Nuro has been granted a permit to begin driverless testing of Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with its autonomous tech on California public roads — vehicles that will eventually be used in Uber’s premium robotaxi service. But the Silicon Valley-based startup, backed by Nvidia and Uber, says it isn’t quite ready to begin.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles, the agency that regulates the testing and deployment of autonomous vehicles in the state, confirmed to TechCrunch on Tuesday that it modified Nuro’s driverless AV permit to include Lucid Gravity vehicles.

Nuro has held a driverless permit for six years, but it only applied to operate a low-speed delivery vehicle — a program that was scrapped when the startup pivoted its business model to focus on licensing its technology to companies like Uber.

This latest driverless permit allows Nuro to test the Lucid vehicles without a human safety operator behind the wheel. Nuro spokesperson David Salguero told TechCrunch the company expects to begin driverless testing later this year, without providing further information on timing.

The driverless permit is one of many regulatory hurdles that Nuro must clear before Uber can launch its premium robotaxi service. Nuro will also have to receive a driverless ride-hailing permit from the California Public Utilities Commission and a deployment permit from the DMV.

For now, Nuro and Uber are testing the Lucid vehicles in autonomous mode with a human safety operator in the driver’s seat. Last month, that testing was expanded to allow Uber employees to request an autonomous ride in a Lucid robotaxi — with a human safety operator still on board — through the Uber app.

As Nuro makes progress on testing, Uber has upped its commitment to Lucid.

When the three-way deal was announced in July 2025, Uber said it would invest $300 million in Lucid and buy 20,000 robotaxi-ready Gravity vehicles. That has since been expanded to $500 million and a minimum of 35,000 robotaxis, with the agreement changing to include at least 10,000 Gravity SUVs and 25,000 EVs built on Lucid’s upcoming mid-size platform.

Those EVs will be equipped with Nuro’s autonomous vehicle system, which is powered by Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor computer. The Lucid Gravity robotaxi, which was revealed in January, is outfitted with high-resolution cameras, solid-state lidar sensors, and radars that help the self-driving system perceive the real-world environment and operate within it.

Uber has also made a multimillion-dollar investment in Nuro.

Lucid has delivered 75 engineering vehicles to Nuro and Uber and testing and mileage accumulation is ongoing in several cities throughout the United States, the EV maker disclosed during its first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday.

Lucid said Tuesday it is on track for commercial robotaxi operations to begin in late 2026. It is possible that those robotaxi operations will not be driverless or will be limited in some other way, depending on regulatory approvals.

Still, Lucid executives struck a positive tone during the call noting that all the development and certifications are moving along as expected.

Even though the very concept of an ‘unpickable lock’ is as plausible as making water not be wet, this doesn’t take away from the intellectual thrill of devising solutions to picking attacks and subsequently circumventing those solutions. Case in point the ‘unpickable’ traveling key lock that [Works by Design] recently featured and sent a few copies off to lock pickers such as [Lock Noob] who gave picking it a shake.

Many of the details and reasoning behind [Works by Design]’s lock design can be found in the original video, with [Lock Noob] going over the basic summary before getting to work trying to pick it.

Rather than trying to bump the tumbler lock mechanism or another indirect approach, the focus is here on an impressioning attack. Although in this traveling key mechanism the physical key is moved inside the lock, the pins of the tumbler lock will leave impressions on the brass blanks when the lock is gently forced to rotate, indicating that there’s still too much material there.

The approach here is thus to slowly file away these sections, with interestingly the plastic pin that [Works by Design] had added to dodge impressioning attacks not being too much of an issue. Thus after over an hour of turning-filing-turning-filing ad nauseam, the lock mechanism rotated, confirming that it had been defeated.

In the subsequent teardown of the lock it can be seen that a plastic pin is indeed rather fragile, with part of its top having been torn off. After replacing this damaged plastic pin with a fresh one, a foil-based impressioning attack is attempted by putting aluminium foil over a skeleton key, but this didn’t quite work out as the pins come in sideways and thus do not leave a useful impression.

Theoretically the pins would press down onto the soft foil, creating an almost immediate impression of the required key. Perhaps that leaving a solid side on the blank would make it work, but this is an approach that would have to be refined.

Either way, it shows that ‘unpickable’ depends on your definition, as ‘1+ hour of filing with knowledge of bitting depths’ would be considered ‘unpickable’ by some. At least it’s not as dramatic as a 2020 [Stuff Made Here] ‘unpickable lock’ hack that we covered, before it got shredded by the [LockPickingLawyer] with resulting list of potential fixes of multiple easy exploits before even having to resort to impressioning.

