Netflix built its streaming empire on other people’s content. Whether it was movies or shows that had already made a name for themselves, Netflix snapped them up and hid them behind a fancy recommendation algorithm, serving up the ones it felt were right for you.
This model for Netflix is changing, and fast. While the algorithm remains and is strengthened every time you click on something to watch, what you are actually choosing is changing and it’s not because of your tastes, but because Netflix is adding more of its original content to its archive and spending lots on it.
According to Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s content chief, a massive 85% of what it is spending is now going on original content. Given it’s put $8 billion aside to spend, that’s a lot of high-quality original shows and movies in the pipeline.
Original of the species
By 2018, Netflix is hoping to have some 1,000 bits of original content on the platform – given it currently has in the region of 470 originals right now, that’s a huge burst of new things appearing on the service.
But why so much on originals, when there are much-loved shows such as The Expanse and The X-Files being cancelled? For Netflix, this is all about future proofing and making sure it has enough of its own IP to tackle the choppy streaming waters ahead. Taking other people’s content means licensing agreements, that eventually have an expiry date.
Sarandos believes the best way forward for Netflix is to recruit like-minded people – filmmakers that actually use and love the service.
“The creators we’re talking to, they watch Netflix and they want to be on our network,” he said to Variety.
“The way we can secure those shows is having a great reputation with talent, having a brand people want to be associated with, and a good track record of delivering.”
Included in the roster of those making things for Netflix is Guillermo del Toro who has recently signed up to make a horror anthology series for the service (and is also behind the successful animated Netflix show Trollhunters) and American Crime Story’s Ryan Murphy.
Netflix has to do this, as there will soon be more choice for viewers when it comes to streaming services. Disney is to join the fray and its original content includes all of the Disney back catalog, as well as Star Wars, Marvel, Indiana Jones…
Not that this is fazing Sarandos, who merely said this of the Mouse House encroaching on Netflix’s territory: “I don’t know what took them so long”.
Could we go fishing on a planet-sized frozen moon near Jupiter?
Using cutting-edge 3D modeling techniques unheard of last century, NASA scientists have re-examined 21-year-old data of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons known to have a huge, salty, liquid ocean underneath its icy surface.
They found new evidence to back-up astronomers’ suspicions that Europa is spewing water vapor into space.
If its ocean does host simple life, that means a spacecraft could ‘sniff’ it – and, potentially, discover signs of life.
Go sniff a moon
“The data were there, but we needed sophisticated modeling to make sense of the observation,” said Xianzhe Jia, a space physicist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor whose team has been re-examining data from the Galileo space probe that reached Jupiter in 1997.
Europa as seen by the Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s | Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
“We were inspired by those Hubble detections, and realized that one of Galileo’s flybys of Europa was just 124 miles above the region that Hubble saw repeated plumes,” said Jia. “We needed to see whether there was anything in the data that could tell us whether or not there was a plume.”
Old data, new discoveries
Europa’s plumes are likely fed by a subsurface water ocean, or pockets of ocean, under Europa’s crust, so a future spacecraft could flyby and investigate their chemical makeup.
That’s what NASA wants to do with its Europa Clipper mission; go sniff a moon. With this new re-examining of old data, NASA can be sure the mission is worth it.
This is not the first time that Galileo’s data has been re-visited. NASA researchers have also reviewed historical data collected by Galileo to get closer to discovering why Jupiter’s moon Ganymede – the solar system’s largest moon – has such a bright aurora.
What is NASA planning to do at Europa?
What Hubble and, it seems, also Galileo found on Europa has tantalized planetary scientists, and momentum has since built up for a dedicated mission.
Called the Europa Clipper, NASA’s spacecraft will conduct approximately 45 flybys of the icy moon during a three- or four-year mission. Some of those flybys would get as close as 16 miles from Europa’s surface.
Europa is strewn with cracks and ridges | Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
This is about the search for the ingredients for life. Life as we know it – and that’s all we know – requires three things: liquid water, the right chemistry, and an energy source to drive biology.
The Europa Clipper will confirm whether the moon has that subsurface ocean, and search for signs of the other two criteria.
So, the spacecraft will image the moon’s icy surface in high resolution and examine the composition and the structure of its interior and icy covering using two ice-penetrating radar antennas.
What is Europa like?
Europa is cold, cracked and chaotic. As cold as -370 F/-220 C at its poles, it’s covered in water ice and frozen sulfur dioxide, and it’s thought that underneath is a liquid salty ocean.
If that does exist, it probably moves a lot because Europa’s ice surges up and down by 50 metres thanks to the gravitational pull of Jupiter.
Europa isn’t the only moon in the solar system to have the potential to host life. In 2005, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft discovered jets of water vapor and dust spewing off the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
When will Europa Clipper arrive?
That depends when it launches, and on what kind of rocket. It’s tentatively scheduled to launch in 2022, but the politics are messy.
