Bicester Heritage car event sells out after five days of general sale
A popular car event set to take place near Bicester sold out just five days after tickets went on general sale.
Bicester Heritage's second Scramble of 2025 will welcome a full house after a quarter of adult tickets were sold during the Pegasus presale, and another 25 per cent were snapped up within two hours of general sale opening.
Bicester Heritage's Pegasus members could buy the tickets a week before they went on general sale.
The event, taking place at Bicester Motion, in Launton, on Sunday, April 27, will celebrate record-breakers and mark the 60th anniversary of the Queen's visit to Bicester in May 1965.
Visitors can expect a variety of children's activities, interactions with 50 onsite specialists, and activities in their showrooms and HQ buildings.
Gates will open at 9am and close at 4pm.
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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
MarketsandMarkets' 360Quadrants Recognizes Top Startups and SMEs in the Urban Air Mobility Quadrant Report 2025
DELRAY BEACH, Fla., June 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- 360Quadrants has released its latest Urban Air Mobility Startups/SMEs Companies Assessment, 2025, recognizing key players, including both global giants and emerging innovators, for their excellence in market presence, product innovation, and business strategy. The report highlights ARC Aero Systems, Urban Aeronautics, Ascendance Flight Technologies, and AIR VEV Ltd., among the top companies, are actively shaping the future of the Urban Air Mobility Startups/SMEs Companies Assessment. The evaluation leverages 360Quadrants' proprietary methodology to map competitive positioning across 7,000+ micro markets within 10+ industries, enabling decision-makers to make strategic, data-backed vendor choices. Company Highlights in the Urban Air Mobility Startups/SMEs Companies Assessment: Arc Aero Systems, a UK-based technology company, specializes in the development of advanced civil aircraft with vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capabilities, aiming to revolutionize urban air mobility (UAM). Committed to creating sustainable and efficient air transportation for urban and regional areas, the company offers a range of innovative aircraft, including the Pegasus, Linx P3, and Linx P9. Arc Aero Systems is driven by a mission to minimize the environmental footprint of air travel through hybrid propulsion technologies. Urban Aeronautics envisions transforming urban mobility through the application of cutting-edge aerospace technologies to develop vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft tailored for complex city environments. By offering a practical and efficient alternative to conventional transportation, the company seeks to redefine how people and critical services move within urban areas. Urban Aeronautics also operates through its wholly owned subsidiary, Tactical Robotics, which leads the development of the Cormorant project. This autonomous VTOL aircraft is designed for combat cargo delivery and medical evacuation missions, sharing technological commonalities with the CityHawk. Together, these innovations reflect the company's commitment to revolutionizing urban transport and emergency response with safe, sustainable, and advanced VTOL solutions. Ascendance Flight Technologies is committed to advancing sustainable aviation through the development of hybrid-electric propulsion systems. The company's flagship aircraft, the Atea, is a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicle designed as a cleaner, quieter, and more efficient alternative to conventional helicopters. Central to Atea's performance is Ascendance's proprietary Sterna hybrid-electric propulsion system, which significantly reduces noise and emissions while extending operational range and efficiency. The company operates across two primary business areas: Aircraft Manufacturing and Propulsion Technology. In aircraft manufacturing, the Atea stands out as a versatile and eco-friendly VTOL aircraft tailored for urban mobility and short regional travel, offering a quieter and safer transport option well-suited to dense urban settings. To explore the full quadrant report and see how companies are positioned in the Urban Air Mobility Startups/SMEs Companies Assessment, 2025, Visit: Evaluation Criteria The vendor evaluation was conducted on over 100 companies, of which the top 11 were categorized and recognized as quadrant leaders. Factors such as revenue, geographic presence, growth strategies, investments, and sales strategies for the market presence of the Urban Air Mobility Startups/Small-Medium Businesses Companies Assessment quadrant. The top criteria for product footprint evaluation included Solution (Infrastructure and platform), Platform architecture (Rotary-wing, fixed-wing hybrid, and fixed-wing), and Mobility Type (Air taxis, air shuttles & air metro, personal air vehicles, cargo air vehicles, and air ambulances & medical emergency vehicles), Mode of Operation (Piloted and autonomous) and Range(intercity (>100 km) and intracity (<100 km)). 