San Francisco is now officially back to poaching major tech conferences away from other cities, as Microsoft has moved its Build 2026 conference to San Francisco, snubbing the conference’s longtime home of Seattle.

Long before there was a San Francisco Doom Loop narrative, there was the legitimate problem of SF losing its best tech conferences and professional conferences to other cities. Maybe it was because Las Vegas offers cheaper accommodations, maybe it was because of the homelessness, and maybe, just maybe, that trend has now reversed.  

Probably thanks to the crazy amount of money being thrown around by the AI industry, SF just lured a tech conference from another city. SFGate reports that Microsoft is holding its Build conference in San Francisco in 2026, a conference that has been held in Seattle for most of the last ten years.

The Build conference has been held in Seattle every (non-COVID-cancellation) year since 2017. But Microsoft Build used to be a San Francisco conference, and was last held here in San Francisco in 2016.

Microsoft-owned GitHub CEO Kyle Daigle seems to be speaking as the de facto spokesperson of this year’s Build conference, likely because Microsoft thinks he has more cred with the AI set. “Let’s ship it to San Francisco and see what we learn this year with that audience that can come and join us, and see about the years following,” Daigle said in an interview with The Verge.

Translation: Let’s move this to where the AI money is, to hopefully remain more relevant, and sell more conference tickets,

If you care to attend, this year’s Microsoft Build conference will be June 2–3 at the Fort Mason Center.

Related: Take That, Florida! SF Swipes Major Conference From Sunshine State Over Florida’s Anti-Diversity Agenda [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CA - MARCH 30: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella delivers the keynote address during the 2016 Microsoft Build Developer Conference on March 30, 2016 in San Francisco, California. The Microsoft Build Developer Conference runs through April 1. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The tech world drama of the week comes via a new report about growing tensions in the relationship between OpenAI and its major backer Microsoft, and today we learn that OpenAI has just landed a $200 million government contract.

OpenAI's contract is with the US Department of Defense, and the work — which doesn't seem too well defined — would be complete by July 2026, as Reuters is reporting.

In text pertaining to the contract, the Pentagon said, "Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains."

OpenAI previously said that it would be collaborating with defense technology startup Anduril to build AI systems for “national security missions,” and Anduril landed a $100 million contract with the Defense Department back in December, as CNBC notes.

In a blog post published Monday, OpenAI says that the new contract falls under the newly launched OpenAI for Government, an initiative "focused on bringing our most advanced AI tools to public servants across the United States."

"We're supporting the US government's efforts in adopting best-in-class technology and deploying these tools in service of the public good," the company says. "Our goal is to unlock AI solutions that enhance the capabilities of government workers, help them cut down on the red tape and paperwork, and let them do more of what they come to work each day to do: serve the American people."

Meanwhile, OpenAI appears to be in some kind of power struggle with Microsoft, its chief backer and the provider of cloud computing power. As the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, tensions between the companies "are reaching a boiling point," and OpenAI may even be considering a "nuclear option" to get out from under Microsoft's heel.

That nuclear option would involve a complaint to the feds that Microsoft is engaging in anti-competitive practices — something that Microsoft famously faced a federal trial about over two decades ago.

At issue, per the Journal, is OpenAI's ongoing process of becoming a public benefit corporation, something that it has to complete by the end of the year. And Microsoft reportedly wants to own a larger stake in OpenAI when that process is complete than OpenAI wants to give it.

As Gizmodo notes, "Were OpenAI to actually turn on Microsoft, the resultant corporate battle could be one for the ages — a truly ugly mud fight between two of the most influential companies in Silicon Valley."

You may recall that Microsoft stepped in to poach OpenAI CEO Sam Altman when he was briefly ousted by his own board in late 2023. The details behind that drama are going to be the subject of a movie now in development at Amazon MGM Studios.

Previously: Former Apple Designer Jony Ive's Secretive Startup Working on AI Hardware of Some Kind, OpenAI Acquiring It

Photo: Getty Images

• The San Francisco 49ers have locked in Brock Purdy with a five-year, $265 million contract, including $181 million guaranteed as the team’s franchise quarterback. ESPN points out that Purdy has come a long way since being called “Mr. Irrelevant” as the last pick in the 2022 NFL draft. [ESPN]
• Advocates plan to rally at San Francisco City Hall on May 19 to demand action on street safety after 42 traffic deaths in 2024 and six more pedestrian fatalities so far this year. The protest comes as the city’s Vision Zero plan has expired with no new policy in place. [WalkSF]

#49ers QB Brock Purdy’s 5-year, $265 million extension is the largest raise in NFL history and makes him highest paid Niner of all time at an average annual salary of $53 million.

