Bay Area high schoolers are spending their summers building hardware, coding safety tools, and developing engineering projects — some for national competitions — through school programs and youth-led initiatives that foster real-world innovation.

KPIX in particular has been highlighting many of these stories. In Concord, students at Ygnacio Valley High developed a phone-controlled exoskeleton hand to assist people with limited mobility. The invention earned their team the top honor at MIT’s EurekaFest and is now patent pending. Their teacher, Joseph Alvarico, helped secure a Lemelson-MIT grant, and a local law firm offered pro bono help to file the patent.

San Francisco hosted 180 teen coders from around the world over the weekend at Hack Club’s Undercity event — a four-day overnight build-a-thon where participants created hardware projects from scratch. Sixteen-year-old Meghana Madiraju led tutorials and pushed for greater gender equity in tech. “Getting more girls into tech” is her personal mission, she said, pointing out the gender gap even at forward-thinking events like this one.

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And 18-year-old Mizan Rupan-Tompkins, a licensed pilot with a background in AI, developed an autonomous tool called Stratus to help prevent mid-air collisions at non-towered airports. The system uses machine learning to detect unusual pilot communications in real time for use as a safety net, as opposed to a replacement for air traffic controllers. He hopes to launch it at 10 Bay Area airports within the month.

Meanwhile in Mountain View, as KGO reports, students with Garage 803 Racing are racing the clock to finish their solar-powered car before heading to the Solar Car Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway. They’ve been building everything by hand — sometimes with scavenged parts — and learning on the fly. Their goal is to get to the track, pass tech inspection, and compete against the best student teams in the country.

Image: mediaphotos/Getty Images

Two years after 17-year-old Ryan Last of San Jose took his own life, authorities have arrested four men in Côte d’Ivoire for their alleged roles in an international sextortion scheme that targeted thousands, including minors.

Ryan Last, a senior at Ann Sobrato High School, died by suicide in February 2022 after being blackmailed online. He had communicated with someone he believed was a young woman, who sent him explicit images and encouraged him to reciprocate. Once he did, the scammer demanded $5,000, threatening to release the images publicly. After Ryan paid $150, the demands continued. Hours later, he ended his life.

“His note apologized for not being smarter,” Ryan’s mother Pauline Stuart told ABC7. “He believed in somebody and that devastates me that he felt that he wasn’t smart because somebody took advantage of him.”

According to KRON4, the U.S. Department of Justice identified Alfred Kassi, an Ivorian national, as the main perpetrator. He was arrested on April 29 by local authorities, who found the sextortion messages to Ryan still on his phone. Côte d’Ivoire does not extradite its citizens, so Kassi and three alleged accomplices—Oumarou Ouedraogo, Moussa Diaby, and Oumar Cisse—will be prosecuted under Ivorian cybercrime laws.

Ouedraogo is accused of laundering money extorted from Ryan. Diaby and Cisse reportedly admitted to their own involvement in sexual extortion. A fifth man, Jonathan Kassi (unrelated to Alfred), was arrested in California in 2022 and later sentenced to 18 months in jail for his role in the broader scheme.

The investigation involved the FBI, San Jose Police Department, U.S. Embassy in Abidjan, and Meta, which the DOJ said provided critical information leading to the arrests.

Stuart, who had parental controls set on her son’s electronics, has urged parents to speak with their children about the dangers of online scams: “Make them understand that not everybody that reaches out to them is who they say they are.”

Image: Julian Christ/Unsplash

This week's notable humans are Maya Merhige, a Berkeley teen who completed her fourth Oceans Seven swim; Tim Friede, whose work self-injecting snake venom has aided crucial antivenom research; and Brighid Kohl, creator of an innovative anti-bullying and leadership program at her college.

Berkeley teen Maya Merhige spent 14 hours crossing New Zealand’s Cook Strait last month — stung by jellyfish every few seconds, swimming 27 miles through pitch-black seas, and pushing her body to the edge of collapse. It was the latest in her quest to become the youngest person ever to complete the Oceans Seven, a marathon swimming challenge that spans some of the world’s most dangerous waters.

