The rise of Netflix and Hulu is largely responsible for the spread of the term "binge-watch." For most, that means dedicating an entire day or at least an evening to sitting down and watching multiple episodes of a TV show at once. According to YouGov, 58 percent of Americans have engaged in binge-watching, and of that number 72% say it's how they normally consume TV shows. 

So why has spending hours on end in front of a TV become a phenomenon? First of all, before online streaming services came around, it wasn't possible to watch multiple episodes at once until after a TV season was available to buy or rent in stores. Fans had to wait until the next cable airing of a show's season, and then sometimes an entire year before the next season debuted. As we can see in this chart from Statista, getting the whole story at once and not having the lag time between episodes are the main motivations for binge-watching. Interestingly, it also looks like Americans are just plain bored and using TV as a way to kill time. 

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Original author: Caroline Cakebread

Original author: Nathaniel Lee and Jessica Orwig

The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft undergoing thermal testing in 1996.NASA/JPL-CaltechAfter 13 years of orbiting Saturn and its moons, NASA's bus-size Cassini probe is now a puff of radioactive vapor in the planet's swirling clouds.

Space agency leaders knew this day would come since 2010, when they decided to empty Cassini's tanks to continue exploring Saturn as long as possible.

Without a means of controlling the probe, they reasoned, Cassini had to be destroyed. This would prevent it crashing into Saturn's icy moons Enceladus and Titan — which hide vast, salty, global oceans that may be habitable to alien life — since Cassini left Earth contaminated with small amounts of bacteria.

To honor the more than 453,000 photos Cassini took of Saturn, its rings, moons, and other objects, several NASA divisions worked together to select its 100 greatest visuals. Those have been turned into a 110-page ebook, titled "The Saturn System Through the Eyes of Cassini", which is free to download for iBooks, Kindles, and other ebook readers (and just as a PDF).

"While these images represent the tip of the iceberg — each telling a story about Saturn and its mysterious moons — our hope is that the mission will inspire future artists and explorers," NASA wrote in a press release. "The sheer beauty of these images is surpassed only by the science and discoveries they represent."

Jim Green, NASA's head of planetary science, wrote the forward to the collection of pictures.

"This book is the first chapter of what I predict will be the greatest story ever told: how humans reached for the stars and discovered life beyond Earth," Green said.

Here's a small collection of the best images and what they reveal.

Original author: Dave Mosher

Get the latest Google stock price here.

Original author: Kif Leswing

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Get the latest Tesla stock price here.

Original author: Danielle Muoio

Equifax’s unprecedented data breach, which potentially exposed 143 million American’s personal information last week, has already cost the credit agency $9.75 billion in market value, and the stock could plunge even more, Morgan Stanley says.

In its updated bear case out Friday, the investment bank asks, "Where’s the floor?" and says Equifax’s stock could plunge as low as $50 a share, about one-third of where it was before the hack.

"The main risks that we see to EFX center around: 1) greater impairment to the Global Consumer Solutions segment (GCS), 2) potential bleed into other businesses and/or share shift, 3) increased regulation, and 4) higher-than-anticipated fines," writes analyst Jeffrey Goldstein.  "We note that many of these risks are difficult, if not impossible to quantify, but we give our best estimates."

Morgan Stanley maintains its equal-weight rating for the stock, and has dropped its base case price target to $127 from $140. 

Regulation is a key concern for investors, the bank says. Senator Elizabeth Warren said Friday she, along with 11 other Democratic senators, had launched an investigation into the breach.

"This could result in higher compliance costs at best, or nationalization of the credit bureau function at worst," Goldstein says. "We believe that the sharp price decline over the past few days is related to the steady drumbeat of legislative inquiries,and a lack of clarity on what this means for EFX's future business model. The ultra-bear case that we have heard is that the government could decide to takeover the function of the credit bureaus."

Shares of Equifax continued their losses Friday afternoon, trading down 5% at 2:15 p.m. ET. They have plunged more than 35% since the breach was announced. 

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Original author: Graham Rapier

We finally have an idea of how much Google has poured into self-driving cars.

Between 2009 and 2015, Google spent at least $1.1 billion to develop the tech powering its self-driving cars, IEEE Spectrum's Mark Harris first reported. The details were made public in a court filing that shows the August 24 deposition of Shawn Bananzadeh, a financial analyst at Waymo, the self-driving car company that was spun out of Google.

Bananzadeh was testifying as part of Waymo's lawsuit against Uber, which claims the ride-hailing company stole intellectual property and trade secrets to develop its own autonomous technology.

Bananzadeh said it costs at least $1.1 billion to develop three different trade secrets within that seven-year time period. That figure, however, is a low estimate because it does not factor in equity and other expenses, Bananzadeh said.

"As I mentioned earlier, there are — there are equity that's missing from this, as well as, like, intracompany expenses of the allocated expensive," he said.

Before it was Waymo, Google's self-driving-car research was an internal program dubbed Project Chauffeur. The secretive project was born in 2009, but it was kept under wraps, making it difficult to assess how much Google was spending to make its driverless utopian vision a reality.

Bananzadeh's testimony shows Google spent at least $1.1 billion on just tech development from the program's inception to 2015. 

Although $1.1 billion is nothing to sniff at, it seems relatively modest in an industry dominated by tech giants with deep pockets. Alphabet reportedly wants to invest $1 billion in ride-hailing startup Lyft, a sum that would equal its 7-year spending on tech development. 

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Original author: Danielle Muoio

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CNN's office in Los Angeles, California. David McNew/Newsmakers

CNN is set to launch a new technology-focused vertical about the changing media landscape on the West Coast.

Titled "Pacific," the new franchise will be led by Senior Media Reporter Dylan Byers, and will focus on the powerful West Coast-based companies that have changed media, technology, and politics.

"We're living in a time when media is not just expanding, it's exploding," CNN Executive VP of Editorial Andrew Morse told Business Insider in a phone call on Friday.

"Media isn't just in Los Angeles and New York anymore. It's in San Francisco and Seattle."

While Byers has already shifted his coverage to focus more specifically on West Coast tech and media, in the coming months, CNN will roll out a corresponding daily newsletter, a podcast, and events under the Pacific brand.

Though Politico reported earlier on Friday that Byers was potentially leaving the media beat, Morse said that "couldn't be further from the truth."

"Dylan will be the tip of the spear in CNN's expansion of media and commitment to covering tech," he said.

CNN has doubled down on its tech coverage this year, launching a standalone tech site focused on the business of tech and innovation, with verticals for business, culture, gadgets, and startups.

The move is the latest shift in the media reporting landscape.

In the last two months alone, Politico lost its two biggest media reporters to Vanity Fair and CNN, while gaining another — The Huffington Post's Michael Calderone.

NBC announced on Friday the launch of its own media reporting team headed up by senior media editor Claire Atkinson, a veteran media reporter from the New York Post, who joined NBC earlier this month.

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