Niners and Purdy always hoped to have this done before on field portion of OTAs. Mission…

— Nick Wagoner (@nwagoner) May 16, 2025

• During a commencement speech at University of San Francisco on Friday, Dr. Anthony Fauci urged graduates to reject conspiracy theories and misinformation, warning that anti-science sentiments—amplified on social media—threaten public health and the foundation of society. [SFGate]
• Here’s how to watch Giants’ games via kayak. [KQED]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by KQEDNews (@kqednews)

• A bit of satire aimed at Newsom’s podcast guests: “So what do you think Democrats can learn from somebody who, like you, targets the most vulnerable among us?” [The Onion]

National:

• Wash your rice: A new report found arsenic in 100% of 145 rice samples sold in U.S. stores, with one in four exceeding the FDA's limit for infant cereal. The study also revealed that other toxic metals like cadmium, lead, and mercury were present, with brown rice and rice grown in the Southeast showing the highest levels. [CBS News]
• A federal judge dismissed trespassing charges against 98 people arrested in a military buffer zone along the Southwest border, ruling the government failed to prove they knew they were entering restricted land—highlighting the questionable legality of the Trump administration’s aggressive border policies. Despite the administration’s efforts to militarize public lands and detain migrants, unclear signage and rugged terrain made it impossible for many to know they were trespassing on a controversial “National Defense Area.” [ABC News]
• Microsoft is laying off 6,000 employees — including 122 in the Bay Area — just days after its CEO said AI now writes up to 30% of the company’s code. [SFGate]
• Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen was among a group of people arrested on Wednesday during a Senate hearing in which they denounced Congress’s role in funding the starvation of children in Gaza while slashing healthcare for poor kids in the U.S. [Guardian]

Video of the Day:

• Scenes from a 1980s-era lowrider meet-up in the East Bay:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Retro Bay Area (@retrobayarea)

Santa Clara-based chipmaker Nvidia briefly toppled Apple as the second most-valuable company in the US after a market rally on Wednesday, but the feds may have Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI in their sights for an antitrust investigation.

The AI boom is reshuffling the traditional top of the roster of US tech companies, which for so long had been Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon. OpenAI’s ChatGPT has made them the fashionable upstart, despite a number of rookie mistakes. But Microsoft's OpenAI partnerships (Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI) has made it quietly the No. 1 most valuable company in tech again. And also on the quiet side (at least for those of us who don’t work in tech) Santa Clara-based chipmaker Nvidia has become an under-the-radar tech powerhouse, because of their dominance in making the chips that power AI tools.

The dominance propelled Nvidia beyond Apple in market value this week after a Wednesday stock rally that briefly made the company worth more than $3 trillion, according to Yahoo Finance. The stock hit a high of an eye-popping $1,255.87 a share, though dipped somewhat the next day, allowing Apple to take back the No. 2 spot. Nvidia shares closed at $1,205.80 on Friday.

Yet for all the exuberance, there may be trouble on the horizon for Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI. The New York Times reports that the feds are finalizing the details of an antitrust investigation into those three companies. The investigation is not announced yet, but the The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are apparently ironing out the  the details of which agency will investigate which firms.

“Under the arrangement, the Justice Department will take the lead in investigating whether the behavior of Nvidia, the biggest maker of AI chips, has violated antitrust laws,” the Times said based on their sourced reporting. “The FTC will play the lead role in examining the conduct of OpenAI, which makes the ChatGPT chatbot, and Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI and made deals with other AI companies.”

Last July, the FTC launched an investigation into whether OpenAI’s products were harming consumers with data overcollection and the ability to impersonate people. This past January, the FTC also started an investigation into whether Amazon, Google, and Microsoft’s AI investments in smaller companies were intended to create monopolies as the industry takes off.    

In an interview earlier this year, FTC chair Lina Khan said the agency hoped to “issue-spot potential problems at the inception rather than years and years and years later, when problems are deeply baked in and much more difficult to rectify.”