Considering that traveling key designs generally require at least a tedious impressioning attack, with potential ways to address this in a more substantial way, a redesign featuring these changes would be rather interesting to see picked. If it can defeat the average lockpicking enthusiast including those practicing the legal profession, it’s probably as close to ‘unpickable’ as can be before the bolt cutters and angle grinders are used against any vulnerable parts that aren’t the lock itself.

Audio Advice Live 2026 returns to Raleigh, North Carolina from August 7-9, bringing three days of high-end audio and home theater demonstrations to one of the fastest-growing hi-fi events in the United States. Hosted by Audio Advice, the show will once again bring together leading audio brands, industry experts, and content creators for an immersive experience covering everything from two-channel systems and turntables to headphones and reference-level home theater installations.

For readers of eCoustics, the event is already on the radar. We were among the few publications to cover the show in-depth in 2025, with on-site reporting from Chris Boylan that captured the scale of the demonstrations and the growing enthusiasm around the Raleigh gathering. With its mix of serious gear, approachable demonstrations, and a healthy dose of Southern hospitality, Audio Advice Live has quickly become one of the more compelling destinations on the North American hi-fi calendar—hosted by one of the most influential specialty audio retailers in the country, whose footprint now stretches across the Southeast and into the Midwest and Nevada.

The company currently operates three retail locations in North Carolina; Raleigh, Charlotte, and Wilmington and recently expanded into the Midwest with the acquisition of a specialty audio store in the suburbs of St. Louis. A fourth company-owned showroom is also under development in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to its physical locations, the retailer runs a comprehensive online store featuring in-depth reviews, system planning tools, and step-by-step tutorials for home audio and home theater enthusiasts. Very few retailers offer that level of free knowledge and help in 2026.

Why Audio Advice Live Is Worth the Trip — and Why Raleigh Makes It Even Better

Audio shows can sometimes feel like insider events for industry veterans, but Audio Advice Live has carved out a reputation as one of the most accessible and hands-on hi-fi gatherings in North America. Across more than 60 listening and home theater demonstration rooms, attendees can experience everything from affordable two-channel setups and turntables to statement-level loudspeakers and reference home theater systems.

Major brands such as Sony, Epson, NAD, JVC, MartinLogan, McIntosh, Focal, Bowers & Wilkins, and JBL regularly participate, giving visitors the chance to hear new products demonstrated in carefully tuned rooms while speaking directly with product managers, engineers, and calibration specialists. For enthusiasts curious about system setup, room acoustics, streaming platforms, or even full home theater calibration, the show offers a rare opportunity to get practical advice from the people who actually design the gear.

The setting helps, too. Raleigh has quietly become one of the most appealing destinations for a summer audio trip, with a vibrant downtown filled with restaurants, breweries, museums, and excellent shopping within easy reach of the show. Visitors flying in will appreciate the convenience of Raleigh-Durham International Airport, widely considered one of the most efficient and traveler-friendly airports in the country.

The event routinely draws attendees from across the Southeast, but it also attracts serious hobbyists willing to travel from Florida and Texas to the Mid-Atlantic and even the DelMarVa region, for three days of immersive listening, industry insight, and a little Southern hospitality in the middle of summer.

Where and How to Attend Audio Advice Live 2026

Audio Advice Live 2026 will take place August 7-9, 2026 at the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel in downtown Raleigh, placing attendees within walking distance of restaurants, bars, museums, and shopping in the city’s revitalized downtown district.

Early bird tickets are already available, with several options depending on how much time you want to spend exploring the show’s listening rooms, seminars, and demonstrations.

Ticket Options (Early Bird Pricing):

• 3 Day All Access Pass: $45
• 1 Day Pass (Friday): $25
• 1 Day Pass (Saturday): $25
• Child / Student Pass (with valid ID): Free

The three day pass offers the best value, giving attendees full access to more than 60 listening rooms, home theater demonstrations, seminars, and live presentations from industry experts across the entire weekend.

Tickets can be purchased in advance through the event’s official website, and early registration is recommended as Audio Advice Live has grown rapidly and regularly attracts enthusiasts from across the South and Mid-Atlantic region.

The Bottom Line

If you’re serious about high performance audio, home theater, headphones, or vinyl, Audio Advice Live 2026 is one of the most accessible and hands on events in North America to experience it all in one place. The show runs August 7-9, 2026 at the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel in downtown Raleigh, where more than 60 listening rooms and seminars will showcase everything from attainable systems to ultra high end gear. Expect strong coverage from us on the show floor. We’ll be there listening, asking questions, and reporting on the best systems and surprises from one of the South’s fastest growing hi-fi events.

