Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

After years of delays and missed deadlines, Tesla’s full self-driving tech has finally launched in Europe — and owners are celebrating. Loading audio narration… Last week, the RDW, the Netherlands auto regulator, approved the driver-assist system that Tesla says allows its EVs to drive themselves almost anywhere under human supervision.It marked the culmination of a long campaign that saw Tesla navigate what Elon Musk described as a “layer cake of bureaucracy.” Until now, European owners have been stuck with a more limited version of Tesla’s driver-assist software that can’t handle intersections or change lanes on its own.For Tesla’s European fans,…

A new Kansas law will allow college students to sue their schools for free-speech violations. In Tennessee, a new law will encourage teachers and professors to include “the positive impacts of religion” in American history courses.The common factor: Both are being done in the name of Charlie Kirk.The laws are among the first of what could become multiple state tributes to the conservative activist who was killed while speaking at a Utah university last year. More than 60 Kirk-themed bills have been proposed in over 20 states seeking to promote his ideology, establish official days of remembrance or affix his…

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Mahnaz Ataei, a finance manager in Tehran, brings her 7-year-old to the office and oversees his online classes while trying to do her job.Schools have been closed across Iran since the United States and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28, with no word on when in-person instruction will resume. The fear of airstrikes has lifted since a fragile ceasefire went into effect, but life has not returned to normal.As with the COVID closures six years ago, it’s especially difficult for working parents with small children.“My productivity drops when I have to pay attention to both…

OpenAI lost three top executives on Friday. Loading audio narration… Kevin Weil, who headed OpenAI’s scientific research efforts after serving as chief product officer, posted on LinkedIn that his team, OpenAI for Science, is being decentralized into other research teams and that he is leaving the company.Bill Peebles, who headed OpenAI’s AI video app Sora, also announced his departure. Although Peebles didn’t explain why in his post, OpenAI shut down Sora last month due to cost and compute constraints.”I’m proud of all the sleepless nights before and after the launch this team endured in order to deploy the technology in…

At a trendy venue near the San Francisco pier, Sam Altman’s verification project World celebrated its next evolution and rapid expansion of its ambitions.  And it’s starting with Tinder. Tools for Humanity (TFH), the company behind the World project, announced Friday plans to integrate its verification tech into dating apps, event and concert ticketing systems, business organizations, email, and other arenas of public life. “The world is getting close to very powerful AI, and this is doing a lot of wonderful things,” said Altman, speaking before a packed crowd at The Midway. “We are also heading to a world now…

OpenAI is losing two of the architects of its most ambitious moonshots. Kevin Weil, who led the company’s science research initiative, and Bill Peebles, the researcher behind AI video tool Sora, both announced their departures on Friday. The exits come as OpenAI consolidates around enterprise AI and its forthcoming “superapp.” The departures follow OpenAI’s decision to cut back on “side quests,” including customer-facing bets like Sora and OpenAI for Science. Sora, which was losing an estimated $1 million per day in compute costs, was shut down last month. OpenAI for Science was the internal research group behind Prism, an AI-powered…

Anthropic says its new AI model, Opus 4.7, should feel “more intelligent, agentic, and precise.” Some users aren’t feeling the joy. Loading audio narration… The backlash to the new Claude model — a relatively rare occurrence for an AI product many view as the gold standard in AI — has gained traction on social media.Anthropic is coming off months of widespread public celebration. The technical chops of Claude Code and Claude Cowork have boosted the company’s image, and chatbot fans have long admired Claude’s writing abilities. After the company’s fight with the Department of Defense, Claude went No. 1 in…

OnlyFans is an internet business marvel: low costs, huge profits, nonstop growth. But every time it goes looking for mainstream capital, it runs into the same problem: Investors are scared of buying into a porn company. Loading audio narration… Our newest reminder of this tension comes from the Financial Times, which reports that OnlyFans’ parent company is close to an investment deal with Architect Capital that would value it north of $3 billion — down meaningfully from previous targets.It’s one of a series of data points about OnlyFans’ difficulty in attracting investors. In 2022, it took a run at going…

AI coding startup Cursor is nearing new funding in which the four-year-old company would raise at least $2 billion in fresh capital, according to four sources familiar with the matter. Returning investors Thrive and Andreessen Horowitz are expected to lead the financing at a $50 billion valuation, prior to the new capital injection, the people said. Battery Ventures, a new investor, may also participate in the financing, according to two sources. Strategic investor Nvidia is also expected to write a check, one person said. Although the round is already oversubscribed, the deal terms are not final and may still change.…

There’s an old saw in management: What you measure matters. And, typically, you get more of whatever you’re measuring. Software engineers have debated productivity metrics for decades, starting with lines of code. But as the new generation of AI coding agents delivers more code than ever, what their managers ought to be measuring is less clear. Enormous token budgets — essentially, the amount of AI processing power a developer is authorized to consume — have become a badge of honor among Silicon Valley developers, but that’s a very weird way to think about productivity. Measuring an input to the process…