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Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune/TNS

AI slop ad backfires for McDonald's

People aren't lovin' it.

McDonald's was forced to pull down an AI-generated Christmas commercial from YouTube after some consumers said the AI-slop-filled tongue-in-cheek take on the holidays was distasteful.

The ad, titled "It's the most terrible time of the year," was a satirical take on holiday realities. It showed a series of short, ...Read more

Handout/Dotemu/TNS

Review: ‘Marvel Cosmic Invasion’ revives an arcade beat-’em-up experience

Gamers of a certain age will remember when beat-’em-ups ruled arcades. The cabinets inhaled quarters as four players teamed up to brawl their way to save Maggie Simpson or battle Shredder across New York. Those memories are connected to pizza parties or late-night forays, with parents handing one more dollar to see if the kids could finish ...Read more

TNS

Gadgets: Ice cream machine

Getting an offer to review a soft-serve ice cream machine is a dream come true, at least for me. Obviously, I'm an ice cream fan, and reviewing the Gourmia Soft-Serve Ice Cream Maker has to be one of my favorites in my 25-plus years of reviews.

Spoiler alert: To say the Gourmia Soft-Serve Ice Cream Maker was the hit of my recent social ...Read more

Jim Rossman/Jim Rossman/TNS

Jim Rossman: When is a new battery better than a new phone?

A few weeks ago, a friend asked if he should replace the battery in his iPhone SE. He’d noticed the phone needed to be topped off before the end of the day and asked if I thought he should replace the battery or just buy a new phone.

I started out asking if he was happy with the performance of the phone. Did it do everything he needed it to...Read more

Why the Bay Area is key to the new US push to win the international AI race

Bay Area laboratories are set to play a central role in the Genesis Mission, a multibillion-dollar effort by the Trump administration to accelerate the nation’s artificial intelligence push in the face of technological advances in China.

The involvement of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the ...Read more

Pitaka/Pitaka/TNS

Tech review: Last call for Christmas tech gift ideas

This last Christmas gift guide is concentrated on gifts for the person with a home office or computer desk.

There are gifts here for all ages and price ranges.

I especially loved trying out the reMarkable tablet and the Pitaka case.

Terramaster F4-425 4-Bay NAS

If you have a household full of computer users, chances are you could benefit ...Read more

Cindy Ord/Getty Images North America/TNS

Commentary: How Spotify's video podcasts hijacked talk TV's playbook

Spotify Technology SA’s list of its top podcasts of the year didn’t offer much in the way of surprises — Joe Rogan, for example, is number one yet again, for the fifth year in a row. But one stat is noteworthy: Nearly half of those shows, 24 of the 50, also have a video version streaming on the platform. And Spotify video consumption has ...Read more

John Fader/Dreamstime/TNS

NOAA's denial of endangered status for salmon sparks talk of legal challenge

Federal fisheries officials on Monday rejected a bid to designate West Coast Chinook salmon as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

In response, one of the conservation groups that petitioned for the listing, the Center for Biological Diversity, says it is considering a legal challenge.

“The major species protections ...Read more

Alejandro Tamayo/The San Diego Union-Tribune/TNS

San Diego County comes out against Trump's offshore drilling plans in California

SAN DIEGO — The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday adopted a resolution vowing to fight efforts by the Trump administration to expand offshore oil and gas drilling more than three miles off the coast of California.

The measure, approved on a 4-1 vote, was introduced by board chair Terra Lawson-Remer and chair pro tem Paloma ...Read more

Monica Herndon/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

New Jersey declares drought warning

New Jersey is parched top to bottom.

In some regions, rainfall has plunged as much as eight inches below average for the past year, straining reservoirs, streams, and aquifers enough that the state Department of Environmental Protection has issued a drought warning — a notch shy of an emergency.

As a result, officials are asking residents to...Read more

SPACEX/TNS

SpaceX national security mission marks last use of Cape Canaveral's landing zones

SpaceX sent up its second launch in less than 24 hours on the Space Coast on Tuesday afternoon, while also bringing home its booster for the last time on a landing zone it has been leasing for the last 10 years.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on the NROL-77 mission with a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office from Cape ...Read more

Handout/Getty Images North America/TNS

NASA astronaut back on Earth after 8 months on space station

ORLANDO, Fla. — NASA astronaut Jonny Kim flew home with two Roscosmos cosmonauts from the International Space Station packed tight in their Soyuz spacecraft landing in the frozen steppes of Kazakhstan on Tuesday to complete an eight-month stay in space.

Kim launched to to the station back on April 8 with cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey ...Read more

SPACEX/TNS

Sonic boom possible today as SpaceX lines up national security launch from Cape Canaveral

SpaceX is set to complete its second launch in less than 24 hours on the Space Coast with a national security mission lines up for Tuesday afternoon.

A Falcon 9 rocket is set to lift off on the NROL-77 mission with a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 ...Read more

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America/TNS

Commentary: The American West's most iconic tree is disappearing

A profound unraveling is underway in the American Southwest, happening across a thousand-mile arc from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the central Sierra. In an unprecedented calamity, the most widely distributed, most iconic tree of the region — the beautiful ponderosa pine — is disappearing. So significant is this loss, both visually and ...Read more

Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Illinois researchers say versatile grass could be used for sustainable fuel, building materials and more

CHICAGO — When you look across a field of miscanthus, it’s “hypnotically beautiful,” says Emily Heaton, whose family farm has for two decades grown the first commercial field of this grass in Illinois. Dense, sun-loving and often called “giant,” it blooms in late summer to fall with a showy silver flower.

Just like cornstalks across...Read more

Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS

'It was a matter of time': Diseased bats may have arrived in Las Vegas

After avoiding it for nearly two decades, wildlife officials say that the illness wiping out millions of bats may have reached Nevada.

The fungal disease is known as white-nose syndrome, and it’s considered to be the single most deadly wildlife disease outbreak in North American history. Scientists first documented the disease in New York in ...Read more

Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Federal judge strikes down Trump's order blocking development of wind energy

A federal judge on Monday struck down the Trump administration’s ban on federal permits for wind energy projects in what supporters said was an important victory for the embattled industry.

President Trump issued the ban on his first day in office through an executive order that called for the temporary withdrawal of nearly all federal land ...Read more

Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Trump ban on wind energy projects ruled illegal by US judge

WASHINGTON — Less than a year after President Donald Trump banned new wind projects, a federal judge ruled the president’s executive order was illegal.

U.S. District Judge Patti Saris said Monday the order is “arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law,” siding with more than a dozen U.S. states and a clean energy group that had ...Read more

Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Trump ban on wind energy projects ruled illegal by US judge

President Donald Trump’s executive order directing government agencies to halt approving new wind energy projects was ruled illegal by a federal judge.

The ruling Monday sided with more than a dozen states and a New York clean energy group that had challenged the executive order that essentially froze U.S. approvals of wind energy ...Read more

Joel Saget/Getty Images North America/TNS

Musk denies reports of SpaceX seeking $800 billion valuation

Elon Musk denied news reports that his rocket and satellite maker SpaceX is seeking a $800 billion valuation through a share sale.

“There has been a lot of press claiming SpaceX is raising money at $800B, which is not accurate,” Musk said in a post Saturday on his social media platform X. “SpaceX has been cash flow positive for many ...Read more