We have a message for fans of the Mushroom Kingdom. Please take a look. pic.twitter.com/U1ASicOuTO

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) August 21, 2023

The news that Martinette will no longer voice Mario comes after much speculation about why Mario’s voice sounds different in promotional materials for the new Super Mario Bros. Wonder game, which is due out on October 20, according to The Verge.

“Charles is now moving into the brand-new role of Mario Ambassador. With this new transition, he will be stepping back from recording character voices for our games. It has been an honor working with Charles to help bring Mario to life for so many years and we want to thank and celebrate him”, Nintendo’s statement reads.

Martinet was cast as the voice of Mario in the Super Mario Bros. movie that was released earlier this year. Nintendo’s statement mentions an upcoming video message from Martinette and CEO Shigeru Miyamoto, but there is still no information on when the video will be available.

Many services today require or at least allow two-factor authentication, which means you have to get a security code via email, SMS, or an authentication app. Now when notifications containing these codes appear, such as a Steam login email, there will be a button to copy that code to the clipboard so you can enter it into the appropriate app or website.

This also works with notifications from your phone if you use the Phone Link app. Microsoft suggests sending feedback if you notice that a notification doesn’t detect the security code.
Another interesting addition relates to the new policy for commercial/business users. This policy allows IT administrators to enable features that were delivered via service updates (not the big annual updates) when they are turned off by default.

However, the companies have already switched on the UK’s first 5G Open RAN site which is carrying live customer traffic. This site, which is located in Bath, UK, is the beginning of Vodafone’s scaled Open RAN network architecture in Europe. Andrea Dona, Chief Network Officer, Vodafone UK:

“Open RAN can radically evolve the telecoms industry, and we are excited to champion the technology in the UK.”

He also added:

“This is an ecosystem which is only a few years old but the progress we have made so far is quite remarkable. Not only have we begun the first scaled deployment in the UK, but we have also installed the first 5G Open RAN site. Open RAN is now a real-world technology and it is truly exciting to see this technology flourish.”

Thomas Riedal, Head of Samsung Networks Europe at Samsung Electronics, said:

“Samsung is proud to collaborate with Vodafone UK to switch on the UK’s first 5G Open RAN site”.

According to him, this will help deliver the benefits of their carrier-grade 5G vRAN solutions to millions of Vodafone UK customers.

Crescent Cove Advisors, Henry Crown and Company and Luminar, a lidar company, also participated in the investment. Alberto Lacaze, CEO of Robotic Research told TechCrunch:

“Most people think robotics is some magic piece of software. The reality is that robotics is more like a stamp collection. You have to collect all these different edge cases where you need to be able to run on slippery roads and with dust and without being able to see the lines and so forth. We have collected lots and lots of stamps. To a certain degree, a common day for a military application is the edge case for a commercial application.”

This funding is specifically geared towards expanding and industrializing commercial applications, says Lacaze.

On the trucking side, RR.AI is working with sawmills in Canada to move logs, and says it will have a big U.S.-related announcement coming soon. The company will also be announcing an agriculture partnership in the coming months.

The company’s go-to-market strategy is to focus on the “low hanging fruits,” says Lacaze, or the areas where there are few regulations or easy regulations to work around.

In the past year, Mindspace launched new branches in London, Tel Aviv, Philadelphia and a new hub and spoke location outside Tel Aviv, at Yakum. Mindspace serves a wide variety of companies; about 41% are large enterprises and corporations and 38% are small and medium-sized companies. The leading industry types of its customer base are technology companies, financial companies and service providers. Past and present customers include Microsoft, Samsung, Playtika, Taboola, Yahoo!, Expedia, GoPro, and more.

