Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
AI lets anyone create videos, but many AI video creation tools lack support for audio. Mirelo is building AI that adds soundtracks to match the video’s action. Earlier this year, the Berlin-based startup released Mirelo SFX v1.5, an AI model that interprets videos to add synced sound effects (SFX). This attracted attention from VCs gearing up for a generative AI revolution in games. The two-year-old German startup has raised a $41 million seed round led by Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, TechCrunch learned exclusively. This new capital will help Mirelo compete more effectively in its emerging category. While it was…
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A group of students and professors at public universities across Alabama are asking an appeals court to halt a state law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in public schools and prohibits the endorsement of what Republican lawmakers dubbed “divisive concepts” related to race and gender.The Alabama measure, which took effect in October 2024, is part of a wave of proposals from Republican lawmakers across the country taking aim at DEI programs on college campuses.The state law prohibits public schools and universities from using state funds for any programs or curriculum that endorse “divisive concepts”…
LONDON (AP) — British pop star Cliff Richard said Monday he has been given the all-clear after treatment for prostate cancer.The 85-year-old singer joined calls for Britain to introduce a national screening program for the disease.Richard told “Good Morning Britain” that he was diagnosed a year ago after a health check for his insurance before a tour to Australia and New Zealand.He said “the good fortune was that it was not very old, and the other thing is that it has not metastasized.”Richard said the treatment was successful, but “I don’t know whether it’s going to come back.”He said it…
Kira West has many aspirations. Two of the American’s long-held dreams: to live abroad and to have a child outside the U.S. In January, she and her husband realized the first of those dreams when they immigrated to London. And, two months ago, West’s second dream came true: Her son was born in a National Health Service (NHS) hospital — the public health care system in the U.K. “We didn’t come here necessarily to do that, but I’m very grateful it worked out that way,” West tells Yahoo.She’s now eight weeks into the 52-week maternity leave she intends to take.…
When CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned Meta employees in January to “buckle up” for an “intense” year, he meant it.Determined to dominate the next era of AI, Meta has spent the past year in blitz mode. Zuckerberg has overhauled divisions, reallocated resources to new products, and poured billions into the AI arms race with OpenAI, Google, and others. Zuckerberg’s push came with a marked shift in leadership tone as well, including his public celebration of what he described as more “masculine energy.”Along the way, the company has trimmed its metaverse ambitions, raised performance expectations, and cut thousands of jobs, all while…
NFL Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton started buying up shares of Apple a decade ago — and he doesn’t plan on selling them any time soon, he told Business Insider.”The Apple stock never gets sold,” Tarkenton said in a recent interview.Tarkenton said he “sleeps well at night” knowing that, regardless of what happens with his companies, he always has his backstop of Apple stock, of which he owns hundreds of thousands of shares, according to records viewed by Business Insider.”I first met Steve Jobs when he was out of Apple and building Pixar, but I really started buying their stock…
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Police renewed their search Monday for the gunman who killed two Brown University students and wounded nine others, a day after they released a person of interest after determining the evidence pointed “in a different direction.”Officials announced the man’s release at news conference late Sunday, marking a setback in the investigation of Saturday’s attack on the Ivy League school’s campus and adding to mounting questions about the attack and investigation, including a lack of video evidence and whether the focus on the person of interest might have given the killer more time to escape justice. Providence…
Dec 15 (Reuters) – Shares of French pharmaceutical group Sanofi fell 4% on Monday after it flagged another delay to a U.S. regulatory decision for its experimental multiple sclerosis drug and disappointing results from a late-stage study.Shares initially fell 5% to the bottom of the SBF 120 index of Paris’ most traded stocks before paring losses.Sanofi said that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decision on its tolebrutinib drug to treat non-relapsing secondary progressive multiple sclerosis will likely be delayed until the first quarter of 2026.It is the second delay to a decision that was initially expected in September before…
Sriraam Raja, the founding engineer at the software company Decode, has been using generative AI to write code for two years. He says he can get projects done about twice as fast when he uses a chatbot to code with intention. Then one day, he fired off directions, and as he sat there while the bot’s wheels turned, he realized he could have actively written what he was aimlessly waiting for the bot to do. “I was giving away a bit of my agency, and so I made a decision to be very conscious,” he tells me.Raja has become “very…
TOKYO (AP) — I speak decent Spanish, picked up working several decades ago as a news and sports reporter in Spain, Mexico and Argentina.Now I report from Tokyo. After seven years, I still can’t grasp Japanese. My weekly language classes have taught me humility more than anything else.Ayaka Ono, my current Japanese teacher, estimates she’s tutored about 600 students over 15 years. They’ve been mostly between 20 and 50. I’m more than a decade beyond her eldest. “I find older students take tiny, tiny steps and then they fall back,” Ono-san — “san” is an honorific in Japanese to show…