Author Archives: 45234-EX

Subsea Internet Cables Could Detect Earthquakes

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The UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and their partners say that the cables could be used as deep sea scientific sensors, helping to sense earthquakes, tsunamis, or see how climate change alters the currents.

Fibre-optic cable

This has already been tested by scientists through the use of a cable connecting the UK and Canada. This is being tested because installing sensors to monitor the ocean floor can be very costly and very difficult, and for that reason only very few of such sensors exist. Using subsea internet cables would be more cost effective.

Theres an estimated 430 of these cables, spanning over 800,000 miles, providing good coverage from country to country. Vibration, pressure, and temperature changes can slightly affect the speed that the light is travelling through these cables, which could be detected. As scientists could detect waves through the link from the UK to Canada, the same same could be done for the other cables around the world, providing a great coverage of underwater sensors. Theres also a potential, untested yet, possibility to sense the temperature change in the ocean due to climate change.

Overall, the ability to sense earthquakes, tsunamis, and other factors at such close range would be very beneficial, as it provides the possibility to have more time to prepare for such events, and with preparation damage and more importantly casualties could be limited.

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61506705

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo1939

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CNN+ Shuts Down Less Than 1 Month From Launch

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Following WarnerMedia’s and Discovery’s merger changes are already coming in, one of them being the end CNN+. The service costed CNN $300m to launch, providing a sizeable loss.

The decision came after it was reported that the service wasn’t meeting the projected viewership figures and would end up costing the company $400m by the end of the year. CNN estimated that the service would hit 2m subscribers by the end of the year, and 30m by 2030 which they projected would earn $800m. Within its first month CNN+ peaked at 150,000 subscribers with 10,000 daily users, which may seem reasonable, but services such as Quibi, which was shut down rather quickly, hit 910,000 subscribers in its first few days.

CNN+ Financial Projections Obtained by Axios

With how fast the service died it is hard to tell how big it could’ve grown. As the service was launched during the merge of WarnerMedia and Discovery, reportedly the executives were disappointed that the service happened at all, as the plan for Warner Bros. Discovery was to develop one large streaming platform that combines HBO Max and Discovery Plus, in which CNN would be offered too.

In the end it all comes down to a mix of unfortunate timing with the merger happening, and potentially over ambitious estimates.

Sources:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/21/23035703/cnn-plus-shutting-down

https://www.theverge.com/23043232/cnn-plus-axios-chat-shut-down-streaming-news

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/21/media/cnn-shutting-down/index.html

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Elon Musk Becomes Twitter’s Biggest Shareholder

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Just over a week before “giving serious thought” to building his own social media platform, Elon Musk went on to become the biggest Twitter shareholder through an acquisition of a 9.2% stake in the social media platform.

Following this acquisition Musk has stated he plans to answer questions some of the employees may have following this acquisition, and intends work on resolving freedom of speech problems present on the platform. Additionally on the 5th of April Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal, announced that Musk has been appointed on the board of directors, and expressed his excitement to working together to improve the platform.

A frequent request from Twitter users over the years has been for an edit feature to be added to Twitter. Following the acquisition of his stake Musk launched a poll raising the question whether or not such feature such be added, following over 4.4m votes, 73.6% voted in favour. Before its conclusion Agrawal responded to the poll saying the consequences will be crucial, and to vote carefully, showing that Musk’s actions already hold some weight.

It’ll be interesting to see where this combination takes both of these parties as these are still the early stages of his involvement, and what the long term plan is for Musk following what seems to be a u-turn on his thoughts of starting his own social media platform, which the poor performance of Parler and Trump’s Truth Social may have made him reconsider. Let’s also see how this works out for Twitter in the long run, as the news increased its valuation, but as seen before with Tesla, a single Tweet from Musk can cause the market to change quickly.

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60995694

https://www.ft.com/content/9db0403f-f6d1-45dc-89a8-f80da924cbe1

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2022-04-06/is-elon-musk-s-plan-for-twitter-speculative-investing-video

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/05/elon-musks-9percent-stake-in-twitter-and-board-seat-heres-what-it-means.html

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Google Letting Developers Use Their Own Billing Systems

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Google has decided to test the possibility of allowing developers to use their own billing systems on their apps, with Spotify being one of the first to be granted the opportunity.

Allowing such feature would allow users to pay or subscribe through the app rather than having to go to an external website from the developer. In this case users will be given the choice to subscribe to Spotify through the app using either their Google Play wallet, or Spotify’s own billing method. Under this new agreement Spotify will be charged less than the standard 30% commission, but the final figure has not been announced at this time.

I believe that the move is beneficial to both companies and will most likely lead to change in the app market, if this method proves successful it will allow more developers the ability to adopt this feature. Having the ability of using your own billing system is a big advantage and useful tool for developers. In the past when using Apple’s App Store, if users wanted to purchase a Spotify subscription they were required to pay £12.99 due to Apple’s 30% commission, Apple also didn’t allow the possibility of Spotify telling users to subscribe outside of the App Store system to pay less, which it was later ruled that the move was in breach of the EU Competition Law, following this Spotify stopped the ability for new users to subscribe with Apple, and to use their website instead. This move from Google will help to avoid problems like this on their platform, and may later push Apple in a similar direction of it proves to be a competitive advantage for Google.

Sources:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-23/google-opens-its-app-store-billing-starting-with-spotify

https://variety.com/2022/music/news/spotify-google-billing-system-subscription-deal-1235212772/

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/23/22993417/google-pilot-test-android-alternate-billing-systems-spotify

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622?hl=en

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/30/eu-says-apples-app-store-breaches-competition-rules.html

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