Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Tutoring is one of the most effective tools for improving a child’s education, yet very few kids in the U.S. receive it. A 2023 survey of the nation’s largest school districts found that fewer than 10% of students received tutoring. One factor is that tutoring is too expensive for many families, often costing hundreds or thousands of dollars a month. Tim Novikoff, a former Google product manager and educator, wants to change that. His startup, Super Teacher, offers an AI-powered tutoring app for elementary school students that costs $15 a month, or $10 with an annual plan. Super Teacher aims…

(Corrects headline and paragraph 2 to clarify that overall survival analysis is continuing, not that the treatment failed to extend overall survival)(Reuters) -Merck and Eisai’s experimental combination treatment helped extend the time certain patients with advanced kidney cell cancer lived without their disease progressing, according to interim data from a late-stage study.The combination of Merck’s Welireg and Eisai’s Lenvima has not yet shown statistical significance in extending overall survival – the trial’s other primary endpoint – when compared to Exelixis’ approved treatment Cabometyx, the drugmakers said on Tuesday.Overall survival, which measures the length of time patients live after diagnosis or…

Canada is on track to lose its measles elimination status as an outbreak that began a year ago continues to spread.The United States could follow in the coming months.The Canadian outbreak began in October 2024 in New Brunswick, a province on the country’s eastern seaboard. As of Tuesday, more than 5,000 cases had been reported. Two babies have died.Canada eliminated measles in 1998. The U.S. followed two years later, in 2000.There are multiple criteria for losing an official measles elimination status, including the declines in vaccination rates observed in both countries.But the most significant factor is having ongoing measles transmission…

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration is moving to overrule any state laws that may protect consumers’ credit reports from medical debt and other debt issues.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has drafted what’s known as an interpretative rule related to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, interpreting the law in a way that says the FCRA should preempt any state laws or regulations when it comes to how debt should be reported to the credit bureaus like Experian, Equifax and Trans Union.This repeals previous Biden-era rules and regulations that allowed states to implement their own credit reporting bans. More than…

On Tuesday morning, some Amazon employees learned they had lost their jobs — through text messages.Amazon sent two text messages early Tuesday to inform employees their jobs had been eliminated, according to people familiar with the matter and screenshots reviewed by Business Insider.One message urged affected employees to check their personal or work email before coming to the office. A second text directed them to call a help desk if they hadn’t received “an email message about your role.”The texts, sent shortly after email notifications, were intended to prevent laid-off employees from arriving at the office and discovering their badges…

When I covered Google a decade ago, the company’s driverless car project was a hot topic. Every time the press gathered, project lead Chris Urmson stepped up to answer questions.Most of us journalists were desperately trying to learn the key technical details on the fly, so we often resorted to the same question that we hoped would yield an interesting story: “When will cars be fully autonomous?”Urmson always did his best to answer, without committing Google to unrealistic timelines. After a while, he lost his patience or grew bored. One day in 2015, he made a joke, or rather, a…

As more Americans turn to weight loss drugs, the U.S. adult obesity rate is declining, according to new survey data from Gallup.The data published Tuesday showed the obesity rate among participants has gradually declined to 37% in 2025 after previously hitting a record high of 39.9% in 2022. Results were based on data from three nationally representative surveys of 16,946 U.S. adults interviewed by web in the first three quarters of 2025.”This is a statistically meaningful decrease representing an estimated 7.6 million fewer obese adults compared with three years ago,” the report noted.In the report, obesity was defined using the…

When a federal judge decided to allow a sprawling class-action lawsuit against OpenAI to move forward, he read some “Game of Thrones” fan fiction.In a court ruling Monday, US District Judge Sidney Stein said a ChatGPT-generated idea for a book in the still-unfinished “A Song of Ice and Fire” series by George R.R. Martin could have violated the author’s copyright.”A reasonable jury could find that the allegedly infringing outputs are substantially similar to plaintiffs’ works,” the judge said in the 18-page Manhattan federal court ruling. The decision was made in a case that consolidated several class-action lawsuits from authors —…

OpenAI says its deep learning systems are rapidly advancing, with models increasingly able to solve complex tasks faster. So fast, in fact, that internally, OpenAI is tracking toward achieving an intern-level research assistant by September 2026 and a fully automated “legitimate AI researcher” by 2028, CEO Sam Altman said during a livestream Tuesday.   The ambitious timeline comes on the same day OpenAI finalized its transition to a public benefit corporation structure, moving away from its non-profit roots. This restructuring releases OpenAI from limitations tied to its non-profit charter, while also opening up new opportunities for capital raising.  Jakub Pachocki,…

Owen Sakawa, the founder of Elloe AI, wants his platform to be the “immune system for AI” and the “antivirus for any AI agent.”   The idea, Sakawa said in an interview days before the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, where Elloe AI is a Top 20 finalist in the Startup Battlefield competition, is to add a layer to companies’ LLMs that checks for bias, hallucinations, errors, compliance issues, misinformation, and unsafe outputs.   “AI is evolving at a very fast pace, and it’s moving this fast without guard rails, without safety nets, without mechanism to prevent it from ever going off…