Wisconsin highway planners are studying the possibility of placing driverless vehicle lanes on I-94 to serve Foxconn ‘s mega factory in Racine County. The Taiwanese company — supplier to tech firms including Apple, Microsoft, and Nintendo — reportedly made the suggestion at a meeting with regional officials, according to USA Today ‘s Journal Sentinel . Foxconn’s $10 billion midwest facility will span 20 million square feet and could create up to 13, 000 jobs. That’s an awful lot of humans commuting back and forth from work, and that’s before you take into account the goods getting hauled in. But, seeing as the I-94 highway is getting a bump from six to eight lanes anyway, regional officials figured they were prepared for the uptick in traffic. Foxconn, it seems, has other ideas in mind. While companies like Uber and Waymo are trialing self-driving vehicles on roads across the US, there’s also been talk of dedicated lanes for robocars (and trucks ). Last year, VC firm Madrona Ventures floated the idea for replacing the I-5 freeway between Seattle and Vancouver with an “autonomous vehicle” corridor. But, Foxconn’s desire to yield regular car lanes to driverless vehicles could be a way off yet. A spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation told the Journal Sentinel that the proposal is just one of many “on the table.” One possibility, according to Tim Sheehy (president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce), is driverless lanes between the Foxconn plant and Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport. Via: Journal Sentinel
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A US freeway may get self-driving car lanes thanks to Foxconn
According to Leichtman Research estimates from the first quarter of 2017, there are more Netflix subscribers in the U.S. (50.85 million) than there are customers for major cable TV networks (48.61 million). While it doesn’t mean Netflix is bigger than TV because it doesn’t account for the 33.19 million satellite viewers, it represents a huge milestone for a streaming service that had half as many users just 5 years ago. Engadget reports: The shift in power comes in part through Netflix’s ever-greater reliance on originals. There’s enough high-quality material that it can compete with more established networks. However, it’s also getting a boost from the decline of conventional TV. Those traditional sources lost 760, 000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year versus 120, 000 a year earlier. Leichtman believes a combination of cord cutters and reduced marketing toward cost-conscious viewers is to blame. Cable giants might not be in dire straits, but they’re clearly focusing on their most lucrative customers as others jump ship for the internet. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader writes BitTorrent today launched Project Maelstrom, the company’s distributed browser, in beta. The company also released new tools on GitHub that let developers and publishers build content for the browser. Announced in December, BitTorrent described Project Maelstrom, then just an invite-only alpha, as “the first torrent-based browser.” The launch today is an open beta, meaning anyone can now try an early version of Maelstrom. You do, however, need a Windows computer. Windows users can download the beta now from here. Since the alpha, BitTorrent says it has improved stability, integrated support for automatic updates, and added DHT visualization for users when loading torrents. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Here are some things that cost $100 million: Making the film Gravity . Recent U.S. airstrikes in Iraq . And now, a two-story penthouse occupying the 89th and 90th floors of the new super-luxury high-rise at 157 West 57th Street. Read more…