At just 17, Merhige has already crossed the English Channel, the Moloka’i Channel, the Catalina Channel, and now the Cook Strait — four of the seven swims required to join the elite club. All with just a swimsuit, a support boat, and whatever mental grit she could summon.

She swam mostly at night, not just to avoid sunburn, but because she preferred not seeing the jellyfish — which struck her face, lips, and ears every few strokes. “Out of sight, out of mind,” she told CNN. “They’re not there if you can’t see them.”

Despite battling injury, hallucinations, and terrifying sea life — including sharks and whales — Merhige says the ocean is where she feels most herself. She’s used her swims to raise over $130,000 for pediatric cancer research and plans to finish the Oceans Seven by 2028, even as she heads to college on a pre-med track.

“There are kids in hospitals right now getting chemo,” she says. “If they can get through that, I can keep swimming.”

Bay Area transplant Tim Friede has spent two decades putting his body on the line to help save lives — by self-injecting venom from some of the world’s deadliest snakes. His goal has been to build immunity that could lead to a universal antivenom and prevent tens of thousands of snakebite deaths each year.

Friede began his experiments in Wisconsin while working as a truck mechanic. With no formal medical training but a deep interest in science, he developed a radical routine: injecting himself with venom from cobras, black mambas, and taipans. He’s survived more than 200 venom exposures — including several near-fatal encounters — and developed a rare immune response that scientists now study closely.

In 2023, Friede moved to San Francisco to collaborate with researchers at UCSF, who are analyzing his blood in hopes of developing more accessible antivenoms. “I do this so others don’t have to,” he told National Geographic, which profiled him in a recent documentary. “Snakebite is one of the most neglected global health issues out there.”

Snakebites kill more than 100,000 people each year, mostly in rural areas without access to region-specific treatments. Current antivenoms are expensive, fragile, and species-specific — making Friede’s vision of a broad-spectrum alternative especially urgent.

Now partnered with leading scientists, Friede is transforming decades of self-experimentation into data that could revolutionize antivenom — proving that even the most unconventional paths can lead to lifesaving breakthroughs.

Brighid Kohl, who’s autistic and has a stutter, created the “You Are Not Alone” (YANA) program at the College of Adaptive Arts (CAA) in Saratoga, which helps combat bullying and isolation. Inspired by a Canadian YouTuber’s anti-bullying campaign, Kohl wanted to offer a space for students who felt alone or bullied. She pitched the idea to the CAA administration through a PowerPoint presentation, and not only was the program approved, but Kohl was also asked to help lead it.

The weekly YANA class fosters a supportive environment where students check in with each other, engage in conversations, and share heart gestures if someone is feeling down. Kohl's leadership has had a significant impact on the class, helping students build stronger social skills, emotional resilience, and a sense of empowerment. In addition to her role in the class, Kohl has become an associate professor at CAA, where students are encouraged to take on leadership roles, including teaching and administrative positions.

Kohl’s work at CAA has not only improved the experience for her peers but has also highlighted the value of inclusive education. Her leadership in the YANA program and role as an associate professor are examples of the opportunities CAA provides for students with disabilities to take on meaningful roles and contribute to the community.

CAA remains focused on supporting students in achieving their academic and personal goals, offering an environment where students can develop social, emotional, and professional skills. Kohl’s story is a testament to the impact of an inclusive educational approach that recognizes the potential in every student, regardless of disability.

Image via Instagram

Previously: Notable Humans: Thomas Bennett’s Dedication To Miyako Ice Cream And The Fillmore Community

15-year-old San Francisco native Ethan Liao already played Carnegie Hall this year, and now he’s headed back to New York to Jazz at Lincoln Center after his new composition won a top national prize. We’ve got a taste of his very notable sounds.

