Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Uber's Deal Blitz To Stop a Robotaxi Monopoly

Uber is aggressively partnering with multiple robotaxi companies to avoid a future dominated by Waymo or Tesla. The ride-hailing giant has struck deals with at least a dozen autonomous vehicle players in recent years. Just last week, it announced a $1.25 billion partnership with Rivian, with plans to deploy up to 50,000 driverless vehicles over the next decade. Business Insider reports: Uber announced three new robotaxi partnerships in the past few weeks with Zoox, Wayve-Nissan, and Rivian. In less than half a decade, the company has secured at least a dozen deals, including with WeRide, AVride, May Mobility, Momenta, Pony.AI, Wayve, Baidu's Apollo Go, Motional, and Lucid-Nuro. Still, less than a half-dozen of Uber's partners have deployed fully driverless, paid robotaxi operations, and only one, Waymo, operates in the US. Uber has a joint deployment with Waymo in Atlanta, Austin, and Phoenix, but in other cities, Waymo is a competitor.

Uber's partnership spree is less about seeking the singular, dominant player of autonomous driving. Instead, analysts told Business Insider that Uber is ensuring multiple vendors can participate in the expensive business of robotaxis -- fending off the real risk of a Waymo or Tesla scaling on its own -- and giving itself a stake in the robotaxi economy by being the aggregator of choice. "The more diversified the supplier base, the better for the network in the middle, which is Uber," Mark Mahaney, an Uber analyst for Evercore ISI, told Business Insider.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OnlyFans Owner Dies At 43

Computershack shares a report from NBC News: Leonid Radvinsky, the owner of adult-content platform OnlyFans, has died of cancer at the age of 43, the company said in a statement on Monday. "We are deeply saddened to announce the death of Leo Radvinsky. Leo passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer," an OnlyFans spokesperson said. "His family have requested privacy at this difficult time."

Radvinsky, a Ukrainian-American entrepreneur, acquired Fenix International Limited, the parent company of OnlyFans, in 2018 and served as its director and majority shareholder. He also runs Leo, a venture capital fund he founded in 2009 that focuses primarily on investments in technology companies. According to Reuters, OnlyFans is valued at around $5.5 billion, including debt.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Mogelijk tientallen doden bij crash militair vliegtuig Colombia

BOGOTÁ (ANP/RTR/AFP) - In Colombia is een militair vliegtuig neergestort, kort na het opstijgen. Dat heeft het ministerie van Defensie bekendgemaakt. Een bron bij het leger zegt tegen persbureau AFP dat waarschijnlijk tachtig soldaten zijn omgekomen. Het lokale medium Blu Radio schrijft dat er 110 militairen aan boord waren en er vooralsnog twintig zijn gered.

Het ongeluk gebeurde in Puerto Leguízamo, diep in de zuidelijke Amazoneregio op de grens met Peru. "Het precieze aantal slachtoffers en de oorzaak van de crash zijn nog niet vastgesteld", zei minister van Defensie Pedro Sanchez op X. Volgens Blu Radio stortte het vliegtuig neer op zo'n 3 kilometer van een stadscentrum.

Het vliegtuig was een Hercules C-130 van Lockheed Martin. Eind februari stortte een dergelijk toestel neer van de Boliviaanse luchtmacht in een stad. Twintig mensen kwamen toen om het leven.


In Heemstede opgepakte jongens verdacht voorbereiden explosie

HAARLEM (ANP) - De jongens van 14 en 17 jaar die in de nacht van donderdag op vrijdag werden opgepakt in Heemstede worden verdacht van het voorbereiden van een explosie met een terroristisch oogmerk. Dat meldt het Openbaar Ministerie.

De politie en het OM houden er rekening mee dat een synagoge in de buurt van de Adriaan Pauwlaan, waar de twee werden aangehouden, doelwit was van een aanstaande explosie.


Beurzen eindigen hoger ondanks Iraanse ontkenning over gesprekken

AMSTERDAM (ANP) - De Europese aandelenbeurzen gingen maandag halverwege de dag plots omhoog en sloten in de plus. Beleggers reageerden op opmerkingen van de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump. Hij meldde dat de Verenigde Staten de aanvallen op Iraanse energiefaciliteiten de komende vijf dagen zullen pauzeren in afwachting van de lopende gesprekken met Iran. De feestvreugde op de beurs werd echter aan het einde van de handel getemperd toen de Iraanse parlementsvoorzitter Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf de gesprekken ontkende en Trumps bewering bestempelde als nepnieuws.

De koersverliezen van eerder op de dag werden wel weggepoetst. De AEX, de index van de dertig meest verhandelde fondsen op de beurs in Amsterdam, eindigde 0,5 procent hoger op 966,72 punten. Bij opening daalde de hoofdgraadmeter nog fors tot een laagste stand van 940,50, waarmee een vervolg werd gegeven aan de verliezen van vorige week. De MidKap steeg met 0,8 procent tot 952,94 punten. De beurzen in Frankfurt en Parijs wonnen tot 1,3 procent. Londen eindigde wel licht lager.


