SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service is poised to reach a significant milestone, with company President Gwynne Shotwell announcing that the subscriber count is expected to surpass 4 million. This announcement was made during her testimony before a Texas legislative committee, and the milestone was later confirmed by SpaceX. The growth has been remarkable, with Starlink gaining a million new customers since May, reflecting a rapid expansion since its beta service launch in October 2020. The service reached 1 million subscribers in December 2022, 2 million in September 2023, and 3 million in May 2024. Starlink's satellite constellation now consists of nearly 6,000 satellites, providing coverage in almost 100 countries. The service caters to both individual users and large enterprises, including major airlines and cruise lines. Financially, Starlink is projected to generate $6.6 billion in revenue this year, a significant increase from approximately $1.4 billion two years ago, according to Quilty Space, an industry research firm. The success of Starlink is integral to SpaceX's broader strategy of commercializing space and funding the development of its reusable rocket, Starship. CEO Elon Musk has emphasized that the revenue from Starlink will support further advancements in space exploration. The launch of Starship is expected to facilitate the deployment of even more Starlink satellites at a faster rate. Starlink has established itself as a dominant player in the satellite internet market, capturing market share from traditional providers like Viasat and SES, which operate in higher geostationary orbits. While other satellite constellations, such as Amazon's Project Kuiper, are in development, they have not yet begun commercial operations, allowing Starlink to maintain its lead in the industry.

SpaceX has revealed plans to launch its Starlink system for phones this fall in a filing about the FCC's new rules on supplying satellite connectivity to US carriers. The company says that the FCC's current framework for supplying satellite connectivity to phones is too restrictive and has urged the agency to loosen the aggregate limit on radio frequencies for cellular satellites, specifically the “one-size-fits-all aggregate out-of-band power flux-density.” It backs replacing the restriction with more granular band-specific limits. SpaceX's rivals have lobbied the Commission to maintain the restriction to protect against potential radio interference.

While SpaceX's Starlink system for cell phones is still in its testing phase, the technology is already good enough to power a video call. SpaceX recently posted a video that showed a video call being completed through Starlink Direct to Cell satellites from unmodified mobile phones. The company has increased the number of cellular Starlink satellites from six to 38. Starlink tech can deliver download speeds as high as 17Mbps to unmodified Android phones.

SpaceX's Starlink system for mobile phones will be free for users connecting to emergency services. The company is currently waiting for approval from the Federal Communications Commission to let it commercially operate its 'direct to cell' Starlink technology. Providing free emergency services access would benefit public safety communications and first responders. There aren't many details about how Starlink's system will work, but it will likely be similar to Apple's Emergency SOS feature for iPhones, which is free for the iPhone 14 and up.

Several agencies are now preparing impact statements for SpaceX's Starship launch plans. SpaceX plans to launch its Starship mega-rocket up to 44 times per year from NASA's Kennedy Space Center and up to 76 times per year from the Space Launch Complex at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Elon Musk aims to eventually launch Starship multiple times per day, with each launch delivering hundreds of tons of cargo to low Earth orbit or beyond. Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance have expressed concerns that SpaceX's high flight rate will have effects on other launch providers with infrastructure at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral.

AST SpaceMobile's market value closed at a record high of more than $8 billion after the satellite communication company confirmed an early September window for its inaugural commercial launch of a network in low-Earth orbit. The company is working with AT&T, Verizon, and other partners to provide wireless service from space to regular consumer smartphones. AST plans to use a SpaceX rocket to send its first five commercial satellites to orbit.

Elon Musk gave a 45-minute speech at SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas last weekend about making life multiplanetary, the booster for Starship, the upper stage, and SpaceX's plans to ultimately deliver millions of tons of cargo to Mars for a self-sustaining civilization. SpaceX has now completed 327 successful launches, with 80% of those involving used boosters. This performance has given Musk confidence that reusability can be achieved with the Super Heavy booster that powers Starship. While SpaceX's goals seem audacious, the company has proven that rocket reusability is a very viable thing, so its other goals appear a lot more achievable.

