Technology

This screengrab from video provided by NASA shows the NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 members re entering the...

Ailing astronaut returns to Earth early in NASA’s first medical evacuation

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An ailing astronaut returned to Earth with three others on Thursday, ending their space station mission more than a month early in NASA’s first medical evacuation. SpaceX guided the capsule to a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego, less than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International […]
9 months ago
A man reacts while holding his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng ...

Aimed at the growing number of young Chinese who live alone, a new app asks: ‘Are you dead?’

BEIJING (AP) — In China, the names of things are often either ornately poetic or jarringly direct. A new, wildly popular app among young Chinese people is definitively the latter. It’s called, simply, “Are You Dead?” In a vast country whose young people are increasingly on the move, the new, one-button app — which has […]
9 months ago
This photo provided by NASA shows clockwise from bottom left are, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, Rosco...

NASA sends 4 astronauts back to Earth in first medical evacuation

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An astronaut in need of doctors’ care departed the International Space Station with three crewmates on Wednesday in NASA’s first medical evacuation. The four returning astronauts — from the U.S., Russia and Japan — are aiming for an early Thursday morning splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego with SpaceX. […]
9 months ago
FILE - Plumes of smoke rise from the area of a UPS cargo plane crash at Louisville Muhammad Ali Int...

A part that broke on a UPS plane that crashed in Kentucky failed 4 times before on different planes

Boeing warned plane owners in 2011 about a broken part that contributed to a UPS plane crash that killed 15 in November — but at that point the planemaker didn’t believe it threatened safety, the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday. The UPS plane crashed in November 2025 shortly after taking off in Louisville, when […]
9 months ago

Verizon outage disrupts calling and data services for phone customers across the US

NEW YORK (AP) — Many Verizon customers encountered a widespread outage on Wednesday, disrupting calling and other cellular services across the U.S. The New York-based carrier acknowledged that there was an “issue impacting wireless voice and data services.” Verizon didn’t specify what was causing the disruptions, but said in an update shared on social media […]
9 months ago
FILE - A person walks outside of the Gates Foundation campus Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in Seattle....

Gates Foundation unveils $9 billion budget and plans to cut staff

The Gates Foundation announced Wednesday that it will spend a record $9 billion in 2026, maximizing its spending in key areas such as global health. At the same time it will begin reducing the number of staff positions it has by as much as 500 over five years. This announcement comes in the wake of […]
9 months ago
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang speaks about the NVIDIA Rubin AI super computing platform durin...

Sales of a powerful Nvidia AI chip to China gets the greenlight, with conditions

The Trump administration placed new security requirements on Nividia’s semiconductor sales to China, but essentially greenlighted the export of its powerful H200 artificial intelligence chips to Chinese buyers. Nvidia must ensure that there is an adequate supply in the U.S., and the H200 chips must undergo a third-party review before being exported to China, according […]
9 months ago
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during his State of the State address Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, i...

Proposed billionaires’ tax in California rattles Silicon Valley, entangles Gov. Newsom

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears will lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any […]
9 months ago
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrives for a classified briefing with senators on the situation in ...

Pentagon is embracing Musk’s Grok AI chatbot as it draws global outcry

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok will join Google’s generative AI engine in operating inside the Pentagon network, as part of a broader push to feed as much of the military’s data as possible into the developing technology. “Very soon we will have the world’s […]
9 months ago

Google’s corporate parent joins $4 trillion club as investors continue to bet on AI breakthroughs

Google parent Alphabet Inc. on Monday became the fourth Big Tech powerhouse to be valued at $4 trillion, a once seemingly unfathomable milestone that’s become more like a rite of passage amid an artificial intelligence arms race. Alphabet reached the threshold just four months after Google dodged the U.S. government’s attempt to break up its […]
9 months ago

Apple calls on Google to help smarten up Siri and bring other AI features to the iPhone

Apple will rely on Google to help finish its efforts to smarten up its virtual assistant Siri and bring other artificial intelligence features to the iPhone as the trendsetting company plays catch up in technology’s latest craze. The deal allowing Apple to tap into Google’s AI technology was disclosed Monday in a joint statement from […]
9 months ago
FILE Former counselor to the President of the United States Dina Powell McCormick smiles during the...

Meta names former Trump adviser Dina Powell McCormick as president and vice chairman

NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook owner Meta has named Dina Powell McCormick, a former Trump administration adviser and longtime finance executive, as president and vice chairman of the tech giant. Powell McCormick previously served on Meta’s board of directors — where, the company notes, she was “deeply engaged” in accelerating its artificial intelligence push across […]
9 months ago
Bystanders film a federal immigration officer in their car Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in Minneapolis. (...