The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Italian voters reject overhaul of judiciary pushed by Giorgia Meloni

Referendum result could tarnish PM’s reputation and make winning next year’s general election challenging

Italian voters have rejected an overhaul of the country’s judiciary pushed by the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni,, an outcome expected to tarnish her reputation and make winning next year’s general election more challenging.

In a two-day referendum, 54.63% of voters said “No” to the reforms to reorganise the judiciary compared with 45.37% for the “Yes” camp.

Continue reading...

"Snow Garden" in spring

lb__ has added a photo to the pool:

"Snow Garden" in spring

VK: Voorpagina

Volkskrant.nl biedt het laatste nieuws, opinie en achtergronden

Jemen ligt ideaal om de oliehandel verder te verstoren, maar de Houthi’s houden zich (even?) afzijdig

Mackenzie River

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Mackenzie River

Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission in June 2025, the image shows the Mackenzie River in Canada. It is Canada’s largest river basin, covering about 1.8 million square kilometres or about 20% of the landmass of Canada. It was one of the rivers used in an ESA-funded study, which used satellite data to reconstruct two decades of river discharge and runoff. The research revealed a striking mosaic of regional change as warming temperatures and shifting precipitation reshape the Arctic’s hydrological system in uneven ways.

Read full story

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2025), processed by ESAñ CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Hubble revisits Crab Nebula to track 25 years of expansion

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

Hubble revisits Crab Nebula to track 25 years of expansion

Nearly a millennium ago, astronomers witnessed a brilliant new star blazing in the sky — a supernova so bright it was visible in daylight for weeks. Today, its expanding remnant, the Crab Nebula, continues to evolve 6,500 light-years away. First linked to historical records by Edwin Hubble, the nebula has since been studied in exquisite detail by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which has now revisited this ancient explosion to trace its ongoing expansion and transformation.

A quarter-century after its first observations of the full Crab Nebula, the Hubble Space Telescope has taken a fresh look at the supernova remnant. The Crab Nebula is the aftermath of SN 1054, located 6,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus.

The result is an unparalleled, detailed look at the aftermath of a supernova and how it has evolved over Hubble’s long lifetime. A paper detailing the new Hubble observation is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The supernova remnant was discovered in the mid-18th century, and in the 1950s Edwin Hubble was among several astronomers who noted the close correlation between Chinese astronomical records of a supernova and the position of the Crab Nebula. The discovery that the heart of the Crab contained a pulsar — a rapidly rotating neutron star — that was powering the nebula’s expansion finally aligned modern observations and ancient records.

In its new image of the nebula, Hubble has captured extraordinary details of its filamentary structure, as well as the considerable outward movement of those filaments over 25 years, at a pace of 5.5 million kilometres per hour. Hubble is the only telescope with the combination of longevity and resolution capable of capturing these detailed changes.

For better comparison with the new image, Hubble’s 1999 image of the Crab was re-processed. The variation of colors in both of the Hubble images shows a combination of changes in local temperature and density of the gas as well as its chemical composition.

The science team has noted that the filaments around the periphery of the nebula appear to have moved more compared to those in the centre and that rather than stretching out over time, they appear to have simply moved outward. This is due to the nature of the Crab as a pulsar wind nebula powered by synchrotron radiation, which is created by the interaction between the pulsar’s magnetic field and the nebula’s material. In other well-known supernova remnants, the expansion is instead driven by shockwaves from the initial explosion, eroding surrounding shells of gas that the dying star previously cast off.

The new, higher-resolution Hubble observations are also providing additional insights into the 3D structure of the Crab Nebula, which can be difficult to determine from a 2D image. Shadows of some of the filaments can be seen cast onto the haze of synchrotron radiation in the nebula’s interior. Counterintuitively, some of the brighter filaments in the latest Hubble images show no shadows, indicating they must be located on the far side of the nebula.

According to the science team, the real value of Hubble’s Crab Nebula observations is still to come. The Hubble data can be paired with recent data from other telescopes that are observing the Crab in different wavelengths of light. The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope released its infrared-light observations of the Crab Nebula in 2024. Comparison of the Hubble image with other contemporary multiwavelength observations will help scientists put together a more complete picture of the supernova’s continuing aftermath, centuries after astronomers first wondered at a new little star twinkling in the sky.

[Image description: A detailed astronomical image of a bright, cloud‑like nebula set against a black background of space. The nebula is formed by intricate, web‑like filaments of gas and dust in shades of blue, red, pink, yellow, and white. A luminous central region glows pale blue, surrounded by swirling, branching structures that extend outward in all directions. Scattered stars appear as small white points across the scene.]

Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, W. Blair (JHU). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)