Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

NEW YORK (AP) — Book bans and attempted bans remain at record highs, according to the American Library Association. And efforts to have titles removed have never been more coordinated or politicized.The ALA on Monday issued its annual list of the books most challenged at the country’s libraries, part of the association’s State of America’s Libraries Report. Patricia McCormick’s “Sold,” a 2006 novel about sex trafficking in India, topped the list for 2025. Others targeted include Stephen Chbosky’s high school novel “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir “Gender Queer” and Sarah J. Maas’ romantasy favorite “Empire…

Robotaxis officially hit the streets of Dallas last week. Their arrival gave one enthusiastic passenger a glimpse of both the promise — and the limitations — of autonomous driving. Loading audio narration… Chris Ramos, a 34-year-old accounts payable supervisor, told Business Insider that he rushed to try Tesla’s service on Saturday after seeing posts online saying it was live. The launch came after Tesla began a similar driverless service in Austin in January, about 10 months after Waymo launched its service there.Early reactions to Tesla’s robotaxis have been mixed, with some riders praising the smooth, futuristic experience while others report glitches, confusion…

OpenAI has been all over the news recently, whether that news is about acquisitions, competition with Anthropic, or bigger debates about AI’s impact on society. On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I did our best to round up all the latest OpenAI news. While the company’s latest acquisitions seem to be classic acqui-hires, Sean suggested they also address “two big existential problems that OpenAI is trying to solve right now.” First, with the team behind personal finance startup Hiro, the company may be hoping to  come up with a product that has “more…

In a recent episode of “No Priors” — the excellent podcast co-hosted by AI investors Sarah Guo and Elad Gil — Gil made a point about exit timing that’s undoubtedly familiar to founders who’ve spent time with him, but seems particularly useful in this moment of go-go dealmaking. For most companies, Gil said, there’s roughly a 12-month period where the business is at its peak value, “and then it crashes out” and the window closes. The companies that capture generational returns are often the ones where someone spies that moment instead of assuming the good times will get even better.…

Surveillance and analytics company Palantir recently posted what it called a “brief” 22-point summary of CEO Alexander Karp’s book “The Technological Republic.” Written by Karp and Palantir’s head of corporate affairs Nicholas Zamiska, “The Technological Republic” was published last year and described by its authors as “the beginnings of the articulation of the theory” behind Palantir’s work. (One critic said it was “not a book at all, but a piece of corporate sales material.”) The company’s ideological bent has come under more scrutiny since then, as tech industry figures have debated Palantir’s work with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and…

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, how AI is playing a part. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Uber seemed to be everywhere, all at once in the emerging autonomous vehicle technology sector. The Financial Times has now put a number on it. The FT calculated that Uber has committed more than $10 billion to buying autonomous vehicles and taking equity stakes in the companies developing the tech, according to public records…

Buying a pair of budget headphones doesn’t mean you have to put up with bad sound or stripped-down features. These days, the best budget headphones can get surprisingly close to what you’d hear from pricier models without draining your wallet. To help you find the right fit, our audio experts tested a wide range of options and narrowed things down to the four best cheap headphones you can get for under $100.If you’re after over-ear headphones, the Soundcore Life Q30 are our top pick. They cost around $80 and offer the most impressive active noise canceling (ANC) we’ve seen at…

Longevity secrets with Bryan JohnsonThirty seconds into my conversation with Bryan Johnson on Tuesday night, the longevity influencer suggested Business Insider was trying to kill the audience. Loading audio narration… We had an open bar in San Francisco’s Exploratorium for our first Long Play event, and booze is a big no-no if you want to live forever like him.”The idea that alcohol is a relaxant that makes your life better is a myth,” he said. The much healthier option would have been serving psychedelic mushrooms, he added. Stay tuned for our menu at our next Long Play event in October.Another…

Software engineers have a message for white-collar workers: Get ready. Loading audio narration… Since late last year, advances in tools like Claude Code and Codex have transformed how engineers do their jobs. While some are loving the new era of AI embedded in their workflows, others have experienced a sense of identity loss as they adapt to the new reality.On X last week, Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s cofounder and president, wrote that AI has has dramatically sped up software engineering, and it’s “on track to bring this same transformation to every other kind of work that people do with a computer.””More…

It seems unlikely that Silicon Valley, a place where “cracked” engineers brag about how many AI tokens they’re burning and how little sleep they get, was heavily influenced by a public high school journalism teacher rather than, say, a computer science instructor who moonlights as a drill sergeant. Loading audio narration… That’s the message behind a new documentary, “The Godmother of Silicon Valley,” which celebrates the impact of Esther Wojcicki, 85, known affectionately as “Woj” by the Palo Alto High School students who struggled to pronounce her last name.The documentary premiered on Thursday at the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco.…