Friday, March 14, 2025
Home Blog Page 1410

Satellite service DirecTV buys rival Dish as it fights the onslaught of streaming services

0
Satellite service DirecTV buys rival Dish as it fights the onslaught of streaming services


Satellite service DirecTV buys rival Dish as it fights the onslaught of streaming services
In this Feb. 23, 2011, file photo, Dish Network satellite dishes are shown at an apartment complex in Palo Alto, Calif. Credit: AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File

DirecTV is buying Dish and Sling, a deal it has sought to complete for years, as the company seeks to better compete against streaming services that have become dominant.

DirecTV said Monday that it will acquire Dish TV and Sling TV from its owner EchoStar in a debt exchange transaction that includes a payment of $1, plus the assumption of approximately $9.8 billion in debt.

The prospect of a DirecTV-Dish combo has long been rumored, with headlines about reported talks popping up over the years. And the two almost merged more than two decades ago—but the Federal Communications Commission blocked their owners’ then-$18.5 billion deal, citing antitrust concerns.

The pay-for-TV market has shifted significantly since. As more and more consumers tune into online streaming giants, demand for more traditional satellite continues to shrink. And, although high-profile acquisitions have proven to be particularly tough under the Biden-Harris administration, that may make regulators more inclined to approve DirecTV and Dish’s pairing this time around.

DirecTV said Monday that the transaction will help it bring smaller content packages to consumer at lower prices and essentially provide a one-stop shopping experience for entertainment programming.

It’s hoping this will appeal to those who have left satellite video services for streaming. The company said that combined, DirecTV and Dish have collectively lost 63% of their satellite customers since 2016.

“DirecTV operates in a highly competitive video distribution industry,” DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow said in a statement. “With greater scale, we expect a combined DirecTV and Dish will be better able to work with programmers to realize our vision for the future of tv, which is to aggregate, curate, and distribute content tailored to customers’ interests, and to be better positioned to realize operating efficiencies while creating value for customers through additional investment.”

Satellite service DirecTV buys rival Dish as it fights the onslaught of streaming services
A DirectTV logo identifies the company’s headquarters in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, May 22, 2020. Credit: AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File

The current deal could provide a key lifeline for EchoStar. The Colorado-based telecommunications company has reportedly faced the prospect of bankruptcy as it continues to burn through cash and see losses pile up.

In a recent securities filing, EchoStar disclosed that it had just $521 million in “cash on hand.” And the company forecast negative cash flows for the remainder of the year—while also pointing to major looming debt payments, with more than $1.98 billion of debt set to mature in November.

“With an improved financial profile, we will be better positioned to continue enhancing and deploying our nationwide 5G Open RAN wireless network,” EchoStar President and CEO Hamid Akhavan said. “This will provide U.S. wireless consumers with more choices and help to drive innovation at a faster pace.”

By shedding Dish, EchoStar will be able to focus its efforts elsewhere, like its wireless carrier Boost Mobile.

“We are playing to win in the wireless business. there’s no doubt about it,” Akhavan said during a conference call, adding that the company may need to seek additional funding and financing in the future to achieve its goals.

Shares of EchoStar fell more than 14% in Monday midday trading.

The DirecTV and Dish deal is targeted to close in 2025’s fourth quarter. But it is contingent on several factors, including regulatory approvals and bondholders writing off nearly $1.6 billion in debt related to Dish.

Satellite service DirecTV buys rival Dish as it fights the onslaught of streaming services
An AT&T sign is seen at a store in Pittsburgh, Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. Credit: AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File, File

The combined company will be based in El Segundo, California.

“We believe regulatory approval is likely to be greater than 50% given the opportunity for the combined company to improve its competitiveness to offer a range of linear video packages as well as to take a more aggressive stance on offering a live streaming video product,” Michael Rollins of Citi Investment Research wrote in a note to clients.