One of San Francisco’s brightest up-and-coming musical stars just performed in February at Carnegie Hall, and now he's heading back to New York, as the Jazz at Lincoln Center organization has awarded one of his original works as a national composition contest winner. Oh, and we should mention, this up-and-coming musical star is a high school freshman who's just 15 years old.

University High School freshman Ethan Liao recently won the Jazz at Lincoln Center’s national student composition and arranging contest that’s part of their upcoming Essentially Ellington high school jazz band competition and festival (May 7-11). So the young man is heading back to New York City, where the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will perform his winning composition “By Candlelight,” and Liao will participate in a recording session of the number.

The song, “By Candlelight,” is seen above from his recent appearance on KRON4’s Live by the Bay (you can watch the full interview here). We’ve got another video below of Ethan Liao playing it on a full, proper piano, and we asked the SF native how he got invites to play at Carnegie Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center at such a young age.

"One of my first memories, and my first memory about music, is listening to my grandma sing opera in the car," Liao tells SFist. "She’s an amateur opera singer. And so she was practicing one of her songs in the car and absolutely belting it. That’s one of my first memories."

"I was exposed to a lot of classical music when I was pretty young. I didn't always love to hear it," he adds. "But looking back, I’m really, really glad that my parents brought me to performances, showed me what symphonies sounded like, and sometimes played for me on their instruments."

"Having that music around the house all the time did wonders for my development as a musician, and also later on," he says.

Liao started playing the piano at three years old, and had a classical piano teacher by the time he was five. But he developed a more intensive interest in composing music for a full band during his spare time in the pandemic (at a time when he was just ten years old).

“By that time I started dipping my toes into composition,” Liao tells us. “I realized how useful the piano can be as a composer. I didn’t really mean to compose my first piece, I was just improvising for a very long time, and I eventually came up with something that I thought was pretty good.”

"And when I brought it over to my teacher, he told me, ‘Ethan, I think you just composed something, you should try to write it down.'”

His award-winning composition “By Candlelight” played on a full piano can be seen above. “It was originally really daunting to write for so many instruments, especially instruments that I don’t play,” he admits. “When I entered that Jazz Ensemble at University High School, that was really eye-opening for me. Because I slowly started figuring out how the different families of instruments could interact.”

“It really was a process of elimination, during the writing and also during my time listening and participating as a player in the band, what really worked and what didn’t,” he tells us. “For anyone else who’s trying to compose for a big band, it’s not as scary as it sounds. It’s actually really fun. You have a lot of freedom, you can put in whatever notes you want.”

“If you try things and try things again, you’ll absolutely get to a product that I’m sure you’ll be happy with, And that’s the experience that I found.”

Now Liao is at University High School, the alma mater of comic Ali Wong and SF Mayor Daniel Lurie. “San Francisco University High School (UHS) has an amazing music program, especially for jazz musicians,” he says. “When I was considering schools, I knew I wanted to be in a place where I could be surrounded by people who loved both jazz and orchestral music."

“I don’t think I could have gotten to where I am now without every single one of the mentors that’s guided me,” Liao continues. “It would be impossible for anyone to be a musician without those teachers. I know there are a lot of people who are self-taught, but they still gain knowledge from somewhere.”

Ethan Liao has more to say about that in his recent KTVU appearance.

Most of us cannot go to New York in May to hear the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra perform “By Candlelight.” But you can see Ethan Liao perform next Friday night, April 25, at Bayview’s Old Skool Cafe from 5:45 - 8:30 pm, with several other University High School music program students.

“I’m very fortunate to be able to play there with some of my fellow musicians from UHS,” he says. “If you want to listen to me and my fellow musicians play some pretty fun jazz music that we all enjoy playing, you should come to the Old Skool Cafe.”

Related: New Musical Inspired and Performed By Real Bay Area Teens to Premiere August 4 at ACT [SFist]

Image: Kateryna Li Khemmett, Laureate Gala performance, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, February 17, 2025

As we approach the five-year COVID lockdown anniversary, a New York Times feature talks to a dozen Oakland Technical High School grads about how it affected them to spend their prime teen years stuck in their room, and just on Zoom.