For more information: live.audioadvice.com

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In August 2017, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever gathered at Elon Musk’s self-described “haunted mansion,” a 47-acre, $23 million estate in Hillsborough, south of San Francisco, to discuss the future of OpenAI. Actor Amber Heard, Musk’s then-girlfriend, had served the group whiskey and then dashed off with a friend, Brockman, OpenAI’s cofounder and president, testified in federal court during the trial for Musk v. Altman on Tuesday.

Ahead of the meeting, Musk gifted Brockman and Sutskever, OpenAI’s cofounder and former chief scientist, new Tesla Model 3 cars. “It felt like he was buttering us up,” Brockman said on the stand. “He wanted us to feel indebted to him in some way.” Sutskever tried to reciprocate for the occasion. The amateur artist presented Musk with a painting of a Tesla. Musk and the other cofounders wanted to establish a for-profit arm to entice investors to give them billions of dollars to pay for compute. But Musk also wanted control of the company, and Sutskever and Brockman objected to granting the Tesla CEO what they believed would be a “dictatorship” over the future of AI development. They proposed having shared control.

After several minutes of deliberation, Musk rejected their offer. “He stood up and stormed around the table,” Brockman recalled. “I actually thought he was going to hit me, physically attack me.” Musk grabbed the painting, said he would cut off his funding of the nonprofit until Brockman and Sutskever quit, and left the room, according to Brockman’s testimony. But that night, Musk’s so-called chief of staff Shivon Zilis called Brockman and Sutskever “to say it’s not over,” Brockman testified. “There were discussions of futures that included us.”

The story of the heated negotiations emerged as Brockman wrapped up his testimony on Tuesday. To OpenAI, the events at the mansion are representative of repeated instances of erratic behavior by Musk that they believe undermine his arguments about the company. Musk contends his roughly $38 million in donations to OpenAI were abused by Brockman and others on the path to creating the $852 billion for-profit venture now known for services such as ChatGPT and Codex. Brockman, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and OpenAI deny any wrongdoing, and the jury in Musk v. Altman could begin deliberating on an advisory ruling as soon as next week.

After Tuesday’s testimony, William Savitt, an attorney for OpenAI, told reporters that what Brockman had learned in 2017 was how tough it can be to meet one’s heroes. Brockman admired and respected Musk’s business acumen, but his desire for control was absolute and concerning, Savitt said. Marc Toberoff, an attorney for Musk, told reporters that the true concern was Brockman’s motivations for sharing control, with his desire for wealth having faced scrutiny in court a day earlier.

For his part, Brockman offered another story on Tuesday to underscore why he thought Musk was not up to the task of controlling an AI company. Brockman recalled then-OpenAI researcher Alec Radford showing Musk an early version of an AI chatbot that didn’t generate responses that he liked. Musk “kept saying this system is so stupid, that a kid on the internet could do better,” Brockman said. Radford “was absolutely crushed” and “demoralized” to the point that he almost quit the AI research field altogether, Brockman said. Brockman and Sutskever “spent a lot of time” rebuilding his confidence. Musk’s inability to see the potential in the early technology—which eventually became the basis for ChatGPT—made him unfit to control OpenAI, in Brockman’s view. “You needed to dream a little bit,” Brockman said. And Musk hadn’t shown that he could.

Boardroom Fights

Brockman said Tuesday that he, Sutskever, and Altman considered voting Musk off the OpenAI nonprofit board as negotiations with him about a for-profit sibling company dragged on for months. They would meet again over whiskey at Musk’s mansion to discuss alternative funding options. There was agreement over what not to do, but little on what to do instead. But Brockman and Sutskever decided removing Musk felt “wrong,” Brockman testified. Eventually, Musk left on his own after deeming OpenAI was on a path of “certain failure,” according to an email he wrote in early 2018.

Zilis, then an adviser to both OpenAI and Musk, kept him informed about developments at the AI venture in the years to come. “She was proxy Elon in some ways,” Brockman said, referring to her as “a friend” who he had first met in 2012 or 2013.

Intel will arrive at Computex 2026 in Taipei on 2 June with something it has not had in a decade: a product in every computing category built on a single manufacturing story. Panther Lake, the laptop chip launched at CES in January, is expanding to handhelds with Arc G3 and Arc G3 Extreme processors designed for the gaming handheld market. Nova Lake, a 52-core desktop chip with a new socket and new CPU architecture, will be previewed for a second-half launch. Clearwater Forest, a 288-core server processor that shipped at MWC in March, rounds out the Xeon lineup for data centres and cloud inference. All of them are built on or designed around Intel 18A, the 1.8-nanometre process node that combines RibbonFET gate-all-around transistors with PowerVia backside power delivery and represents the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing capability produced entirely in the United States. CEO Lip-Bu Tan will deliver the keynote. The venue is 40 kilometres from TSMC’s headquarters. The message is not subtle.

