Category: Technology News

Connie Francis was a giant of 1950s and ’60s sugary-sweet pop, notching more than a dozen hits. In the months leading up to her death, announced Thursday, she experienced one more in “Pretty Little Baby,” which has become a viral hit on TikTok six decades after its release.

As of Thursday, more than 22.5 million TikTok videos have been created using the sound, often partnering videos of baby animals, toddlers, makeup tutorials and retro fashions. According to TikTok, those videos have amassed more than 45.5 billion views, globally. Celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian and North West have used it, too, with West lip-syncing along to the track.

Hooky, feel-good pop songs tend to do well on TikTok, and 1962’s “Pretty Little Baby” is an exemplar of that phenomenon. Users gravitated toward the song’s wholesome simplicity, sweet vocals, delicate organ and upstroke riffs. “You can ask the flowers / I sit for hours / Telling all the bluebirds / The bill and coo birds / Pretty little baby, I’m so in love with you,” Francis swoons on the verse that has picked up steam on the platform.

And all of this has transpired in mere months: According to Luminate, an industry data and analytics company, “Pretty Little Baby” was earning just over 17,000 on-demand audio streams in the U.S. during the week ending April 10. A month later, that number had climbed to 2.4 million. That’s a growth of over 7,000%. The song has earned over 29 million streams this year so far.

In one popular video, which garnered over 56 million views, a user posted about baby teething hacks for first-time moms. Another user, Amari Goins, posted a video, with over 112 million views, of her 2-year-old daughter singing along to the lyrics, noting that her toddler picked up the song because of how often they heard it on TikTok.

Most recently, TikTok users have begun posting covers of “Pretty Little Baby” as part of a singing challenge, where they exaggerate Francis’ performance with their own stylized vocal runs. Francis, who died at 87, herself joined TikTok as a result of her song’s popularity, and her first two videos — which earned 16.3 million and 31.2 million views, respectively — furthered engagement. In her first video, posted in early June, she said she was “flabbergasted and amazed” at the song’s resurgence.

“To think that a song I recorded 63 years ago is captivating new generations of audiences is truly overwhelming for me,” Francis said in that first post, which she followed with a clip of herself lip-syncing to the song.

For decades, the song lived in relative obscurity — written by Don Stirling and Bill Nauman for Francis, it was never a single and was originally released in the U.K. as the B-side of her 1962 single “I’m Gonna Be Warm This Winter.” It appears on her album “Connie Francis Sings ‘Second Hand Love,’” released the same year. More than 60 years later, the song reached No. 20 on Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart in June 2025 and hit both the Hot 100’s Bubbling Under chart and the Billboard Global 200.

In Francis’ last TikTok video, posted late last month, she thanked the “many wonderful artists” who paid tribute to her, and all the users who sang along with her.

Peter Lemongello Jr., a singer and performer who called Francis a friend, posted a TikTok in May where he sang the song to Francis, what he wrote on Facebook was “one of the greatest and most exciting moments of my career so far.” The video garnered over 15 million views.

“There are no words to express this monumental loss,” he wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday. “I will be forever grateful to her for the help she gave me with my career.”

Ian Paget, a TikTok creator, posted a tearful video Thursday and said he hopes Francis and her family “have felt that love from the younger crowd learning who she is.”

The TikTok popularity of “Pretty Little Baby” prompted her label Republic/UMe Records to reissue versions Francis had sung in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish in 1962. Bruce Resnikoff, president and CEO of UMe, wrote in a statement that the global catalog division was saddened but took “comfort in knowing how joyful and fulfilled she felt in these last few months, as a new generation discovered her music and celebrated her legacy.”

In May, as the song took off, Francis thanked TikTok and its users for “the wonderful, and oh so unexpected, reception” in a Facebook post.

As for her reaction to having a “viral hit”? She continued: “Clearly out of touch with present day music statistics terminology, my initial response was to ask: ‘What’s that?’ Thank you everyone!”

Before the mayor of San Jose, California, arrives at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new business, his aides ask ChatGPT to help draft some talking points.

“Elected officials do a tremendous amount of public speaking,” said Mayor Matt Mahan, whose recent itinerary has taken him from new restaurant and semiconductor startup openings to a festival of lowriding car culture.

Other politicians might be skittish admitting a chatbot co-wrote their speech or that it helped draft a $5.6 billion budget for the new fiscal year, but Mahan is trying to lead by example, pushing a growing number of the nearly 7,000 government workers running Silicon Valley’s biggest city to embrace artificial intelligence technology.