We’re coming up on St. Patrick’s Day weekend, though many will remember that St. Patrick’s Day is also the day that lockdown arrived at 12:01 a.m. on March 17, 2020. The whole nation and world would quickly follow suit over this thing that at the time we called the “novel coronavirus,” and the five-Bay-Area-county shelter-in-place order was announced as being “in effect until at least Tuesday, April 7,” 2020. If we only knew what was ahead of us!

The commemorate these years, the New York Times has an longform article speaking to a dozen Oakland Technical High School graduates, now 21 or 22 years old, on how COVID wrecked their high school years. They missed out on first dates, first jobs, proms and other such rites of passage during those COVID years where the time of day never mattered. The Times explains how they spent their days holed up “making TikToks, watching porn, playing Fortnite,” while hundreds of thousands were dying, and of course, they also endured the wild confusion of the orange sky day.

Oakland Tech went “remote only” in March 2020, and their Zoom school day was only three hours long, starting at 9 am. Many students quickly learned how to game the system, logging in only long enough to be counted as present for the day, or muting themselves so they could engage in other forms of goofing off instead of schooling.

Even when schools reopened, as the vaccines arrived in April 2021, the Times points out that “Chronic absenteeism soared in the pandemic to about 30 percent nationwide, and high school graduation rates dropped in 31 states, including California.” At Oakland Tech, the percentage of students who applied for and got into college dropped by four points.

They did not just face learning loss, there was also a giant loss in these students’ social-emotional development. Many say they formed severe anxiety around in-person communication. They developed long-term habits to drink less alcohol (unlike the adults), and engaged in less dating and sex. During the COVID years, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that the percentage of teens who expressed “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” increased from 37% to 42%.

The Times features a quote from Oakland Tech’s valedictorian of the Class of 2021, Ahmed Muhammad. Yes, the school had in-person graduation that year, albeit on a football field, with everyone masked and forced to be six feet apart. As Ahmed told his graduating classmates in the speech, “If our high school experience has taught us anything, it’s that we have absolutely no idea” what’s coming next.

Related: It’s the Three-Year Anniversary of Our COVID-19 Lockdown, San Francisco [SFist]

Image: @kpeastbayarea via Twitter

Eight minors from across the Bay Area, one of them only 12 years old, have been arrested and charged for 23 separate Walgreens robberies in which their estimated alleged stolen loot totaled $84,000 worth.  

It is stunning to think that one gang of Bay Area burglars could be behind 23 different Walgreens robberies, and made off with $84,000 worth of merchandise. It is even more stunning to learn that these eight suspects were all youngsters between the ages of 12 and 18 years old.

But SFPD clearly has a teen robbery crew on its hand here, and announced Thursday that eight young suspects had been arrested for the robbery spree that covered 23 different Walgreens heists. Only one of the suspects is 18 years old, Brandon McClain of Hayward. The rest were all 12-15 years old, and hail from San Francisco, Oakland, Oakley, and Pittsburg.

It was a September 16 robbery of the Walgreens at 24th Street and Potrero Avenue that helped SFPD unspool the case. Two of the suspects assaulted a store employee that day, giving the employee a serious head injury. Police recognized five of those suspects from an assault that had taken place earlier that day on 24th Street.

“A review of other incidents with the SFPD Burglary–Organized Retail Crime Unit led investigators to identify other incidents based on similarities in the suspect description, victim similarities, and modus operandi,” SFPD says in  their announcement. “Through the diligent work of investigators and Walgreens Asset Protection members, a total of eight suspects were determined to have been involved in at least 23 organized retail crime incidents at various Walgreens locations in San Francisco, totaling over $84,000 in stolen merchandise.”

The youths, all male, are being charged with robbery, burglary, grand theft, organized retail theft, and petty theft. A couple also face charges of assault with a deadly weapon, assault likely to produce great bodily injury, and battery causing serious bodily injury.

