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Here Come the Robotaxis: Zoox and Lyft Both Launch Driverless Ride Sharing

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Here Come the Robotaxis: Zoox and Lyft Both Launch Driverless Ride Sharing


“How do we break down the journey into bite-sized pieces, so it doesn’t feel overwhelming or insurmountable?” says Jesse Levinson, the cofounder and CEO of Zoox. “This moment is a huge one, but the service is still unpaid and fairly limited.” Zoox launched in 2014, and though it’s been testing its technology in San Francisco, at its Foster City, California, headquarters, and in Las Vegas for years, this will be the first time it’s allowing anyone willing to download an app to ride. The company was acquired by Amazon in 2020 for a reported $1.2 billion.

Olsen, the May Mobility CEO, says he is comfortable with the company’s slower launch process after watching others rush to put self-driving cars on the road. “One of the things we’ve seen across the industry is that a vehicle might perform brilliantly some of the time, but then will do wildly inappropriate things in the edge cases,” Olsen says. He declines to say exactly when the firm would remove the safety drivers from its vehicles, or when it might expand its Lyft partnership to other areas or cities, but he says any moves the company makes will be tested and validated with real-world and simulated data. The service will scale more quickly as time goes on, he says.

May Mobility offers rides through Lyft.

COURTESY OF Lyft and May Mobility

Climb in Lyfters.

Climb in, Lyfters.

COURTESY OF Lyft and May Mobility

Two US self-driving vehicle firms shut down this past decade after their robotaxis were involved in serious road accidents. In 2018, a testing self-driving vehicle operated by Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group struck and killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona. Uber sold off its self-driving technology to a competitor in 2020. In 2023, General Motors subsidiary Cruise struck a pedestrian in San Francisco after the person was thrown into the empty robotaxi’s path by a collision with another car; state regulators later learned that the Cruise dragged the person 20 feet while it attempted to move out of traffic, and revoked the company’s permit to operate. General Motors got out of the robotaxi business a year later, citing high development costs and a desire to focus on personal vehicles.

Keep On Robotaxiing

Still, robotaxi companies say they have plenty more public deployments on the horizon. Zoox says it will start picking up public riders in San Francisco later this year, and will then launch in Austin and Miami. May Mobility plans to deploy robotaxis in Arlington, Texas, before the end of the year, this time on the Uber platform. Waymo has announced future service in several US cities, including Miami, Washington, DC, and Dallas. Tesla is running a small, invite-only ride-hail service in the California Bay Area with drivers behind the wheel using its more limited Full Self-Driving (Supervised) tech, which requires the person up front to stay alert at all times. Musk plans to move quickly: He said this spring that the company would have “millions” of vehicles operating autonomously by the second half of next year.

Vegas residents can download Zoox's app.

Vegas residents can download Zoox’s app.

Chris Noltekuhlmann

Rides are free for the time being.

Rides are free for the time being.

COURTESY OF ZOOX

Developers of self-driving vehicles have argued that their tech will increase safety and ride efficiency, bringing down prices in the long term. (Of course, these companies will also no longer have to pay a cut of each ride to human drivers.) But even in Phoenix and San Francisco, where Waymo has been running public robotaxis for years, cities have yet to catch a clear glimpse of how the expensive-to-develop technology might transform residents’ lives.

“It’s not at the scale yet where it’s really dramatically changing anything,” says Adam Millard-Ball, an urban planning professor who directs the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies.

Robotaxi services will likely have to get much bigger, Millard-Ball says, before they can prove out their expansive visions. Waymo has released studies suggesting that its tech is safer than human drivers in many situations, but some experts still argue that it’s hard to compare robots’ performance to humans’ given the still-limited number of miles the cars have driven.

“Can this make the rideshare industry grow the pie?” asks Jeremy Bird, Lyft’s executive vice president of driver experience, who collaborated with May Mobility on the Atlanta launch. Bird says Lyft has studied data from where autonomous vehicles have already been deployed, and he thinks the answer is yes. But when robotaxis will become a moneymaking venture is still a big question mark. Clearly, though, plenty of people are still working to find out.



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Top Design Within Reach Promo Codes for March 2026

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Top Design Within Reach Promo Codes for March 2026


Design Within Reach carries some of the best and coolest home decor you can find, from modern couches to fantastic office chairs and fun designers like Herman Miller and Dusen Dusen. It’s not a cheap store to shop at, though, which is what makes these coupons something to jump on. Unlock online-exclusive discounts of up to 50%, free shipping, plus 20% off featured brands and 15% off office furniture bundles with Design Within Reach promo codes and Summer 2025 sale events. Save on hundreds of stylish items, including our favorite Design Within Reach office chairs, plus some other fantastic home gear we’ve earmarked for testing.

