Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

CARLETON, Mich. (AP) — Chase Harvell rolled into the Airport High School parking lot Friday in southeastern Michigan one final time before next week’s graduation.Harvell was driving a family vehicle, just as he had countless times before.This set of wheels, though, topped out at around 25 mph (40 kph).Harvell and dozens of his fellow seniors eschewed their cars and trucks and arrived in tractors, ATVs, golf carts and more.It was all part of Tractor Day, a celebration that dates back to the 1980s at the school in Carleton, Michigan, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) south of Detroit. Most students arrived…

Microsoft is hitting Ctrl+Alt+Delete on its leadership structure.As Big Tech’s elder statesman reinvents itself for AI, it’s forcing a rethink of how its most powerful executives are organized. BI’s Ashley Stewart has a full breakdown of how CEO Satya Nadella is reshaping Microsoft’s upper echelons, the people who are rising and falling, and the impact he hopes it’ll have throughout the org.The changes include dismantling Microsoft’s senior leadership team, which comprises executives reporting directly to Nadella.Microsoft is also preparing for the departure of Yusuf Mehdi, a 35-year company veteran and its commercial chief marketing officer, according to an internal memo…

CEO Satya Nadella has dismantled the senior leadership structure that has run Microsoft for decades, creating a new inner circle, Business Insider has learned.It’s the latest step in his plan to reboot Microsoft for the AI era and transform the 220,000-person behemoth into a company capable of competing with its smaller, faster, technically sophisticated rivals.People who work closely with the CEO and internal documents revealed to Business Insider who’s in, who’s out, and how the company’s power structure is changing.”We quietly retired what’s known as the SLT,” said one of the people who works closely with Nadella, referring to the…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 41-year-old business owner Gracella Brown and her 20-year-old daughter, Gracelle Jones, from Glendale, Arizona. It’s been edited for length and clarity. Glendale Community College apologized for disappointment caused by “a technical issue. You can read the college’s full statement at the bottom of the essay.Gracella Brown: I attended Glendale Community College for my Associate of Arts, starting in 2016, and I graduated in 2019. They didn’t have the ceremony until 2020, and since COVID was going on, they weren’t able to do it.It was a really big deal for me, since…

Jonathan Butler owned 105 website domains that were collecting dust. The problem was, he didn’t know how to code them to life.The 56-year-old entrepreneur is a Brooklyn fixture. He cofounded the food festival Smorgasburg and the resale market Brooklyn Flea. In 2004, he made one of New York’s early blogs, Brownstoner.com.When he was building Brownstoner, he had help. He was “looking over the shoulder” of an employee programming the site’s back-end, he said. With no coding knowledge, he couldn’t do anything with all those web domains himself. Butler vibe coded a website for his REM cover band and a vintage…

Japan’s SoftBank Group is the latest major Asian stock to surge on investor enthusiasm around artificial intelligence.This week, shares of the technology-focused investment firm surged nearly 30% in two straight trading days as investors piled in.The stock was turbocharged by reports that OpenAI and SB Energy — SoftBank’s energy and data-center subsidiary — are moving toward initial public offerings.SoftBank’s share price surged nearly 20% on Thursday and closed 12% higher on Friday. The stock is up over 50% this year.Investors have also piled into SoftBank because of its majority stake in Arm Holdings, whose shares have surged alongside the AI…

The wait is over.On Wednesday, SpaceX filed its S-1, giving a rare look at the finances and far-reaching ambitions behind Elon Musk’s rocket company.The prospectus showed a business gearing up for what could be the biggest public offering in history, while also laying out a vision that expands from Starlink and AI compute to space data centers, asteroid mining, and a Mars colony.The S-1 filing also pulled back the curtain on the money moving through Musk’s sprawling business empire, the role early investors and Wall Street banks could play in the listing, and how retail traders may be able to…

Yusuf Mehdi, a 35-year Microsoft veteran who has been its commercial chief marketing officer since 2023, will leave the company after the next fiscal year, according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider.”After 35 extraordinary years at Microsoft – years filled with adventure, challenge, reinvention, and innovation – I’ve decided the time is right to begin planning for my next adventure,” Mehdi wrote in the memo. “I will work through the next fiscal year to help reimagine Windows for the agentic era, grow Microsoft 365 services, and bring our One Copilot vision to life.”Mehdi leads product marketing for Microsoft…

Watch out, Suno. Spotify on Thursday announced it has partnered with Universal Music Group (UMG) to allow fans to use generative AI technology to create covers and remixes of their favorite songs. The tool will launch as a paid add-on available only to Spotify’s Premium subscribers and will offer a revenue share with participating artists for the AI-generated music based on their work. The company did not share pricing or a launch date for the new tool, only that the two companies had come to a licensing agreement. However, Spotify had teased its plans last year, noting that it was…

Google is about to look really different, and if you’re not a fan of the AI Overviews feature, then you’re not going to like what’s coming. At the Google I/O 2026 keynote this week, the company announced that it is overhauling Search to embrace a conversational, AI-driven approach, even inviting users to enlist AI agents to automatically notify them if, for example, their favorite band were to go on tour. “This is the biggest upgrade to our iconic search box since its debut over 25 years ago,” said Elizabeth Reid, leader of the Search organization at Google. Now, when you…