Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Microsoft’s chief commercial officer Judson Althoff said during a presentation this week that AI tools are boosting productivity across sales, customer service, and software engineering, Bloomberg reports. Althoff noted AI has been so useful that Microsoft was able to save more than $500 million last year in its call center alone.  The internal remarks come a week after Microsoft laid off more than 9,000 workers, the company’s third round of layoffs this year that put the total number of affected employees somewhere around 15,000.  For employees who lost their jobs while working at a company that is reporting impressive cost-savings…

Fungal infections are getting harder to treat as they grow more resistant to available drugs, according to research published Wednesday in The Lancet Microbe.The study focused on infections caused by Aspergillus fumigatus, a fungus that is ubiquitous in soil and decaying matter around the world. Aspergillus spores are inhaled all the time, usually without causing any problems. But in people who are immunocompromised or who have underlying lung conditions, Aspergillus can be dangerous.The fungus is one of the World Health Organization’s top concerns on its list of priority fungi, which notes that death rates for people with drug-resistant Aspergillus infections…

PHOENIX (AP) — The Phoenix Suns have signed star guard Devin Booker to a two-year, $145 million maximum contract extension through the 2029-30 season, two people with direct knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press.The people spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been announced.The 28-year-old Booker has been one of the NBA’s best shooting guards, earning four All-Star appearances in 10 NBA seasons. The two-time all-NBA player has averaged 24.4 points since Phoenix took him out of Kentucky with the 13th overall pick in the 2015 draft.Booker averaged 25.6 points, 7.1 assists and 4.1…

A top venture capitalist firm is following in Elon Musk’s footsteps and ditching Delaware.Andreessen Horowitz announced Wednesday it will move its primary business — AH Capital Management — to Nevada. Although Delaware has historically been a business-friendly state, a series of court rulings have led some executives to question whether that’s still true.”In particular, Delaware courts can at times appear biased against technology startup founders and their boards,” the firm said in a blog posted to its website.The firm added that the “legal uncertainty” has caused concern among “entrepreneurs and their professional investors who often sit on their boards.””As a…

Olivia Munn is opening up about her mom’s breast cancer diagnosis.The “Your Friends and Neighbors” star, 45, took to Instagram on Wednesday and revealed that her mom was diagnosed with Stage 1 HER2 breast cancer after Munn’s own breast cancer diagnosis in 2023.”Going through cancer is really hard,” Munn wrote in a statement shared in the post. “But there’s something about watching a loved one go through it that is even more heartbreaking.”Olivia Munn speaks out about breast cancer, fertility issues in 1st TV interview since surgeriesIn the statement, Munn wrote that she “urged my mother and sister to take…

Garry Tan says too many business students today are being taught to fudge the truth — and warns that going down that road could lead to serious consequences, like jail time.Speaking to an audience of undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. students during a live recording of Y Combinator’s Lightcone Podcast, Tan criticized unnamed academic entrepreneurship programs that he claimed teach a “fake it till you make it” attitude.”I’m very worried about them because what we’re coming to understand is they are teaching you to lie,” Tan told the audience at Y Combinator’s AI Startup School conference. “Software is the most empowering…

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — Wearing their blue, red and white jerseys, Paris Saint-Germain supporters were surrounded by white shirts.Real Madrid fans were 95% of the crowd at MetLife Stadium for Wednesday’s Club World Cup semifinal, the shirts of Los Blancos radiant in the harsh summer sun. Yet, it was PSG fans in a couple sections behind one goal who cheered virtually from start to finish as their team moved within one win of a historic quadruple.A 4-0 rout of Real Madrid in a Club World Cup semifinal following a 5-0 wipeout of Inter Milan in the Champions League final…

California State Senator Scott Wiener on Wednesday introduced new amendments to his latest bill, SB 53, that would require the world’s largest AI companies to publish safety and security protocols and issue reports when safety incidents occur. If signed into law, California would be the first state to impose meaningful transparency requirements onto leading AI developers, likely including OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and xAI. Senator Wiener’s previous AI bill, SB 1047, included similar requirements for AI model developers to publish safety reports. However, Silicon Valley fought ferociously against that bill, and it was ultimately vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom. California’s governor…

The U.S. is having its worst year for measles spread since 1991, with a total of 1,288 cases nationally and another six months to go. But in Gaines County, Texas, which was once the nation’s epicenter for measles activity, health officials said they are no longer seeing ongoing measles transmission.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention count, updated Wednesday, is 14 more cases than in all of 2019, when the U.S. almost lost its status of having eliminated measles. There’ve been three deaths in the U.S. this year, and all were unvaccinated: two elementary school-aged children in West Texas…

“SaaS is going away,” said Dave Park, co-founder and CEO of Narada AI. The company is betting big on a different future for enterprise software, one powered by agentic AI. Change is coming “in the not-too-distant future,” Park said on Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast. “The typical knowledge worker today deals with anywhere from 17 to 25 different SaaS tools and portals every day, wasting two and a half hours just manually looking up or updating these systems. We believe in a future where it’ll just be the data, the databases, and AI agents or agentic models that take your request…