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Top 10 video games of 2025: Indie titles dominate a year overshadowed by AI

As artificial intelligence has seeped more into daily life, it’s been met with a mix of acceptance and repulsion. The technology has been used to modify photos and improve productivity, but it has also threatened jobs and created havoc with the truth.

When it comes to video games, players abhor AI. It’s associated with slop and the deluge...Read more

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Gadgets: Dashcam

Vueroid's latest dashcam, the S1 4K Infinite (2-channel), is an industry leader, setting a new standard as the first offering AI-powered license plate recognition. Once an incident occurs, there's nothing better than having dashcam footage. As Vueroid points out in its press release, the S1 dash cam serves as insurance, delivering reliable ...Read more

Jim Rossman/Jim Rossman/TNS

Jim Rossman: How to make the best of a smaller hard drive

Lately I’ve been helping my wife deal with a laptop hard drive that’s too small.

Whenever we go out, I’m the one who takes the pictures with my phone, but she always asks me to AirDrop the photos to her computer. This is great, but I picked up her MacBook Air used, and it has the minimum amount of storage – 256 gigabytes.

Her ...Read more

Handout/Corsair/TNS

Review: SCUF Valor Pro Wireless is a top-notch Xbox controller with one flaw

SCUF Gaming has built a reputation for innovation and for pushing the boundaries of controller design. It’s the company that holds the patent on back paddles and trigger stops, two features that have become staples of Pro controller design.

The one issue is that its products tend to be on the expensive side compared to its peers — until ...Read more

Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

'Memory manipulation is inevitable': How rewriting memory in the lab might one day heal humans

LOS ANGELES — We often think of memories like the contents of a museum: static exhibits that we view to understand the present and prepare for the future.

The latest research, however, suggests they are more like well-thumbed library books that wear and change a little bit every time they're pulled off the shelf.

Think of one of your ...Read more

E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Environmentalists push back against US EPA plan to extend coal plant closings

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is facing strong public opposition to its proposed plans to extend closure deadlines until October 2031 for 11 coal plants across the country — three of which are in Illinois and one in northwest Indiana.

But many environmental experts, including Earthjustice senior attorney Mychal Ozaeta, say the ...Read more

L.E. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS

AI dominates as CES 2026 opens in Las Vegas

Artificial intelligence dominated the conversation as CES 2026 opened Tuesday. Nearly every major exhibitor framed AI as a tool that can make daily routines smoother, faster and more efficient.

The emphasis was less on far-off science fiction and more on practical systems designed to improve how people live and work right now.

The four-day ...Read more

Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

Environmentalists sue feds to protect 'prehistoric' crabs that frequent South Carolina coast

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Environmentalists are suing the federal government over what they say is a failure to protect the horseshoe crab, a prehistoric looking species that is important to the survival of shore birds in South Carolina and other coastal states.

The Center for Biological Diversity says the National Marine Fisheries Service has not met...Read more

Michael Vi/Dreamstime/TNS

Universal partners with Nvidia on AI music creation, discovery

Universal Music Group NV is partnering with Nvidia Corp. to boost the role of artificial intelligence in music discovery and creation, as record labels seek to capitalize on the fast-growing technology while managing the risks AI poses to their catalogs.

The collaboration between the world’s largest record label and the leading AI chipmaker ...Read more

Jolearra Tshiteya/NASA/TNS

Defying Trump's NASA proposal, Congress looks to maintain budget, including science, near current levels

Last year President Donald Trump pitched a severe chop to NASA’s proposed annual budget for 2026, but the House and Senate on Monday released an appropriations bill that would mostly ignore those cuts.

The minibus bill put forth by both congressional bodies’ appropriation committees includes NASA as well as the National Oceanic and ...Read more

Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Where a Saudi company pumps desert groundwater, Arizona considers imposing limits

VICKSBURG, Ariz. — Lush green fields of alfalfa spread across thousands of acres in a desert valley in western Arizona, where a dairy company from Saudi Arabia grows the thirsty crop by pulling up groundwater from dozens of wells.

The company, Fondomonte, is the largest water user in the Ranegras Plain groundwater basin, shipping hay ...Read more

Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group/TNS

California's largest reservoir rises 36 feet as rains boost water supply statewide

When it rains, it pours. And that’s good news for California’s water supply.

After a relatively slow start to the winter rainy season, a series of atmospheric river storms has sent hundreds of billions of gallons of water pouring into reservoirs across California over the past three weeks, easing the concerns of water managers and ...Read more

Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel/TNS

Orlando confirms avian flu to blame for Lake Eola swan deaths as toll hits 19

ORLANDO, Fla. — The number of swans that have died in the avian flu outbreak at Orlando’s Lake Eola Park has spiked to 19, city officials said Monday.

Since discovering the first deaths in December, the city has operated under the assumption that avian flu was to blame – though only in recent days did it receive official confirmation ...Read more

Madeline Carter/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS

Robotic puppy, AI, wearable technology on display at CES media preview

Hundreds of the roughly 4,000 media members attending CES 2026 got an early look Sunday at some of the thousands of consumer electronics gadgets that will dominate multiple trade show floors across the city this week.

The annual Consumer Electronics Show, sponsored by the Virginia-based Consumer Technology Association opens Tuesday, but media ...Read more

Butterflies, snakes and flowers: In rugged Baja canyons, San Diego scientists unlock an unsung region's biodiversity

Sulphur butterflies glide across Zorrillo Canyon, hundreds of them, moving back and forth against the cerulean sky. It’s nothing short of a fairy wonderland for the scientists below.

At least, that’s how Jon Rebman, curator of botany at the San Diego Natural History Museum, describes it as he begins the hike into the canyon on a late ...Read more

Scott Olson/Getty Images North America/TNS

Editorial: The Trump administration misapplies federal law to keep open coal-fired plants in Indiana

The Trump administration is badly stretching the law to keep open coal-fired power plants throughout the Midwest that otherwise would have shuttered under well-thought-out, long-term strategies.

The latest examples are in neighboring Indiana, where the Department of Energy late last month ordered utilities not to close two aging power stations ...Read more

Courtesy SpaceX/TNS/TNS

SpaceX lines up 1st Space Coast launch of the year

ORLANDO, Fla. — The Space Coast’s first launch of the year could come at midnight Sunday, the first of what could be four launches in the next 10 days, all from SpaceX.

A Falcon 9 is set to lift off on the Starlink 6-88 mission with 29 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 during a launch ...Read more

Vincent Feuray/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Elon Musk company bot apologizes for sharing sexualized images of children

Grok, the chatbot of Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI, published sexualized images of children as its guardrails seem to have failed when it was prompted with vile user requests.

Users used prompts such as "put her in a bikini" under pictures of real people on X to get Grok to generate nonconsensual images of them in ...Read more

Nearly every corn seed planted in Colorado is covered in insecticide. Lawmakers may restrict the chemical

DENVER — Colorado farmers plant tens of millions of corn seeds every year, nearly every one of them covered in a thin layer of insecticide.

The neonicotinoids used in the coatings protect the seed from pests in the soil and, as the crop matures, the chemical is absorbed into the plant’s tissue, where it continues to paralyze and kill ...Read more

$40 million campaign launched to save pristine NC game lands from development

Conservationists launched a $40 million campaign Thursday to save 4,000 acres of pristine North Carolina game land from development.

The owner of the land along the Yadkin River between Salisbury and Albemarle allowed public access to hunters, anglers and others for years before recently deciding to sell the property, officials with Salisbury-...Read more