Posts Tagged: Billion
Biden administration launches $45 billion plan to get the entire US online by 2030
The Biden administration has formally started its $ 45 billion effort to bring affordable and reliable high-speed broadband internet access to everyone in the US by 2030. The Internet for All funding is part of the $ 65 billion earmarked for broadband in the $ 1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Starting today, states and other entities can apply for funding from three Internet for All programs.
“In the 21st century, you simply cannot participate in the economy if you don’t have access to reliable, affordable high-speed internet,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who is overseeing the distribution of the funds, said. “Thanks to President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Americans across the country will no longer be held back by a lack of high-speed internet access. We are going to ensure every American will have access to technologies that allow them to attend class, start a small business, visit with their doctor and participate in the modern economy.”
States could use the funding to install fiber-optic cables, put more Wi-Fi networks in place or even offer some people free broadband internet access. The launch of the program follows news earlier this week that the Biden administration has teamed up with 20 providers to offer subsidized internet service to low-income households.
Most of the Internet for All funding will be available from the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program. States and other territories will need to file a letter of intent and a budget for planning funds. They'll then receive $ 5 million in planning funds to help them put together a five-year plan detailing how they'll provide comprehensive internet access to all residents.
Each state that takes part in the program will receive at least $ 100 million from the BEAD pot of $ 42.5 billion. After that, funding allocations will be decided in part based on updated broadband coverage maps that the Federal Communications Commission is expected to release this fall.
Under the $ 1 billion Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Program, funding will be allocated based on a "technology-neutral, competitive basis" to build, buy or improve infrastructure elements that carry "large amounts of data at high speeds over long distances." As for the $ 1.5 billion State Digital Equity Planning Grant Program, that's designed to bolster adoption and use of the internet with the help of digital literacy training.
Take-Two is acquiring mobile game giant Zynga for $12.7 billion
PC gaming Giant Take-Two has announced that it's making a big move into mobile gaming with the acquisition of Zynga for a total price of approximately $ 12.7 billion. Take-Two already owns Rockstar Games, Codemasters and 2K, producing games like Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Bioshock and others. Zynga, meanwhile, produces well-known mobile titles like CSR Racing, FarmVille, and Words with Friends.
Take-Two said that the deal will result in $ 6.1 billion worth of 12-month pro-forma net bookings, meaning it will become one of the largest gaming companies in the world. "This strategic combination brings together our best-in-class console and PC franchises, with a market-leading, diversified mobile publishing platform that has a rich history of innovation and creativity," said Take-Two Chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick. The deal will also help Take-Two save about $ 100 million annually after two years.
Zynga itself was on an acquisition streak of late, having acquired the studio behind Torchlight 3early last year. Zynga has sometimes relied on acquisitions to find the hottest games in the notoriously fickle mobile gaming market. Still, Take-Two said that the mobile industry booked $ 136 billion 2021 and is currently growing at over 8 percent, so the money is there to be had. Mobile will now account for half of its net bookings (net amount of products and services sold digitally or sold-in physically), the company said.
Hyundai confirms its $1.1 billion acquisition of Boston Dynamics
Boston Dynamics is now officially part of Hyundai Motor Group. The Korean conglomerate has struck a deal with Softbank to acquire a controlling interest — an 80 percent stake — in the robotics company for $ 1.1 billion. Softbank will retain a 20 perce…
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NVIDIA is officially buying Arm for $40 billion
Just as we expected, NVIDIA just announced that it’s buying the semiconductor design company Arm for $ 40 billion. The deal will make NVIDIA into an even larger presence in mobile computing, especially when it comes to bringing its AI technology into…
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House approves $100 billion in broadband funding for rural areas
The US House of Representatives approved the Moving Forward Act this week, a $ 1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that puts $ 100 billion toward bringing high-speed broadband to underserved areas. The ambitious bill also allocates funds toward transporta…
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CERN approves plans for a $23 billion, 62-mile long super-collider
CERN has approved plans to build a $ 23 billion super-collider 100 km in circumference (62 miles) that would make the current 27 km 16 teraelectron volt (TeV) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) look tiny in comparison. The so-called Future Circular Collider…
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Jeff Bezos pledges $10 billion to combat climate change
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Google’s Fitbit acquisition is official for $2.1 billion
Despite being one of the first in the wearable game and buying up Pebble, Fitbit is going to fold under Alphabet’s wing. Google’s parent company was reportedly trying to buy them earlier this week, and that deal has now closed. It’s worth $ 2.1 billion, too, so some serious money was spent. What’s Google going to […]
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Queen’s iconic “Bohemian Rhapsody” video reaches historic 1 billion views milestone on YouTube
Queen’s iconic music video for “Bohemian Rhapsody” has now officially passed one billion views on YouTube, making history as the first pre-1990s video to reach one billion views on the platform.