Related: Silicon Valley Chipmaking Giant Nvidia Hit With Cyberattack, Russia Theories Already Flying [SFist]

Image: SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 18: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote address during the Nvidia GTC Artificial Intelligence Conference at SAP Center on March 18, 2024 in San Jose, California. The developer conference is expected to highlight new chip, software, and AI processor technology. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Can you undo a coup? Freshly fired OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is reportedly in talks to return to the company that canned him just five days ago, as the corporate infighting continues at the chaotic but red-hot AI startup.

It’s been nothing but messy @sama drama since Friday morning’s stunning firing of OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, as the board of directors of the company behind ChaptGPT put forth some vague allegation that Altman “was not consistently candid” with them.

Altman’s replacement was the company’s CTO Mira Murati, who lasted two days on the job, and was replaced by former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, against a backdrop of nearly the whole OpenAI workforce threatening to quit in a mass revolt. It seemed Altman had a soft landing arranged, as Microsoft announced late Sunday that they were hiring Altman (Microsoft is OpenAI’s largest investor, having put $13 billion into the company).

What’s odd about the tweet above that Sam Altman has retweeted, with heart emojis, a post from OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who reportedly engineered Altman’s ouster. (Sutskever seems to admit this in the post). And simultaneous to all this heart emoji retweeting, The Verge had a Monday report that Altman was plotting his return to OpenAI, that the Microsoft gig was never a done deal, and that Sutskever had flipped and wanted to bring Altman back on.

It gets juicier! As of Tuesday morning, Bloomberg reports that Altman is now in active negotiations to return to OpenAI. Per Bloomberg, “Altman and members of the OpenAI board have opened negotiations aimed at a possible return,” and that “Discussions are happening between Altman and at least one board member.”

And it is perhaps no coincidence that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gave multiple interviews Monday saying that Altman could return to OpenAI, according to TechCrunch. Nadella told CNBC that Microsoft “chose to explicitly partner with OpenAI [and] obviously that depends on the people at OpenAI staying there or coming to Microsoft, so I’m open to both options.”

Very pointedly, Nadella had words about the OpenAI board that chose to fire Altman. “It’s clear something has to change around the governance — we’ll have a good dialogue with their board on that, and walk through that as that evolves,” he told CNBC.

It’s not hard to read between the lines here that Microsoft now wants a seat on that board, which they do not currently have. The chaos on that board now presents such an opportunity. And Microsoft may be tipping the scales in favor of Altman's return, for which they may be hoping to get a little something in return for themselves.

Related: OpenAI Board Fires Sam Altman For Reasons Unclear [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 06: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the OpenAI DevDay event on November 06, 2023 in San Francisco, California. Altman delivered the keynote address at the first-ever Open AI DevDay conference.(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Whatever professional or interpersonal drama is underpinning the chaotic last few days at OpenAI, it sounds like the company's board might regret the mess they created by abruptly firing CEO Sam Altman on Friday, and an employee revolt at the company is ongoing.

While there was rumor over the weekend that OpenAI's board might have been talking to Sam Altman about undoing the surprise firing they announced Friday, that was all dashed by late Sunday night when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that he was hiring Altman and some of his colleagues instead.

That was followed by a 1 a.m. PT announcement from Emmet Shear, the former CEO of Twitch, saying on X/Twitter that he was accepting the role as the new CEO of OpenAI.

"I’m super excited to have you join as CEO of this new group, Sam, setting a new pace for innovation," Nadella said in a tweet. "We’ve learned a lot over the years about how to give founders and innovators space to build independent identities and cultures within Microsoft, including GitHub, Mojang Studios, and LinkedIn, and I’m looking forward to having you do the same."

OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman, who resigned within hours of Altman's firing, is said to be joining Altman at Microsoft, along with a team of Altman allies.

Brockman posted to X/Twitter, "We are going to build something new & it will be incredible."

Microsoft, which had been a major investor in OpenAI and has partnered with the company to build out AI in its Bing search engine, was among the investors who balked at the OpenAI board's decision on Friday and encouraged them to reverse it, according to reports.

Shear now faces the difficult task of leading a company out of this turmoil, after a group of 500 OpenAI employees signed a letter to the company's board urging them to reinstate Altman and threatening to quit en masse. Update: As the New York Times reports, around 700 of OpenAI's 770 employees have signed onto this letter, and they are all apparently threatening to go over to Microsoft.

