Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

An 18-year-old who allegedly killed eight people in a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, Canada, reportedly used OpenAI’s ChatGPT in ways that alarmed the company’s staff. Jesse Van Rootselaar’s chats describing gun violence were flagged by tools that monitor the company’s LLM for misuse and banned in June 2025. Staff at the company debated whether or not to reach out to Canadian law enforcement over the behavior but ultimately did not, according to the Wall Street Journal. An OpenAI spokesperson said Van Rootselaar’s activity did not meet the criteria for reporting to law enforcement; the company reached out to Canadian…

Super Early Bird pricing for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ends February 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT. That gives you one week to secure the biggest savings of the year — up to $680 off individual passes and up to 30% off community passes. Register now to lock in at the lowest rate. From October 13-15 at Moscone West in San Francisco, Disrupt will bring together 10,000 founders, investors, and operators for three days engineered for results. What you gain at Disrupt Access to active investors and high-growth founders High-impact networking built to drive deals Tactical insights you can implement immediately Visibility into emerging trends before they scale…

Social media addiction has been compared to casinos, opioids and cigarettes.While there’s some debate among experts about the line between overuse and addiction, and whether social media can cause the latter, there is no doubt that many people feel like they can’t escape the pull of Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and other platforms.The companies that designed your favorite apps have an incentive to keep you glued to them so they can serve up ads that make them billions of dollars in revenue. Resisting the pull of the endless scroll, the dopamine hits from short-form videos and the ego boost and validation…

Travis Corbitt knew he wasn’t in the best shape, but he didn’t understand why he felt like he could never catch his breath. He had been a police officer for more than 40 years, but chasing down suspects and responding to emergencies was getting harder and harder.His doctor said he might have allergies or exercise-induced asthma. Corbitt wasn’t aware of any allergies, so that “didn’t really make sense,” he said. Inhalers didn’t help. Not knowing what was wrong became frustrating.”I don’t know how to describe it, but until you are struggling for every breath you draw, you don’t know what…

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent years campaigning against vaccines, but with the flu shot, he’s suggested it’s personal. Kennedy has linked his strained, raspy speech to the vaccine, despite several medical experts saying there is no scientific evidence to support that claim.Federal guidance revised under Kennedy last month, while the United States is experiencing a hard-hitting flu season, no longer recommends routine flu vaccines for children and adolescents. The day after he assumed office a year ago, he ordered the end of a government ad campaign encouraging flu vaccination.Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most…

The U.S. has officially logged 982 measles cases in 2026, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. It’s more than four times the number of cases as this time last year, when a large outbreak was just beginning in West Texas.Twenty-six states have reported cases so far this year. Large outbreaks continue to grow in Utah, Arizona and, most notably, South Carolina, where the virus has been spreading since the fall. As of Friday, the state had reported nearly 800 cases since January, bringing the outbreak’s total to 973.It’s the largest single measles outbreak the U.S. has seen…

And the award for Best Actor goes to… an AI model trained on Matthew McConaughey?The concept of AI actors usurping human actors may sound far-fetched now, but it’s a future that McConaughey — the real McConaughey — believes emerging talent should prepare for.”It’s not enough — it may be for you — but it’s not going to be enough to sit on the sidelines and make the moral plea that ‘no, this is wrong!'” McConaughey said during a conversation with Timothée Chalamet. “That’s not going to last. There’s too much money to be made, and it’s too productive. It’s here.”He…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brian Jenney, 42, who lives in California. The following has been edited for length and clarity.When I got into tech in my early 30s, I had no clue how crazy lucrative the industry was.I started as a web application developer in 2015, earning roughly $60,000 a year.Over the years, I became savvier at negotiating my salary, and by 2023, I was making over $250,000.I’ve earned more than I could have ever imagined, without working in Big Tech, where people often assume the big money is made. Every time Charissa publishes a…

Sarvam, an Indian AI startup focused on building models for local languages and users, on Friday launched its Indus chat app for web and mobile users, entering a fast-growing market dominated by global players including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The launch comes as India has become a key battleground for generative AI adoption. Recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said ChatGPT has more than 100 million weekly active users in India, while Anthropic said India accounts for 5.8% of total Claude usage, second only to the U.S. Indus serves as a chat interface for its newly announced Sarvam 105B model, the…

“Jersey Shore” star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi announced Friday that she had been diagnosed with cervical cancer.The 38-year-old reality star revealed in a TikTok video that her results at a post-op appointment for a cone biopsy — a procedure that removes a cone-shaped piece of cervical tissue to check for precancerous cells — showed a stage 1 cervical cancer called adenocarcinoma. “Obviously not the news that I was hoping for, but also not the worst news just because they caught it so early. Thank freaking God!” Polizzi said in the nearly eight-minute video.Prior to her diagnosis, Polizzi said she was “struggling…