Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

US tech companies are hoping soon to gain clearance for flying taxis that make short commercial hops like Manhattan to LaGuardia Airport. Eyeing defense dollars, they’re also equipping air taxies for the battlefield.Air taxis have wings and propellers, allowing them to take off and land like a helicopter and fly like an airplane. You can’t yet hail a flying taxi anywhere in the US, though those futuristic flights could be coming in the next couple of years.Pentagon leaders have shifted their focus to the tech industry, arguing that traditional defense contractors can’t deliver new weapons fast or cheaply enough to…

Adtech company Fluency has built a platform that helps brands and agencies automate their campaigns across Meta, TikTok, Google, and other platforms. Now, it aims to introduce AI agents to the mix.Large brands and agencies typically manage campaigns across multiple platforms and ad buying tools, known as demand-side platforms, each with separate logins and interfaces.Founded in 2017 in Burlington, Vermont, Fluency created what it describes as a digital advertising operating system. It connects to the various platforms’ application programming interfaces (APIs) and lets its customers manage their digital ads using a single workflow.”It takes a lot of people, and hours,…

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Authorities knocked on doors in search of video and sifted through snow and dumpsters for other evidence that might lead them to the Brown University gunman, whose face was covered or not visible in footage captured before and after the weekend attack that killed two students and wounded nine others.Officials on Monday released three new videos of the man they believe carried out Saturday’s attack that show him wearing a mask and a dark two-tone jacket. Although his face wasn’t visible, the footage from about two hours before the shooting provided the clearest images yet of…

A young Brooklyn man has been charged with stealing $15 million by impersonating a Coinbase customer care representative.In a criminal complaint, Ronald Spektor, 23, is accused of tricking some 100 victims from across the United States into turning over the passwords for their cryptocurrency accounts, under the guise that their assets were at risk.The “long term larceny scheme” began in April 2023 and continued until his arrest on December 4, the complaint alleges. Since then, Spektor has been held in Rikers Island, in lieu of bail set at $500,000 cash or $1 million bond.Spektor faces top charges of grand larceny…

Even three years after the generative AI boom started, most AI startups are still making money by selling to businesses, not individual consumers. Although consumers quickly adopted general-purpose LLMs like ChatGPT, most specialized consumer GenAI applications have yet to resonate. “A lot of early AI applications around video, audio, and photo were super cool,” said Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner at Goodwater Capital, onstage at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event in early December. “But then Sora and Nano Banana came out, and the Chinese open sourced their video models. And so, a lot of those opportunities disappeared.” Chien compares some of…

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The ongoing effort to find a man who walked onto Brown University ’s campus during a busy exam season and shot nearly a dozen students in a crowded lecture hall has raised questions about the school’s security systems and the urgency of the investigation itself.A day after Saturday’s mass shooting, officials said a person of interest taken into custody would be released without charges, leaving investigators with little actionable insight from the limited security video they had recovered and scrambling to develop new leads.Law enforcement officials were still doing the most basic investigative work two days…

The U.S. Capitol on Tuesday began displaying a statue of a teenaged Barbara Rose Johns as she protested poor conditions at her segregated Virginia high school, a pointed replacement for a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that was removed several years ago.An unveiling ceremony of the statue representing Virginia in the Capitol took place in Emancipation Hall, featuring Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s congressional delegation and Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger.Johnson said more than 200 members of Johns’ family were on hand, listening on as the ceremony included…

Your Uber spending is coming back to haunt you — for real.Just days after “Saturday Night Live” aired a satirical skit about an “Uber Eats wrapped” and the horrors of discovering how much you spent on it this year, Uber made the embarrassment real with a Spotify-style year-end recap.On Monday, the company launched a new year-in-review feature called “YOUBER,” which compiles users’ activity across both Uber and Uber Eats.It’s unclear if “SNL” knew about Uber’s plans before its spoof. It’s also unclear how long Uber had the recap in the works, or if it was influenced by the skit. Uber…

Chai Discovery, a biotech startup with backing from OpenAI, announced a $130 million Series B round at a $1.3 billion valuation on Monday. The round was led by General Catalyst and Oak HC/FT, the company said. Other participants include Menlo Ventures, OpenAI, Dimension, Thrive Capital, Neo, Yosemite venture fund, Lachy Groom, SV Angel, and new investors Glade Brook and Emerson Collective. The firm’s total funding now stands at over $225 million. The company is one in a growing industry that sees AI as a faster route toward drug development. In August, Menlo Ventures announced it was leading Chai’s $70 million…

Four of the nation’s top retail stores failed to promptly pull contaminated infant formula tied to a dangerous botulism outbreak from their shelves, federal health officials said in warning letters posted Monday.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent letters to leaders at Walmart, Target, Kroger and Albertsons, saying the companies continued to sell ByHeart infant formula for days or weeks, despite a Nov. 11 recall of all products in the outbreak that has sickened more than 50 babies in 19 states.“As a participant in the supply chain, your firm should take prompt and effective action when notified of a product…