"It’s clear that the process and communications around Sam’s removal has been handled very badly, which has seriously damaged our trust," Shear said in his early Monday post. He vowed in his first 30 days at the company to "Hire an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report." And Shear said he would "Reform the management and leadership team in light of recent departures into an effective force to drive results for our customers."

Shear assured everyone that OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft would continue, but it certainly calls to question how much Microsoft will need OpenAI in the future if it has its own AI team led by Altman and Brockman.

One of the board members who may have been a key figure in Altman's ouster, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, expressed regret in his own Monday morning tweet about the situation. "I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions," Sutskever writes. "I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we’ve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company."

It's not clear how much of OpenAI's executive team, or its other teams, will be decamping to Microsoft with Altman.

There also seemed to be some emotion on the part of CTO and board member Mira Murati, who was briefly named interim CEO starting Friday. As the Associated Press notes, Murati was among several OpenAI employees who tweeted the phrase, "OpenAI is nothing without its people," which received a heart reply from Altman.

The Atlantic delved into the "chaos" inside the company over the weekend, reporting that it dated back around a year, to the release of ChatGPT. At the heart of the turmoil was the speed at which ChatGPT and its progenitors, including the upcoming GPT5, were being developed and rolled out, and there are reportedly people within the company who believe that safety testing had been rushed and inadequate.

The firing of Altman, apparently, was a decision that came out of a rift within the company between those pushing for faster innovation and those pushing for caution around the development of overly powerful AIs. Altman has called himself a "centrist" in this debate, and Sutskever is reportedly on Team Caution.

The board only said that the ouster was due to the fact that Altman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."

As a result of the shakeup, shares of Microsoft were on the rise Monday morning, surpassing an all-time high price and hitting $377.88 as of this writing.

Previously: OpenAI Board Fires Sam Altman For Reasons Unclear

Photo: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman looks on during the APEC CEO Summit at Moscone West on November 16, 2023 in San Francisco, California. The APEC summit is being held in San Francisco and runs through November 17. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Not even a month after Microsoft announced they opened an “AI Co-Innovation Lab” at 555 California, the tech giant is now trying to lease off the space at the building that is, infamously, partially owned by Donald Trump.

The giant downtown office building 555 California was once the tallest building in  SF (until the Transamerica Pyramid was completed). In recent years it’s gained notoriety for other reasons; this past winter because glass was blown off its windows during the storms, and of course, because the family of none other than Donald J. Trump co-owns the building with a 30% share.

Now the building located, naturally, at 555 California Street is in the news for other reasons. The SF Business Times reports that Microsoft is trying to unload a bunch of office space they have at 555 California, as SF’s well-documented office space vacancy woes continue.

It’s a surprise move, because not even a month ago, Microsoft made a big announcement that they had opened an “AI Co-Innovation Lab” at 555 California. It’s unclear whether that lab will be booted or discontinued, and frankly, whether Microsoft can find a new tenant willing to take the space anyway.

The Chronicle reviewed marketing materials for the sublease Microsoft is offering, and characterizes the available space “as small as 4,500 square feet” and “up to 49,000 square feet.” Presumably, Microsoft would prefer you rented more on the larger end of that space estimate. The lease runs through May 2029.

Surprisingly, the Chronicle notes that 555 California is 94.5% leased as of July. Obviously that’s an estimate from a few months ago, but that’s still a stratospheric lease rate in the current office space downturn. The building still has blue-chip tenants like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, McKinsey & Co., and Bank of America (who used to have their global headquarters at the building).

Back in February, the building had been placed on a lender watchlist, as Bloomberg reported, because of its $1.2 billion mortgage, and questions about whether its owners — the Trump organization and Vornado Realty Trust — would be able to service that debt.

Related: SF’s ‘Trump Tower’ Taken Off The Market, Denying Trump Big Payday [SFist]

Image: Kevin Y. via Yelp

Photo: The beloved Mondrian Car, photograph by Darwin Bell

Several tech CEOs whose companies have begun releasing products with powerful artificial-intelligence capabilities were called to a meeting at the White House Thursday to discuss the escalating nervousness around AI and calls to regulate it.