While arrests have been made, this is still an active investigation. Anyone with information is asked to call the SFPD tip line at 415-575-4444, or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with “SFPD.” Tipsters can remain anonymous.

Related: Group of Suspects Ransacks and Robs Walgreens Store In Castro [SFist]

Image: FOX

Three teens and an 11-year-old were in a stolen Infinity G35 that crashed into two trees and a pole in Richmond early Monday morning, leaving a 14-year-old girl dead, and her 11-year-old sister hospitalized.

A car that had been reported stolen crashed into two trees and a pole at around 5:15 am Monday morning in Richmond, resulting in the death of a 14-year-old girl, according to KTVU. The girl’s 11-year-old sister was also hospitalized and is in critical condition as of early Wednesday morning. And the only other two occupants of the vehicle were two 15-year-old boys who fled the scene, so clearly someone too young to drive was driving this stolen Infinity G35.

The condition of that vehicle is seen in the above report from the Grandview Independent, which notes that the Richmond Police Department received two early morning alerts from iPhones indicating there had been a serious car crash.  

“Officers responded to the area and located a heavily damaged Infinity G35 resting in the northbound lanes of Canal Blvd,” that department said in a Tuesday Facebook post. “Officers located one occupant, a 14-year-old female, ejected from the vehicle and with fatal injuries. Officers located another occupant, an 11-year-old female, suffering from significant injuries. The 11-year-old victim was transported to a local trauma center, where she remains in critical condition.”

Police also say there were two 15-year-old boys in the car when it crashed, and fled the scene of the accident, but both have since been located and questioned. One boy was found at a hospital seeking treatment for his own injuries, the other was found at a private residence in Richmond Monday night.

And they’re apparently giving different accounts of who was driving the car. The Richmond PD says that “Investigators will follow up on additional leads, including DNA evidence, to determine which occupant was driving during the crash.”

The Infinity G35 had been reported stolen to the San Pablo Police Department on Saturday, October 12, just two days before the fatal crash.

The Richmond PD added in their statement, “We are saddened by this senseless tragedy that has resulted in the loss of such a young life. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim's family and the remaining victim who remains hospitalized.”

Related: ​​13-Year-Old Girl's Early Morning Joyride Ends in Crash in San Francisco [SFist]

Image: Police units respond on scene. (Getty Images)

After years of criticism over online bullying, ads that stoke depression, and predators chasing teens on the platform, Menlo Park-based Instagram is tightening up the controls over what teens can see when they log in.

The photo-sharing app Instagram is still quite popular with teens, even if TikTok and Snapchat may be taking some of their attention. And therefore it is also quite popular with sexual predators who try to lure teens, teens who like to bully, and advertisers aiming to manipulate teens’ self-esteem to sell products. The US Surgeon General has said Instagram and other social sites should come with warnings like on a pack of cigarettes, and members of Congress went even further in January hearings grilling Facebook/Instagram/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, telling him, “You have blood on your hands. You have a product that's killing people."  

So at long last, Instagram will introduce sweeping new restrictions on accounts for those under 18, according to TechCrunch. They will now be referred to as “Teen Accounts,” and changes will be applied automatically to all users under 18. CNN explains that on Teen Accounts, access to sensitive content will be restricted, the teen cannot be massaged by anyone who they don’t already follow, and parents will be able to monitor their kids’ activity on the platform.

“Teen Accounts have built-in protections which limit who can contact them and the content they see, and also provide new ways for teens to explore their interests,” Meta said in their Tuesday company announcement. “We’ll automatically place teens into Teen Accounts, and teens under 16 will need a parent’s permission to change any of these settings to be less strict.”

These teen account users will also get a prompt once they’ve been on Instagram for an hour or longer each day, and a “sleep mode’ that does not send notifications at night time between 10 pm and 7 am.

Teens 16 and older will be automatically switched to Teen Accounts, though can opt out themselves. Teens 15 or younger cannot opt out. Though as CNN points out, Instagram’s parent company Meta has “long faced criticism for failing to do more to prevent teens from lying about their age when they create a new account to bypass safety restrictions.”

