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E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/TNS

As Trump dismantles EPA, Great Lakes states with a history of pollution likely will suffer

CHICAGO — Dirty air remains a chronic problem in the Chicago area.

Shortly before President Joe Biden left office, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reclassified the region from “moderate” to “serious” violations of federal regulations limiting lung-damaging smog, also known as ground-level ozone.

Better understanding about ...Read more

Patrick T. Fallon/Getty Images North America/TNS

Climate disasters are on the rise. These states want to make oil companies pay

For many California residents, the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year were the latest and most searing example of the devastating effects of climate change. Some estimates have pegged the damages and economic losses from the fires at more than $250 billion.

“We’ve had disaster after disaster after disaster,” said Assemblymember Dawn ...Read more

Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

Apple production hubs hit by tariffs, sending shares plummeting

Apple Inc. is finding itself squarely in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s new tariffs, even after a yearslong effort to insulate the iPhone maker from trade wars and supply chain disruptions.

A long list of levies unveiled by the White House are poised to hit the company especially hard, triggering an after-hours stock rout on ...Read more

United Launch Alliance/United Launch Alliance/TNS

United Launch Alliance, Amazon set first launch for SpaceX Starlink competitor Project Kuiper

A launch date is set for the first batch of what will be thousands of satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper as the company looks to play catch-up to SpaceX and its Starlink internet constellation.

United Launch Alliance is targeting a three-hour window that opens at noon Eastern time on April 9. It will send up 27 satellites on an Atlas V ...Read more

Richard Tribou/Orlando Sentinel/Richard Tribou

1st day in space filled with nausea for SpaceX's private polar mission crew

The four private space travelers flying around the Earth’s poles this week had a vomit-filled first day in space, according to the man paying for the trip.

“The first few hours in microgravity weren’t exactly comfortable,” Chun Wang, a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur said in a Fram2 mission update on X. “Space motion sickness...Read more

Sven Hoppe/ZUMA Press/TNS

An AI 'gold rush.' What to know about OpenAI's record $40 billion funding round

SAN FRANCISCO — ChatGPT maker OpenAI this week announced it raised a whopping $40 billion as it races to dominate a competitive AI landscape against tech giants like Google, and rivals including Anthropic and Chinese upstart DeepSeek.

The investment was the highest ever raised for a startup and places OpenAI at a $300 billion valuation, ...Read more

Apple/TNS/TNS

Tech review: M4 MacBook Air is easy to love

Apple’s new MacBook Air has been recently updated to the M4 processor, and while the design remains the same as the M2 and M3 models before it, there are a few nice upgrades on the inside to make the M4 worthy of your consideration.

Personally, I’ve been a MacBook Pro user at home for decades. I always just thought I needed the most ...Read more

Ken James/California Department of Water Resources/TNS

For the first time in 25 years, California has a snowpack trifecta

LOS ANGELES — The year may have started with a dry spell, but the end of California’s storm season has brought more fresh snow to the Sierra Nevada, pushing the state’s snowpack to 96% of average on April 1, when the snow season typically reaches its peak.

The near-average snowpack has given the state a third straight year of ample water ...Read more

Gieson Cacho/Bay Area News Group/TNS

A look at ‘Hela,’ ‘Revenge of the Savage Planet’ and ‘Promise Mascot Agency’ on Xbox

When you’re tired of playing the same type of first-person shooters, “Souls”-like epics or role-playing games, indie titles feel like a breath of fresh air. At the Xbox showcase featuring independent developers last month, I had a chance to check out a few titles and try out the Xbox Adaptive Joystick. The games offered a much-needed ...Read more

Jim Rossman/Jim Rossman/TNS

Jim Rossman: RAM and storage – how much do you need and what does it do?

I got a phone call from a neighbor yesterday. His eight-year-old Microsoft Surface tablet has started acting up.

