The Tribune

• Computer chip maker Intel paid handsomely for a piece of the next big thing Monday as it offered more than $15 billion for Mobileye, an Israeli company at the forefront of autonomous vehicle technology.

The purchase, scheduled to close by year’s end, creates another major player in self-driving technology as traditional automakers and tech companies vie to put the cars into public use. Most companies have predicted autonomous vehicles will be carrying people in the next three-to-five years.

The big investment by Intel validates predictions that autonomous cars will someday come in large numbers, signifying a sea change in the way we all get around, said Timothy Carone, a Notre Dame University professor who has written about the future of automation. “Major players are finding ways finding ways to position themselves for a change as seminal as the personal computer revolution,” he said.

• Internet radio company Pandora is launching an on-demand music service for $10 a month.

Pandora’s existing service works more like radio. People listen to music on customisable stations. The premium service launching this month will let users choose specific songs or albums and will personalise recommendations based on people’s listening habits.

There is also an “offline mode.”

The new Pandora Premium offering will compete with Apple Music and Spotify, both of which have given the music-streaming pioneer a run for its money. Spotify has 50 million subscribers, while Pandora had about 4.4 million as of the end of 2016. That’s because most people listen to Pandora without paying; the company has 81 million total “active listeners.”

Until now, the Pandora subscription mostly stripped out ads — for $5 a month.

• Once again, internet gambling has made the difference between an up month and a down one for Atlantic City casinos.

Figures released Monday by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement show the seven casinos won $205.3 million from gamblers in February. That’s an increase of 0.3 percent from February 2016.

But without the extra money won from online gamblers, the casinos would have posted a decrease of nearly 2 percent.

Resorts Digital (up 131 percent compared with a year ago) and the Golden Nugget (up 66 percent) had particularly good months online.