The accompanying video for Queen’s 1975 single, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” is generally recognized as the first-ever promotional music video, kick-starting and setting the gold-standard for the genre for decades to come. Today, it continues to inspire and entertain millions of fans around the world, more than 40 years after it was first created.
Speaking from the band’s current sold-out North American tour, founding Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor said, “We are honoured that Bohemian Rhapsody has just hit one billion views on YouTube. We want to thank you all and celebrate with our amazing fans all around the world by creating three new music videos to our songs, all featuring you! Whether you are a musician, singer, dancer, visual artist or you just want to have some fun. Go to youarethechampions.com to find out more and we’ll see you on the road somewhere.”
To celebrate this monumental achievement, a newly remastered HD version of the video is available today, for the first time ever and exclusively on the bands’ YouTube channel. Fans can now see the video restored in all its glory, as it was originally intended. Additionally, fans will now be able to access the song’s lyrics in multiple languages including English, Spanish, Italian, French, Japanese, Polish, German, Indonesian Bahasa, Korean, Czech, Russian and Turkish while watching the video.
To further honor this significant milestone, Queen — in partnership with YouTube Music, Universal Music Group and Hollywood Records — have announced the launch of ‘You Are The Champions,’ a unique new campaign that will give fans an exclusive chance to become a part of Queen history with a starring role in three brand-new, user-generated videos for three of the band’s most celebrated tracks. The campaign launches later this month, so stay tuned for more details.
As part of the campaign, musicians, singers, and instrumentalists can take on “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Dancers will be able to give their own interpretations for “Don’t Stop Me Now,” with a special instructional video created by Polly Bennett (Rami Malek’s movement coach from the hit film, “Bohemian Rhapsody”). And, finally, visual artists will get the chance to design any word or phrase from the lyrics of “A Kind of Magic.”
Fans can visit YouAreTheChampions.com to find out more and add their submissions! The finished videos will be published later this year on the bands’ official YouTube channel.
“Bohemian Rhapsody is a sonic and cinematic masterpiece that’s one of the most enduring songs of all time,” said Lyor Cohen, Global Head of Music for YouTube. “The newly remastered video on YouTube will ensure the song continues to be rediscovered, embraced and beloved by old and new generations of music fans around the world. It’s incredible to help change the way fans experience music and provide a place for artist and fan connections worldwide.”
Celine Joshua (General Manager, Commercial, Content and Artist Strategy at Universal Music Group) said, “We are thrilled that Queen’s iconic “Bohemian Rhapsody” video has reached a historic one billion views on YouTube. Now, together with Queen, YouTube and Hollywood Records, we are excited to launch ‘You Are The Champions,’ an innovative, new user-generated video campaign with Queen’s incredible fans around the world at its core. This will be the first of a series of custom initiatives we have planned in the coming months on the official Queen channel.”
As well as its status as being the first music promo video of its kind, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is regularly cited as one of the greatest songs ever recorded. In 2004, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and Freddie Mercury’s vocal performance was named by the readers of Rolling Stone magazine as the best in rock history.
The song has continued to inspire a new generation of fans following the unprecedented global success of last year’s biographical film “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which tells the incredible story of the band’s career, as well as the genesis of the song. The film is the highest-grossing music biopic in history, having generated more than $ 900 million dollars at the box office. The film also won four Oscars, including Rami Malek’s triumph in the Best Actor Category for his portrayal of legendary frontman Freddie Mercury on the big screen — a feat he repeated at both BAFTA and the Golden Globes.