He likes the tablet form factor and uses the on screen keyboard for his text input. After an incident where he dropped an item on the back of the case, a portion of the screen no longer responds reliably when touched. So when he ...Read more

TNS

Gadgets: Open-ear headphones; remote cases

AceFit's new Air Open Ear Bluetooth sports true wireless (model FA002) headphones are a solid entry into the relatively new category of open-ear headphones.

If you do not like traditional earbuds that sit inside your ear, you might like this style. These sit on your ear. In most cases, they wrap around your neck or have ear hooks to wrap ...Read more

Gieson Cacho/Bay Area News Group/TNS

Checking out Sandbox VR and the new Vive Focus Vision headset

The last time I visited Sandbox VR was during the before times. This is prior to the pandemic and its monumental change around the company’s San Francisco venue. Back then, I went with friends to check out the “Star Trek: Discovery — Away Mission” experience and strapped on doodads to my wrists and ankles to boldly go where no one has ...Read more

Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Einstein called it his 'biggest blunder.' Now a Berkeley Lab breakthrough is shedding light on the mysteries of dark energy and cosmic expansion

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has released new breakthrough findings on one of science’s biggest mysteries — one that Albert Einstein once called his “biggest blunder.”

In March, Berkeley Lab researchers presented data gathered from 14 million galaxies at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics ...Read more

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America/TNS

How Meta's upcoming $1,000+ smart glasses with a screen will work

Meta Platforms Inc., ramping up work on a deluxe version of its popular smart glasses, plans to include hand-gesture controls and a screen for displaying photos and apps.

The company intends to introduce its first glasses with a screen as early as the end of this year — a product it sees as a key step toward providing an alternative to Apple ...Read more

Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group/TNS

Job losses hammer Bay Area tech industry in brutal beginning for 2025

The Bay Area’s tech industry stumbled at the start of 2025 with a net loss of thousands of jobs over the first two months of this year, a slump that suggests the crucial sector’s hiring woes have yet to run their course.

During the first two months of 2025, tech companies slashed a net total of 8,700 jobs in the Bay Area, according to a ...Read more

Microsoft president's vision for Pacific Northwest: 'Tomorrowland' everywhere

REDMOND, Washington — Brad Smith is an unusual futurist.

Before he rose to become Microsoft's president and vice chair, Smith built his reputation as a highly capable attorney with a conciliatory nature.

Much as his counterpart CEO Satya Nadella would later be tapped to reinvigorate the company, Smith was selected in 2002 to pull Microsoft ...Read more

George Avalos/Bay Area News Group/TNS

Biotech companies shed hundreds of Bay Area jobs in fresh layoffs

Life sciences companies have decided to chop hundreds of Bay Area jobs in a fresh wave of layoffs that hint at ongoing turbulence in the region’s biotech sector, state labor agency posts show.

All told, the biotech companies have revealed their intentions to slash 310 Bay Area jobs, according to official notices the companies sent to the ...Read more

Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images North America/TNS

World's largest wildlife crossing reaches critical milestone. Now what?

LOS ANGELES — Monday was momentous for the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing although it still looked like a bridge to nowhere from the 101 Freeway, where more than 300,000 vehicles stream endlessly every day.

Nearly three years after the project began, the critical milestone was visible only to the government officials, scientists and ...Read more

World's largest wildlife crossing reaches critical milestone. Now what?

LOS ANGELES — Monday was momentous for the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing although it still looked like a bridge to nowhere from the 101 Freeway, where more than 300,000 vehicles stream endlessly every day.

Nearly three years after the project began, the critical milestone was visible only to the government officials, scientists and ...Read more

Microsoft turns 50: 4 employees recall their early years

Fifty years ago, two kids from Seattle flipped the tech industry on its head.

While all the big brains in personal computing were focused on machines — "microcomputer" hardware — Bill Gates and Paul Allen were thinking about the technology that made the machines go: software. That idea, planted by Allen at Gates' Boston-area apartment, ...Read more