Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kyle McDonald, a programmer and artist in Los Angeles who uses code, machine learning, computer vision, and surveillance tech to create projects that reveal how technology affects society. It has been edited for length and clarity.I created a website that tracks private jets and assigns their movements an “emergency level.” The underlying joke is: If something really bad is about to happen, maybe billionaires will know before the rest of us.The project came together after I saw a threat from President Donald Trump about Iran — that a “whole civilization” would die…

NEW YORK (AP) — Global conflicts from South Sudan’s political crisis to the United States’ recent war with Iran are putting more children at risk of suffering.One humanitarian duo wants to ensure conflict-stricken children get funding for an often-overlooked need: education. Under an agreement announced Wednesday, the LEGO Foundation committed $97 million to expand International Rescue Committee programs that use play to help millions of children learn and recover. “Children who are born in conflict have their childhood stolen from them,” IRC President David Miliband told The Associated Press. “But what’s remarkable about children is that if you give them…

Last week, after Google announced its huge overhaul to Search, I overheard a woman on the phone saying she was switching to DuckDuckGo because you can “opt out of using AI.” “Google just isn’t Google anymore,” she said. It seems that others had the same idea. At I/O, Google’s annual developer conference, the company said it would transform its search box into a conversational engine that expands for longer queries, anticipates user intent, and autocompletes searches. Rather than just returning a list of links, it will use AI Overviews to answer questions directly first. Google also unveiled a more seamless…

Whenever you browse the internet, accept cookies, or download an app, data brokers could be harvesting your personal information, such as your name, address, email, and phone number. Third parties can then use this data to send you spam emails, hit you with targeted ads, or pester you with telemarketing calls.While you can send requests to data brokers to remove your private information yourself, this takes a lot of time and effort. Luckily, thanks to Incogni, you don’t have to. Created by the team behind Surfshark, one of the best VPN services we’ve tested, this data removal service can handle everything…

Fragmented HR systems are a major cause of payroll errors, compliance risks, and poor operational efficiency in US companies.When employee data is spread across multiple, unconnected platforms, it leads to inaccurate data and inefficient, duplicated processes. This negatively impacts costs and productivity. Staff time is spent resolving errors and problems, which may incur penalties.Reliance on disconnected systems is costing companies millions of dollars. A nationwide survey by consulting firm EY shows that just one input error in a traditional payroll system costs an average of $291. The same research reveals that 20% of a company’s annual payroll contains errors.1Despite this,…

London Glorfield isn’t a Luddite — he just wants tech products to feel a little less soul-sucking.”Tech is a sea of sameness right now,” Glorfield, who goes by London Jackson professionally, told Business Insider in an interview. “It’s so boring.”Young people are hungry for retro tech, especially in the AI era. Analog has taken on a new meaning. It’s often not used literally, but instead as a blanket term for any tech that feels slower than what we’ve grown accustomed to. Digital point-and-shoot cameras? Analog. CD player? Analog. Wired headphones? Analog.”I call it dumb tech,” Jackson, a 28-year-old based in…

Popular AI gateway maker OpenRouter, founded in 2023, has raised a hefty $113 million Series B led by CapitalG, the growth venture fund of Google parent company Alphabet. While the startup didn’t disclose its new valuation, The New York Times reports that it landed at about $1.3 billion post-money. This is a hefty increase from the estimated $547 million post-money valuation it hit a year ago, per PitchBook, after raising $40 million in Series A funding in June 2025. That round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures, with participation from Sequoia. What a difference a year makes. Since…

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston invoked an old and reliable piece of advice to choose his successor.Houston told employees in a Tuesday memo that Dropbox named Ashraf Alkarmi as co-CEO and that Houston would be training him as his replacement. Following 19 years at the helm, Houston said he plans to step down as CEO after a transition period and become executive chairman.The Dropbox cofounder said in the memo that the company’s culture was in “good hands” with Alkarmi.”Early in running Dropbox, someone gave me a piece of advice: before you hire anyone, ask yourself if you’d feel good about your little brother or…

WASHINGTON (AP) — After 15 years at a convention center in suburban Maryland, the Scripps National Spelling Bee moved this year to a grand stage befitting the stakes of the competition: Constitution Hall, Washington’s largest dedicated concert venue.Not everyone at this week’s competition appreciates the change.“I feel like they should not have moved it. The old venue was better. Because it’s a bit of a hassle, getting on the bus and going there and then coming back,” said 14-year-old Yahya Mohammed, a three-time speller from Hoffman Estates, Illinois. “The old venue was more spacious, and it feels kind of isolated…

In the last few years, India’s online food delivery market has grown significantly, with both Zomato and Swiggy going public and the number of cloud kitchens increasing. Meanwhile, startups working on home services, such as on-demand household staffing platforms like Urban Company, Snabbit, and Pronto, have gained popularity. Silicon Valley-based startup Human Archive is tapping into this trend, partnering with these companies to have workers wear special caps with cameras to collect egocentric (first-person point of view) video data of everyday tasks that could be used to train robots. Without naming specific partners, the startup said it is working with…