360 Quadrants Scoring Methodology 360 Quadrants employs a comprehensive and transparent scoring methodology to evaluate companies. It identifies relevant evaluation criteria, collects and validates data from multiple sources, and employs an algorithm that considers parameter weights to generate scores. Normalization ensures fair comparisons, and the aggregated scores categorize solutions into quadrants such as Progressive companies, Responsive companies, Dynamic companies, and Starting blocks. This unbiased approach equips users with accurate information, empowering them to make well-informed decisions and select solutions that best suit their needs and objectives. Download Free Sample @ About 360Quadrants 360Quadrants, a specialized division of MarketsandMarkets™, delivers comprehensive quadrant analyses for various emerging technologies and markets, including start-ups. Our evaluation methodology hinges on two critical parameters: market presence and product footprint. This approach facilitates a graphical representation of competitive positioning across four key categories: leaders, contenders, innovators, and emerging companies. In addition, we meticulously classify start-ups into progressive companies, responsive companies, dynamic companies, and starting blocks. Our expertise equips organizations with insights into market leaders across over 6000 micro markets, enabling a detailed comparison of vendor capabilities and performance. At 360Quadrants, we ensure that each quadrant adheres to the highest standards, empowering our clients to navigate complex market dynamics precisely and confidently. 360Quadrants has also launched quadrants in fields such as – Drone Detection Startups/SMEs Companies Assessment, 2025, and Drone Communication Startups/SMEs Companies Assessment, 2025. About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets™ has been recognized as one of America's Best Management Consulting Firms by Forbes, as per their recent report. MarketsandMarkets™ is a blue ocean alternative in growth consulting and program management, leveraging a man-machine offering to drive supernormal growth for progressive organizations in the B2B space. With the widest lens on emerging technologies, we are proficient in co-creating supernormal growth for clients across the globe. Today, 80% of Fortune 2000 companies rely on MarketsandMarkets, and 90 of the top 100 companies in each sector trust us to accelerate their revenue growth. With a global clientele of over 13,000 organizations, we help businesses thrive in a disruptive ecosystem. The B2B economy is witnessing the emergence of $25 trillion in new revenue streams that are replacing existing ones within this decade. We work with clients on growth programs, helping them monetize this $25 trillion opportunity through our service lines – TAM Expansion, Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy to Execution, Market Share Gain, Account Enablement, and Thought Leadership Marketing. Built on the 'GIVE Growth' principle, we collaborate with several Forbes Global 2000 B2B companies to keep them future-ready. Our insights and strategies are powered by industry experts, cutting-edge AI, and our Market Intelligence Cloud, KnowledgeStore™, which integrates research and provides ecosystem-wide visibility into revenue shifts. To find out more, visit or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Contact:Ms. Sipti Banga,630 Dundee Road, Suite 430Northbrook, IL 60062USA: +1-888-600-6441Email: Logo: View original content: SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
Business Insider
02-06-2025
- Business Insider
I visited Amazon's robot factories and got an inside look at how it builds and trains them
I started the day at the North Reading office. A lineup of Amazon's robots past and present greets visitors at the entrance. The green one at the front is Amazon's latest mobile drive unit, Proteus, which can sense objects and humans in its path and move around them. The robots get older the further along the line you go. The facility is huge, stretching 209,000 square feet. From my view on the mezzanine, I could see mobile drive units that had just been built on the assembly line. The blue robots, called Hercules, move pods of items around a fenced area of a fulfillment center. Each Hercules robot can lift a pod that weighs up to 1,250 pounds. The green robots, called Proteus, do similar tasks but move autonomously. The North Reading facility was previously home to Kiva Robotics before Amazon acquired the company in 2012. Julie Mitchell, director of robotic sortation technology at Amazon Robotics, told me how the company approaches robot design. She said that Amazon works with teams in its fulfillment centers to understand which areas could be made more efficient with automation. Robots go through early alpha testing and then beta testing before they are ready for mass production. "We work backwards from our customer needs and think about which systems will help enable better delivery and faster speeds to our customers," she said. "We look to try to develop systems that will add value within one to two years in our fulfillment network." Looking to the left, I could also see other robots being tested. On the middle floor are Pegasus robots, which transport packages around sortation centers. The yellow robotic arm below is Robin, which uses suction to pick up packages. I got a closer look at the Pegasus robots as we made our way down to the manufacturing floor. They zoomed around the floor, testing out new software updates. The Pegasus robot is an evolution of the Hercules robot, using the same base but with a conveyor belt on top. The orange robots are older, from before Amazon rebranded its Prime services to blue. I also got my first up-close look at Proteus. The eyes indicate he's spotted me. Proteus is designed to work alongside employees on a shipping dock. Those workers don't get specific training to work with robots. "It was really important to us to make Proteus intuitive to understand so the human-robot interaction is seamless," Mitchell said. "We used the eyes as a way to communicate." When we got down to the manufacturing floor, I saw this poster that had been