VLC reaches three billion downloads, will soon add AirPlay
VLC, the video player that'll crunch every format you've heard of, plus all the ones you haven't, is about to hit a huge milestone. Variety spotted an installation at VideoLan's CES booth that's counting ever-closer to the three billion download mark…
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Google Duo hits a major milestone with 1 billion downloads from the Play Store
Huawei isn’t the only one breaking records, as Google has officially crossed the 1 billion download threshold with their video calling app, Duo. It did it just in time for the end of 2018, too. Part of the reason why Duo has hit such high numbers is because it’s a pre-installed application for new Android […]
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Tinder co-founders sue parent company for $2 billion over deception
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YouTube gets 1.8 billion logged-in viewers monthly
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Saudi Arabia plans $1 billion investment in Virgin’s space tourism
Richard Branson has gained a powerful and extremely wealthy ally that can make his space tourism dreams a reality: Saudi Arabia. The kingdom will invest $ 1 billion in the Virgin Group's space companies and might even add $ 480 million more in the futu…
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YouTube hits 1.5 billion viewers per month, introduces new share and dynamic adapt features
New features for YouTube were introduced alongside the announcement of a major milestone. Every month there are 1.5 billion logged in viewers on YouTube, which Google says is about 20% of the world’s population. These viewers are watching an hour per day on mobile devices alone. That should mean the 1 billion hours of video […]
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You know what’s cool? A billion hours
A few years back, we made a big decision at YouTube. While everyone seemed focused on how many views a video got, we thought the amount of time someone spent watching a video was a better way to understand whether a viewer really enjoyed it. It wasn’t an easy call, but we thought it would help us make YouTube a more engaging place for creators and fans. And last year, we hit a big milestone on that journey: people around the world are now watching a billion hours of YouTube’s incredible content every single day!
Let’s put that in perspective. If you were to sit and watch a billion hours of YouTube, it would take you over 100,000 years. 100,000 years ago, our ancestors were crafting stone tools and migrating out of Africa while mammoths and mastodons roamed the Earth. If you spent 100,000 years traveling at the speed of light, you could travel from one end of the Milky Way to the other (and you wouldn’t age a day!). And if you searched for 100,000 years on YouTube, you’d find a really killer KISS track.
That’s the great thing about this milestone. It represents the enjoyment of the fantastically diverse videos that creative people make every single day. Around the world, people are spending a billion hours every day rewarding their curiosity, discovering great music, keeping up with the news, connecting with their favorite personalities, or catching up with the latest trend.
We’ve worked hard behind the scenes to make that billion-hour journey possible, but this isn’t just our milestone. It belongs to all of you, too—the global audience that tunes in every day and the creators whose videos have made YouTube the original, surprising and limitless source of entertainment it is. From all of us here at YouTube, please accept our heartfelt thanks.
Cristos Goodrow, VP of engineering at YouTube, recently watched “Secret Billionaire: The Chuck Feeney Story.”
You’re watching 1 billion hours of video on YouTube daily
A huge milestone for YouTube was just revealed. If you’re like any of us at Talk Android, you watch a lot of video on YouTube throughout the week. Millions of other people do as well. So it’s not surprising to find out that 1 billion hours of video are being watched on the service every […]
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One billion captioned videos
I envision a future where everything will be captioned, so the more than 300 million people who are deaf or hard of hearing like me will be able to enjoy videos like everyone else. When I was growing up in Costa Rica, there were no closed captions in my first language, and only English movies had Spanish subtitles. I felt I was missing out because I often had to guess at what was happening on the screen or make up my own version of the story in my head. That was where the dream of a system that could just automatically generate high quality captions for any video was born.
Today I am lucky to be making my dream a reality as part of a team at YouTube exploring innovative ways to make captions more available for everyone. Over the years we have made great strides both in terms of the numbers of videos with captions and also in the accuracy of those captions.
Google first launched video captions back in 2006. Three years later these efforts were taken to a whole new level with automated captions on YouTube. This was a big leap forward to help us keep up with YouTube’s growing scale. Fast forward to today, and the number of videos with automatic captions now exceeds a staggering 1 billion. Moreover, people watch video with automatic captions more than 15 million times per day.
One of the ways that we were able to scale the availability of captions was by combining Google’s automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions for videos. There were limitations with the technology that underscored the need to improve the captions themselves. Results were sometimes less than perfect, prompting some creators to have a little fun at our expense!
A major goal for the team has been improving the accuracy of automatic captions — something that is not easy to do for a platform of YouTube’s size and diversity of content. Key to the success of this endeavor was improving our speech recognition, machine learning algorithms, and expanding our training data. All together, those technological efforts have resulted in a 50 percent leap in accuracy for automatic captions in English, which is getting us closer and closer to human transcription error rates.
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| Automatic captions example from our previous model |
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| Automatic captions example from our current model |
Continuing to improve the accuracy of captions remains an important goal going forward, as does the need to keep growing beyond 1 billion automatic captions. We also want to extend that work to all of our ten supported languages. But we can’t do it alone. We count on the amazing YouTube community of creators and viewers everywhere. Ideally, every video would have an automatic caption track generated by our system and then reviewed and edited by the creator. With the improvements we’ve made to the automated speech recognition, this is now easier than ever.
