Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Each day, PBS programming fills the airwaves of Alabama Public Television with shows such as “Sesame Street,” “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” “Antiques Roadshow” and “PBS Newshour.” Alabamians could lose access to those programs on state airwaves if the Alabama Educational Television Commission opts to become the first state network to sever ties with PBS.The Alabama commission last month discussed the possibility of dropping PBS and is expected to discuss the matter again its Nov. 18 meeting.The possibility comes after President Donald Trump and Congress in July withdrew funding for the nonprofit The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which…

A “black box” warning on a health product sounds pretty scary – maybe even more so when it’s suddenly being taken off the packaging.Americans were reminded of this type of public health messaging on Nov. 10, 2025, when the Food and Drug Administration announced it is removing the “black box” warning from hormone replacement therapy for menopause.But what are these warnings, anyway? What’s their history, and how do they affect a drug’s use?I am a clinical pharmacologist and pharmacist studying drug prescribing, safety and effectiveness for over 25 years.Black box warnings – or as the FDA officially calls them, boxed…

The online search funnel is shrinking, and for Google, it’s adapt or die.Generative AI means people are making longer, more specific queries when they search online. That’s taking them to their answer faster, and, when it comes to online shopping, it means they’re clicking “buy” faster, too.For Google, that’s potentially a problem (fewer clicks). It’s also a massive opportunity.This week, it shared some of the ways it’s adapting as generative AI upends traditional search. The first is shopping, which is a significant part of search advertising — Google’s core moneymaking business.Google is revamping how shopping works in AI Mode, its…

Google is rolling out a suite of AI shopping updates just ahead of the holiday season. The company on Thursday unveiled a host of new tools and features, including conversational shopping in Google Search, new shopping features within its Gemini app, agentic checkout, and even an AI tool that can call local stores to find out if a product you want is available. The company believes the additions will help improve the online shopping experience, which can still today involve a lot of drudgery, explained Vidhya Srinivasan, VP and GM of ads and commerce at Google, in a press briefing…

Developer AI coding tool Cursor continues to gobble up venture capital as its valuation keeps climbing. On Thursday, Cursor announced a $2.3 billion funding round that valued the company at $29.3 billion, as originally reported by the Wall Street Journal. This round more than doubles the company’s previous valuation of $9.9 billion, which it achieved in its $900 million Series C round in June. This most recent fundraise was led by co-led by Accel, an existing investor, and Coatue, which is new to the cap table. Strategic investors including Nvidia (an enterprise customer) and Google (an AI model supplier) also…

Developer AI coding tool Cursor continues to gobble up venture capital as its valuation keeps climbing. On Thursday, Cursor announced a $2.3 billion funding round that valued the company at $29.3 billion, as originally reported by the Wall Street Journal. This round more than doubles the company’s previous valuation of $9.9 billion, which it achieved in its $900 million Series C round in June. This most recent fundraise was led by co-led by Accel, an existing investor, and Coatue, which is new to the cap table. Strategic investors, including Nvidia (an enterprise customer) and Google (an AI model supplier), also…

Instagram isn’t just competing with TikTok’s algorithm and content. It’s also trying to claim a stake in the creative process.In April, Instagram unveiled its stand-alone video editing app Edits — directly competing with CapCut, owned by TikTok parent ByteDance.”Our vision for it is really to be an end-to-end creative studio,” Brett Westervelt, Instagram’s VP of design, told Business Insider.Six months in, Instagram is sharing some data around Edits’ momentum.About half of the people “watching reels on Instagram” are seeing content that was made using the Edits app, Westervelt said. And in the third quarter, the weekly number of people using…

Microsoft is taking a page from OpenAI’s playbook, literally. Bloomberg first reported that the tech giant plans to leverage its partner’s custom chip development to bolster its own struggling semiconductor efforts, a move that looks increasingly pragmatic given Microsoft’s lackluster performance compared to rivals like Google and Amazon. The arrangement is straightforward: OpenAI is designing AI chips with Broadcom, and Microsoft gets full access to the innovations. “As they innovate even at the system level, we get access to all of it,” CEO Satya Nadella explained on a newly released interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, describing plans to adopt OpenAI’s…

GenAI has become a key part of coding workflows, but most companies struggle to track its use, let alone its return on investment. Israeli startup Milestone hopes to help with a platform designed to correlate AI tool usage with engineering metrics, including code quality. The catch is that these companies have to give Milestone access to their codebases, a bet that investors initially questioned, CEO and co-founder Liad Elidan told TechCrunch. But with customers including Kayak, Monday, and Sapiens, the startup has now raised a $10 million seed funding round led by San Francisco-based venture firm Heavybit and Israeli fund…

Tune into an appearance from Palantir CEO Alex Karp, and it’s likely you’ll hear an obscure word: Ontology.The term is a favorite among Karp and his Palantir deputies. They drop it on earnings calls and in financial filings. They’ve said it’s behind the rise of Palantir’s stock, which is up over 140% year-to-date.Ontology was even at the center of a spat earlier this week between the CEO and famed investor Michael Burry, who bet against Palantir.”The idea that chips and ontology is what you want to short is batshit crazy,” Karp said on TV, after filings revealed Burry’s hedge fund…