The products

Panther Lake launched as Core Ultra Series 3 at CES in January and is already shipping in more than 200 laptop designs. The chip delivers 180 total platform TOPS, combining 120 TOPS from its Xe3 integrated GPU with 50 TOPS from the NPU 5 neural processing unit, and claims a 60 per cent improvement in multi-threaded performance over its predecessor at equivalent power. The Computex expansion brings Panther Lake to gaming handhelds through the Arc G3 platform: a 14-core design with two performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and four low-power cores paired with a 10 or 12-core Xe3 GPU in a configurable power envelope of 25 to 80 watts. MSI, OneXPlayer, GPD, and Acer are expected to showcase handheld devices running the Arc G3 chips at the event, with reports suggesting a Microsoft Xbox-branded handheld may also appear.

Nova Lake, branded Core Ultra Series 4, is Intel’s next desktop platform and will be previewed at Computex ahead of a late-2026 launch. The chip scales from 8 to 52 cores using new Coyote Cove performance cores and Arctic Wolf efficiency cores, introduces the LGA 1954 socket, and integrates Xe3 graphics, Thunderbolt 5, and Wi-Fi 7. The power range spans 35 to 175 watts, reflecting a design that covers both mainstream desktops and high-performance workstations. Nova Lake adopts what Intel calls a “big last level cache” architecture, a design approach inspired by AMD’s success with large L3 caches that prioritises keeping data close to the CPU cores. Intel’s first-quarter earnings revealed that AI-driven CPU demand is real: data centre and AI revenue grew 22 per cent year on year to 5.1 billion dollars as agentic AI workloads shift processing requirements back toward CPUs and away from the GPU-only model that defined the training era.

The server

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Clearwater Forest, formally launched at MWC in March as Xeon 6+, is Intel’s most architecturally ambitious server processor. It packs 288 Darkmont efficiency cores across 12 compute chiplets manufactured on 18A, assembled using Foveros Direct 3D stacking on base tiles built on Intel 3. The IPC uplift is 17 per cent over the prior generation, and the chip targets the cloud inference and dense computing workloads that are expanding as AI deployments move from training to production. The shift toward agentic AI is driving demand for inference compute across every major cloud provider: Meta has committed more than 140 billion dollars to chip procurement from Nvidia, AMD, and Amazon, and the inference workloads those chips serve increasingly require CPU resources for orchestration, memory management, and the real-time decision-making that autonomous AI agents demand.

Intel’s server story at Computex also includes updates on Crescent Island, its dedicated inference accelerator, and Jaguar Shores, a rack-scale computing platform designed for the AI data centre of the late 2020s. Neither product has been formally launched, but both are expected to receive architectural details at Tan’s keynote. The inference accelerator is Intel’s attempt to compete directly with Nvidia’s inference-optimised products rather than conceding the AI accelerator market entirely. Whether Intel can build a competitive inference chip while simultaneously ramping its foundry business and launching three client platforms is the operational question that Computex will not answer but cannot avoid raising.

The process

The thread connecting every product at Computex is 18A. Panther Lake is the first consumer chip built on the node. Clearwater Forest is the first server chip. The Arc G3 handheld processors are the first gaming-focused silicon. Nova Lake will be the first desktop chip, though reports indicate that more than 90 per cent of Nova Lake’s compute tiles will be manufactured by TSMC on its N2 process rather than on Intel’s own fabs, a concession to the reality that Intel’s foundry capacity is not yet sufficient to supply both internal demand and external customers simultaneously.

That concession matters because the 18A node is not just a manufacturing process. It is the product Intel is selling to Apple, Amazon, Musk’s Terafab, and every other company that has signed or is negotiating a foundry agreement. Intel recently hired Qualcomm veteran Alex Katouzian to lead a new Client Computing and Physical AI group, a signal that the company sees local AI inference, the kind of processing that runs on PCs, handhelds, and edge devices rather than in cloud data centres, as the next wave of chip demand. The Computex product lineup is the proof of concept: if 18A can produce competitive chips across laptops, handhelds, desktops, and servers, the foundry pitch to external customers becomes significantly more credible than a roadmap slide.

