Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Marc Palet, 26, a Singapore-based venture capitalist at OMVC. The following has been edited for length and clarity.I was first exposed to venture capital while running an e-commerce fashion business in college back home in Barcelona. During a study abroad program in Hong Kong, I did a ton of networking and came across a VC firm investing in fintech, blockchain, and AI — all the things I liked. I ended up staying with them after graduation and spent three years in Hong Kong before moving to Singapore to lead the firm’s…

Airbnb helped solve one of the more annoying aspects of staying in a rental home, and it looks like it could be paying off.CEO Brian Chesky said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call Thursday that one of the most popular new features offered as part of the app’s push into experiences and services was one that he did not expect: luggage storage.”What a sleeper hit,” Chesky said when an analyst asked which of the newer services were most popular.Chesky said he was giving a keynote speech where he was talking up a bunch of AI features, and that the mention…

Meta must pay a total of $942 million to address harm caused to children on its platforms, a New Mexico judge ruled Thursday.A jury in March found Meta liable for failing to protect kids and approved a $375 million fine. New Mexico state Judge Bryan Biedscheid issued a ruling Thursday ordering the company to pay an additional $567 million and to make changes to its platforms to make them safer for kids. The judge said the money was to be put into an abatement fund, with most of it, $420 million, to go toward treatment services.Among the changes, Meta must strengthen…

NONTHABURI, Thailand (AP) — A student shot several people at a high school outside Bangkok on Friday morning, killing at least five and wounding several others, according to authorities, who said the gunman also appeared to have separately killed his two grandparents. The shooter then took his own life, officials said. Five school staff members, including teachers and administrators, died in the shooting around 10 a.m. at Debsirin Nonthaburi School in Nonthaburi province northwest of Bangkok, Deputy Interior Minister Polapee Suwunchwee said at the scene.The shooter also killed his two grandparents at home prior to the school shooting, Polapee said.Prime…

More details continue to trickle out about OpenAI’s mysterious new hardware device — described previously as an AI-fueled smart speaker that will be the “physical manifestation” of ChatGPT. Bloomberg now reports that the device will be “donut-shaped,” designed thusly to allow users to carry it around their home and place it in different locations, like a bedside table or a kitchen counter. It will be constructed from “high-quality metal,” have a “premium look,” and (in a detail that mystifies) will have distinct “moving parts,” sources told Bloomberg. It also could be slightly more expensive than your average smart speaker, perhaps…

Legendary Googler Jeff Dean is starting his own AI company.On Wednesday, Dean, Google’s chief scientist, announced that he and three other colleagues were leaving to start Discovery Loop, an AI startup focused on AI applications in science and engineering.Here’s everything we know about the new ventureWhat is Discovery Loop?Discovery Loop is a public benefit corporation “whose mission is to automate machine learning, science, and engineering to accelerate discoveries and progress,” Dean wrote on X.The loop part of the name comes from the company’s goal of automating the process by which scientists and engineers propose an experiment, implement and run it,…

A new documentary about Elon Musk is set to hit theaters this October, and the world’s richest man still isn’t thrilled about it.”It’s a hit piece,” Musk wrote on X on Thursday. “Gibney is incapable of anything else.””MUSK” is the work of Emmy and Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, who’s made a name for himself by chronicling the lives of the rich and powerful. His films include “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” which details the fall of Enron, “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” a look into the world of Julian Assange, and “The Inventor: Out…

Elon Musk is calling it the “most valuable building on Earth by far.”SpaceX on Thursday released several renderings — complete with panoramas and wide angles — of Terafab, the 100-million-square-foot semiconductor factory it’s building in rural Texas.The imaginings, which could change, feature a futuristic, Star Wars-like roadway attached to what appears to be the factory, which itself is split into four massive, rectangular-shaped buildings.In a press release, SpaceX said the chips the factory plans to produce will be used in space-based data centers and robotaxis.”Terafab will be epic in both its mission and in its sheer size, designed to build…

The savings claimed by the erstwhile Department of Government Efficiency don’t add up, a government watchdog said Thursday.In a new report, the Government Accountability Office, an independent congressional watchdog, said it audited the savings DOGE published on its “Wall of Receipts,” an online database showing how much money DOGE says it saved.The “Wall of Receipts” says DOGE saved an estimated $110 billion across the federal government by slashing contracts, leases, and grants.The Government Accountability Office, however, found that some of those savings estimates were “incorrect or lack supporting evidence.” It said, for instance, that it found more than 2,500 contracts…

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — The Justice Department on Thursday accused Duke University’s law school of unlawfully considering race in admissions in the latest Trump administration action against higher education institutions. In a findings letter to the school, the department said that while administrators paid lip service to being race-neutral in admissions, they used other factors as stand-ins for race, including personal essays and whether someone was a first-generation college student.The Durham, North Carolina, school said in an emailed statement it was reviewing the letter and is committed to following the law “in a manner that is consistent with our academic…