Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
Google’s next big AI rollout is imminent. It could cement a turnaround that’s been three years in the making.Gemini 3.0, the company’s next large language model, is expected to drop very soon. Company employees are teasing it. CEO Sundar Pichai has said it will be out by the end of the year. Brace for impact.Anticipation has reached fever pitch on X and in various Discord channels, where AI truthers are convinced Gemini 3 is already out in the wild. Google has a history of testing its models semi-secretly, so this might not be a total conspiracy.But it’s not just them.…
A judge said Friday that he planned to approve a deal for OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family who own the company to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids, allowing money to start flowing to victims as soon as next spring.U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Sean Lane said he would spell out his reasoning in a hearing next week.Here’s what to know.The Sackler family members will pay billions and can’t put their names on any more museumsMembers of the Sackler family have been cast as villains in an overdose epidemic that has been linked…
After a year of frenzied dealmaking and rumors of an upcoming IPO, the financial scrutiny into OpenAI is intensifying. Leaked documents obtained by tech blogger Ed Zitron provide more of a glimpse into OpenAI’s financials — specifically its revenue and compute costs over the past couple of years. Zitron reported this week that in 2024, Microsoft received $493.8 million in revenue share payments from OpenAI. In the first three quarters of 2025, that number jumped to $865.8 million, according to documents he viewed. OpenAI reportedly shares 20% of its revenue with Microsoft as part of a previous deal where the…
A Washington resident has been hospitalized with a different strain of bird flu than those seen in past cases, state health officials announced Friday.The person was infected with a bird flu called H5N5. State and federal health officials say it appears to be the first known human infection with the H5N5 bird flu virus.The individual has a mixed backyard flock that was exposed to wild birds, making either the domestic birds or the wild ones the most likely source of infection, the Washington State Department of Health said. Public health officials are continuing to investigate.It is the nation’s first human…
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Rayann Martin sat in a classroom hundreds of miles from her devastated Alaska Native village and held up 10 fingers when the teacher asked the pupils how old they were.“Ten — how do you say 10 in Yup’ik?” the teacher asked.“Qula!” the students answered in unison.Martin and her family were among hundreds of people airlifted to Anchorage, the state’s largest city, after the remnants of Typhoon Halong inundated their small coastal villages along the Bering Sea last month, dislodging dozens of homes and floating them away — many with people inside. The floods left nearly 700…
NEW YORK (AP) — A Washington state resident has bird flu, and it’s a different type than what was seen in previous infections, state health officials said Friday.It is the nation’s first human case of bird flu since February. The older adult with underlying health conditions remains hospitalized.State health officials had announced the preliminary bird flu diagnosis on Thursday. On Friday, they said it had been confirmed.The person was infected with a bird flu called H5N5, state officials said. State and federal health officials said it appears to be the first known human infection with the H5N5 bird flu virus.That…
Andy Konwinski is concerned that the U.S. is losing its dominance in AI research to China, calling the shift an “existential” threat to democracy. Konwinski is a Databricks co-founder and the co-founder of the AI research and venture capital firm Laude. “If you talk to PhD students at Berkeley and Stanford in AI right now, they’ll tell you that they’ve read twice as many interesting AI ideas in the last year that were from Chinese companies than American companies,” Konwinski said onstage at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit this week. In addition to investing through Laude, the venture fund…
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…
NEW YORK (AP) — Researchers have reported what they believe is the first documented death from a meat allergy that can be triggered by tick bites.A 47-year-old New Jersey man died last year from alpha-gal syndrome, which in 2011 was first linked to bites from the Lone Star tick.More than 100,000 people in the U.S. have become allergic to red meat since 2010 because of the syndrome, according to one estimate.Some outside experts said it appears to be the first documented case of someone suffering a deadly alpha-gal reaction shortly after eating meat.It’s possible other deaths have happened but were…
Fitbit’s Charge series has long been the Goldilocks of fitness trackers — not quite a smartwatch, but far more capable than a basic step counter. With the Charge 6 (released in 2023), Fitbit packed basic smarts into a just-big-enough package, bringing features like built-in GPS, Google Wallet, and on-wrist music control alongside its best-in-class heart rate and sleep tracking accuracy.Since the Charge 6 is still Fitbit’s best-selling device, and priced well at $160, I wanted to see if the iconic tracker really lives up to the hype and remains worth the money in 2025.Over the course of four weeks, I…