Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Snowflake plans to acquire Observe, an observability platform that has been built on Snowflake’s databases from day one. (Observability platforms help companies monitor their software systems and data for performance issues and bugs.) The cloud data company announced it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Observe, subject to regulatory approval, on January 8. Snowflake will integrate Observe’s product into its own to give customers a unified place to collect and store their telemetry data (logs, metrics, and traces from software systems) and better spot potential bugs and issues in their data and software. Observe was founded in 2017 by Jacob…

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Austin Peay State University has reinstated a professor who was fired for his social media post after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The Tennessee school is also paying the teacher $500,000 in the settlement.Austin Peay spokesperson Brian Dunn said Darren Michael returned to his position as a tenured faculty member at the public university in Clarksville effective Dec. 30. A copy of the settlement agreement obtained through a public records request includes a $500,000 payment and reimbursement of counseling, as reported earlier this week by WKRN-TV.Tennessee’s governor, attorney general and comptroller signed a document…

Kim Farrell, TikTok’s global head of creators, is leaving the company, Business Insider has learned.Farrell joined TikTok nearly six years ago, starting on the company’s Latin America marketing team before shifting to its operations division and later taking over as global creator lead in late 2023. In December, she helped organize TikTok’s first awards show for creators at the Hollywood Palladium theater in Los Angeles. Prior to TikTok, Farrell worked in marketing at Booking.com and Google.Her departure was announced internally on Wednesday, as the company informed staff that it was reorganizing its content division, which includes employees who work with…

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said she wants to “get Americans away from the highly processed packaged foods,” saying those foods are driving the obesity epidemic in America, following the release on Wednesday of new federal dietary guidelines.”This is a whole flipping of the narrative,” Rollins said in an exclusive interview on “Good Morning America” that aired on Thursday. “It’s a flipping of what we’ve known over the last couple of decades.”Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the new federal dietary guidelines on Wednesday, encouraging Americans to limit highly processed food and reduce refined carbohydrates.ABC…

Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI will go to trial after a U.S. judge said there is evidence to support the billionaire’s case.  Musk sued OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, alleging they betrayed their original contractual agreements by pursuing profits instead of the nonprofit’s founding mission to develop AI that benefits humanity.  Musk, who has launched his own for-profit company xAI, was an early financial backer and co-founder of OpenAI. He resigned from the board in 2018 after his bid to take over as CEO was rejected by the other co-founders, who put Altman up…

NEW YORK (AP) — The crisp crinkle of fallen leaves beneath your feet. The swish and trickle of water moving through a stream. A breath of crisp, fresh air.Spending time in nature can be invigorating or produce feelings of peace and calm. But many professions allow little time or access to the outdoors during the workday.After a youth spent climbing trees and playing soccer, Anna Rose Smith found it difficult when her first job as a psychotherapist in Utah required working in a windowless office.So she spent her lunch breaks outside, walking to nearby fountains or gardens. She picked up…

Health and medicine is more than just biological – societal forces can get under your skin and cause illness. Medical sociologists like me study these forces by treating society itself as our laboratory. Health and illness are our experiments in uncovering meaning, power and inequality, and how it affects all parts of a person’s life.For example, why do low-income communities continue to have higher death rates, despite improved social and environmental conditions across society? Foundational research in medical sociology reveals that access to resources like money, knowledge, power and social networks strongly affects a person’s health. Medical sociologists have shown…

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday proposed paring down the responsibilities of California’s elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction and shifting more power to the State Board of Education.“California can no longer postpone reforms that have been recommended regularly for a century,” Newsom said, referring to numerous reports over the years that have suggested streamlining the state’s system of K-12 school governance. “These critical reforms will bring greater accountability, clarity and coherence to how we serve our students and schools,” Newsom said.The move is intended to simplify California’s convoluted education governance, which policy analysts have said can be inefficient, redundant and…

Investment in consumer tech startups has been in a downturn since 2022, as a turbulent macroeconomic climate and rising inflation have made VCs skittish about consumer spending power. For the past couple of years, most AI investment has focused on winning over enterprise customers, who provide fat checks, multi-year contracts, and quick paths to scale.   But one VC sees the consumer sector gearing up for a comeback in 2026.  “This is gonna be the year of the consumer,” said Vanessa Larco, partner at the venture firm Premise and a former partner at NEA, on this week’s episode of the Equity…

2026-01-08T14:40:14.966Z Share Copy link Email Facebook WhatsApp X LinkedIn Bluesky Threads lighning bolt icon An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt. Impact Link Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. Angi, the company formerly known as Angie’s List, is cutting 350 jobs, it said on Wednesday. Angi cited AI efficiency among its reasons for the layoffs. Economists and tech experts have predicted that more companies will replace humans with AI in 2026. The popular contractor listing site once known…