The market

GitHub paused new Copilot sign-ups after agentic AI workflows consumed more compute than users paid for, an early signal that the economics of agentic AI will push processing toward local hardware. If AI agents run continuously on cloud infrastructure, the costs scale linearly with usage and eventually become unsustainable at flat subscription prices. If those agents run locally, on a laptop with 180 TOPS of AI processing power or a desktop with 52 cores and a large cache, the economics shift from per-query cloud charges to a one-time hardware purchase. Intel’s bet is that the AI PC is not a marketing label but an architectural requirement: the agentic era needs local compute, and Intel’s chips are designed to provide it.

The competition is real. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite has established itself in the thin-and-light Windows market with superior power efficiency. AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 and 400 series compete directly with Panther Lake in laptops and with Arrow Lake Refresh on desktops. Apple’s M-series processors remain the benchmark for integrated performance in the consumer market. Nvidia’s server GPUs sell for a million dollars each in China despite export controls, reflecting a level of demand that Intel’s data centre products have never generated. Intel’s advantage at Computex is not that its chips are the best in any single category. It is that it has chips in every category, all manufactured on a process node that also serves as the foundation of a foundry business, and the foundry business is the reason Apple is in talks, Musk is building a 25 billion dollar fab, and the US government owns 10 per cent of the company.

The stakes

Computex has been Intel’s event for decades. The show takes place in Taipei, the heart of the global semiconductor supply chain, and Intel has traditionally used it to announce the products that define each generation of PC computing. The difference in 2026 is that Intel is no longer just a chip designer presenting products manufactured in its own fabs. It is a foundry operator competing with the host country’s most valuable company for the right to manufacture other people’s chips. Tan’s keynote will be watched not just for what Intel announces about its own products but for what those products reveal about 18A’s readiness to serve external foundry customers. Every Panther Lake laptop that ships without defects, every Clearwater Forest server that meets its performance claims, every Arc G3 handheld that runs within its thermal envelope is a data point for Apple, Amazon, and every other company evaluating whether to trust Intel with their silicon.

In 2016, Intel was the world’s largest semiconductor company by revenue. By 2024, it had fallen to eighth, behind Nvidia, TSMC, Samsung, Broadcom, Qualcomm, AMD, and Texas Instruments. Its manufacturing process had fallen two generations behind TSMC. Its CEO was forced out by a board that had lost confidence in the turnaround. The stock hit 18 dollars. Fourteen months later, Intel is at an all-time high, its foundry has anchor customers including Apple and Musk’s Terafab, and it is going to Computex with a product in every category for the first time in a decade. The turnaround is real, but it is also incomplete: the foundry loses 2.4 billion dollars per quarter, external revenue is 174 million dollars against TSMC’s 20 billion, and 90 per cent of the desktop chip Intel is previewing at Computex will be manufactured by the competitor it is trying to displace. The 18A node is Intel’s answer to all of those problems. Computex is where it starts proving the answer works.

The iPhone’s journey began in 2007 by changing the smartphone market forever, replacing physical keyboards with a 3.5-inch multi-touch display. Now, as the device moves toward its 20th anniversary, Apple may be preparing for another major design shift, a seamless, completely buttonless iPhone.

Is Apple planning its biggest iPhone redesign in years?

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has added fresh weight to the iPhone 20 redesign rumors. In the Q&A section of his Power On newsletter, Gurman said Apple’s 20th-anniversary iPhone overhaul is internally referred to by some as “Glasswing,” a name inspired by the glasswing butterfly and its transparent wings.

According to Gurman, the design includes glass edges that curve smoothly into the display on all four sides. Gurman also said Apple’s Liquid Glass interface is being shaped around this hardware direction, with the software designed to visually blend into the iPhone’s glass-heavy body. The idea appears to be a tighter connection between the device and the operating system.

Previous reporting has also pointed to Apple exploring a return to curved-screen styling. The design may aim for a seamless visual effect rather than bringing back the sharply sloped waterfall displays seen on some older Android phones.

Could the iPhone 18 start the shift earlier?

The buttonless part of the story comes from an earlier Weibo leak by Chinese tipster Instant Digital from October 2025. The tipster claimed Apple’s solid-state button plan had completed functional verification and was being prepared for mass production on the 2027 iPhone 20.

According to that leak, the power button, volume buttons, Action button, and Camera Control button could all move to solid-state controls with localized vibration feedback. That would allow the iPhone to simulate a physical click without using traditional moving buttons.

Instant Digital also claimed Apple may begin the transition earlier with the iPhone 18. The Camera Control button is said to get a simpler structure by removing the capacitive sensing layer and keeping pressure recognition.

Ming-Chi Kuo had previously reported that Apple was working on solid-state power and volume buttons for the iPhone 15 Pro. However, the feature was later shelved due to technical and manufacturing issues. If Apple has managed to fix those issues, the iPhone 20 might finally be the one to go fully buttonless.