Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Amazon is bringing its new AI-powered conversational assistant, Alexa+, to the U.K., the first country to get the AI assistant outside of North America. The company is currently letting users in the U.K. try out Alexa+ for free via an early access program. Users who buy the new Amazon Echo will receive an invite for the early access program, and the company says it plans to enable Alexa+ for “hundreds of thousands” of customers in the coming weeks. Once the early access program ends, Prime subscribers will get to use Alexa+ for free, and non-Prime users will need to pay…

Uber is striking robotaxi deals left and right, and Rivian is the latest automaker to join its roster. Loading audio narration… The two companies announced a deal on Thursday that would see Uber buy 10,000 fully autonomous Rivian robotaxis and invest up to $1.25 billion in the Tesla rival through to 2031.The fleet of autonomous R2 electric robotaxis would enter commercial service in San Francisco and Miami in 2028 before scaling to 25 US cities by 2031. The two companies said Uber would have the option to purchase up to 40,000 more Rivian robotaxis in 2030.The partnership comes as both…

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s richest man, Michael Bambang Hartono, who helped turn the Djarum cigarette company into one of the country’s largest business empires and later became a controlling shareholder of Bank Central Asia, Indonesia’s biggest private lender, died Thursday. He was 86.Hartono died at a hospital in Singapore on Thursday afternoon, the Djarum Group said in a statement.“With deep sorrow, the extended family of PT Djarum announces the passing of one of our company’s leaders, Michael Bambang Hartono,” the statement said. “We extend our gratitude for his dedication and service.”The family has not revealed the cause of his…

Doctor ordered modified bed rest, work from homeA jury in Ohio said a firm must pay $22.5 million after an employee who was having complications with her pregnancy was not allowed to work from home − despite her doctors’ orders – and gave birth prematurely to a baby who died.The Cincinnati-area Hamilton County jury of five women and three men found that Total Quality Logistics was negligent for the 2021 death of Magnolia Walsh. She was delivered after 20 weeks and died after only a few hours of life.Total Quality Logistics’ headquarters in Union Township.The jury’s verdict was announced March…

Are you an entrepreneur? Miro may want to hire you. Loading audio narration… In the last two and a half years, CEO Andrey Khusid said that the company, which makes a visual collaboration tool, has made a “big shift” in its hiring strategy.To get ahead in the AI era, “we decided to add more entrepreneurs,” Khusid told Business Insider.The CEO said that when he speaks about entrepreneurs, he’s not referring to people with side hustles or solo projects. He’s referring to founders with a focus on a specific area.Khusid estimated that in the past two and a half years, the…

When Jessica Chamberlain went to sign up for health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for 2026, she not prepared for the sticker shock.Last year, Chamberlain was paying $59.67 in monthly premiums. This year, she would be paying nearly $100.The 43-year-old mother of two from Illinois said she was floored to see her monthly premiums were nearly doubling.1.4 million fewer people enrolled in ACA plans as premiums spike, tax credits expire”I can’t afford that as a single mom with two kids,” she told ABC News.After carefully weighing her options, Chamberlain decide to forego health insurance and is currently…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ganesh Karthik Sankar, a 29-year-old UX designer at Google who previously worked at Amazon as a product designer. He lives in Seattle. The following has been edited for length and clarity.During my last job search, I had the opportunity to interview with all five MAANG companies — Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google.By April 2025, I’d accepted an offer from Amazon and moved to Seattle. I was genuinely excited about the role — especially the opportunity to work on projects at a much larger scale. The compensation was also a significant…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Akshat Prakash, the 27-year-old CTO of Camb.ai, based in Mountain View and Dubai. It’s been edited for length and clarity.I was born in a small village near New Delhi into a family of doctors who prioritized education. My father and I traveled to many different places, even when I was young.We moved from India to Ireland when I was in the second grade, and five years later, we moved back to India. I came to the US in 2016 for my undergraduate degree.10 years later, I split my time between California…

Tooth decay can begin very early in a child’s life. If five states ban fluoride in drinking water, the costs to Medicaid for a significant increase in kids with cavities could top $40 million within three years, a new analysis finds.CareQuest Institute for Oral Health, a nonprofit which advocates for fluoridation, used Medicaid claims data and survey responses to predict the outcomes if the five states — Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri and Oklahoma — stopped adding fluoride to water systems. Florida has already banned it; the other states have legislation in the works to ban it or make it optional.Within…

With private company defaults running at upwards of 9.2% — the highest rate in years — VC firm Lux Capital recently advised companies relying on AI to get their compute capacity commitments confirmed in writing. With financial instability rippling through the AI supply chain, Lux warned, a handshake agreement isn’t enough. But there’s another option entirely, which is to stop relying on external compute infrastructure altogether. Smaller AI models that run directly on a user’s own device — no data center, no cloud provider, no counterparty risk — are getting good enough to be worth considering. And Multiverse Computing is…