Mahan said adopting AI tools will eliminate drudge work and help the city better serve its roughly 1 million residents.

He’s hardly the only public or private sector executive directing an AI-or-bust strategy, though in some cases, workers have found that the costly technology can add hassles or mistakes.

“The idea is to try things, be really transparent, look for problems, flag them, share them across different government agencies, and then work with vendors and internal teams to problem solve,” Mahan said in an interview. “It’s always bumpy with new technologies.”

By next year, the city intends to have 1,000, or about 15%, of its workers trained to use AI tools for a variety of tasks, including pothole complaint response, bus routing and using vehicle-tracking surveillance cameras to solve crimes.

One of San Jose’s early adopters was Andrea Arjona Amador, who leads electric mobility programs at the city’s transportation department. She has already used ChatGPT to secure a $12 million grant for electric vehicle chargers.

Arjona Amador set up a customized “AI agent” to review the correspondence she was receiving about various grant proposals and asked it to help organize the incoming information, including due dates. Then, she had it help draft the 20-page document.

So far, San Jose has spent more than $35,000 to purchase 89 ChatGPT licenses — at $400 per account — for city workers to use.

“The way it used to work, before I started using this, we spent a lot of evenings and weekends trying to get grants to the finish line,” she said. The Trump administration later rescinded the funding, so she pitched a similar proposal to a regional funder not tied to the federal government.

Arjona Amador, who learned Spanish and French before she learned English, also created another customized chatbot to edit the tone and language of her professional writings.

With close relationships to some of the tech industry’s biggest players, including San Francisco-based OpenAI and Mountain View-based Google, the mayors of the Bay Area’s biggest cities are helping to promote the type of AI adoption that the tech industry is striving for, while also promising guidelines and standards to avoid the technology’s harms.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced a plan Monday to give nearly 30,000 city workers, including nurses and social workers, access to Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot, which is based on the same technology that powers ChatGPT. San Francisco’s plan says it comes with “robust privacy and bias safeguards, and clear guidelines to ensure technology enhances — not replaces — human judgment.”

San Jose has similar guidelines and hasn’t yet reported any major mishaps with its pilot projects. Such problems have attracted attention elsewhere because of the technology’s propensity to spew false information, known as hallucinations.

ChatGPT’s digital fingerprints were found on an error-filled document published in May by U.S. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” commission.

In Fresno, California, a school official was forced to resign after saying she was too trusting of an AI chatbot that fabricated information in a document.

While some government agencies have been secretive about when they turn to chatbots for help, Mahan is open about his ChatGPT-written background memos that he turns to when making speeches.

“Historically, that would have taken hours of phone calls and reading, and you just never would have been able to get those insights,” he said. “You can knock out these tasks at a similar or better level of quality in a lot less time.”

He added, however, that “you still need a human being in the loop. You can’t just kind of press a couple of buttons and trust the output. You still have to do some independent verification. You have to have logic and common sense and ask questions.”

Earlier this year, when OpenAI introduced a new pilot product called Operator, it promised a new kind of tool that went beyond a chatbot’s capabilities. Instead of just analyzing documents and producing passages of text, it could also access a computer system and schedule calendars or perform tasks on a person’s behalf. Developing and selling such “AI agents” is now a key focus for the tech industry.

More than an hour’s drive east of Silicon Valley, where the Bay Area merges into Central Valley farm country, Jamil Niazi, director of information technology at the city of Stockton, had big visions for what he could do with such an agent.

Perhaps the parks and recreation department could let an AI agent help residents book a public park or swimming pool for a birthday party. Or residents could find out how crowded the pool was before packing their swim clothes.

Six months later, however, after completing a proof-of-concept phase, the city didn’t buy a full license for the technology due to the cost.

The market research group Gartner recently predicted that over 40% of “agentic AI” projects will be canceled before the end of 2027, “due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls.”

San Jose’s mayor remains bullish about the potential for these AI tools to help workers “in the bowels of bureaucracy” to rapidly speed up their digital paperwork.

“There’s just an amazing amount of bureaucracy that large organizations have to have,” Mahan said. “Whether it’s finance, accounting, HR or grant writing, those are the kinds of roles where we think our employees can be 20 (to) 50% more productive — quickly.”

