Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Substitutes who watch from the locker room, abandoned practice sessions and sweat-soaked jerseys. A heat wave hitting a wide swath of the country is taking a toll on players at the FIFA Club World Cup.The grueling conditions could also be a preview of what’s to come next summer when the United States, Canada and Mexico host soccer’s premier event, the 2026 World Cup.“It’s impossible, it’s terribly hot. My toes were sore, even my toenails were hurting, I couldn’t stop or start. In the end, it’s incredible, but since it’s the same for everyone, there’s no excuse,” Atlético’s Marcos Llorente said…

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The $1.5 billion sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves from Glen Taylor to an investment group led by e-commerce entrepreneur Marc Lore and former baseball star Alex Rodriguez gained NBA approval on Tuesday, finalizing a complex and contentious process more than four years after the deal was reached.The ownership transfer that Taylor tried to stop last year received an unanimous vote from the league’s board of governors that comprises the 30 team owners. The deal, which is expected to close this week nearly 51 months and more than 1,500 days after the initial agreement, includes the four-time WNBA…

Startups developing voice AI technology and applications are having their moment. Model builders like ElevenLabs and Cartesia have raised millions of dollars in the last few months. Applications such as AI-powered notetaker Granola and meeting tools Read AI and Fireflies AI have also received investor attention and backing. Continuing the trend, dictation app Wispr Flow announced today that it is raising $30 million in Series A funding from Menlo Ventures with participation from NEA, 8VC, Opal CEO Kenneth Schlenker, Pinterest founder Evan Sharp, Carta CEO Henry Ward, and Lindy CEO Flo Crivelli. Menlo Ventures’ Matt Kraning, who also backed the company as an angel investor,…

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A West Virginia woman filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking a religious exemption from required school vaccinations for her young child.Miranda Guzman alleges that the state’s vaccine mandate violates a 2023 West Virginia law that stipulates the government would not be able to “substantially burden” someone’s constitutional right to freedom of religion unless doing so “is essential to further a compelling governmental interest.” Guzman sued the state and local boards of education and the county schools superintendent in Raleigh County Circuit Court.West Virginia was among just a handful of states that granted only medical exemptions from school…

Federal judge William Alsup ruled that it was legal for Anthropic to train its AI models on published books without the authors’ permission. This marks the first time that the courts have given credence to AI companies’ claim that fair use doctrine can absolve AI companies from fault when they use copyrighted materials to train LLMs. This decision comes as a blow to authors, artists, and publishers who have brought dozens of lawsuits against companies like OpenAI, Meta, Midjourney, Google, and more. While the ruling is not a guarantee that other judges will follow Judge Alsup’s lead, it lays the…

AI has venture capitalists back on the prowl for new consumer social startups.”We’re on the brink of another big consumer wave,” Vanessa Larco, a former NEA partner, told Business Insider. She’s launching a new consumer-focused venture firm called Premise.Larco’s eyeing consumer-focused AI startups like Midjourney (a generative AI image maker), Tolan (an AI companion platform), and Sitch (an AI-powered dating app). Larco said she is not an investor in Midjourney or Tolan, but is an angel investor in Sitch.For some consumer startup founders, AI feels like a must-have in any pitch meeting.”There’s been no real crazy big raises in many…

Google DeepMind on Tuesday released a new language model called Gemini Robotics On-Device that can run tasks locally on robots without requiring an internet connection. Building on the company’s previous Gemini Robotics model that was released in March, Gemini Robotics On-Device can control a robot’s movements. Developers can control and fine-tune the model to suit various needs using natural language prompts. In benchmarks, Google claims the model performs at a level close to the cloud-based Gemini Robotics model. The company says it outperforms other on-device models in general benchmarks, though it didn’t name those models. Image Credits: Google In a…

Gamers can’t get enough of the Switch 2 — and demand for the new console has boosted Nintendo stock too.Shares in the Japanese company hit new highs this month and have gained 39% this year, adding $39 billion to its market cap that stands at about $115 billion.The Switch 2 was released at the start of June and has been a huge hit with gamers. Nintento said earlier this month it had sold 3.5 million consoles in the first four days — the fastest-selling system it’s ever released.US retailers have kept running out of stock, making it hard to nab. Walmart…

When Eventual founders Sammy Sidhu and Jay Chia were working as software engineers at Lyft’s autonomous vehicle program, they witnessed a brewing data infrastructure problem — and one that would only become larger with the rise of AI. Self-driving cars produce a ton of unstructured data from 3D scans and photos to text and audio. There wasn’t a tool for Lyft engineers that could understand and process all of those different types of data at the same time — and all in one place. This left engineers to piece together open source tools in a lengthy process with reliability issues.…

For the second consecutive season the Las Vegas Aces have gotten off to a slow start.The team snapped a three-game losing streak Sunday with a victory over Indiana. Las Vegas sits at 6-7, a rare time they are under .500 since the team came to the Nevada city in 2018. The victory over Caitlin Clark and the Fever was one of their best efforts of the season. (It also was ESPN’s third most-watched WNBA regular-season game, averaging 1.7 million viewers.)Coach Becky Hammon is hoping for more consistency moving forward.“It’s hard to build trust when you’re not consistent. Every day. You…