Meteorologists began warning that extremely dangerous storms were likely coming days before tornadoes tore across the Central and Eastern U.S. in March and April 2025. But pinpointing exactly where a tornado will touch down still relies heavily on seeing the storms developing on radar. Chris Nowotarski, an atmospheric scientist, explains why,...Read more

Qualcomm, the San Diego-based company designing chips that power smartphones, laptops, virtual reality headsets and next-generation cars, acquired a Vietnamese startup for its generative artificial intelligence technology.

The local firm announced the acquisition Tuesday as part of its effort to expand its research and development of generative...Read more

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

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

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

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

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

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’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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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