auto-restart of a locked device, which will keep your personal data more secure. It's coming as part of a Google Play Services update, though, so there's nothing you can do to speed along the process.

Google is preparing to release a new update to Play Services (v25.14), which brings a raft of tweaks and improvements to myriad system features. First spotted by 9to5Google, the update was officially released on April 14, but as with all Play Services updates, it could take a week or more to reach all devices. When 25.14 arrives, Android devices will see a few minor improvements, including prettier settings screens, improved connection with cars and watches, and content previews when using Quick Share.

Most importantly, Play Services 25.14 adds a feature that Google describes thusly: "With this feature, your device automatically restarts if locked for 3 consecutive days."

Read full article

Comments

Industry groups have submitted deregulatory wishlists for the Federal Communications Commission's " Delete, Delete, Delete " initiative that aims to eliminate as many regulations as possible.

Broadband providers that want fewer telecom regulations and debt collectors opposed to robocall rules were among those submitting comments to the FCC in response to Chairman Brendan Carr's request for public input. The Carr-led FCC last month issued a public notice asking for help with "identifying FCC rules for the purpose of alleviating unnecessary regulatory burdens."

The FCC said it opened the official proceeding—which is titled "Delete, Delete, Delete"—because "President Trump has called on administrative agencies to unleash prosperity through deregulation and ensure that they are efficiently delivering great results for the American people." Initial comments were due on Friday, and there is an April 28 deadline for reply comments.

Read full article

Comments

One of President Donald Trump’s top officials has warned European allies hesitant about working with Elon Musk’s satellite Internet company that they needed to choose between US and Chinese technology.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr told the Financial Times that “allied western democracies” needed to “focus on the real long-term bogey: the rise of the Chinese Communist party.”

His comments come as European governments and some European companies consider whether Starlink—which is owned by Musk’s SpaceX and provides satellite broadband and limited mobile services—is a reliable partner after Washington threatened to switch off its services in Ukraine.

Read full article

Comments

Was the James Webb Space Telescope worth it?

Well, $10 billion is a lot of money. Even when spread over a couple of decades, that's still a huge chunk of NASA's annual science budget. (And given the recent Trump administration attack on NASA's science budget, money is about to get a whole lot tighter.)

However, it is difficult to put a price on advancing our species' understanding of the natural world and the wide Universe we're swimming in. And Webb is doing an amazing job of that.

Read full article

Comments

Computed tomography scans have become vital, even lifesaving, medical imaging for diagnosing and monitoring health conditions. But they do expose patients to ionizing radiation at levels linked to higher risks of cancer. In a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine , researchers tried to estimate what those higher risks are exactly—and although the estimates come with uncertainty, they may seem startling.

Based on data from 93 million CT scans performed on 62 million people in 2023, the researchers estimated that the CT scans would lead to 103,000 future cancers. To put that in context, those 103,000 cancers would account for about 5 percent of cancers diagnosed each year, based on the current cancer rates and the current usage of CT scans. And the estimate puts CT scans on par with alcohol consumption and obesity in terms of risk factors for developing cancer.

The most common types of cancers estimated to be a result of CT scans were lung cancer and colon cancer—two cancers that are becoming more common in younger people for reasons experts do not fully understand. The types of CT scans linked to the greatest number of cancers were abdomen and pelvis CT scans.

Read full article

Comments

The Trump administration has been using federal research funding as a cudgel . The government has blocked billions of dollars in research funds and threatened to put a hold on even more in order to compel universities to adopt what it presents as essential reforms. In the case of Columbia University, that includes changes in the leadership of individual academic departments.

On Friday, the government sent a list of demands that it presented as necessary to "maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government." On Monday, Harvard responded that accepting these demands would "allow itself to be taken over by the federal government." The university also changed its home page into an extensive tribute to the research that would be eliminated if the funds were withheld.

Diversity, but only the right kind

Harvard posted the letter it received from federal officials, listing their demands. Some of it is what you expect, given the Trump administration's interests. The admissions and hiring departments would be required to drop all diversity efforts, with data on faculty and students to be handed over to the federal government for auditing. As at other institutions, there are also some demands presented as efforts against antisemitism, such as the defunding of pro-Palestinian groups. More generally, it demands that university officials "prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions."

Read full article

Comments