The mission must be as cheap as possible and launch on time, which means using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is a no-brainer.
Except that, unless the Europa Clipper uses NASA’s own flagship Space Launch System (SLS) uber-rocket – which is overdue, over budget, misunderstood by politicians, and likely to delay the Europa Clipper’s launch until 2025 – Congress might cancel the SLS.
The Europa Clipper will discover if there are the ingredients necessary to support life | Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The politics are complex, but suffice to say, the preparation for this mission is likely to be just as much about NASA’s future as it is the search for alien life.
‘The mid-to-late 2020s’ is all we know about the Europa Clipper’s arrival date, because which rocket it launches on will determine how long it takes to get there.
Are there any other missions to Europa planned?
Planned to launch in 2022, the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JuICE) will spend three and a half years examining Europa, Ganymede and a third moon, Callisto, all of which are thought to conceal oceans of liquid water beneath their icy crusts.
The JuICE mission will explore Europa, Ganymede and Callisto | Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
JuICE will carry cameras and ice-penetrating radar, among other instruments, and detect organic molecules.
At Europa, it will explore its active regions and study the composition of the icy crust, detecting whether there are shallow reservoirs of water sandwiched between icy layers.
How to see Europa in the night sky
It may only be the sixth-largest moon in the solar system, but Europa is a relatively easy object to see in the night sky.
Jupiter has 53 moons in total, but the biggest four – Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto – are known as the Galilean moons.
First spotted by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei through a small telescope in 1610, absolutely any size of ‘scope pointed at Jupiter will reveal them.
Europa and the other Galilean moons are easy to see with a small telescope | Credit: NASA
They can also be seen through high-powered binoculars. Now is a great time to do so because Jupiter is at ‘opposition’ – Earth is directly between the sun and the giant planet – making Jupiter the brightest it’s been for 13 months and, technically, since 2002.
So, who will get to Europa first, NASA’s Europa Clipper or the ESA’s JuICE?
Though the launch schedule and thus the speed of the Europa Clipper is up in the air, the set-in-stone ESA’s JuICE is solar-powered, so it will take seven years to reach the Jovian System.
The hunt for alien life is nothing if not a slow-burner, but at least now astronomers know that Europa’s has plumes; the solar system sniff is on.
Best Noise-Cancelling Headphones Buying Guide: Welcome to TechRadar’s round-up of the best noise-cancelling headphones you can buy in 2018.
Traveling, by all accounts, is one of life’s great pursuits. To travel, to see the world, whether for work or for pleasure, is always and forever an admirable venture.
But just as the nature of travel has changed and, thankfully, so too has the technology that we use to make the journey more comfortable.
Take, for example, wireless noise-cancelling headphones.
A far cry from the barely effective products released a few years ago, the best headphones released these days feature Hi-Res Audio, batteries that offer several days of use, comfort and the best, most advanced noise cancelling algorithms to keep outside noise far away.
They’re vital for any adventure you’re about to embark upon – whether it’s a multi-hour flight or a train ride that’s part of your every day commute.
To help you pick out a pair of headphones that deliver all of the above in spades, we’ve put together a list of the top 10 noise-cancelling headphones, listed below and ranked by their price-to-performance ratio.
1. Sony WH-1000XM2
Crystal clear noise-cancelling headphones that are better than Bose
The Sony WH-1000XM2 are an excellent revision of an already great pair of headphones: They sound great, deftly wield noise cancellation technology and cost just as much as a pair of Bose QC35s. They might have a slightly shorter battery life than Bose’s flagship over-ear headphones, but Sony’s WH-1000XM2 outclass the QC35 in terms of performance and feature-set.
You’d want to pick these Sony headphones over the Bose because not only do they provide the same level of awesome noise-cancellation, but they have three neat tricks that Bose just doesn’t have on its headphones: One is an ambient noise mode that only lets in mid-to-high frequency tones (announcements over a loudspeaker, for instance) and another being Quick Attention mode that allows you to let in all outside noise without taking off the headphones. (The latter is perfect when giving a drink order on a plane or speaking to a coworker for a brief moment before diving back into your work.) The last trick Sony has up its sleeve is the LDAC codec. Alongside the widely adopted aptX HD standard, LDAC enables Hi-Res Audio playback using the 1000XM2.
Great-sounding, feature-packed and just as affordable as the competition? The Sony WH-1000XM2 are our all-around pick for best noise-cancelling cans.
Coming in at the number two spot is the Bose QuietComfort 35 II – a nearly identical product to the already-excellent Bose QuietComfort 35 but updated for 2018 with Google Assistant. This means you still get the class-leading noise cancellation Bose is known for, good sound quality and incredible comfort, plus a convenient assistant to answer any inquiries you might have while traveling.
