Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
Prepaid phone plans can be a great cost-effective option for cellular connectivity. In exchange for upfront payments, they provide most people with all they need, like plenty of high-speed data, at significantly lower costs than major carriers’ postpaid plans.Currently, our top pick among the best prepaid phone plans is Mint Mobile’s 12-month unlimited plan with the carrier’s limited-time $120 discount. Those with more modest needs or seeking to pay as little as possible should check out Tello Mobile’s Build Your Own Plan, with the option to pay as little as $5/month.Our top picks for the best prepaid phone plansBest overall:…
Brett Adcock, co-founder and CEO of the humanoid robotics startup Figure AI, made a rare public appearance at the Bloomberg Tech conference on Thursday. Figure has recently been the subject of a couple news articles that questioned its progress with marquee customer BMW. Figure objected so strenuously to at least one of these reports that Adcock publicly threatened to sue the publication. When asked about the skepticism surrounding the BMW relationship and whether it is a pilot or has commercial value to the company, Adcock replied with an explanation of the technical benefit of having robots on a factory floor…
If you’ve been following Anthropic, you’ll know it’s been a busy year for the AI startup. Back in March, the company announced that it raised $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion valuation in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Since then, it’s launched a blog for its Claude models and, according to Bloomberg reporting, partnered with Apple to power a new “vibe-coding” software platform. Instead of our usual Friday news rundown, today’s episode of Equity brings you a conversation from this week’s TechCrunch Sessions: AI event in Berkeley. Our friend and co-host Max Zeff sat down with Jared Kaplan,…
(Adds omitted timeframe in paragraph 8)(Reuters) -The Texas health department reported no new cases of measles on Friday, the first time the state has not recorded an increase since the outbreak began in February.The state, which is the epicenter of the current measles outbreak, has a total of 742 confirmed cases as of Friday.The number of new cases continues to decrease, from an average of about 12 per day around the peak to fewer than one case per day recently, Chris Van Deusen, director of media relations at the Texas health department, told Reuters in an email.”The fact that (we)…
CALEDON, Ontario (AP) — Masters champion Rory McIlroy tumbled out of the RBC Canadian Open on Friday with his worst round in nearly a year, with Cameron Champ taking a two-stroke lead into the weekend in the final event before the U.S. Open.McIlroy shot an 8-over 78, making a mess of the fifth hole with a quadruple-bogey 8 in his highest score since also shooting 78 last year in the first round of the British Open. He had a double bogey on No. 11, four bogeys and two birdies.“Of course it concerns me,” McIlroy said. “You don’t want to shoot…
CINCINNATI (AP) — All-Star right-hander Corbin Burnes of the Arizona Diamondbacks is set to undergo Tommy John elbow surgery, ending his season early in the first year of a $210 million, six-year contract that’s the richest in team history.Manager Torey Lovullo said Friday the decision was made with “a lot of people weighing in.” Lovullo said the surgery probably would be scheduled for next week with Dr. Neal ElAttrache, the team physician of the Los Angeles Dodgers.The announcement came three days after the Diamondbacks put Burnes on the 15-day injured list with right elbow inflammation.The 30-year-old left his most recent…
EleutherAI, an AI research organization, has released what it claims is one of the largest collections of licensed and open-domain text for training AI models. The dataset, called the Common Pile v0.1, took around two years to complete in collaboration with AI startups Poolside, Hugging Face, and others, along with several academic institutions. Weighing in at 8 terabytes in size, the Common Pile v0.1 was used to train two new AI models from EleutherAI, Comma v0.1-1T and Comma v0.1-2T, that EleutherAI claims perform on par with models developed using unlicensed, copyrighted data. AI companies, including OpenAI, are embroiled in lawsuits…
CNN — History will be made Saturday. For the first time ever, a performance of a record-breaking Broadway production will broadcast and stream live on CNN and CNN International. Add to calendar: Apple / Outlook or Google The play, “Good Night, and Good Luck,” stars George Clooney as veteran CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow as he takes a stand against the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s. The story is based on the 2005 film of the same name. In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Clooney drew a through line from the era in which Murrow questioned Republican Senator…
Amazon’s retail business is locking down its hiring budget.According to an internal email, this major part of the company will keep a “flat headcount opex,” or operating expenses, this year compared to 2024. Headcount operating expense refers to employee salaries plus their stock-based compensation, the email noted.The update was shared earlier this year by a finance leader in Amazon’s retail unit. This executive explained that any increase in the hiring budget will be “scrutinized” and require “strong supporting reasons.” Business Insider obtained copy of the email.The retail business is also shifting from managing “opex targets versus headcount targets,” according to…
It’s getting clearer who the winners will be in key parts of the generative AI race, according to Elad Gil, a top startup investor.”In coding, it seems like it’s consolidated into 2 or 3 players,” he said recently on my favorite AI podcast, “No Priors.”He highlighted Cursor, Codium (now called Qodo), Cognition AI (the startup behind Devin), and Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot.A clear sign of progress in the tech industry is when a giant platform decides to use an outside service rather than its own product. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others have thousands of engineers who can whip up new tech…