But the analyst added that there’s still significant uncertainty related to whether or not the Federal Communications Commission, Department of Justice and other possible regulators give the necessary approvals, based on previous talks with company management and industry experts over the last few years.

Shortly before DirecTV made its announcement, AT&T said it was selling its remaining stake in DirecTV to private equity firm TPG in a deal valued at about $7.6 billion.

The move ends the communication giant’s remaining ties to the entertainment industry.

AT&T said Monday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it will receive payments from TPG and DirecTV for its remaining 70% stake in the satellite TV company. This includes $1.7 billion in the second half of the year and $5.4 billion next year. The remaining amount will be paid in 2029.

AT&T purchased DirectTV for $48.5 billion back in 2015. But in 2021, following the loss of millions of customers, AT&T sold a 30% stake of the business to TPG for $16.25 billion.

AT&T’s deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025.

© 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Citation:
Satellite service DirecTV buys rival Dish as it fights the onslaught of streaming services (2024, September 30)
retrieved 30 September 2024
from https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-satellite-directv-buys-rival-dish.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.





Source link

The evolutionary history of rats has more holes than Swiss cheese, but researchers are trying to close them

0
The evolutionary history of rats has more holes than Swiss cheese, but researchers are trying to close them


The evolutionary history of rats has more holes than Swiss cheese, but researchers are trying to close them
After the initial evolution of commensalism in east Asia during the Neolithic, brown rats spread concomitant with human settlements in east and southeast Asia, and then eventually across much of the world.  Credit: Drexel University

Rats and humans have lived together for thousands of years. However, written historical records of rats migrating alongside people are sparse and some are entangled with myth and folklore.

Researchers at Drexel University, who are working to gain a better understanding of the evolutionary history of wild and domestic brown rats (Rattus norvegicus), recently presented a review of research on domestication events and genomic studies in the journal Science. The piece brings together findings about how rats moved from one place to another, particularly in association with humans.

Led by Jason Munshi-South, Ph.D., Betz Chair and professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, researchers scoured written records, archaeological remains and genomic data to bring together what we know about the evolutionary history of rats.

“We’re trying to understand how rats travel with humans and how, along the way, they have changed because of the types of environments humans have created,” said Munshi-South.

Using recent discoveries about the evolutionary history of brown rats and advances in zooarchaeology and population genomics, the research team anticipates new inquiries in the field will help to answer questions about the evolution of human migrations, trade corridors and economies of various societies—using rats as a proxy to understand what humans were doing in various places and times throughout history.

One example of a waypoint in this evolutionary history happened in Philadelphia in 1892, when Wistar Institute became one of the first biomedical research institutions to take wild rats from the streets and begin breeding them for laboratory research. Laboratory strains of rats, still used for biomedical models across the United States, can be traced back to Wistar.

According to the Drexel researchers, thousands of high-quality whole genomes from ancient and contemporary wild rats, as well as lab strains, will be sequenced in the next decade, thanks to advances in technology and a growing research focus on rats.

These resources, coupled with analytical advances, should vastly improve the understanding of the movement of brown rats around the world, their adaptations to diverse environmental conditions—particularly cities and other human-dominated contexts—and of the novel functional variation that will likely improve the utility of rats as biomedical models.

“The mindset of people about rats, typically, is that they’re pests. But now, people are reconsidering them as something important in evolutionary history—an organism that we should care about for other reasons,” said Munshi-South.

More information:
Jason Munshi-South et al, The evolutionary history of wild and domestic brown rats ( Rattus norvegicus ), Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adp1166

Provided by
Drexel University


Citation:
The evolutionary history of rats has more holes than Swiss cheese, but researchers are trying to close them (2024, September 30)
retrieved 30 September 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-evolutionary-history-rats-holes-swiss.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.