Taken as a whole, the Bose QC35 II NC is an excellent headphone for travelers and commuters. Bose has found a good balance of features that will satisfy most mainstream listeners. While we don’t love them as much as the better-sounding Sony WH-1000XM2, they’re still top of the class for noise cancellation.
The PXC 550’s greatest strength is their sound. Other wireless noise-cancelling headphones might offer a better user interface or better noise-cancellation technology, but ultimately none of the above match up to the sound quality of these Sennheisers.
However, that said, there are a couple of irritations that prevent us from being able to fully and unreservedly recommend them, such as unresponsive touch controls. These annoyances aren’t quite deal-breakers, but there are definitely other noise-cancelling headphones out there that don’t suffer from the same issues.
Philips presents a more elegant noise-cancelling solution with its NC1. These on-ear headphones aren’t wireless like our top pick, but that’s hardly a reason to knock them. Coming in at $299/£195, the NC1 are a compact set that’s high on comfort and battery life.
You get a lot for the money here. In the box comes the headphones, a hard case for storage and the headphones rock a rechargeable battery that provides noise cancellation for close to 30 hours. But best of all, the sound performance is extremely well balanced and warm.
(A quite note for our Australian readers: Philips sadly no longer sells the NC1’s down under, so you’ll need to import a pair if you’re keen.)
A few years ago, the Bose QuietComfort 25 are the best noise-cancelling headphones we’ve ever used. The lows, mids and highs came through clear as day, never stepping over each other. Music of all sorts sounded predictably incredible. With the noise-cancellation turned on, we never felt further immersed and concentrated than when we let the QC25 engulf our ears.
But that was a few years ago and time has moved on since. Bose has released not just one sequel to these headphones, but two: the QC35 and QC35 II with Google Assistant built in, both of which we’d recommend above the QC25.
But, it’s not all bad. If you don’t mind using the older, wired headphones, the QC25s are a finely-tuned set of cans that provide over 35 hours of very good noise-cancelling performance with one AAA battery.
Bowers and Wilkins are a little late to the noise-cancellation game, but their first foray impresses.
The PX Wireless aren’t just a great sounding pair of headphones, they’ve also got a number of other interesting tricks up their sleeve. They’ll turn on and off automatically depending on whether you’re wearing them or not, and they also feature the future-proof USB-C charging standard.
In our opinion their only downside is the sound quality, which we felt lacks the depth of the flagship headphones from Bose and Sony.
That said, if you’ve been a fan of the look of B&W’s headphones in the past then the PX Wireless are certainly worth a listen.
If you prefer on-ear noise-cancellation, then the AKG N60NC Wireless are a great pair of headphones.
At their mid-range price point the headphones offer fantastic value for money, with great sound quality and a level of noise-cancellation performance that’s on a level with the much more premium entries on this list.
These are a fantastically compact pair of headphones, and offer a very complete package for the price.
With noise-cancelling tech just as effective as that in headphones from rival Bose, and with a more musical sonic ability, the Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNC are a definite contender for the noise-cancelling crown. More affordable and easy to travel with, these lightweight headphones are a great value all-rounder, whether for flights, commuter trains or busy offices.
Design-wise, the Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNCs seem a more slimmed-down, lighter and more focused effort than the bulky and expensive alternatives from Bose and Sony; and crucially, the HD 4.50 BTNCs are just as good with audio, and almost as good on noise-canceling. Whether you’re after noise canceling for long-haul ravel, for the commute, or just to stay more productive in a noisy office, the Sennheiser HD 4.50 BTNCs are worth considering.
With the second generation Plantronics BackBeat Pro, Plantronics went back to the drawing board to fix many of the issues owners complained about the original. The BackBeat Pro 2, therefore, manage to keep all the great things about the original and improved upon its shortcomings, like its bulk and weight.
In terms of value, the BackBeat Pro 2 are basically a steal. With the BackBeat Pro 2, you’re getting a travel headphone with incredible battery life, supreme comfort, the ability to pair two device as once and, most importantly, good sound quality for the cost. If you don’t want to drop $350 (£290, AU$500) on the Bose QuietComfort 35 or $400 (£330 or AU$700) on Sony’s flagship MDR-1000X, the Plantronics BackBeat Pro 2 should be on the top of your shopping list.
The Samsung Level On Pro Wireless are one of the few headphones we’ve tested that feel like they’re meant as a package deal for another device. Yes they’ll work with every Bluetooth and 3.5mm jack-equipped handset on the market, but you’re better off sticking to a Samsung device in order to squeeze every ounce of aural goodness from the Ultra High Quality (UHQ) audio codec.
It’s one of the comfiest pair of cans on the market, and they’re also much cheaper than a lot of the competition. If it had a better sound quality for the vast majority of cell phone users it would be an easy recommendation but, as it stands, really makes the most sense at checkout when purchased alongside Samsung’s Next Big Thing.
