Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Many tech executives still preach the importance of learning to code — but the CEO of software company Autodesk says there’s another skill that’s more important.”If the coding models are going to be doing the code for you, what’s more important is that you understand there’s this whole notion of systems-level and interdisciplinary thinking,” Andrew Anagnost told Business Insider.As someone who followed a non-traditional educational path before earning a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering and computer science, Anagnost is a big advocate for interdisciplinary thought and exploration.While he understands the value of diving deeply into a topic and gaining expertise in…

It was an awkward blooper that may have been a blessing in disguise. When Tesla unveiled the Cybertruck in 2019, the company’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, stood next to CEO Elon Musk and threw a metal ball at the car’s windows to prove their durability.The only problem? The Cybertruck’s windows shattered.In a recent interview, von Holzhausen spoke about the story behind the viral incident.He’d done a test run on the armored glass windows “multiple times right before we went live on the stage,” he said in an interview with Tesla Club Austria published Saturday.”I think it was just one…

When Parthi Duraisamy was a consultant at McKinsey’s Dubai office, he discovered that the American Express cards his company relied on for corporate expenses were rarely accepted in the Middle East. This forced Duraisamy to cover significant travel expenses out of pocket and file endless expense reports. “It was a constant pain,” Duraisamy explained on the call. “I’d spend my weekends uploading receipts, reconciling every expense manually.” Now, Alaan, the company he launched with fellow McKinsey alumnus Karun Kurien, is the Middle East’s leading spend management platform. It just announced that it raised $48 million in Series A funding led…

Two people have died and at least 58 people have been diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease in a cluster that broke out in the Harlem area of New York City last week, officials said on Monday.The New York City Health Department had reported on Thursday that one person had died and 22 people were sick in the cluster.MORE: 1 dead and at least 22 sick from Legionnaires’ disease cluster in New York City“People living or working in the area with flu-like symptoms, such as cough, fever, chills, muscle aches, or difficulty breathing should contact a health care provider immediately,” the department…

EAGAN, Minn. (AP) — Harrison Smith, just like anyone approaching middle age, has learned to accept the realities of getting older. The joints, for one, don’t quite move as effortlessly as they once did.So that’s where the 14th-year free safety for the Minnesota Vikings has aimed his recent training regimens, customizing resistance exercises to simulate the stress that NFL games can place on critical areas of the body. Reaching at full extension to make a tackle at full speed puts the arm muscles and tendons in a vulnerable position. The more fluidly the elbow can bend, the better.“All the strength…

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — For nearly four decades, the World Health Organization and partners have been trying to rid the world of polio, a paralytic disease that has existed since prehistoric times. While cases have dropped more than 99%, polio remains entrenched in parts of Afghanistanand Pakistan.In its quest to eliminate the virus, WHO and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative have been derailed by mismanagement and what insiders describe as blind allegiance to an outdated strategy and a problematic oral vaccine, according to workers, polio experts and internal materials obtained by the Associated Press.Officials tout the successes…

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — For the past decade, Sughra Ayaz has traveled door to door in southeastern Pakistan, pleading with parents to allow children to be vaccinated against polio as part of a global campaign to wipe out the paralytic disease. She hears their demands and fears. Some are practical – families need basics like food and water more than vaccines. Others are simply unfounded – the oral doses are meant to sterilize their kids.Amid rampant misinformation and immense pressure for the campaign to succeed, Ayaz said, some managers have instructed workers to falsely mark children as immunized. And the…

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee is gearing up for an execution on Tuesday that experts say would likely mark the first time a man has been put to death with a working defibrillator in his chest.Gov. Bill Lee declined Monday to grant a reprieve, clearing the way for Byron Black’s execution after a legal battle and ongoing uncertainty about whether the implantable cardioverter-defibrillator will shock his heart when the lethal drug takes effect.The nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center said it’s unaware of any other cases in which a person on death row made similar claims to Black’s about defibrillators or…

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — In Kabul’s alleys and courtyards, boys in white caps and tunics recite verses from the Quran in a growing network of madrassas, the religious schools increasingly filling the gaps in Afghanistan’s fractured education system.While public schools still operate, their reach has been weakened by limited resources, teacher shortages and decades of conflict. In response, many families now turn to madrassas, which offer structured learning rooted in Islamic teachings. Enrollment is booming. One school north of Kabul has grown from 35 students to more than 160 in five years.Most madrassas focus on Quranic memorization, jurisprudence and Arabic,…

A Palantir exec had some strong words for Large Language Models.The Denver-based AI software company reported its first-ever billion-dollar quarter in Monday’s Q2 earnings report, and the executives opened the investors call with comments on LLMs and how it plans to win the AI race.”LLMs, on their own, are at best a jagged intelligence divorced from even basic understanding,” Ryan Taylor, the company’s chief revenue officer and chief legal officer, told shareholders on the earnings call. “In one moment, they may appear to outperform humans in some problem-solving task, but in the next, they make catastrophic errors no human would…