The meeting was not with President Biden, but with Vice President Kamala Harris — maybe because of her connections to the Bay Area? As the New York Times reports, the meeting lasted over an hour in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, and the attendees included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

President Biden reportedly "stopped by" the meeting briefly.

"The private sector has an ethical, moral and legal responsibility to ensure the safety and security of their products," Harris said in a statement. "And every company must comply with existing laws to protect the American people."

The meeting comes amid calls for limitations and regulations on the entire AI industry, as the technology appears to be advancing more quickly than many in Washington realized. And as the Times notes, this was the first time that questions raised by the likes of ChatGPT, Google's Bard, and Microsoft's Bing chat bot have been taking up by the White House.

Arati Prabhakar, the director of the White House office of science and technology policy, invited the CEOs to the meeting. The Times got a copy of the invite, which said, in part, "We aim to have a frank discussion of the risks we each see in current and near-term A.I. development, actions to mitigate those risks and other ways we can work together to ensure the American people benefit from advances in A.I. while being protected from its harms."

Other high-level discussions are reportedly happening in the European Union and in China about placing limits on AI — and of course in China, the communist government is mostly, initially worried about AI bots adhering to their strict censorship guidelines.

"Europe certainly isn’t sitting around, nor is China," says Tom Wheeler, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, speaking to the Times, adding, "There is a first mover advantage in policy as much as there is a first mover advantage in the marketplace."

Lina Kahn, the current chair of the Federal Trade Commission, penned a guest essay for the Times today, noting that the government was caught flat-footed over a decade ago by the rise of social media.

"The last time we found ourselves facing such widespread social change wrought by technology was the onset of the Web 2.0 era in the mid-2000s," Kahn writes. "What we initially conceived of as free services were monetized through extensive surveillance of the people and businesses that used them. The result has been an online economy where access to increasingly essential services is conditioned on the widespread hoarding and sale of our personal data."

"The trajectory of the Web 2.0 era was not inevitable — it was instead shaped by a broad range of policy choices," Kahn says. "And we now face another moment of choice. As the use of A.I. becomes more widespread, public officials have a responsibility to ensure this hard-learned history doesn’t repeat itself."

Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk went public with his desire to help shape the future of AI last month, going on Tucker Carlson's now-canceled show to talk about his current fears — which, bafflingly, aren't about bad actors scamming people or misinformation proliferating or computers seizing control of weapons of war, but mostly about AI bots being trained to be too politically correct or "woke."

Musk pledged to build is own AI, which he was calling TruthGPT. And he said that AI companies should welcome regulation, because with regulation, there's a "better chance of advanced AI being beneficial to humanity."

Previously: John Oliver Goes After SF-Based OpenAI and Its ChatGPT Product: ‘The George Santos of Technology’

Top image: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, walks from lunch during the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 06, 2022 in Sun Valley, Idaho. The world's most wealthy and powerful businesspeople from the media, finance, and technology will converge at the Sun Valley Resort this week for the exclusive conference. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Netflix has now committed to an ad-supported, lower-cost subscription package with Microsoft handling the ads, in an effort to boost the company's bottom line and lure back some customers.

The bad PR headlines for Netflix lately have involved their greenlighting of needlessly transphobic Dave Chapelle specials and a not particularly trans-friendly workplace culture. But the company has bigger problems, namely, with money. The service is hemorrhaging subscribers, and has had rounds of layoffs not once but twice in just the last two months.  

Netflix execs announced with their last poor earnings report that the company was going to try to stop the bleeding by adding a new, cheaper tier supported by ads. And that is now official, as The Verge reports that Netflix is partnering with Microsoft to handle the ads, on this new cheapo tier.

"In April we announced that we will introduce a new lower priced ad-supported subscription plan for consumers, in addition to our existing ads-free basic, standard and premium plans,” Netflix COO and Chief Product Officer Greg Peters said in a company blog post. “Today we are pleased to announce that we have selected Microsoft as our global advertising technology and sales partner.”

Now “a new lower priced ad-supported subscription plan” doesn't mean free. And if people aren’t willing to pay even $9.99 a month for Netflix, is knocking a few dollars off of that cost really going to lure more subscribers?

In addition to no information on what this lower pricing would be (let's guess $5/mo), there is also no timeline announced for the launch of ad-supported Netflix. Peters merely said, "It’s very early days and we have much to work through."