Extra 25% Off at Design Within Reach

Upgrade your digs to sleek Eames-esque mid-century modern design for up to 25% off furniture with Design Within Reach promo code EXTRA25. Head to Design Within Reach’s sale page for huge markdowns of live-proof, luxe furniture and household items like storage furniture, bar stools, chairs, couches, cabinetry, accessories, and more. And don’t forget to use that Design Within Reach promo code for even more savings.

Get 15% Off Furniture With Design Within Reach Promo Codes

On Design Within Reach’s website, you’ll see an expansive catalogue with a huge range of furniture to revamp any room—from couches and credenzas to coffee tables and bar stools for way less than normal designer prices. Flos lamps, known for mixing functionality and style, are now 20% off for a limited time. These colorful table lamps start at $255, with wall sconces, pendants, and more on sale.

Summer’s here, and it’s better late than never to get some great outdoor furniture. During Design Within Reach’s outdoor sale event, you can get up to 30% off great outdoor furniture essentials, like outdoor sectionals, chaise lounge chairs, benches, and outdoor tables. You can get bonus savings with sitewide Design Within Reach promo codes during this time. But you can still save thousands of dollars, on top of 50% off markdowns. If you’ve been eyeing the Eames Lounge Chair, Aeron Chair, or Noguchi table, this is your chance to save over $1,500.

One of the easiest ways to get a design within reach coupon is by signing up for their emails. When you sign up for DWR’s email list, you’ll get 15% off your first order, plus, you’ll be the first to know of flash sale events and discount codes when the updates are sent straight to your inbox.

You can ditch the delivery fees with Quick-Ship free shipping offers. You can save up to $699 and get complimentary shipping sitewide on orders of $2,000 or more. Explore the many items with quick-ship and free shipping offers, including sofas, storage pieces, coffee tables, and more iconic furniture. Check out their New to Sale deals too, with 40% off select bar stools, 20% off sectionals, and decor for 50% off. Design Within Reach’s end-of-season sales are some of the best times to save big on those pricier purchases, but you’ll be surprised to find that many new arrivals will go on sale too. While you’re browsing the Sale section, you can use the filter button to organize by category, specific designers, brands, and even price. Unleash your inner interior designer and go wild.

Shop up to 50% Off Design Within Reach Clearance Sale Deals

Buying furniture and other household items can be one of the biggest purchases one makes in their life. Luckily, Design Within Reach has some great furniture deals, with clearance deals that are even steeper than their usual sale discounts. These deals include last-chance furniture discounts, with up to 50% off on all home categories and decor—including light fixtures, tables, ottomans, furniture cushions, and more. Check out Design Within Reach clearance deals and take advantage of the final sale prices, where furniture items are at their lowest prices yet—before they go out of stock.

More Ways to Save on Design Within Reach Furniture

Design Within Reach is also here for small business owners and design industry professionals, to help them jumpstart and elevate their businesses in style. They can apply to the free DWR Trade program, where they will receive sitewide discounts every day, a dedicated Account Executive, exclusive promotions only available to Trade members, and exclusive and discounted Trade pricing across Design Within Reach’s 200 premium design brands in one place.

Our Favorite Design Within Reach Gear

Design Within Reach has a huge range of designers and home pieces, from massive couches to decor and chargers. They carry Herman Miller pieces we love from our guide to the Best Office Chairs, plus chargers from Courant that we recommend in our Best Wireless Chargers guide. We’ve also got our eye on couches and sheets from designers like Hay and Dusen Dusen to test too that you can find at Design Within Reach.



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A Billionaire-Backed Startup Wants to Grow ‘Organ Sacks’ to Replace Animal Testing

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A Billionaire-Backed Startup Wants to Grow ‘Organ Sacks’ to Replace Animal Testing


As the Trump administration phases out the use of animal experimentation across the federal government, a biotech startup has a bold idea for an alternative to animal testing: nonsentient “organ sacks.”

Bay Area-based R3 Bio has been quietly pitching the idea to investors and in industry publications as a way to replace lab animals without the ethical issues that come with living organisms. That’s because these structures would contain all of the typical organs—except a brain, rendering them unable to think or feel pain. The company’s long-term goal, cofounder Alice Gilman says, is to make human versions that could be used as a source of tissues and organs for people who need them.

For Immortal Dragons, a Singapore-based longevity fund that’s invested in R3, the idea of replacement is a core strategy for human longevity. “We think replacement is probably better than repair when it comes to treating diseases or regulating the aging process in the human body,” says CEO Boyang Wang. “If we can create a nonsentient, headless bodyoid for a human being, that will be a great source of organs.”

For now, R3 is aiming to make monkey organ sacks. “The benefit of using models that are more ethical and are exclusively organ systems would be that testing can be meaningfully more scalable,” Gilman says. (R3’s name comes from the philosophy in animal research known as the three R’s—replacement, reduction, and refinement—developed by British scientists William Russell and Rex Burch in 1959 to promote humane experimentation.)