The parental controls sound like an excellent tool, though of course, require parents to sign up for an Instagram account themselves.  

"Parents will be able to see, via the family center, who is messaging their teen and hopefully have a conversation with their teen," Meta head of product Naomi Gleit told the Associated Press. "If there is bullying or harassment happening, parents will have visibility into who their teen’s following, who’s following their teen, who their teen has messaged in the past seven days and hopefully have some of these conversations and help them navigate these really difficult situations online."

Though as the AP notes, “The announcement comes as the company faces lawsuits from dozens of US states that accuse it of harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms.” So it’s fair to guess that’s what’s prompting these changes.

According to Meta, new teen users will automatically be classified as Teen Accounts starting today, and existing accounts will be migrated into Teen Accounts next week.

Teen users in countries like the UK, Canada, and Australia will be migrated over in the next 60 days, and the change will take effect worldwide by January 2025. Then, Meta claims, they will introduce similar measures on their other platforms Facebook, Threads, and WhatsApp.

Related: US Surgeon General Wants Warning Labels on Social Media Sites, Just Like the Ones We Put On Cigarettes [SFist]

Image: Solen Feyissa via Unsplash

The 18-year-old who goes by the name Peter Teatime (not his real name?) is making the media rounds following the video he made with a friend going viral featuring them climbing to the top of one of the Golden Gate Bridge towers. And he tells ABC 7 that he'd been happy to offer his consulting services to the bridge authority or Homeland Security to help them prevent other people from doing what he did.

Authorities are now scrambling to explain how the two Wisconsin teens, who got up onto one of the main cables of the bridge on a spring break lark last month, managed to evade all the bridge's security measures and were, in fact, never seen or detected.

In a Facetime conversation with ABC 7's Lyanne Melendez, Teatime says that he and pal Tommy Rector didn't come to San Francisco with this particular feat in mind. "We really didn't know we were going to climb it but once we got there, we were like 'Yeah we're gonna climb it,'" he says. He and his friend also said they were surprised by how easy it was to get up there. And despite footage of them staking out the area and apparently jumping a fence during daylight, he says this footage was all shot at 3 a.m.

Bridge District General Manager Denis Mulligan gave a press conference alongside the CHP Tuesday explaining that the teens were successful because they weren't sneaking around any particularly vulnerable spots on the bridge — I guess structurally? See if this is convincing, because I think those main cables are pretty important:

"In many areas where you could hurt the bridge, we have different types of sensors that trigger an alarm, there is an audible and then that camera pops up on the big screen. Where these individuals were and what they were engaged in could not have harmed the bridge, so it did not trigger alarms."

ABC 7 also found a retired FBI agent, Rick Smith, to whom they showed the video footage for his reaction. "It's a wake-up call," he says. "It allows you to look over the entire security plan for the bridge."

"I want to assure you the bridge is safe," said Lisa Locati, the CHP Golden Gate Bridge captain, at yesterday's news conference.

Teatime, a senior in high school, doesn't seem concerned about the possible legal implications of all this — state law stipulates up to a $10,000 fine and one year of jail time for trespassing on a restricted area of a bridge. Maybe he's hoping his consulting service fee will offset any fines? Or that all the respect this will get him from potential sexual partners in college will make it all worth it?

"I've been doing this type of stuff my whole life, so to me it wasn't too hard," He tells ABC 7. "I think we're the first to ever do flips up there," he boasts.

His friend Rector, who's apparently in his 20s, spoke to the Chronicle by phone and said, "We're not trying to hide from [authorities] in any way. There's no reason to treat us like criminals. We're not criminals, just a couple of kids from Wisconsin who like to climb things."

Rector adds, trying to strike an adult tone, "They're not entirely wrong when they say we are daredevils. We don't want to promote this kind of behavior."