In addition to introducing this ad-supported tier, Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings said in April that the company was looking to create a new family plan structure, and to crack down on account sharing. With people sharing accounts and passwords for years, this could backfire and lead to lost subscribers if the crackdown gets too cumbersome, but the idea would be to gently call out those accounts that are being shared across households, and push them to pay for a slightly more expensive family plan with some cap on the number of simultaneous sign-ins.

There's also no announced timeline on when that option is getting introduced.

Related: Netflix Tells Employees They Can Seek Other Jobs If They Object to Content [SFist]

Image: Netflix

Twitter is in the mix with Microsoft to acquire the mega-popular video app, as the clock is ticking on the September 15 deadline of a mandatory TikTok sale.

Shortform video app TikTok, which has seemingly destigmatized the deservedly very stigmatized portrait mode in smartphone video, has to sell off its US business by September 15, after President Trump’s executive order last week (which also covers the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat). Trump’s suspicion may be justified, there are legitimate Chinese state surveillance concerns with the app’s Beijing-based parent company ByteDance. And the lack of political pushback against the unusual ban of a tech product means the sale is almost certainly happening, with Microsoft as the leading contender for the winning bid, according to CNBC.

Not so fast, Clippy. Early Monday, BBC News reported that San Francisco-based Twitter has “approached” TikTok about a US sale, building on some Wall Street Journal reporting that dropped Saturday night.

“Twitter Inc. has had preliminary talks about a potential combination with TikTok, the popular video-sharing app that the Trump administration has declared a national-security threat due to its Chinese ownership,” the Journal reported over the weekend. “A deal would involve TikTok’s U.S. operations, the people said.”

That’s one major difference — Twitter’s TikTok deal would only buy up the U.S. operations, while the Microsoft proposal would also buy TikTok’s operations in Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well, according to a KPIX/CNN report. Of course, another major difference is Microsoft’s $1.7 trillion value, compared to Twitter’s “much smaller” $29 billion. But the TikTok tool is certainly a better fit for Twitter, the platform where these videos are so frequently posted, whereas Microsoft’s current incarnation is more of a business-to-business company with a few niche consumer products like Xbox and LinkedIn.

There's also something important to note in Twitter's acquisition history: The company already owned a short-form video platform, Vine, which it summarily shut down in 2016 as creators fled for apps with more features and more money-making potential, and as Snapchat's 10-second videos became the go-to place for the kids to share clips from their lives. (Also, Twitter had enough to deal with in its core business in 2016 to worry about fixing or improving Vine.)

Much of the analysts’ discussion of these potential deals revolves around content moderation challenges Microsoft or Twitter would face with the platform, particularly in the wake of news that QAnon’s conspiracy theory about child trafficking involving Wayfair’s furniture spread like wildfire on TikTok. But this seems like an odd concern.

Pretty much no tech company has ever really been held accountable for their spectacular failures at content moderation, and YouTube is rather notorious for monetizing hate videos, so there is not penalty for tech companies who can’t or won’t moderate content. The real sticking issue here may be Trump’s demand that the U.S. Treasury get a "very substantial portion" of the proceeds of any sale, which means whoever wins the TikTok sweepstakes will probably have to close the deal on a Trump golf course, at a Trump resort, and contingent on the additional purchase of a semi-truck full of Trump steaks.

Related: Woman Sets Her Hair On Fire On BART Train In East Bay, Video Lands On TikTok [SFist]

Image: Sarah Cooper via TikTok

Many of tech's biggest companies are banding together to resist President Trump's stated decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. Per CNet's report, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are a few of the 100 companies which sponsored an amicus brief filed in San Francisco yesterday.

The brief, which is publicly available, touches on one of the primary talking points around DACA, which is that it grants a heavy economic boon to these companies in the form of access to an expanded, skilled workforce. They write:

DACA has produced -- and is continuing to produce -- important benefits for America's companies and for our economy as a whole. Employment is not a zero sum game. Dreamers are filling vacancies at companies that cannot find enough workers to fill their needs.

Since the it was first introduced in 2012 by then-President Obama, over 800,000 children and young adults have taken advantage of the program, which defers deportation action and proceedings. In essence, it allowed children and teenagers who were brought in by their undocumented parents to remain in the U.S. while lawmakers worked to institute meaningful immigration reform. No progress has been made on that front, and with Trump's election, many don't expect that fact to change. But in the time since, those 800,000 DACA recipients, or Dreamers, have received full educations, with some of them graduating and joining the American workforce as trained professionals. The tech companies are choosing to center their focus on their contributions and the impact they have as individuals on the tech industry at large.