signed by Jeff Bezos. Amazon has now built more than 750,000 mobile robots, in addition to its robotic arms and sortation systems. Erica McClosky, director of manufacturing and technical operations at Amazon Robotics, leads teams that build and test robots before they are sent to fulfillment centers. About 300 people work on the physical side of building and maintaining Amazon's robotic fleet. The majority of those employees are on the assembly line, while others receive and ship materials and test and repair robots. "We're in a very controlled, stable environment here, so we're able to, for all of our new products, continuously look at how we optimize the entire flow," McClosky said. Here, workers put together subassemblies that will be incorporated into Proteus' design. Amazon's manufacturing stations have built-in automation, too, including torque tools. "If you're supposed to install, let's say, four fasteners, it'll make sure that you only store four fasteners and that it has the right rotation," McClosky said. Employees receive parts to be installed on the robots. The parts are scanned so that they can be traced as they travel through Amazon's ecosystem. "If there were ever to be a problem, we could trace back and understand what's happening," McClosky said. Amazon sources its robotic parts globally as well as from some local suppliers. I saw one assembly line building Hercules robots and another building Proteus. Lights above each station signal green when everything is in place and red when something is wrong. The North Reading facility has four assembly lines with 10 stations each. Employees at each station complete their assembly tasks in about seven and a half minutes, using a lift assist for heavy items. The last step of the assembly process for Hercules is putting the blue cover on top. Amazon asked that I not take close-up photos of the robots without their covers on due to the sensitivity of the technology. The assembly process for Hercules takes about an hour from start to finish. When the robots are complete, they're picked up from the assembly line by this lift and placed onto the floor. Lift assists are in place in various parts of the manufacturing process so that workers don't strain to pick up heavy objects. After the robots come off the line, they take a few minutes to get their batteries charged. They then line up to be tested in these blue-fenced structures. McClosky said Amazon's testing technology is one of the biggest and most helpful innovations it's rolled out in recent years. She said that Amazon used to test its robots by filling big pods with bricks and having them drive around the factory floor for hours. "What used to take us hours for testing here on the production floor is now done in minutes," McClosky said. "It's looking at environments that it would see in the fulfillment center, so under different loads, making sure that it is fully, fully functional." Proteus has its own diagnostic center where it calibrates its cameras and sensors to maintain "clear vision," Mitchell said. Proteus uses AI to "see" the space it's navigating and decide whether it can safely navigate around an object or needs to stop moving forward. Hercules is the robot Amazon has made the most units of over the years. "It's kind of our workhorse in the fulfillment centers," McClosky said. After the robots have been charged and tested, they line up for "robot graduation." The robots actually drive themselves to the loading dock and put themselves on an individual pallet. Since Hercules can't detect humans the same way that Proteus can, this is a restricted area. They're now ready to be shipped out to fulfillment centers and be put to work. Next up, I watched a robotic arm called Robin pick up packages from a conveyor belt. Robin works in conjunction with Pegasus, the mobile robot with a conveyor belt we saw earlier. The packages I saw Robin pick up were all Amazon-branded, but the robot also frequently encounters packaging from third-party brands using Amazon's fulfillment centers. "We're constantly using AI to train Robin to see different package types, different surfaces, different types of materials that it has to grasp," Mitchell said. "We can change the way we grasp it by changing which actuator we send down to pick up the package. That helps cover the gamut of different shapes." I also saw Proteus in action, practicing transporting carts around the floor. This robotic arm, Cardinal, scans packages' labels, determines which cart to place them into, and tightly packs them in like Tetris. Cardinal works in conjunction with Proteus. "When Cardinal finishes the stacking and creates a complete container, it will signal to Proteus to come and take that container and replenish that container," Mitchell said. "The two robotic systems working together has created an end-to-end automated path from sorting to loading that container onto our trailers and our ship dock." It's a powerful machine. After the tour wrapped up, we traveled to the other Amazon Robotics facility in the Boston area. Both this facility and the one in North Reading also have corporate offices and research and development labs located directly off the manufacturing floor. Amazon views this as a competitive advantage in that it allows for a more direct feedback loop. McClosky said that engineers and manufacturing staff work "shoulder to shoulder." This facility is even bigger than the one in North Reading. Looking out from the mezzanine, it felt like the factory floor stretched on forever. Madeline Stone It covers about 350,000 square feet of space. Tye Brady, the chief technologist for Amazon Robotics, spoke about the work Amazon is doing in physical