——————

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — A settlement was announced Thursday in court in a class action investors’ lawsuit against Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and current and former company leaders over claims stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.

The suit had sought billions of dollars in reimbursement for fines and legal costs. No details on the settlement were shared when it was announced in Delaware’s Court of Chancery at the start of what would have been the second day of trial, at which point nothing related to the settlement had been filed with the court.

The attorneys involved left court without commenting. A communications representative from Meta said the company had no comment.

Investors had alleged in the lawsuit that Meta did not fully disclose the risks to Facebook users that their personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016. Shareholders say Facebook officials repeatedly violated a 2012 consent order with the Federal Trade Commission under which Facebook agreed to stop collecting and sharing personal data without users’ consent.

Facebook later sold user data to commercial partners in direct violation of the consent order and removed disclosures from privacy settings that were required under consent order, the lawsuit alleged.

Facebook agreed to pay a $5.1 billion penalty to settle FTC charges in the fallout. The social media giant also faced significant fines in Europe and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.

Shareholders wanted Zuckerberg and others to reimburse Meta an estimated $8 billion or more for the FTC fine and other legal costs.

Zuckerberg and former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg had been expected to testify. Other current and former board members, including billionaires Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, were also included as defendants.

Earlier this year, Sandberg was sanctioned for deleting emails from her personal account related to the Cambridge Analytica investigation. Jeffrey Zients, who served as an outside director from 2018 to 2020, avoided sanctions in the same case because his role made it less likely he had access to relevant information.

Testifying on the first day of this lawsuit, Zients said he had supported the FTC settlement for which shareholders were seeking reimbursement.

___

Associated Press reporter Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this report.

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland (AP) — The oldest major championship has taken a step into the modern world by using a technological feature that British Open organizers hope will bring to life one of the most storied walks in golf.

Spidercam — that’s a camera, not a superhero — was used in golf for the first time at Royal Portrush on Thursday. It’s a camera suspended above the 18th green using four pylons about 25 meters high, giving TV viewers unique views of the closing hole and its undulations.

Held in a resting position high to the back of the green for approach shots, Spidercam swoops down as the players make their walk to the green and hovers just above them as they make their putts.

“It’s pretty cool the way it can move and do all those swings,” said Northern Irish golfer Tom McKibbin, who went out at 6:35 a.m. local time in the first group of the day with Nicolai Hojgaard and Padraig Harrington.

They were the first players to experience in competition the technology which reportedly cost the R&A 300,000 pounds ($400,000) to install.

“It was a little bit different,” McKibbin said. “I’d never seen it before.”

That’s because the R&A is using the technology before any of the professional tours in golf.

Spidercam has, though, operated widely in TV coverage of other major sports including soccer, rugby and cricket — and has occasionally gotten in the way.

In 2017, India star MS Dhoni hit a shot in a cricket match against England that smashed into the hovering camera and broke it.

In 2022, South Africa cricketer Anrich Nortje was knocked to the ground when he collided with a low-swinging Spidercam as he walked to his place in the field in a test against Australia. The camera operator responsible was stood down for the remainder of the match.

“I didn’t know what hit me,” Nortje said at the time. “I don’t think it should be traveling at head height.”

At Royal Portrush, Spidercam will complement existing technology such as a plane camera, aerial drones and bunker cameras to enhance TV coverage.

According to the Guardian newspaper, players were briefed last week about plans to use Spidercam at Royal Portrush and there were no complaints despite the potential for getting distracted while preparing to make a shot.

As Hojgaard and Harrington walked alongside each other to the 18th green, Spidercam swung down and over them. As Harrington made his two putts, the camera almost circled him.

Hojgaard said he didn’t notice Spidercam.

With Royal Portrush not having a clubhouse on the 18th green, there has been space to install the technology. Other venues on the Open rotation won’t have that luxury, notably Royal Lytham St. Anne’s, Royal Troon and Hoylake.

Next year’s Open is at Royal Birkdale, which has its clubhouse near the 18th green but should still have room for the Spidercam technology.

“We … believe that Spidercam will bring millions of fans a new perspective of the action from Royal Portrush,” said Neil Armit, chief commercial officer at the R&A, “with incredible detail and accessibility wherever they are in the world.”

___

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

LONDON (AP) — Smartphones, laptops, headphones and other electronic devices are essential for work and play in our daily lives. But all that time spent typing, scrolling or listening also means our devices gradually accumulate grime that needs to be cleaned off.