Elon Musk gave a 45-minute speech at SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas last weekend about making life multiplanetary, the booster for Starship, the upper stage, and SpaceX's plans to ultimately deliver millions of tons of cargo to Mars for a self-sustaining civilization. SpaceX has now completed 327 successful launches, with 80% of those involving used boosters. This performance has given Musk confidence that reusability can be achieved with the Super Heavy booster that powers Starship. While SpaceX's goals seem audacious, the company has proven that rocket reusability is a very viable thing, so its other goals appear a lot more achievable.

Elon Musk gave a 45-minute speech at SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas last weekend about making life multiplanetary, the booster for Starship, the upper stage, and SpaceX's plans to ultimately deliver millions of tons of cargo to Mars for a self-sustaining civilization. SpaceX has now completed 327 successful launches, with 80% of those involving used boosters. This performance has given Musk confidence that reusability can be achieved with the Super Heavy booster that powers Starship. While SpaceX's goals seem audacious, the company has proven that rocket reusability is a very viable thing, so its other goals appear a lot more achievable.

AI-native products and companies are growing faster and engaging users more deeply than ever before. Over the coming decade, AI will likely underpin category-defining companies. This article examines data on the most popular generative AI products to uncover patterns on how consumers are using the technology. It looks at the rate of progress in the industry, emerging categories, hot niches, the mobile vs web split, and AI as a global pursuit.

Titles help normalize pay ranges and allow for progression and evaluation. People who are not job hoppers or get stuck in the same company and title due to laziness, comfort, or other reasons are unfortunately prone to 'The Curse of the Senior Software Engineer'. This is when an engineer who has been senior for too long finds themselves between two worlds upon their next job search: they are too senior to be hired as a senior or they have too little leadership experience to be hired in a leadership position. Avoiding the curse involves either playing by corporate rules or exiting the game by switching to self-employment.

Building a time zone conversion layer on top of a datetime library sounds like an easy task, but it isn't. This article lists 21 misconceptions about time zones the author had before attempting to write a time zone conversion app as well as extra misconceptions from readers. These misconceptions include thinking that there are more countries in the world than time zones, that every time zone has exactly one agreed-upon name, or that time zones are always offset from UTC by an integer number of hours.

SpaceX's Starship rocket flew halfway around the world yesterday, accomplishing a key demonstration of its ability to carry heavy payloads into low-Earth orbit. The successful launch builds on two previous flights last year. Thursday's flight tested Starship's payload bay door and performed a precursor test of an in-orbit refueling system. Photos from the launch are available in the article.

ByteDance may have to sell TikTok in the US if a proposed bill passes the Senate. Some high-profile investors, including former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, online video platform Rumble, and former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, have expressed interest in acquiring the app. This article presents a list of known potential buyers along with a primer on companies that have previously tried to purchase TikTok.

Researchers have engineered a cow capable of producing milk that contains human insulin. This could result in an alternative for insulin production. The process involves inserting human DNA coding for insulin into cow embryos. It could dramatically simplify the process and cost of producing the drug. A single cow can produce enough milk every day to supply thousands of type 1 diabetes patients with their daily insulin for an entire month. Scaling up production, ensuring the health and welfare of the transgenic cows, and navigating regulatory approvals are still huge challenges that lie ahead before the process can replace conventional methods of insulin production.

Evo is a long-context biological foundation model capable of both prediction tasks and generative design, from molecular to whole genome scale. The model generalizes across the fundamental languages of biology, DNA, RNA, and proteins to generate DNA sequences using a context length of 131k tokens. It is based on StripedHyena, a deep signal processing architecture designed to improve efficiency and quality over prevailing Transformer architecture. A playground is available where users can generate DNA in their browsers using Evo.

The first HTTP draft had only one method, GET - there were no headers or status codes, and the only data format available was HTML. The protocol has evolved significantly since then. HTTP/3 is designed for unstable connections, resulting in performance tradeoffs. HTTP/2 offers better performance on reliable and stable connections than HTTP/3. Servers can accept both HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 connections so clients can make the decision of which version to use.

SpaceX's Starfactory started construction back in February. The upgrade gives Starbase an extra 100,000 square feet of factory floor to help SpaceX reach its ambitious goal of producing one Starship a day. SpaceX intends to start building Starship Version 2 at the new Starfactory. Starship Version 2 is said to hold more propellant, have improved reliability and a lower dry weight, and feature aerodynamic changes. There are currently over 1,800 full-time employees at Starbase.