AI. Madeline Stone He compared the way Amazon is thinking about robotics and physical AI to the way people thought about the computer in the 1950s. "I think if you were to roll ahead in time, you're going to see more and more physical AI agents used as tools to help people be more human, to help people be more capable of who they are, to allow people to connect to one another more readily," he said. I got a good look at Amazon's storage and sortation robot, Sequoia, from above. Madeline Stone Sequoia is a containerized storage system that brings pods over to a station where employees pick items out of totes so that they can be shipped to customers. On the left is a traditional fabric pod that can be moved by Amazon's mobile robots and brought to employees for picking. Madeline Stone Brady said the items stored in each pod are somewhat random and chosen more so to fill the space. This is how Amazon has traditionally stored items, and it's actually what the original Kiva system did even before it was part of Amazon. Amazon's newest robot, Vulcan, can pick from these pods using a sense of touch. However, Sequoia uses plastic containers to store items instead of the yellow fabric pods. Brady pointed to a screen that displays what the robot is doing at each moment. Madeline Stone The totes have all kinds of goods, from water bottles to toys to Amazon Basics cables. "This is where automation really helps us because we can take just about any object that fits inside one of these totes and place it in there," Brady said. A unique code on each tote helps keep track of what's inside. The robotic system brings the totes to an employee work station. The conveyor belt is positioned at the optimal height for picking in order to reduce injuries. Madeline Stone Brady explained how Sequoia helps workers in fulfillment centers to pick customers' orders. "When a customer goes on and they make an order, we look at the entirety of the Amazon network, we figure out which building has the goods closest to the customer, how we can make a meaningful delivery route for that customer, and then at the right time, we'll call the right pod to a station where we can now have the goods that the customer has ordered inside this tote," he said. Sequoia can also be used to process and stow items that are just arriving at a fulfillment center. Madeline Stone "I just pick the item out and then place it into another container to be packed and processed downstream," he said. Our last stop on the tour was to see the Sparrow robotic arm. Madeline Stone Unlike the other robotic arms I saw earlier, Sparrow handles individual items rather than packages. Sparrow is responsible for consolidating items into totes. Hercules robots bring pods to the Sparrow station. Madeline Stone "The robotic system extracts the tote, presents it to the Sparrow arm," Brady said. "That arm has its own end effector on it, and what it's going to do is pick up objects and try to create a more full tote." Sparrow can pick up more than 200 million different items. Madeline Stone It uses an AI system that looks down from above to differentiate between objects, look for damage, and determine the best path to place it into a bin. "That's really the holy grail when it comes to manipulation: being able to successfully identify and manipulate a huge variety of goods," Brady said.
TechCrunch
30-05-2025
- TechCrunch
Eight things we learned from WhatsApp vs. NSO Group spyware lawsuit
On May 6, WhatsApp scored a major victory against NSO Group when a jury ordered the infamous spyware maker to pay more than $167 million in damages to the Meta-owned company. The ruling concluded a legal battle spanning more than five years, which started in October 2019 when WhatsApp accused NSO Group of hacking more than 1,400 of its users by taking advantage of a vulnerability in the chat app's audio-calling functionality. The verdict came after a week-long jury trial that featured several testimonies, including NSO Group's CEO Yaron Shohat and WhatsApp employees who responded and investigated the incident. Even before the trial began, the case had unearthed several revelations, including that NSO Group had cut off 10 of its government customers for abusing its Pegasus spyware, the locations of 1,223 of the victims of the spyware campaign, and the names of three of the spyware maker's customers: Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan. TechCrunch read more than 1,000 pages of court transcripts of the trial's hearings. We have highlighted the most interesting facts and revelations below. New testimony described how the WhatsApp attack worked The zero-click attack, which means the spyware required no interaction from the target, 'worked by placing a fake WhatsApp phone call to the target,' as WhatsApp's lawyer Antonio Perez said during the trial. The lawyer explained that NSO Group had built what it called the 'WhatsApp Installation Server,' a special machine designed to send malicious messages across WhatsApp's infrastructure mimicking real messages. 