Source link

California governor vetoes AI safety bill

0
California governor vetoes AI safety bill


A California bill seeks to regulate the development of AI models, though critics say the measure can threaten innovation in the nascent field
A California bill seeks to regulate the development of AI models, though critics say the measure can threaten innovation in the nascent field.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill aimed at regulating powerful artificial intelligence models following pushback from tech giants and critics who argued the law went too far.

The bill had faced a barrage of critics, including members of US Congress from Newsom’s Democratic party, who argued that threats of punitive measures against developers in a nascent field would throttle innovation.

In a statement on Sunday, Newsom acknowledged that SB-1047 was “well-intentioned” but expressed concern that the bill was too “stringent” and unfairly focused on “the most expensive and large-scale models.”

“The bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions—so long as a large system deploys it,” the governor noted.

He added, “smaller, specialized models may emerge as equally or even more dangerous than the models targeted by SB 1047—at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good.”

The bill’s sponsor, Democratic state Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco, lamented the “setback,” saying it left AI safety in the hands of the tech giants racing to release the technology.

Wiener had hoped the bill would set rules for AI giants in Silicon Valley’s home state, filling a void left by Washington, where a politically divided Congress struggles to pass legislation.

“This veto leaves us with the troubling reality that companies aiming to create an extremely powerful technology face no binding restrictions from US policymakers, particularly given Congress’s continuing paralysis around regulating the tech industry in any meaningful way,” Wiener wrote on X.

The California state bill would have required developers of large “frontier” AI models to take precautions such as pre-deployment testing, simulating hacker attacks, installing cybersecurity safeguards, and providing protection for whistleblowers.

To secure the legislation’s passage, lawmakers made several changes, including replacing criminal penalties for violations with civil penalties such as fines.

However, opposition remained, including from influential figures like Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, also opposed the bill, preferring national rules instead of a patchwork of AI regulations across the 50 US states.

At least 40 states have introduced bills this year to regulate AI, and a half dozen have adopted resolutions or enacted legislation aimed at the technology, according to The National Conference of State Legislatures.

The bill had gained reluctant support from Elon Musk, who argued that AI’s risk to the public justifies regulation, as well as leading AI researchers like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio.

Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center for AI Safety, said that although the veto was “disappointing,” the debate around the bill “has begun moving the conversation about AI safety into the mainstream, where it belongs.”

He added on X that the bill has “revealed that some industry calls for responsible AI are nothing more than PR aircover for their business and investment strategies.”

© 2024 AFP

Citation:
California governor vetoes AI safety bill (2024, September 30)
retrieved 30 September 2024
from https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-california-governor-vetoes-ai-safety.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.





Source link

Proof-of-concept study develops battery that would use Martian atmosphere as fuel during discharge

0
Proof-of-concept study develops battery that would use Martian atmosphere as fuel during discharge


A high-energy-density and long-cycling-lifespan Mars battery
(a-c) The battery outputs electric energy at light and complete darkness conditions. (d, e) Synchronous IR images. (f, g) The open-circuit voltages before and after test. (h) A photograph of pouch battery. (i) Pie chart of weight distribution in pouch battery. (j) The energy density of the Mars battery. Credit: Science China Press

Mars presents a highly complex natural environment, characterized by a variety of gas components—95.32% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, 0.13% oxygen, and 0.08% carbon monoxide—as well as extreme temperature fluctuations, with day-to-night temperature differences of about 60 °C.

To address these challenges, Prof. Peng Tan and Dr. Xu Xiao have developed a novel Mars battery that uniquely utilizes the Martian atmosphere as fuel during discharge. This approach significantly reduces the battery’s weight, making it more suitable for space missions.

Their study, “A high-energy-density and long-cycling-lifespan Mars battery,” is published in the journal Science Bulletin.

Once depleted, the battery can be recharged using solar energy harvested from the Martian surface, enabling it to be prepared for subsequent discharges. Furthermore, the team simulated Martian surface conditions, including temperature fluctuations, to develop a Mars battery system capable of continuous power output.