As an industry, tech has long relied on the skills of workers from overseas, which means they also rely on the government to enable such practices. The foremost example of this is the H1-B visa, which The Independent calls a "key pipeline" for tech companies, as it allows tech companies to bring talent into the country on work visas. The practice has been criticized by many in the past, as American workers are supposedly being replaced by these folks, but if nothing else, the practice shows that tech companies are heavily invested in immigration reform and rights. CNet also points out that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, created FWD.us back in 2013, a lobbyist group that works to advocate for immigration reform in Washington, D.C. He can also be seen speaking with a few Dreamers in this video he posted to Facebook.

Elsewhere, Axios reports that Apple has filed its own brief. In theirs, they write, in part:

These talented and entrepreneurial people fill important and varied roles across the company, including in operations, research and development, administration, sales and marketing, and retail. Apple and its customers have benefitted greatly from their intelligence, ambition, creativity, resilience, and hard work. These employees are important contributors to Apple's unique culture. That unique culture enables employees throughout Apple to do the best work of their lives and excel at creating the most innovative products and providing the very best customer service.

Additionally, IBM has voiced their support, as Christopher Padilla, their VP of government affairs wrote:

They contribute to our company and help to drive innovation and excellence at IBM. In fact, one of our Dreamers recently worked around-the-clock remote shifts to ensure continuity of IBM services when Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston," Padilla said. "BM is actively urging Congress to find a permanent legislative solution to enable Dreamers to stay in the United States. We have also urged the court in this case to find that DACA's revocation was unfounded. The program is due to begin phasing out in less than five months, and we are committed to providing as much stability and predictability as possible to DACA recipients who work at IBM

Politico reports that Trump is still meeting with GOP senators, who are set to report on how much progress they've made in ending the DACA program, which is scheduled to terminate in March. Ostensibly, their plans would "a pathway to legal status" for the 800,000 or so Dreamers, but there's no word yet on what that pathway might look like.

Related: Dreamers File Lawsuit Against Trump Administration's Move to End DACA

#WannaCry #ransomware used in widespread attacks all over the world via @Securelist https://t.co/zh012F9lCC pic.twitter.com/UzJVqUwbT6

— Kaspersky Lab (@kaspersky) May 12, 2017

Ransomware leaked by hackers and stolen originally from NSA documents has been infecting computers worldwide Friday, with some of the first reports coming from hospitals and offices in England. The Washington Post reports that the ransomware, which cripples computers and threatens to delete data unless a ransom is paid to the hacker, exploits a flaw in Microsoft system software, and though the company has issued a patch, that has not stopped the spread of the malware across the internet. As one cybersecurity expert puts it to the New York Times, "When people ask what keeps you up at night, it’s this."

In this case, the scope of the attacks is vast, but the ransoms demanded are relatively small, starting around $300. The sum goes up the longer you wait to pay.

According to the Times, the attack has affected at least 36 hospitals in England, and other attacks have been reported in 74 countries so far, per Consumerist, including the US, Russia, Spain, India, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Turkey, and Vietnam. The hackers appear to have targeted large computer networks that had yet to be updated and were therefore vulnerable, and among the large companies affected were major telecommunication companies like Spain’s Telefónica and Russia’s MegaFon. Interestingly, targets in Russia appear to be the hardest hit so far, according to SecureList.

Britain’s National Health Service issued a statement identifying the ransomware as a variant of something called Wanna Decryptor, saying that their cybersecurity team was working quickly to "ensure patient safety is protected."

The attacks were first reported by one security firm at 1 p.m. Eastern Time.

Gizmodo and Malwarebytes have example screenshots of what the ransomware screens looks like:

TechCrunch reports that the ransomware, which was one of a number of hacking tools that was discovered and developed by the NSA, was leaked by a hacking group called Shadow Brokers last month, but the Microsoft flaw it exploits had been preemptively fixed in a patch that was released in March.

Reportedly there have already been some 57,000 computers affected worldwide so far, and TechCrunch also notes that money has been steadily flowing into the hackers' bitcoin wallet in small sums of $250 to $500, indicating that many are opting to pay the ransom.