You might not give much thought to cleaning your devices but there are reasons you should, says Logitech, which makes keyboards, webcams and other computer peripherals.

“Regular cleaning and proper maintenance not only keeps your gadgets looking pristine, and wins you hygiene points, it also helps them perform better and last longer,” the company says. “In the case of devices like earbuds, the accumulated bacteria and debris may even cause health issues or discomfort.”

Here are some pointers on cleaning your tech:

Getting started

Always check if the manufacturer has any specific guidelines for cleaning.

Assemble some basic equipment and material for cleaning, which should include a soft and lint-free cleaning cloth, like a microfiber cloth; cotton swabs; a soft-bristled brush like a toothbrush, paintbrush or makeup brush; compressed air and isopropyl alcohol.

Isopropyl, or rubbing alcohol, is a cleaning solvent that’s antiseptic and antibacterial. It’s popular for cleaning electronics because it doesn’t leave any residue and dries quickly. But you might want to wear gloves to avoid skin irritation. Drip some of it on a cloth instead of pouring it directly onto your device. Also heed some of the more specific warnings below.

Water and mild soap can be useful for cleaning dirty surfaces, but isopropyl alcohol is recommended for cleaning the internals of a device, said Alex Diaz-Kokaisl, senior technical writer at electronics repair company iFixit.

“While there isn’t a hard-and-fast rule for cleaning electronics, we generally use high-concentration isopropyl alcohol (more than 90%) because it evaporates quickly,” he said. “The faster a liquid evaporates, the less likely it is to affect any components that conduct electricity.”

For whatever device you’re cleaning, disconnect or power it off first. Remove any cases, plugs, covers and accessories.

Computers and laptops

When using a computer, the keyboard and mouse are the parts that are touched most often and therefore need the most frequent cleaning. And all those crevices between a keyboard’s keys are sure to catch crumbs.

To remove any loose debris, iFixit’s official in-house cleaning guide recommends using a can of compressed air. Run the spray back and forth across the keys to blow out any bits. If possible, hold the keyboard upside down so the debris falls out.

If you don’t have compressed air, Logitech suggests using a hair dryer on the cold air setting. Some social media users also recommend a handheld balloon pump.

Next, dampen a cleaning cloth with water and gently wipe down the keyboard and mouse.

Logitech says you can also use rubbing alcohol but recommends you test it first on an inconspicuous spot to make sure it doesn’t cause discoloration or scrub the lettering off the keys.

Anti-bacterial baby wipes can also work on devices like a mouse, Diaz-Kokaisl said.

“There shouldn’t be enough liquid to seep through cracks in the shell, and their residue typically evaporates faster than just using soap and water,” he said.

For laptop screens or external monitors, use a dry microfiber cloth to gently wipe away fingerprint smudges.

If there are more stubborn spots — like food stains or sneezy spatters — dampen the cloth with distilled water or a 50/50 solution of distilled water and vinegar.

Computer maker Lenovo says the “gentle acidity of vinegar can help break down oils and fingerprints.” Avoid using household glass cleaners, which can contain ammonia that could damage the screen. The same goes for paper towels, which can scratch the screen. HP also warns against using rubbing alcohol.

AirPods and earphones

A lot of people listen to music or podcasts through their earbuds, but that also means they’ll need regular cleaning to remove any earwax, natural skin oils or other grungy buildup.

If the earbuds have silicon tips, remove them. Cleaning procedures vary depending on your brand and model. Logitech and Bose recommend using soapy water. But Sony warns against water or wet wipes because they can speed deterioration, and, instead, advises using a dry cloth.

Use a cotton swab to wipe the earbud nozzles clean.

Owners of Apple AirPods need to follow a much more elaborate procedure to clean the mesh. You’ll need a child’s toothbrush, two small cups, a paper towel, distilled water, as well as micellar water — typically used as a facial cleanser.

Pour some micellar water into a cup, dip the toothbrush, brush the AirPod’s various mesh parts, and then blot them dry with the paper. Repeat twice. Then repeat that procedure but using the distilled water to rinse off the micellar water. Finally, let the AirPods dry for at least two hours.

To clean the rest of the AirPod’s body, use a damp cloth. And don’t forget about the charging case. Apple recommends brushing out any debris and then wiping with a dry cloth. If needed, dampen it with isopropyl alcohol.