The researchers also demonstrate that at a low temperature of 0 °C, the battery achieves an energy density of up to 373.9 Wh kg-1 and a charge/discharge cycle life of 1,375 hours, which corresponds to approximately two Martian months of continuous operation.

The battery’s charge and discharge processes involve the formation and decomposition of lithium carbonate, while trace amounts of oxygen and carbon monoxide in the Martian atmosphere act as reaction catalysts, significantly accelerating the carbon dioxide conversion kinetics.

The team maximized the effective reaction area of the Martian atmosphere through integrated electrode preparation and a folded cell structure design. By enlarging the cell size to 4 cm2, they further enhanced the energy density of the pouch battery to 765 Wh kg-1 and 630 Wh l-1.

According to the researchers, this study offers a critical proof-of-concept for the application of Mars batteries in real Martian environments.

They aim to advance the development of solid-state Mars batteries in future research, addressing the challenges of electrolyte volatilization under low pressure, and supporting thermal and barometric management systems. This work lays a foundational step toward the development of multi-energy complementary systems for future space exploration.

More information:
Xu Xiao et al, A high-energy-density and long-cycling-lifespan Mars battery, Science Bulletin (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2024.06.033

Citation:
Proof-of-concept study develops battery that would use Martian atmosphere as fuel during discharge (2024, September 30)
retrieved 30 September 2024
from https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-proof-concept-battery-martian-atmosphere.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.





Source link

New assessment suggests Anthropocene started in the 1950s

0
New assessment suggests Anthropocene started in the 1950s


New assessment suggests Anthropocene started in the 1950s
Map of geological archive locations used for the detection of anthropogenic fingerprints. Red circles denote 137 locations of geological archives, including varved marine and lake sediments, coral skeletons, ice cores, and tree ring samples. Credit: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2313098121. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2313098121

A team of Earth scientists from the Center for Marine Environmental Studies, the University of Tokyo, The Australian National University, Matsuyama University, Kyoto University, and Shimane University, has found, via a new assessment, that the 1950s is the strongest candidate for the start of the Anthropocene.

In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes how they compared the three top contenders, and why they chose the 1950s, as the most likely marker.

In 2002, Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen suggested that the Holocene had ended and that a new era in planetary history had begun—the Anthropocene. The new era, he suggested, was one dominated by changes to the planet that had occurred because of human behaviors.

Since then, planetary scientists have debated the issue, with some suggesting that there is more than enough evidence to declare the start of a new era, and others claiming there is not yet enough. In this new study, the research team began with the belief that there is enough evidence to support the start of the Anthropocene, and because of that there must be a point at which it began.

In looking at available evidence, the researchers suggest that there are three good candidates; the first being the late 1800s. It was during this period, they note, that the Industrial Revolution began. They also point out that it was a time during which levels of lead began to be spread across major land surfaces, along with stable isotope ratios and changes in the balance of nutrients.

The second candidate they suggest was the early 1900s, which saw changes in pollen across the globe, major increases in black carbon and widespread changes in stable isotopes.

The third candidate, the middle of last century, saw the most measurable global and permanent changes. This was when organic pollutants began showing up all over the world, along with plastics and microplastics. It was also the start of the nuclear age, with evidence of test blasts found everywhere on Earth—and finally, it was the beginning of major impacts resulting from global warming.

After comparing the global impact of all three candidates, the research team concluded it was the third that most likely should be considered as the true start of the Anthropocene. They suggest it shows the most easily seen and measured global changes—changes that would likely take thousands, if not millions of years to change back to Holocene levels, should humans depart the scene.

More information:
Kuwae, Michinobu, Toward defining the Anthropocene onset using a rapid increase in anthropogenic fingerprints in global geological archives, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2313098121. www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2313098121

© 2024 Science X Network

Citation:
New assessment suggests Anthropocene started in the 1950s (2024, September 30)
retrieved 30 September 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-anthropocene-1950s.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.





Source link