Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
When I picked up my new Tesla Model 3 Performance in December, it came with a free trial of the company’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software.I originally made the purchase to enjoy driving a fast sports car. But I’ve also been fascinated by the promise of autonomous vehicles ever since I experienced Google’s early driverless technology as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal over a decade ago.So, for the past five months, I’ve been using FSD (in “Chill” mode only) to see what it can and can’t do.I still drive the car. Legally, functionally, and by necessity. Tesla calls this…
At TechCrunch Sessions: AI, the spotlight is on the future of artificial intelligence and the startups shaping it. This high-energy event brings together founders, investors, and technologists to explore how AI is transforming industries — from the pitch deck to full-scale deployment. We’re proud to spotlight our partners — not just for their support, but also for the expertise they bring to the stage. Their sessions offer a front-row view into the latest developments in AI and are a must-attend for anyone looking to stay ahead in this fast-evolving space. Catch “Your Next Co-Founder Will Be AI” on the main…
At Microsoft’s Build developer conference last week, the company’s head of AI security accidentally leaked details of its partnership with Walmart.The leak happened when employees protesting Microsoft’s selling products and services to the Israeli military interrupted a presentation at the conference. The executive was streaming and switched over to a Teams message saying Walmart was ready to “rock and roll” on Microsoft’s Entra Web and AI Gateway services.Walmart and Microsoft have for years boasted of a partnership, but the companies don’t disclose much about the relationship.A separate leaked document viewed by Business Insider shows just how big of a customer…
AI dev platform Hugging Face continued its push into robotics on Thursday with the release of two new humanoid robots. The company announced a pair of open source robots, HopeJR and Reachy Mini. HopeJR is a full-size humanoid robot that has 66 actuated degrees of freedom, or 66 independent movements, including the ability to walk and move its arms. Reachy Mini is a desktop unit that can move its head, talk, listen, and be used to test AI apps. Hugging Face doesn’t have an exact timeline for shipping these robots. The company’s co-founder and CEO, Clem Delangue, told TechCrunch over…
Earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a video posted on X that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer be recommending COVID-19 vaccines for “healthy children and pregnant people.”In the video, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said there is no evidence that healthy children “need” the vaccine. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya also appeared in the video.Public health experts said they were surprised by the way the decision was announced.MORE: Why are more than 300 people in the US still dying from COVID every…
Black Forest Labs, the AI startup whose models once powered the image generation features of X’s Grok chatbot, on Thursday released a new suite of image-generating models — some of which can both create and edit pics. The most capable of the models in the new family, called Flux.1 Kontext, can be prompted with text and, optionally, a reference image to create new images, writes Black Forest Labs in a blog post. “The Flux.1 Kontext models deliver state-of-the-art image generation results with strong prompt following, photorealistic rendering, and competitive typography — all at inference speeds up to 8x faster than…
Delaware’s attorney general is hiring an investment bank to advise on OpenAI’s for-profit conversion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The independent evaluation could prolong the transition, or gum up OpenAI’s plans even further. OpenAI’s conversion will help it attract new investment and eventually go public, but first, the startup needs to secure approvals from state regulators. Although OpenAI and Microsoft have hired their own investment banks to advise on the deal, Delaware’s attorney general is now seeking an independent evaluation of the equity that OpenAI’s nonprofit will receive. Regulators seem to be zeroing in on a key factor…
Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine gunning for Google, on Thursday released Perplexity Labs, a tool for subscribers to Perplexity’s $20-per-month Pro plan that can craft reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and more. Perplexity Labs is available on the web, iOS, and Android, and coming soon to Perplexity’s apps for Mac and Windows. “Perplexity Labs can help you complete a variety of work and personal projects,” Perplexity explains in a blog post. “Labs is designed to invest more time — 10 minutes or longer — and leverage additional tools [to accomplish tasks], such as advanced file generation and mini-app creation.” Labs, which arrives the…
DeepSeek’s updated R1 reasoning AI model might be getting the bulk of the AI community’s attention this week. But the Chinese AI lab also released a smaller, “distilled” version of its new R1, DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B, that DeepSeek claims beats comparably sized models on certain benchmarks. The smaller updated R1, which was built using the Qwen3-8B model Alibaba launched in May as a foundation, performs better than Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash on AIME 2025, a collection of challenging math questions. DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B also nearly matches Microsoft’s recently released Phi 4 reasoning plus model on another math skills test, HMMT. So-called distilled models like…
When my employer switched HSA providers in 2025, I attempted to combine my accounts.I ultimately abandoned the complex process, but not without a major takeaway: Pay attention to fees.A certified financial planner weighed in on the process and offered advice for avoiding fees.This year, my employer switched HSA providers, leaving me with two different vendors: Ameriflex and Flores.HSA stands for health savings account, and its primary function is to save for health costs. However, as I’ve learned through my reporting, fiscally savvy individuals also like to use it as an investment tool. I decided to follow their lead last year…