Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Classes were canceled or moved online this week in more than half of the departments at Mexico’s National Autonomous University over security concerns following the recent killing of a student at a university feeder school and a spate of threats.The rector of the country’s leading university committed Tuesday to strengthening security measures and bolstering emotional support available to students.The school has experienced cases of gender-based violence over the years, and is now investigating threats made against several female professors, in addition to last week’s killing of a 16-year-old student at the Sciences and Humanities School South…
Periodic Labs came out of stealth on Tuesday with a war chest of $300 million as a seed round, backed by a tech industry who’s who: Andreessen Horowitz, DST, Nvidia, Accel, Elad Gil, Jeff Dean, Eric Schmidt, and Jeff Bezos. Periodic Labs was founded by Ekin Dogus Cubuk and Liam Fedus. Cubuk led the materials and chemistry team at Google Brain and DeepMind, where one of his projects was, for instance, an AI tool called GNoME. That tool discovered over 2 million new crystals in 2023, materials that could one day be used to power new generations of technology, researchers…
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration said Tuesday that the state of Minnesota and its governing body for high school sports are violating a key federal law against sex discrimination by allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls sports.The ruling came from the civil rights offices at the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services. The agencies said the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League are violating Title IX “by allowing males to compete in female sports and occupy female intimate facilities.”The agencies said they found that the league…
With fall, and by extension, respiratory illness season, underway, COVID-19 cases have continued to fluctuate nationwide.Some regions of the United States are experiencing “very high” and “high” COVID-19 viral activity, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), prompting states to take their own actions to address cases amid federal turmoil around vaccines. Meanwhile, one strain, Stratus, continues to dominate all others in the U.S., accounting for an even higher percentage of cases than the previous month.While the CDC has slowed its pace in reporting certain COVID-19 data, such as variant prevalence, it continues to track cases, hospitalizations and…
On Tuesday, OpenAI announced the release of Sora 2, an audio and video generator to succeed last year’s Sora. Along with the model, the company also launched a linked social app called Sora, where users can generate videos of themselves and their friends to share on a TikTok-style algorithmic feed. OpenAI’s work on a new social platform was previously reported by Wired. While we haven’t been able to test the invite-only app and Sora 2 model ourselves yet, OpenAI has shared impressive examples. In particular, Sora 2 is better at following the laws of physics, making the videos more realistic.…
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The University of South Florida in Tampa on Tuesday named longtime academic Moez Limayem as the sole finalist to be its next president, the latest university in the Sunshine State to announce only one contender in the search for its new leader. Unlike other candidates nominated to lead Florida’s public universities in recent months, Limayem has not served as a Republican elected official. He is currently the president of the University of North Florida in Jacksonville and previously served as the dean of USF’s college of business for a decade.It’s not publicly known who the other…
Spotify made the rare move of naming two CEOs to share its top job. Netflix may have the playbook for making it a success.Founder Daniel Ek said Tuesday that he’s stepping down as CEO of Spotify and into an executive chairman role. Co-presidents Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström are set to take his place as co-CEOs in 2026, reporting to Ek.Dual executives aren’t the norm, but there are prominent examples of companies that have adopted the model. In 2023, for example, Netflix named Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos co-CEOs, replacing cofounder and former CEO Reed Hastings. Online eyewear retailer Warby…
What happens when your first 10 hires aren’t people at all? At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27–29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, we’re digging into the new wave of startups replacing or augmenting early employees with AI agents. Think outbound sales, billing, and customer support — automated from day one. This panel, hosted on the Builders Stage, features a mix of technical founders and seasoned operators who are actually doing it, debating where the line between human and machine should be drawn — and how far is too far. Meet the speakers Caleb Peffer, founder and CEO of Firecrawl,…
The Hillshire Brands Company has announced a voluntary recall of 58 million pounds of corn dogs and breakfast-on-a-stick products due to potential extraneous material contamination.According to an announcement from the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service over the weekend, the recalled products may contain pieces of wood “embedded in the batter.”Tyson Foods, the parent company of Hillshire said in a statement Saturday that the recall specifically includes select State Fair Corn Dogs on a Stick and Jimmy Dean Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick products.The company said “a limited number of products” were impacted, and that it initiated…
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership with Apple for its generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, the release of GPT-4o with voice capabilities, and the highly-anticipated launch of its text-to-video model Sora. OpenAI also faced its share of internal drama, including the notable exits of high-level execs like co-founder and longtime chief…