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Waymo has gotten a step closer to offering robotaxi rides to the public in Nashville, Tennessee. The company the city and making sure they can operate as fully autonomous rides before launching a paid service in the location. Waymo announced that it was planning to bring its robotaxis to Nashville in September 2025, with the intention opening up rides to the public sometime this year. The company has been testing its technology in Nashville since then, but it has yet say when itll start accepting bookings for rides.The company conducts extensive testing in every new city before deploying its robotaxi service. It starts by having safety drivers map the area and then updating its software with information learned from those tests, since each city has its own driving rules and conditions. Despite its testing, Waymo has had to issue a software recall several times in the past after its vehicles malfunctioned when faced with real hazards on the road. Its vehicles were previously seeing hitting gates, chains, telephone poles and stationary vehicles. Most recently, it issued a recall because its robotaxis failed to stop for school buses.At the moment, Waymo vehicles are already open to the public in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Phoenix, as well as in Atlanta and Austin through a partnership with Uber. Its active in a lot more locations, including New York, New Orleans, Seattle and even Tokyo, Japan, but its not serving riders in those locations yet. Nashville is in the list of new locations where Waymo is conducting or planning to conduct driverless trials, along with Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Orlando, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, Washington and London, UK. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/waymos-vehicles-are-now-fully-driverless-in-nashville-120412343.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
When a train disaster disrupts one of Europe's busiest corridors, what happens to airfares? In Spain, the answer became uncomfortably clear after the Adamuz rail accident sent flight prices soaring. The accident killed 46 people and knocked out the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed AVE line. Airline Iberia has now responded by capping economy fares on the route at EUR 99 per trip through February 19, a move it first applied to Madrid-Andalusia flights in January after the same accident made rail travel to cities like Málaga and Seville impossible. The airline operates up to 14 daily flights in each direction on the Madrid-Barcelona route, giving it significant capacity (and pricing power). Business class and Puente Aéreo fares remain untouched.As reported by El Periódico, the price cap didn't materialize in a vacuum. Spain's Consumer Affairs Minister Pablo Bustinduy announced that the government plans to impose mandatory price ceilings on alternative transport during infrastructure emergencies, calculated from the average fare in the month preceding the disruption. The goal, as Bustinduy put it, is to ensure "nobody can profit extraordinarily from an emergency or necessity."TREND BITEIberia's fare cap sits at the intersection of crisis response and brand strategy. When essential infrastructure fails, the companies that control alternatives face a binary choice: extract maximum value from captive demand, or demonstrate restraint and bank the reputational dividend. Iberia chose the latter. For brands operating in sectors where demand can spike overnight due to external shocks energy, logistics, travel, telecommunications the calculus is shifting. Voluntary restraint now buys goodwill and may stave off heavier-handed regulation later.
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Marketing and Advertising
Another day, another wave of gaming layoffs. Today it's Riot Games with the announcement that it's cutting jobs on its pair-based fighting game 2XKO. For context, a representative from Riot confirmed to Game Developer that about 80 people are being cut, or roughly half of 2XKO's global development team. "As we expanded from PC to console, we saw consistent trends in how players were engaging with 2XKO," according to the blog post from executive producer Tom Cannon. "The game has resonated with a passionate core audience, but overall momentum hasnt reached the level needed to support a team of this size long term."The console launch for 2XKO happened last month. Cannon said the company's plans for its 2026 competitive season have not altered with the layoffs. He added that Riot will attempt to place the impacted people at new positions within the company where possible.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/riot-games-is-laying-off-half-of-the-2xko-development-team-215423279.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
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