George Floyd and Renee Good: 5 years between Minneapolis videos, and confusion has increased

Five years ago, video images from a Minneapolis street showing a police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd as his life slipped away ignited a social movement. Now, videos from another Minneapolis street showing the last moments of Renee Good’s life are central to another debate about law enforcement in America. They’ve slipped […]
10 months ago

VR headsets are ‘hope machines’ inside California prisons, offering escape and practical experience

CHOWCHILLA, Calif. (AP) — Jacob Smith has been in prison for two decades but he and other inmates are still taking regular trips to far-flung, exotic locales. No passport required, just a virtual reality headset. “I went to Thailand, man!” Smith recalled with a grin, describing the first time he strapped on a VR device […]
10 months ago
FILE - The U.S. Supreme Court is seen on Capitol Hill, Nov. 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Maria...

Supreme Court will take up Cisco’s bid to shut down lawsuit by Falun Gong

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Friday to take up an appeal from tech giant Cisco seeking to shut down a lawsuit claiming that the company’s technology was used to persecute members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement in China. The justices, who will hear arguments in the spring, will review an appellate ruling […]
10 months ago
Demonstrators holds signs during a protest by Uber and Lyft drivers asking state regulators to take...

Lyft and Uber drivers protest Waymo robotaxis as California considers further regulations

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Drivers for Lyft and Uber protested self-driving Waymo taxis in San Francisco on Friday, urging state regulators to exercise greater oversight of autonomous vehicles, given recent events in which the cars killed pets and blocked traffic. About two dozen drivers and supporters spoke or held up signs calling for safer streets […]
10 months ago
FILE -A Meta logo is shown on a video screen at LlamaCon 2025, an AI developer conference, in Menlo...

Meta signs three nuclear power deals to help support its AI data centers

Meta has cut a trio of deals to power its artificial intelligence data centers, securing enough energy to light up the equivalent of about 5 million homes. The parent company of Facebook on Friday announced agreements with TerraPower, Oklo and Vistra for nuclear power for its Prometheus AI data center that is being built in […]
10 months ago
AI hacking cyberattack...
Luke Duecy

Tech Talk: Sci-fi meets espionage as cyber criminals use a popular AI platform to do their hacking for them

Cyber experts around the world are sounding alarm bells after a team of researchers at Anthropic discovered hackers recently used AI to help run a cyberattack.
10 months ago
FILE - The xAI data center is seen, May 7, 2025, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File...

Elon Musk’s xAI to build $20 billion data center in Mississippi

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI is set to spend $20 billion to build a data center in Southaven, Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves announced Thursday, calling it the largest private investment in the state’s history. The data center, called MACROHARDRR, is being built in Mississippi’s DeSoto County near Memphis, Tennessee. It […]
10 months ago

FACT FOCUS: Minneapolis shooting prompts spread of misrepresented and fabricated images online

Misrepresented and fabricated images spread widely on social media in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman, Renee Good, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Wednesday. Soon after the shooting, photos emerged erroneously identified as showing the victim, a 37-year-old mother of three. Others were fabricated to falsely show the […]
10 months ago
A couple of Bosch 800 Series fully automatic espresso machines are seen on display at the Bosch boo...

‘Worst in Show’ CES products include AI refrigerators, AI companions and AI doorbells

The promise of artificial intelligence was front and center at this year’s CES gadget show. But spicing up a simple machine like a refrigerator with unnecessary AI was also a surefire way to win the “Worst in Show.” The annual contest that no tech company wants to win announced its decisions Thursday. Among those getting […]
10 months ago
FILE - Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks about Google DeepMind at a Google I/O event in Mountain Vi...

Gmail adds new AI features, turning it into a personal assistant

More artificial intelligence is being implanted into Gmail as Google tries to turn the world’s most popular email service into a personal assistant that can improve writing, summarize far-flung information buried in inboxes and deliver daily to-do lists. The new AI features announced Thursday could herald a pivotal moment for Gmail, a service that transformed […]
10 months ago
FILE - People hold candles during a vigil, Dec. 14, 2025, in Providence, R.I., for the victims of S...

Inside a chaotic digital record of the Brown University shooting: What students saw, feared, shared

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — When a gunman began firing inside an academic building on the Brown University campus, students didn’t wait for official alerts warning of trouble. They got information almost instantly, in bits and bursts — through phones vibrating in pockets, messages from strangers, rumors that felt urgent because they might keep someone alive. […]
10 months ago
People gather for a vigil after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a wo...

Woman killed by ICE agent in Minneapolis was a mother of 3, poet and new to the city

WASHINGTON (AP) — The woman shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday was Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who had recently moved to Minnesota. She was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado and appears to never have been charged with anything involving law […]
10 months ago