What about over-the-ear headphones? Bose says you should wipe them down at least once a week, especially after working out, to remove any dirt and bacteria hiding in the nooks and crannies. Remove the pads and use a cloth dampened with soapy water to clean them.

Smartphones

Apple has issued specific instructions on its website for cleaning various iPhone models. Samsung has posted similar guidelines for its Galaxy lineup.

They both advise using a soft, lint-free cloth, such as a lens cleaning cloth, to gently wipe the outside of the phone. Apple warns against using any cleaning products, which could erode the oil-repellent coating that most iPhones come with.

Both companies say it’s OK to use disinfectants such as rubbing alcohol to gently clean the exterior, but avoid bleach or hydrogen peroxide.

___

Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.

Before the mayor of San Jose, California, arrives at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new business, his aides ask ChatGPT to help draft some talking points.

“Elected officials do a tremendous amount of public speaking,” said Mayor Matt Mahan, whose recent itinerary has taken him from new restaurant and semiconductor startup openings to a festival of lowriding car culture.

Other politicians might be skittish admitting a chatbot co-wrote their speech or that it helped draft a $5.6 billion budget for the new fiscal year, but Mahan is trying to lead by example, pushing a growing number of the nearly 7,000 government workers running Silicon Valley’s biggest city to embrace artificial intelligence technology.

Mahan said adopting AI tools will eliminate drudge work and help the city better serve its roughly 1 million residents.

He’s hardly the only public or private sector executive directing an AI-or-bust strategy, though in some cases, workers have found that the costly technology can add hassles or mistakes.

“The idea is to try things, be really transparent, look for problems, flag them, share them across different government agencies, and then work with vendors and internal teams to problem solve,” Mahan said in an interview. “It’s always bumpy with new technologies.”

By next year, the city intends to have 1,000, or about 15%, of its workers trained to use AI tools for a variety of tasks, including pothole complaint response, bus routing and using vehicle-tracking surveillance cameras to solve crimes.

One of San Jose’s early adopters was Andrea Arjona Amador, who leads electric mobility programs at the city’s transportation department. She has already used ChatGPT to secure a $12 million grant for electric vehicle chargers.

Arjona Amador set up a customized “AI agent” to review the correspondence she was receiving about various grant proposals and asked it to help organize the incoming information, including due dates. Then, she had it help draft the 20-page document.

So far, San Jose has spent more than $35,000 to purchase 89 ChatGPT licenses — at $400 per account — for city workers to use.

“The way it used to work, before I started using this, we spent a lot of evenings and weekends trying to get grants to the finish line,” she said. The Trump administration later rescinded the funding, so she pitched a similar proposal to a regional funder not tied to the federal government.

Arjona Amador, who learned Spanish and French before she learned English, also created another customized chatbot to edit the tone and language of her professional writings.

With close relationships to some of the tech industry’s biggest players, including San Francisco-based OpenAI and Mountain View-based Google, the mayors of the Bay Area’s biggest cities are helping to promote the type of AI adoption that the tech industry is striving for, while also promising guidelines and standards to avoid the technology’s harms.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced a plan Monday to give nearly 30,000 city workers, including nurses and social workers, access to Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot, which is based on the same technology that powers ChatGPT. San Francisco’s plan says it comes with “robust privacy and bias safeguards, and clear guidelines to ensure technology enhances — not replaces — human judgment.”

San Jose has similar guidelines and hasn’t yet reported any major mishaps with its pilot projects. Such problems have attracted attention elsewhere because of the technology’s propensity to spew false information, known as hallucinations.

ChatGPT’s digital fingerprints were found on an error-filled document published in May by U.S. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” commission.

In Fresno, California, a school official was forced to resign after saying she was too trusting of an AI chatbot that fabricated information in a document.

While some government agencies have been secretive about when they turn to chatbots for help, Mahan is open about his ChatGPT-written background memos that he turns to when making speeches.

“Historically, that would have taken hours of phone calls and reading, and you just never would have been able to get those insights,” he said. “You can knock out these tasks at a similar or better level of quality in a lot less time.”

He added, however, that “you still need a human being in the loop. You can’t just kind of press a couple of buttons and trust the output. You still have to do some independent verification. You have to have logic and common sense and ask questions.”

Earlier this year, when OpenAI introduced a new pilot product called Operator, it promised a new kind of tool that went beyond a chatbot’s capabilities. Instead of just analyzing documents and producing passages of text, it could also access a computer system and schedule calendars or perform tasks on a person’s behalf. Developing and selling such “AI agents” is now a key focus for the tech industry.

