Elon Musk unveiled his epic plan to shuttle thousands of colonists to Mars — and eventually beyond — in giant spaceships lifted by huge, reusable rockets. The SpaceX CEO figures it would take 40 to 100 years to build a self-sustaining civilization on the Red Planet. The biggest hurdle may be the most mundane: The billions of dollars required of a public-private partnership to fund the project.
[April Glaser | Recode]
Nielsen reported the first Clinton-Trump debate drew an average of 84 million TV viewers — more than any debate in history, but still well below the 110 million or so who have watched the Super Bowl the past few years.
[Peter Kafka | Recode]
With an eye toward India and other emerging markets where internet access is primarily on mobile phones with data constraints and sketchy connectivity, Google announced low-bandwidth versions of YouTube, Chrome and the Play Store, along with a public Wi-Fi initiative.
[Newley Purnell | Wall Street Journal]
After just four months on the job, Jason Goldberger is out as Target's chief digital office, in a shake-up that, like Walmart's ouster of e-commerce head Neil Ashe, looks to be related to an inability to gain ground on Amazon. Meanwhile, a new survey found that 55 percent of online shopping searches begin on Amazon, versus 28 percent on Google.
[Jason Del Rey | Recode]
Walmart plans to invest $1 billion in Flipkart, India's largest online retailer. In June, Amazon said it would spend $3 billion expanding its footprint in India.
[Saritha Rai | Bloomberg]
Comings and goings
By Peter Kafka
Spotify wants to make a splash in video — kind of like Netflix.
Drones
By April Glaser
At $999, it employs gesture recognition so you don’t have to hold the controller to take a selfie.
Robots
By April Glaser
Using robots to make shoes means moving factories closer to the people who buy them.
Music
By Peter Kafka
No discovery here, which will probably suit you just fine.
Podcasts
By Eric Johnson
Mossberg and Frommer joined Recode's Kara Swisher and The Verge’s Lauren Goode on this special Apple Event episode of Too Embarrassed to Ask.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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