I know from firsthand experience that if you build with accessibility as a guiding force, you make technology work for everyone.
Liat Kaver, product manager, recently watched “27 Things You Might Not Know about Star Wars – mental_floss List Show Ep. 450” with automatic caption track.
Facebook shows no sign of stopping, now has 1.86 billion users
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LeEco looking for a billion dollar investment deal
LeEco expanded as quickly as possible over the past couple of years, but that created some problems for the company’s cash flow. After expanding into the US market with a slew of phones and a Vizio acquisition, LeEco is pretty close to being completely broke. Since they sell their phones very close to cost to […]
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Apple could invest $1 billion in SoftBank Vision Fund for emerging tech
According to reports, Apple is in talks to invest $ 1 billion in the SoftBank Vision Fund — aimed at investing in emerging technologies. That could help Apple gain insight into recent tech innovations.
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A billion reasons to celebrate music on YouTube
Last year was a bright one for music—after several tough years of declining revenues, the industry started growing again, spurred in large part by the growth of music streaming subscriptions. This year, the industry has even more reasons to be optimistic. Even as music subscriptions have been growing faster than any other subscription type, advertising is another powerful driver of revenue. In fact, in the last 12 months, YouTube has paid out over $ 1 billion to the music industry from advertising alone, demonstrating that multiple experiences and models are succeeding alongside each other.
And this is just the beginning. As more advertising dollars shift from TV, radio and print to online services, the music industry will generate even more revenue from ads. In the future, the music business has an opportunity to look a lot like television, where subscriptions and advertising contribute roughly equal amounts of revenue, bolstered by digital and physical sales. To achieve this, there is a lot of work that must be done by YouTube and the industry as a whole, but we are excited to see the momentum.
At a time when there’s never been more competition for attention, fans can’t get enough good music. It is clear that this creative industry has two strong engines of growth — subscriptions and advertising — and we are honored to be a part of it.
Robert Kyncl, Chief Business Officer, recently watched “The Hamilton Mixtape Performance Live Stream.”
Samsung expects to miss out on $2.3 billion in profits, and it’s all the Note 7’s fault
Samsung has been forced to slash its expected earnings for the previous three months by a third, due to the failure of the Galaxy Note 7, and resulting product recall. Added into a huge drop in shares, and the financial pain is beginning to show.
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Truecaller and Huawei reach deal to pre-install app as use eclipses half a billion calls
Showing that even the most basic of smartphone functions can continue to benefit from innovation, Truecaller announced today that after just four months their users have reached a major milestone. On a monthly basis, Truecaller users are now making half a billion calls per month with the app. In recognition of the explosive growth for […]
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Facebook crushes earnings again and hits a billion daily active users on mobile
User numbers up, revenue up, profit up. Facebook reported yet another set of healthy performance figures on Wednesday, with the data showing that more than a billion mobile users now hit the site on a daily basis.
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10 billion articles of clothing and footwear are going to go smart
Your clothes are about to get real smart. Thanks to a brand new partnership between Fortune 500 packaging company Avery Dennison and Internet of Things startup Evrythng, we’ll soon be inundated with connected clothing.
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Dubai is building a $1 billion skyscraper that may be the tallest in the world
Prepare to have a major crick in your neck. Pushing the boundaries of the sky are developers in Dubai, who plan to build a $ 1 billion skyscraper that will put the current tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, to shame.
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The NBA counts more than a billion likes and followers
Ahead of tonight's NBA All-Star Game, the league proclaimed it's the first pro sports association with over a billion combined likes and followers on social media. It's debatable how many people that figure actually represents, but it apparently come…
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WhatsApp marches on, now has 1 billion monthly users
WhatsApp has finally reached the billion-user milestone. While the Facebook-owned messaging app doesn’t generate any revenue, recently revealed plans suggest that could change by developing features within the app that help businesses connect with customers.
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Android earned Google $22 billion in profit, says Oracle
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Congress will give NASA nearly $20 billion next year
In a surprise move, the Republican-controlled Congress has promised to give NASA roughly $ 19.3 billion dollars next year as part of its 2016 omnibus spending bill. That's nearly a billion dollars beyond the $ 18.5 billion that the Obama administration…
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LG’s $8.7 billion OLED factory might be the birthplace of the OLED iPhone
LG plans to open an OLED factory in 2018, spending $ 8.7 billion on the facility to build all types of displays. The factory might be the first to manufacture OLED displays for the iPhone, with Apple apparently looking for an OLED supplier.
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