While most of the commercial real estate industry took a hit as a result of COVID, the flex market continued to grow. All forecasts predict the accelerated growth of the flex industry to reach a market share of more than 30% by 2030; the current market share of flex as part of commercial real estate is 5%. According to a recent study by CBRE, in two years 43% of occupiers will have 10-50% of their portfolio dedicated to flex. In addition, 17% of occupiers will have more than 50% of their portfolio dedicated to flex. Zakai said:

“Mindspace is experiencing an impressive growth momentum and high demand in all its locations,” says Dan Zakai, CEO and Co-founder of Mindspace. “We successfully faced the many challenges of COVID. Today, our locations are almost at full occupancy and the current investment led by Harel Insurance and More Provident Funds is intended to fulfill the rising demand in the market and to launch new locations in partnership with landlords worldwide. Mindspace isn’t just another real estate company that rents out offices, but rather offers a strong, strategic partnership to its customers and to landlords. When choosing their office environment, we found that our customers put a great emphasis on their experience: central location, unique design and service of the highest standard. We expect a continued accelerated growth in 2022, while creating a great added value for our many customers.”

Mindspace provides well designed offices, fully equipped kitchens and meeting rooms. Mindspace allows for flexibility, shorter term commitments and lower financial risk, which is a suitable solution in times of economic slowdown.

“Another step towards a future where space is accessible to all of us”, said Bezos about the first all-civilian mission to orbit.

Congratulations to @ElonMusk and the @SpaceX team on their successful Inspiration4 launch last night. Another step towards a future where space is accessible to all of us.

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) September 16, 2021

Richard Branson also sent greetings to Musk, the SpaceX team and Inspiration4 crew on reaching orbit, another great moment for space exploration.

Congratulations to @ElonMusk & the @SpaceX @Inspiration4x crew on reaching orbit, another great moment for space exploration #Inspiration4

— Richard Branson (@richardbranson) September 16, 2021

The crew of Inspiration4 had an incredible first day in space. They have completed more than 15 orbits around planet Earth since liftoff and made full use of the Dragon cupola.

“Missions like Inspiration4 help advance spaceflight to enable ultimately anyone to go to orbit and beyond”, sait Elon Musk after the successful launch of Inspiration4.

Missions like Inspiration4 help advance spaceflight to enable ultimately anyone to go to orbit & beyond

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 16, 2021

Inspiration4 is the world’s first all-civilian mission to orbit. The mission will be commanded by Jared Isaacman, the 38-year-old founder and Chief Executive Officer of Shift4 Payments and an accomplished pilot and adventurer. Named in recognition of the four-person crew that will raise awareness and funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, this milestone represents a new era for human spaceflight and exploration.

Inspiration4 crew in orbit

Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin with the vision of enabling a future where millions of people are living and working in space to benefit Earth. In order to preserve Earth, Blue Origin believes that humanity will need to expand, explore, find new energy and material resources, and move industries that stress Earth into space. Blue is working on this today by developing partially and fully reusable launch vehicles that are safe, low cost and serve the needs of all civil, commercial and defense customers.

Richard Branson is the co-founder of Virgin Galactic – an American spaceflight company. It is headquartered in California, USA, and operates from New Mexico. The company is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists.

Cruise will use their first autonomous Origin vehicles, unveiled in 2019. The Origin is designed to be a shared vehicle – once it gets into production, it won’t have any human driving control, such as a steering wheel or pedals. Their goal is to scale up to at least 4 000 vehicles in Dubai by the end of the decade.

Cruise still intends to have San Francisco as their first market for commercial robotaxi services. The company hasn’t announced a release date yet because it failed to launch the commercial services in 2019, as planned.

The Cruise Origin will go into production at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant starting in 2022. The COVID-19 Pandemic had a negative impact on shared ride-hailing services, so Cruise recently unveiled a new set of safety protocols to keep people socially distanced during trips. The vehicle is sanitized between fares.

Cruise is among the best capitalized autonomous vehicle companies in the world. They raised over 7.4 billion dollars from several investors like SoftBank, Honda, GM, T. Rowe Price Group and Microsoft for the period of three years. Cruise is currently valued at $19 billion.