More than an hour’s drive east of Silicon Valley, where the Bay Area merges into Central Valley farm country, Jamil Niazi, director of information technology at the city of Stockton, had big visions for what he could do with such an agent.

Perhaps the parks and recreation department could let an AI agent help residents book a public park or swimming pool for a birthday party. Or residents could find out how crowded the pool was before packing their swim clothes.

Six months later, however, after completing a proof-of-concept phase, the city didn’t buy a full license for the technology due to the cost.

The market research group Gartner recently predicted that over 40% of “agentic AI” projects will be canceled before the end of 2027, “due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls.”

San Jose’s mayor remains bullish about the potential for these AI tools to help workers “in the bowels of bureaucracy” to rapidly speed up their digital paperwork.

“There’s just an amazing amount of bureaucracy that large organizations have to have,” Mahan said. “Whether it’s finance, accounting, HR or grant writing, those are the kinds of roles where we think our employees can be 20 (to) 50% more productive — quickly.”

——————

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

LONDON (AP) — Smartphones, laptops, headphones and other electronic devices are essential for work and play in our daily lives. But all that time spent typing, scrolling or listening also means our devices gradually accumulate grime that needs to be cleaned off.

You might not give much thought to cleaning your devices but there are reasons you should, says Logitech, which makes keyboards, webcams and other computer peripherals.

“Regular cleaning and proper maintenance not only keeps your gadgets looking pristine, and wins you hygiene points, it also helps them perform better and last longer,” the company says. “In the case of devices like earbuds, the accumulated bacteria and debris may even cause health issues or discomfort.”

Here are some pointers on cleaning your tech:

Getting started

Always check if the manufacturer has any specific guidelines for cleaning.

Assemble some basic equipment and material for cleaning, which should include a soft and lint-free cleaning cloth, like a microfiber cloth; cotton swabs; a soft-bristled brush like a toothbrush, paintbrush or makeup brush; compressed air and isopropyl alcohol.

Isopropyl, or rubbing alcohol, is a non-toxic cleaning solvent that’s antiseptic and antibacterial. It’s popular for cleaning electronics because it doesn’t leave any residue and dries quickly. But you might want to wear gloves to avoid skin irritation. Drip some of it on a cloth instead of pouring it directly onto your device. Also heed some of the more specific warnings below.

Water and mild soap can be useful for cleaning dirty surfaces, but isopropyl alcohol is recommended for cleaning the internals of a device, said Alex Diaz-Kokaisl, senior technical writer at electronics repair company iFixit.

“While there isn’t a hard-and-fast rule for cleaning electronics, we generally use high-concentration isopropyl alcohol (more than 90%) because it evaporates quickly,” he said. “The faster a liquid evaporates, the less likely it is to affect any components that conduct electricity.”

For whatever device you’re cleaning, disconnect or power it off first. Remove any cases, plugs, covers and accessories.

Computers and laptops

When using a computer, the keyboard and mouse are the parts that are touched most often and therefore need the most frequent cleaning. And all those crevices between a keyboard’s keys are sure to catch crumbs.

To remove any loose debris, iFixit’s official in-house cleaning guide recommends using a can of compressed air. Run the spray back and forth across the keys to blow out any bits. If possible, hold the keyboard upside down so the debris falls out.

If you don’t have compressed air, Logitech suggests using a hair dryer on the cold air setting. Some social media users also recommend a handheld balloon pump.

Next, dampen a cleaning cloth with water and gently wipe down the keyboard and mouse.

Logitech says you can also use rubbing alcohol but recommends you test it first on an inconspicuous spot to make sure it doesn’t cause discoloration or scrub the lettering off the keys.

Anti-bacterial baby wipes can also work on devices like a mouse, Diaz-Kokaisl said.

“There shouldn’t be enough liquid to seep through cracks in the shell, and their residue typically evaporates faster than just using soap and water,” he said.

For laptop screens or external monitors, use a dry microfiber cloth to gently wipe away fingerprint smudges.

If there are more stubborn spots — like food stains or sneezy spatters — dampen the cloth with distilled water or a 50/50 solution of distilled water and vinegar.

Computer maker Lenovo says the “gentle acidity of vinegar can help break down oils and fingerprints.” Avoid using household glass cleaners, which can contain ammonia that could damage the screen. The same goes for paper towels, which can scratch the screen. HP also warns against using rubbing alcohol.