Previously: Video: Teen Daredevils Climb To Top Of Golden Gate Bridge, Dangle From Cables

Proving just how easy it is to jump a fence, enter the restricted area, and climb the main cables all the way to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge's towers, two teens recently filmed themselves doing just that, complete with some death-defying/stupid antics along the way. And given that the video begins at daylight, it looks like they did this just after sundown, so how did no one see them?

Their names according to the video are Peter Teatime and Tommy Rector, and as we await their arrests (since their faces are fully identifiable), we can see their vertigo-inducing video — the fisheye lens effect helps — making the rounds from the New York Post to the UK Daily Mail. The latter notes in all caps that one of the teens hangs by his "FINGERTIPS" and does "somersaults" as they make their climb.

The Daily Mail got a quote from Teatime, who they say is an 18-year-old from Allentown, Pennsylvania (his Instagram says he's from Wisconsin), who said, "It was a tough climb and incredibly tiring, those cables get very steep." But still, he adds, "for any explorer the Golden Gate Bridge is an absolute must-do, as it's the tallest bridge in the US and such an iconic structure."

Right, but there are a lot of reasons why this is illegal, terrorism being just one of them.

Teatime also sounds pretty proud in an interview with SF affiliate KPIX/CBS 5, saying, "We did it about a month ago, at the beginning of April. There was not a lot of thinking — There’s the bridge, let’s do it." And, in case any terrorist get any ideas, he warns, "I don’t want to say too much about how we got passed security... I will say security is really tough. It’s really tight. They have motion detectors, cameras. I have a lot of experience with stuff like this so I was able to get around and get on the cables."

Teatime is an avid parkour enthusiast and YouTuberist whom you can see below flipping around in a video from several months ago.

And here he is in a photo from last year, perched on what appears to be the beam of a high-rise construction site in Chicago.

We see you Chicago 👀 #yachtclub #illgrammers #artofvisuals #artofchi #chicago #chicagogram #tlpicks #urbanandstreet #scaryhighstuff #streetmagazines #visuals #yachty #worldplaces #createvisual #special_shots #rooftopping #skyscraper #skyhigharchitecture #highshots #perspective #urbexchicago #urbanandrural #igerschicago #createexplore #nightphotography #ontheroofs #chiarchitecture #westbend @elimazpk

A post shared by Peter Teatime (@peterteatime) on Nov 21, 2016 at 7:31pm PST

SFist has noted before how tourists frequently ignore the No Trespassing signs around the base of the bridge near Fort Point, and just last summer two young men were arrested for doing the same climb up one of the bridge's main cables, which can be reached from one of the bike paths along the deck of the bridge. But where was their video?

After Windsor High School student Luhe “Otter” Vilagomez decided to jump off the bridge for kicks in 2011, and remarkably survived, the California Highway Patrol recommended trespassing charges, but it's unclear if he was ever charged or fined.

Trespassing on any not-publicly-accessible part of any bridge in the state of California comes with a possible fine of $10,000 and up to a year in county jail, following a law that was passed back in 1997.

Previously: Windsor High School Student Jumps Off Golden Gate Bridge, Survives

A leaked document from Facebook's Australia office, marked confidential and authored by two Australian Facebook executives, purported to show potential advertisers how to target to teens as young as 14 when they were feeling both good and confident, and targeting "moments when young people need a confidence boost." The document was first reported on by The Australian newspaper, and Consumerist notes that "The document apparently outlines an array of teenagers’ emotional states that the company claims it can target based on how kids are using the service, including, 'anxious,' 'defeated,' 'insecure,' 'overwhelmed,' 'stressed,' and 'worthless,' among other negative emotions." Reportedly, the document was part of a pitch being prepared for a major Australian bank, and was dated in 2017.

The document was apparently geared toward helping advertisers to pinpoint the best moments to target teens and young adults in the workforce in Australia and New Zealand, also noting, as Ars Technica reports, that "earlier in the week, teens post more about 'anticipatory emotions' and 'building confidence,' while weekend teen posts contain more 'reflective emotions' and 'achievement broadcasting.'