'Once received, those messages would trigger the user's phone to reach out to a third server and download the Pegasus spyware. The only thing they needed to make this happen was the phone number,' said Perez. NSO Group's research and development vice president Tamir Gazneli testified that 'any zero-click solution whatsoever is a significant milestone for Pegasus.' NSO admitted that it kept targeting WhatsApp users after the lawsuit was filed Following the spyware attack, WhatsApp filed its lawsuit against NSO Group in November 2019. Despite the active legal challenge, the spyware maker kept targeting the chat app's users, according to NSO Group's research and development vice president Tamir Gazneli. Gazneli said that 'Erised,' the codename for one of the versions of the WhatsApp zero-click vector, was in use from late-2019 up to May 2020. The other versions were called 'Eden' and 'Heaven,' and the three were collectively known as 'Hummingbird.' NSO confirms it targeted an American phone number as a test for the FBI Contact Us Do you have more information about NSO Group, or other spyware companies? From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or Do you have more information about NSO Group, or other spyware companies? From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email . For years, NSO Group has claimed that its spyware cannot be used against American phone numbers, meaning any cell number that starts with the +1 country code. In 2022, The New York Times first reported that the company did 'attack' a U.S. phone but it was part of a test for the FBI. NSO Group's lawyer Joe Akrotirianakis confirmed this, saying the 'single exception' to Pegasus not being able to target +1 numbers 'was a specially configured version of Pegasus to be used in demonstration to potential U.S. government customers.' The FBI reportedly chose not to deploy Pegasus following its test. How NSO's government customers use Pegasus NSO's CEO Shohat explained that Pegasus' user interface for its government customers does not provide an option to choose which hacking method or technique to use against the targets they are interested in, 'because customers don't care which vector they use, as long as they get the intelligence they need.' In other words, it's the Pegasus system in the backend that picks out which hacking technology, known as an exploit, to use each time the spyware targets an individual. NSO says it employs hundreds of people NSO Group's CEO Yaron Shohat disclosed a small but notable detail: NSO Group and its parent company, Q Cyber, have a combined number of employees totalling between 350 and 380. Around 50 of these employees work for Q Cyber. NSO's headquarters shares the same building as Apple In a funny coincidence, NSO Group's headquarters in Herzliya, a suburb of Tel Aviv in Israel, is in the same building as Apple, whose iPhone customers are also frequently targeted by NSO's Pegasus spyware. Shohat said NSO occupies the top five floors and Apple occupies the remainder of the 14-floor building. 'We share the same elevator when we go up,' Shohat said during testimony. The fact that NSO Group's headquarters are openly advertised is somewhat interesting on its own. Other companies that develop spyware or zero-days like the Barcelona-based Variston, which shuttered in February, was located in a co-working space while claiming on its official website to be located somewhere else. Pegasus spyware cost European customers millions During their testimony, an NSO Group employee revealed how much the company charged European customers to access its Pegasus spyware between 2018 and 2020, saying the 'standard price' is $7 million, plus an additional $1 million or so for 'covert vectors.' These new details were included in a court document without the full context of the testimony, but offers an idea of how much advanced spyware like Pegasus can cost paying governments. While not explicitly defined, 'covert vectors' likely refer to stealthy techniques used to plant the spyware on the target phone, such as a zero-click exploit, where a Pegasus operator doesn't need the victim to interact with a message or click a link to get hacked. The prices of spyware and zero-days can vary depending on several factors: the customer, given that some spyware makers charge more when selling to countries like Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, for example; the number of concurrent targets that the customer can spy on at any given time; and feature add-ons, such as zero-click capabilities. All of these factors could explain why a European customer would pay $7 million in 2019, while Saudi Arabia reportedly paid $55 million and Mexico paid $61 million over the span of several years. NSO describes a dire state of finances During the trial, Shohat answered questions about the company's finances, some of which were disclosed in depositions ahead of the trial. These details were brought up in connection with how much in damages the spyware maker should pay to WhatsApp. According to Shohat and documents provided by NSO Group, the spyware maker lost $9 million in 2023 and $12 million in 2024. The company also revealed it had $8.8 million in its bank account as of 2023, and $5.1 million in the bank as of 2024. Nowadays, the company burns through around $10 million each month, mostly to cover the salaries of its employees. Also, it was revealed that Q Cyber had around $3.2 million in the bank both in 2023 and 2024. During the trial, NSO revealed its research and development unit — responsible for finding vulnerabilities in software and figuring out how to exploit them — spent some $52 million in expenses during 2023, and $59 million in 2024. Shohat also said that NSO Group's customers pay 'somewhere in the range' between $3 million and 'ten times that' for access to its Pegasus spyware. Factoring in these numbers, the spyware maker was hoping to get away with paying little or no damages. 'To be honest, I don't think we're able to pay anything. We are struggling to keep our head above water,' Shohat said during his testimony. 'We're committing to my [chief financial officer] just to prioritize expenses and to make sure that we have enough money to meet our commitments, and obviously on a weekly basis.' First published on May 10, 2025 and updated with additional details.