BoingBoing notes that this attack has echoes of another ransomware attack that targeted several hospitals in the US in February and March 2016. In those attacks, the hackers initially demanded large sums and then backed down to accepting smaller sums as they realized that using hospitals as targets to lead to a more aggressive criminal investigation effort.

Related: One Million Gmail Accounts Compromised In Phishing Attack, Here's How To Protect Yours

#Twitter #Disney pic.twitter.com/SjUSPHyzHq

— Wissem (@Wissem_Rassas) September 26, 2016

Late last week we heard that Twitter was starting to receive buyout bids from several tech companies, including Salesforce and Google, and as of today we're learning that two more top contenders for an acquisition deal are Microsoft and possibly Disney. Citing an unnamed source with apparent knowledge of the discussions, CNBC reports that a deal could be struck within 30 to 45 days. As a result, Twitter stock price continues to rise as it began doing sharply last Thursday, trading at $23.25 per share late Monday up from about $18.50 last week.

Bloomberg first reported the Disney news Monday, noting that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is on the board of Disney and saying that multiple people familiar with the discussion report that "Walt Disney Co. is working with a financial adviser to evaluate a possible bid for Twitter Inc." TechCrunch independently verified this as well.

Also, apparently, Salesforce has been working with Bank of America to prepare a formal bid, and as we learned last week Salesforce's "chief digital evangelist" Vala Afshar is pretty in love with the idea.

Microsoft may be stepping in, however, after already beating out Salesforce to acquire LinkedIn earlier this year. And Facebook, which has long been Twitter's primary competitor, is unlikely to be putting in a bid, despite the fact that the company still needs help with disseminating real-time news.

Forbes notes that Twitter's live streaming deals with the NFL and NBA are likely attractive to Disney, but as Recode discussed earlier this month, while an acquisition of Twitter might be highly attractive to an Old Media company like Disney, it comes with a pretty steep price tag for media companies, likely north of $18 billion.

The Verge explains that Disney likely has a strong interest investing in a new media property like Twitter and keeping it out of the hands of competitors, particularly as its cable TV business — the biggest piece of the company — with properties like ABC and ESPN are losing younger viewers to YouTube and the internet in general. With that in mind, Disney has already invested in properties like Hulu and Vice Media.

Recode reiterates today, however, that Disney is an unlikely buyer, and that looking into a bid is probably as far as this is going to go for them. Speaking to Disney CEO Bob Igor's friendship with Jack Dorsey, the site quips, "If you’re going to spend $18 billion, $20 billion, $30 billion on something, you need a little bit more than 'I like the dude who runs the company.'"

Previously: Twitter Likely About To Get Bought, Maybe By Google Or Salesforce

A study published today looking at worker personality traits across the tech sector has some bad news for Facebook. Its employees were found to rank dead last in "curiosity and adventurousness" — qualities which study authors say are key for innovation — among the five most prominent tech companies studied. Picked up by the Chronicle, the report casts new light on why some tech giants may be disrupting while others are merely imitating.

Looking at data from 4,364 people over a two-year span, the study's authors came to a pretty straightforward conclusion: “Looking for a workplace that prioritizes a creative culture? Avoid Facebook.”

"When we compared the character traits of managers at IBM, Facebook, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, we discovered that Facebook's culture is demonstrably lacking when it comes to hiring for aspects of 'openness to experience,' such as intellectual curiosity and adventurousness — two traits vital for fostering a culture of creativity," the study reads.

The data was compiled by Good&Co, a job search site that, according to its website, bills itself as "the job-hunting lovechild of e-Harmony and LinkedIn” (whatever that means). People interested in getting a job through the site first fill out a survey that determines various personality traits and then are matched with potential professional opportunities based on those results. It is from these surveys that the data is drawn.

"[Our] data suggests that Facebook's culture was never quite as focused on innovation as we originally thought and perceived," the study continues, "towing the line and staying 'in the box' might be the key to success after all."

Huh, that might explain why Facebook ditched its famous "move fast and break things" motto two years ago in favor of the more prosaic “move fast with stable infra(structure).” Or maybe the Zuck's goal of making the world a more open and connected place just doesn't translate to intellectual openness.

Related: Here's What Facebook, Google, And Apple Employees Really Think About Tech-Shuttle 'Hubs'