While SpaceX is the undisputed leader in launch, with a record 96 launches last year, it has a growing number of competitors that say they can bring much-needed supply and competitive pressure to the market. This article looks at the current medium-, heavy, and super-heavy lift rocket landscape. While some are yet to be operational, if any of these projects succeed, it will change everything in the industry.

SpaceX aims to send its Starship megarocket on Mars missions two years from now. The company will start with uncrewed tests, with the first crewed flights starting in four years. It aims to build a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Starship's fifth test flight could take place soon - the company has already performed test-fires with the Super Heavy and the Starship that will fly the mission. The next test will involve the first attempt to land Super Heavy back on the launch mount.

A SpaceX rocket has failed for the first time in nearly a decade. The upper stage engine of the Falcon 9 rocket malfunctioned several minutes into flight. It left 20 Starlink satellites in an orbit less than half of what was intended. The company is attempting to boost some of the satellites to a higher orbit using onboard ion thrusters, but it is unlikely to be successful. The satellites will likely return to the atmosphere and burn up. The Federal Aviation Administration says the problem must be fixed before SpaceX can fly its Falcon rockets again.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has approved a commercial launch license for SpaceX's Starship rocket's third test flight. The test is scheduled for this morning at 7 am CDT, with a launch window of 110 minutes. SpaceX will target the Indian Ocean for Starship's slashdown. Details about the changes planned for flight 3 are available in the article.

The Vision Pro may just be an over-engineered devkit. There is some genius and audacity behind some of Apple's hardware decisions - gaze and pinch was a major industry 'a-ha' moment. However, the device's software/content story is dull and unimaginative and most people likely won't use the Vision Pro for watching media. The Vision Pro's debut was the best thing that ever happened to Meta's Quest brand as it elevated VR to a level of mainstream consumer curiosity, set new standards and pricing envelopes for VR devices, and created a competitor for Meta teams to chase.

OpenAI appears to have accidentally published a blog post that was indexed by Bing and DuckDuckGo before it was quickly taken down. The post was an announcement for GPT-4.5 Turbo, a new model that surpasses GPT-4 Turbo in speed, accuracy, and scalability. The cached description mentions a knowledge cutoff date of June 2024 and a 256k context window. OpenAI has not commented on the leak.

Figure has implemented OpenAI's technology to allow its robots to have full conversations with people. OpenAI's models provide high-level visual and language intelligence while Figure's neural networks deliver fast, low-level dexterous robot actions. This X post contains a video showing a person talking to a Figure robot and getting it to perform tasks, explain the reasoning behind the tasks, and self-assess on how the tasks went.

Interlune, a company that has been operating in stealth since its founding by two of Blue Origin's earliest employees in 2022, aims to extract helium-3 from the Moon. The company recently came out of stealth with an announcement that it has raised another $15 million. While the funding is relatively small, its implications are potentially large. Most lunar efforts are focused on providing services to NASA, but Interlune's goal directly derives value from extracting resources on the Moon.

The design engineer is someone who sits at the intersection of design and engineering and works to bridge the gap between them. They know how to run a design process and have the engineering chops to implement it. This allows them to quickly iterate on ideas - their skillset is ideal for prototyping, exploratory interaction design, and building robust design systems. This blog post contains a list of people who are considered design engineers to more fully illustrate what the role entails.

Layoffs are still dragging on and industry veterans are finding it hard to get a callback from recruiters. However, wage gains secured during the good days are still massive, despite what inflation has eroded over the last few years. Developers are still looking mighty privileged compared to premium programmers from a decade ago. AI will have a huge impact on the industry - no profession has ever successfully resisted automation or redundancy in the face of technological advancement over the long term.

MrBeast's influence on YouTube can be seen everywhere, from the types of content people make to the brisk editing styles populating all of YouTube's trending content to even the way YouTubers style their video thumbnails. Copycats can be seen all over the platform. While it is unlikely that MrBeast will be dethroned anytime soon, there are signs that people are growing fatigued with sensationalism and are hungry for authenticity and relatability.

SpaceX will sell insider shares at $112 each in a tender offer that values the company at close to $210 billion. The company was valued at $180 billion in December. The new valuation is a record for an American private company. It puts SpaceX on par with some of the world's largest publicly traded companies by market capitalization. Terms on the tender offer haven't been finalized - the size of the offer could change depending on interest from both insider sellers and buyers.