AirPods and earphones

A lot of people listen to music or podcasts through their earbuds, but that also means they’ll need regular cleaning to remove any earwax, natural skin oils or other grungy buildup.

If the earbuds have silicon tips, remove them. Cleaning procedures vary depending on your brand and model. Logitech and Bose recommend using soapy water. But Sony warns against water or wet wipes because they can speed deterioration, and, instead, advises using a dry cloth.

Use a cotton swab to wipe the earbud nozzles clean.

Owners of Apple AirPods need to follow a much more elaborate procedure to clean the mesh. You’ll need a child’s toothbrush, two small cups, a paper towel, distilled water, as well as micellar water — typically used as a facial cleanser.

Pour some micellar water into a cup, dip the toothbrush, brush the AirPod’s various mesh parts, and then blot them dry with the paper. Repeat twice. Then repeat that procedure but using the distilled water to rinse off the micellar water. Finally, let the AirPods dry for at least two hours.

To clean the rest of the AirPod’s body, use a damp cloth. And don’t forget about the charging case. Apple recommends brushing out any debris and then wiping with a dry cloth. If needed, dampen it with isopropyl alcohol.

What about over-the-ear headphones? Bose says you should wipe them down at least once a week, especially after working out, to remove any dirt and bacteria hiding in the nooks and crannies. Remove the pads and use a cloth dampened with soapy water to clean them.

Smartphones

Apple has issued specific instructions on its website for cleaning various iPhone models. Samsung has posted similar guidelines for its Galaxy lineup.

They both advise using a soft, lint-free cloth, such as a lens cleaning cloth, to gently wipe the outside of the phone. Apple warns against using any cleaning products, which could erode the oil-repellent coating that most iPhones come with.

Both companies say it’s OK to use disinfectants such as rubbing alcohol to gently clean the exterior, but avoid bleach or hydrogen peroxide.

___

Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The Trump administration revoked federal funding for California’s high-speed rail project on Wednesday, intensifying uncertainty about how the state will make good on its long-delayed promise of building a bullet train to shuttle riders between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The U.S. Transportation Department announced it was pulling back $4 billion in funding for the project, weeks after signaling it would do so. Overall, a little less than a quarter of the project’s funding has come from the federal government. The rest has come from the state, mainly through a voter-approved bond and money from its cap-and-trade program.

President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy both have slammed the project as a “train to nowhere.”

“The Railroad we were promised still does not exist, and never will,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This project was Severely Overpriced, Overregulated, and NEVER DELIVERED.”

The loss marks the latest blow to California by the Trump administration, which has blocked a first-in-the-nation rule to phase out the sale of new gas-powered cars, launched investigations into university admission policies and threatened to pull funding over transgender girls being allowed to compete in girls sports.

It also comes as rail project leaders are seeking private investment to help pay for its estimated price tag of more than $100 billion.

Voters first approved the project in 2008 and it was supposed to be operating this decade. But cost estimates have consistently grown and its timeline pushed back.

State officials are now focused on building a 119-mile (192-kilometer) stretch connecting the Central Valley cities of Bakersfield and Merced that is set to be operating by 2033. The California High Speed Rail Authority is slated to release a report this summer to state lawmakers with an updated funding plan and timeline for the project.

Authority officials wrote in a letter earlier this month that the Trump administration made up its mind about revoking funding before thoroughly reviewing the project. They noted that more than 50 structures have already been built, including underpasses, viaducts and bridges to separate the rail line from roadways for safety.

“Canceling these grants without cause isn’t just wrong — it’s illegal,” authority CEO Ian Choudri said in a statement Wednesday. “These are legally binding agreements, and the Authority has met every obligation, as confirmed by repeated federal reviews, as recently as February 2025.”

The authority has asked potential private investors to express their interest by the end of the month.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state will keep “all options on the table” to fight the revocation of federal funds.

“Trump wants to hand China the future and abandon the Central Valley. We won’t let him,” he said in a statement.

The state has “no viable plan” to complete even the Central Valley segment, said Drew Feeley, acting administrator of the transportation department’s Federal Railroad Administration, in a report released last month. He called the project a “story of broken promises” and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

California Democrats also have criticized project spending. Democratic Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan said at a budget hearing earlier this year that her constituents “overwhelmingly believe” high-speed rail spending “has been irresponsible.”