The UAE has the goal of using autonomous vehicles for 20% of the trips by 2030. Dubai has also invited a number of urban air mobility companies, like Volocopter, to test their electric aircraft.

In pursuit of this milestone and a future of safer roads, Motional set a high bar for the industry. The company’s driverless operation follows decades of innovation, 1.5 million miles, and a two-year self-imposed safety evaluation process that took hundreds of employees more than 100,000 hours to complete. During this process, Motional proactively sought external review; TUV SUD, a world-leading independent technical service provider with extensive experience assessing driverless technology, was given access to the company’s proprietary systems, technology, and operations. Upon completion of its assessment, TUV SUD provided Motional with a first-of-its-kind endorsement to operate with an empty driver’s seat.  The state of Nevada granted Motional permission to do so last November.

Robotaxi Fleet Provider

Following extensive progress in 2020, Motional has firmly established itself as the ridesharing industry’s robotaxi fleet provider of choice, and is uniquely positioned to commercialize driverless technology. It is the sole driverless technology provider to have partnerships with two ridesharing leaders, including an agreement to launch the largest robotaxi deployment for a major ridesharing network.

“Not all driverless systems are created equal. Ours is the product of decades of innovation, a relentless commitment to safety and process, more than a million miles of testing, and a rigorous external review,” commented Karl Iagnemma, President and CEO, Motional. “We’re one of the first companies in the world to go driverless. It’s a significant step on our path to making driverless vehicles a safe, reliable, and accessible reality, and a proud day for Motional.”

Raising the Bar on Safety

Building public trust in driverless vehicles is critical. The technology has the power to save millions of lives, but for this potential to become a reality, the general public must trust and adopt it. Motional’s process went the extra mile to demonstrate the safety of its systems, and build consumer confidence.

During its 18-month review of Motional’s systems, TUV SUD’s experts interviewed employees,  reviewed detailed safety architecture designs, analyzed testing processes and results, scrutinized training procedures, and reviewed the qualifications and skill of the team. The resulting first-of-its-kind endorsement is a testament to the soundness of Motional’s technology. It supports Motional’s driverless testing in its operational design domain, with a safety steward in the passenger seat. Safety stewards monitor the route, and have the ability to stop the vehicle. They have not had to do so during Motional’s driverless operations.

This external review was just one part of Motional’s industry-leading safety evaluation process, which the company detailed in its Voluntary Safety Self-Assessment (VSSA). Throughout the process, Motional covered enough distance to circumnavigate the world multiple times. This testing was in addition to the 1.5 million miles Motional had already driven across a diverse set of road environments, cities, and vehicle platforms.

Testing took place on public roads with a safety operator, as well as on closed courses with and without a safety operator.  Motional vehicles navigated thousands of challenging scenarios.  These involved:

• Human-driven cars and other autonomous vehicles
• Pedestrians, cyclists, and other road actors
• Busy intersections and unprotected turns
• A wide range of traffic and road conditions
• Safely-staged edge cases on closed courses

At the Intersection of Technological and Commercial Capability

Developing an advanced driverless system that can safely navigate roads is a monumental accomplishment, but it’s only part of the equation. The technology must also have clear, scalable paths to market to fulfill its potential — and Motional’s commercial ridesharing experience and capability are unparalleled.

In 2023, Motional and Lyft will launch a scalable, fully-driverless, multimarket service — the largest agreement of its kind for a major ridesharing network, and a quantum leap forward for an already successful partnership. Lyft and Motional operate the world’s longest-standing commercial robotaxi service, and have provided more than 100,000 rides with zero at-fault incidents.

Motional is a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group one of the world’s largest vehicle manufacturers offering smart mobility solutions and Aptiv, one of the industry’s most innovative technology providers. Motional is a driverless technology pioneer, responsible for many industry firsts. This latest milestone brings the company one step closer to a future of safer transportation.