As CNet reports, Facebook is an "advertisers' goldmine" with some 5 million companies vying to get their products into our news feeds each month. But Facebook's own policies (as well as Australian advertising law, per Mashable) prohibit the use of its somewhat controversial research into users' emotional states for the purpose of advertising. This was laid out in a protocol that the company finalized just last year following earlier dustups over the ethics of the research generally.

Facebook has issued a statement saying "This research did not follow [our established] process, and we are reviewing the details to correct the oversight.” The company also says, "Facebook does not offer tools to target people based on their emotional state. The analysis done by an Australian researcher was intended to help marketers understand how people express themselves on Facebook." And, assuring us that no one's privacy was violates, they say, "[The research] was never used to target ads and was based on data that was anonymous and aggregated."

There has been some anecdotal suggestion in recent years that teens, at least in the US, were fleeing Facebook in droves in favor of other social media platforms not inhabited by their parents, but research has not shown that to be the case. As of early 2015, the Pew Research Center found that 71 percent of teens still reported using Facebook regularly, with Instagram and Snapchat usage coming in second and third, respectively. And a new survey published in January of 2017 suggested that teens' Facebook usage has only risen over the past several years — though their percent figures are lower, showing 65 percent using the platform as of November 2016.

Previously: Most Teens Actually Still Using Facebook

Sometimes it's best to jump in at the deep end of the pool... especially when you're driving a car that would bottom out in the shallow end.

That was one shred of luck experienced by a drowsy 19-year-old driver who veered off the road in Santa Clara just before 3 a.m. last night, crashing through a fence into a backyard pool at a stranger's house.

"Too big of a turn," the driver told ABC 7, "I was falling asleep, ended up crashing."

According to NBC Bay Area's coverage, the teen was administered a field sobriety test, which he passed. KRON 4 reports that the driver was not arrested but could face a traffic ticket for unsafe driving.

He was, however, a bit shaken up. "He seemed pretty worried, understandably," a witness told the news station, "because his car was in a pool."

A crane will be needed to fish the car out of the pool, where it's still submerged. Better do it quick: As of this morning, the homeowners were none the wiser, as they were on vacation.

Related: David Campos Heads To Santa Clara As Deputy County Executive

An email sent by Microsoft is enough to make one wonder if the company restarted its ill-fated (racist/pot-head) tween Twitter-bot Tay and then gave it a recruiting job. In an attempt to woo potential interns to a Microsoft after-party following a San Francisco event known as "Internapalooza," the recruiter manifested practically every stereotype of a tech company too busy hyping excessive weeknight alcohol consumption in a culture already prone to poor judgement to realize just how out of touch it sounds. Microsoft, Gizmodo reports, is already backpedaling.

The email first came to light via a tweet from the roommate of the intended recipient. "My roommate received this email from a Microsoft recruiter today," explained Patrick Burtchaell when he posted the screengrab of the email.

"HEY BAE INTERN! <3," begins the email, before proceeding to explain that the recruiter would be at the aforementioned Palooza. We are then treated to what reads like the ramblings of a methed-out Community Manager, desperate to increase that tween click-through rate.

"We're throwing an exclusive after party the night of the event at our San Francisco office and you're invited! There will be hella noms, lots of dranks, the best beats and just like last year, we're breaking out the Yammer beer pong tables!

"HELL YES TO GETTING LIT ON A MONDAY NIGHT," the email concludes in all caps.

Hella noms. Lots of dranks. Yammer beer pong.

Putting aside the fact that it's just lame, this email seems to exists in a world where tech companies don't already face criticism for perceived cultures of excessive alcohol consumption (not to mention pervasive sexual harassment).

"The email was poorly worded and not in keeping with our values as a company," a spokesperson, confirming the email's authenticity, told Gizmodo. "We are looking into how this occurred and will take appropriate steps to address it."

Sure you will.

Related: Microsoft Reminds Us What Most Gamers Really Think Of Women At GDC