Newsom plans to extend the state’s cap-and-trade program, a key funding source for the project which is set to expire at the end of 2030, through 2045.

The program sets a declining limit on the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions large emitters can release. Those polluters can buy allowances from the state needed to pollute, and about 45% of that money goes into what’s known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, according to the Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee, a group of experts that reviews the program.

The fund helps pay for climate and transportation projects, including high-speed rail.

The bullet train project receives 25% of the money from the fund, which ends up being a little less or a little more than $1 billion annually, depending on the year. Newsom in May proposed guaranteeing $1 billion a year for the project from the fund, but lawmakers have not agreed to that.

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Austin is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on X: @sophieadanna

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — An $8 billion class action investors’ lawsuit against Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and company leaders — current and former — began Wednesday, with claims stemming from the 2018 privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.

Investors allege in their lawsuit that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users’ personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016. Shareholders say Facebook officials repeatedly and continually violated a 2012 consent order with the Federal Trade Commission under which Facebook agreed to stop collecting and sharing personal data on platform users and friends without their consent.

Facebook later sold user data to commercial partners in direct violation of the consent order and removed disclosures from privacy settings that were required under consent order, the lawsuit alleges.

The fallout led to Facebook agreeing to pay a $5.1 billion penalty to settle FTC charges. The social media giant also faced significant fines in Europe and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users. Now shareholders want Zuckerberg and others to reimburse Meta for the FTC fine and other legal costs, which the plaintiffs estimate total more than $8 billion.

The first trial witness, privacy expert Neil Richards, testified Monday morning for the shareholders.

“Facebook’s privacy disclosures were misleading,” said Richards, a professor at Washington University Law School.

In later testimony, Jeffrey Zients, who served on Facebook’s board from 2018 to 2020, testified that consumer privacy and user data were priorities for both management and the board.

Nonetheless, he supported settling with the FTC as it investigated potential violations of the 2012 consent order, so the company could move forward.

“It was difficult because this was a lot of money, but I think it was better than the alternative,” Zients said.

Asked if the board considered making its founder a party to the settlement, he said Zuckerberg was “essential” to running the company.

And, Zients, who served in both the Obama and Biden administrations, said, “there was no indication that he had done anything wrong.”

The case is expected to run through late next week and include testimony from both Zuckerberg and former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. Other witnesses expected in Delaware Chancery Court, where Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. is incorporated, include board member Marc Andreessen and former board member Peter Thiel. The judge is not expected to rule for several months.

Meta had hoped the Supreme Court would dismiss the case. Justices heard arguments in November before deciding they should not have taken it up. The high court dismissed the company’s appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.

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Ortutay reported from San Francisco.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — A $8 billion class action investors’ lawsuit against Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and company leaders — current and former — begins Wednesday, with claims stemming from the 2018 privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.

Investors allege in their lawsuit that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users’ personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016. Shareholders say Facebook officials repeatedly and continually violated a 2012 consent order with the Federal Trade Commission under which Facebook agreed to stop collecting and sharing personal data on platform users and friends without their consent.

Facebook later sold user data to commercial partners in direct violation of the consent order and removed disclosures from privacy settings that were required under consent order, the lawsuit alleges.

The fallout led to Facebook agreeing to pay a $5.1 billion penalty to settle FTC charges. The social media giant also faced significant fines in Europe and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users. Now shareholders want Zuckerberg and others to reimburse Meta for the FTC fine and other legal costs, which the plaintiffs estimate total more than $8 billion.

The first trial witness, privacy expert Neil Richards, testified Monday morning for the shareholders.

“Facebook’s privacy disclosures were misleading,” said Richards, a professor at Washington University Law School.

On cross-examination by a lawyer for the board of directors, he said he could not say whether the company had violated a 2012 consent order with the FTC. However, when asked about a PricewaterhouseCoopers report published in 2015 that found Facebook’s privacy controls to be sufficient, Richards called such reviews “of limited value” because they are based on information provided by the firm itself.

The eight-day case will feature testimony from Zuckerberg and former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. Others expected to appear on the stand include board member Marc Andreessen and former board member Peter Thiel. It takes place in Delaware Chancery Court, where Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. is incorporated. A judge is expected to rule in the months after the trial wraps up.

Meta took the case all the way to the Supreme Court to try to get it dismissed. Justices heard arguments in November and decided that it was wrong to take up the case in the first place. The high court dismissed the company’s appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.

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Ortutay reported from San Francisco.