New drugs are often tested in monkeys before they’re given to human participants in clinical trials. For instance, monkeys were critical during the Covid-19 pandemic for testing vaccines and therapeutics. But they’re also an expensive resource, and their numbers are dwindling in the US after China banned the export of nonhuman primates in 2020.

Animal rights activists have long pushed to end research on monkeys, and one of the seven federally funded primate research facilities across the country has signaled it would consider shutting down and transitioning into a sanctuary amid growing pressure. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also winding down monkey research, part of a bigger trend across the government to reduce reliance on animal testing.

As a result, Gilman says, there aren’t enough research monkeys left in the US to allow for necessary research if another pandemic threat emerges. Enter organ sacks.

Organ sacks would in theory offer advantages over existing organs-on-chips or tissue models, which lack the full complexity of whole organs, including blood vessels.

Gilman says it’s already possible to create mouse organ sacks that lack a brain, though she and cofounder John Schloendorn deny that R3 has made them. (For the record, Gilman doesn’t like the term “brainless” to describe the organ sacks. “It’s not missing anything, because we design it to only have the things we want,” she says.) Gilman and Schloendorn would not say how exactly they plan to create the monkey and human organ sacks, but said they are exploring a combination of stem-cell technology and gene editing.

It’s plausible that organ sacks could be grown from induced pluripotent stem cells, says Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell biologist at the University of California, Davis. These stem cells come from adult skin cells and are reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state. They have the potential to form into any cell or tissue in the body and have been used to create embryo-like structures that resemble the real thing. By editing these stem cells, scientists could disable genes needed for brain development. The resulting embryo could then be incubated until it grows into organized organ structures.



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A Mysterious Numbers Station Is Broadcasting Through the Iran War

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“Tavajoh! Tavajoh! Tavajoh!” a man’s voice announces, before going on to narrate a string of numbers in no apparent order, slowly and rhythmically. After nearly two hours, the calls of “Attention!” in Persian stop, only to resume again hours later.

The broadcast has been playing twice a day on a shortwave frequency since the start of the US-Israel attack on Iran on February 28.

According to Priyom, an organization which tracks and analyses global military and intelligence use of shortwave radio, using established radio-location techniques, the broadcast was first heard as the US bombing of Iran began. It has since played on the 7910 kHz shortwave frequency like clockwork—at 02.00 UTC and again at 18.00 UTC.

Over the weekend, Priyom said it had identified the likely origin of the broadcast. Using multilateration and triangulation techniques, the group traced the signal to a shortwave transmission facility inside a US military base in Böblingen, southwest of Stuttgart, Germany.

The site lies within a restricted training area between Panzer Kaserne and Patch Barracks, with technical operations possibly linked to the US army’s 52nd Strategic Signal Battalion, headquartered nearby.

That identification narrows the field, but it does not reveal who is behind the transmissions or who they are meant for.

The two-hour-long transmission is divided into five to six segments, each lasting up to 20 minutes. Each opens with “Tavajoh!” before shifting into a string of numbers in Persian, sometimes punctuated with an English word or two. Five days into the broadcast, radio jammers were heard attempting to block the frequency. The following day, the transmission shifted to a different frequency—7842 kHz.

Radio communication experts believe the broadcast is likely part of a Cold War–era system known as number stations.

The Return of the Numbers

Number stations are shortwave radio broadcasts that play strings of numbers or codes that sound random—like the one now heard in Iran. “It is an encrypted radio message used by foreign intelligence services, often as part of a complex operation by intelligence agencies and militaries,” says Maris Goldmanis, a Latvian historian and avid numbers stations researcher.

Number stations are most commonly associated with espionage. “For intelligence agencies, it is important to communicate with their spies to gather intelligence,” says John Sipher, a former US intelligence officer who served 28 years in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. “This is not always possible in person due to political constraints or conflict. This is where number stations come in.”

While the use of number stations can be traced back to the First World War, they gained prominence during the US-Soviet Cold War. As espionage grew more sophisticated, governments used automated voice transmissions of coded numbers to communicate with agents, Goldmanis says. Citing declassified KGB and CIA documents, he adds that number stations were widely used during this period, often as Morse code transmissions and, in many cases, as two-way communications, with agents reporting back using their own shortwave transmitters.

“Nowadays, you have various satellite and encrypted communications technologies,” Sipher says. “But during the Cold War and even before that, governments had to find ways to do this without being noticed, and broadcasting coded messages was one way to communicate with your assets discreetly.”

The apparent randomness of the numbers means they can be understood only with a codebook, Sipher adds. “Nobody can make heads or tails of it or understand what it says unless you have the codebook that can give you hints to decrypt the code,” he says, noting that such systems must be set up and coordinated in advance.

A Signal Without a Sender

While the likely origin of the signal may now be clearer, its purpose and intended recipient remain unknown.

Because the broadcasts are encrypted and designed to be covert, those details may remain unclear for years, Goldmanis says. The structured nature of the transmission—its fixed schedule and consistent use of frequencies—further suggests it is part of a planned operation.



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