SF Restaurants, Food & Drink We Are On the Verge of Another Sriracha Shortage! Maker Huy Fung Foods Halts Production Until Fall Sriracha lovers, brace yourselves for finding some alternative hot sauces this summer as popular sriracha maker Huy Fung Foods is halting production due to a bad chili pepper supply.
Business & Tech Apple Apologizes For Disastrously Tone-Deaf Ad Showing Machine Crushing Human Creativity Apple was uncharacteristically way off the mark with its latest splashy ad for the new, ultra-thin iPad Pro, which drew a ton of criticism on social media. And now they're apologizing.
Business & Tech Sure Enough, OpenAI Is Considering Allowing Its Tools to Generate Porn The artificial intelligence company OpenAI is considering allowing its tools to “responsibly” create AI-generated NSFW content, though it's hard to imagine users would have many goals other than to create a tidal wave of deepfake pornography.
Business & Tech Google Is Bailing From Its Offices at Trophy SF Building One Market Plaza A prize tenant is leaving a prized property at the luxe waterfront offices of One Market Plaza, as Google is reportedly vacating its 300,000 square feet of the property when the lease expires next year.
Arts & Entertainment Giant Mystery Laser Dazzles and Confuses SF, Turns Out to Be a Tech Conference Thing Did you see the giant blue and green lasers shooting into the sky near Coit Tower Monday night? They're scheduled to be back again Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and are brought to you by a company unsurprisingly named MegaLasers.
SF News Waymo Spotted Driving in Red Bus Lane, About to Make Illegal Left-Hand Turn A video from Sunday shows a self-driving Waymo robotaxi driving in the red ‘bus only’ lane on Van Ness Avenue, and apparently about to engage in an illegal left-hand turn.
SF News US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Bay Area Today There may be a motorcade or two complicating traffic near Moscone Center Monday afternoon, as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will be downtown to give a keynote at the RSA Conference.
Business & Tech Williams-Sonoma Fined Nearly $3.2 Million for Labeling Products as ‘Made in USA’ When They Were Not San Francisco-based houseware and cookware purveyor Williams-Sonoma just got nailed with a $3.18 million fine for claiming that products were “Made in USA” when they were actually made in China, and it’s not the first time the company has done this.
Business & Tech A Clever Original Post on Threads That Goes Viral Could Now Earn Creators a $5,000 Bonus Meta has confirmed that it has launched a limited-time, invite-only bonus program for social media creators on Threads, in an apparent effort to boost engagement on the platform as it crosses the 150 million user mark.
Arts & Entertainment Area Man Buys Satire Site The Onion, Also Happens to Be Twilio Co-Founder Jeff Lawson Beloved humor site and “America’s Finest News Source” The Onion has been sold to San Francisco resident and Twilio co-founder Jeff Lawson, who says “The Onion is an institution, a national treasure, and we need it.”
Business & Tech Former SF District Attorney Suzy Loftus, Now TikTok's Head of Safety, Compares Fight for TikTok to Defending SF As TikTok faces its biggest challenge to date, with the US government insisting that it be divorced from its Chinese parent company or cease doing business here, the company has a trust and safety officer whose name may be familiar to San Franciscans.
Business & Tech New State Bill Hopes to Break Up Ticketmaster Monopoly, 49ers and Warriors Totally Against It Concert and sporting event ticket prices have exploded since the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, but a new California bill could break up their monopoly. And the 49ers and Warriors are completely against this bill, because they benefit handsomely from that monopoly.
Business & Tech Larry Ellison Moving Oracle Headquarters Again, Now Heading for Nashville Barely three years after Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison made a big stink about leaving the Bay Area for Austin, he’s planning to move the company headquarters again, this time to Nashville, Tennessee.
Business & Tech Empty Office Building at Sixth and Market, Which Last Sold for $62 Million, Sells for Just $6.5 Million The 955 Market Street building that was once home to Burning Man headquarters, and then a whole bunch of WeWork offices, is now empty and just sold for a measly 10% of the price it fetched in 2016.
SF News Waymo Drives on Wrong Side of Street, But Has Excuse Because of Taunting Unicycle Riders A Friday night incident saw a self-driving Waymo pop into the wrong lane for a couple blocks, but it may have had good reason to do so, because it was being swarmed by electric unicycle riders.
SF News California Could Ban TSA Line-Skipping Service ‘Clear’ From CA Airports Under New Bill The pricey, $189-a-year service called Clear that lets people cruise through airport TSA lines could be banned in California, under a proposed bill from state lawmakers who think its unfair to people can’t pay the extra 200 bucks.
SF News Confused Waymo Cars Block 101 On-Ramp In Potrero Hill, Then Go Down Closed Road It’s SF driving 101 that you should not follow a confused self-driving Waymo vehicle down a closed road, but that’s what happened Tuesday night near Highway 101 in Potrero Hill, after a stalled Waymo traffic jam led to the robotaxis veering into a closed lane.
Business & Tech Google Fires All 28 Workers Who Pulled an In-Company Protest Against Israeli Defense Contract In a not-at-all surprising development, Google has fired the 28 workers who staged a sit-in protest Tuesday in a top executive’s office, all in protest of a billion-dollar contract Google has with the Israeli government during the Gaza conflict.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Is at War With the Brazilian Judiciary Now Brazilian politics are, like America's, in a volatile and divisive place. And Xitter is reportedly being weaponized in ways that violate Brazilian law — which does not have complete protections for free speech. So Elon Musk is basically threatening to shut down all operations in the country.
Bay Area Sports Giants Set to Use Facial Recognition on Fans, Privacy Advocates Say It’s a Slap in the Face Like it or not, facial recognition cameras are coming to gates at Oracle Park, in what Major League Baseball calls “hands-free” ticketing, but others call a “nuclear bomb of privacy.”
Business & Tech Uber Eats Already Outsourcing Delivery to Robots Via Partnership With Waymo Uber once had grand plans to operate its own driverless taxis, but now it's playing nice and partnering with Waymo to have food delivered without humans involved in Phoenix.
Business & Tech One SF Engineer Might Have Just Saved the World From a Massive Cyberattack A 38-year-old software engineer for Microsoft was apparently curious, eagle-eyed, and lucky enough to have discovered a pernicious bit of code in the widely used Linux operating system, that someone, somewhere, had gone to some lengths to hide.
Business & Tech Onetime ‘Law & Order’ Star Says Instacart Driver Shot and Killed Her Dog, Instacart Suspends Driver Late 1990s ‘Law & Order’ actor Angie Harmon is fuming publicly that an Instacart driver allegedly shot and killed her dog Saturday, and Instacart has sidelined that driver while police investigate.
Arts & Entertainment Jon Stewart Says He Parted Ways With Apple Because They Wouldn't Let Him Talk About AI, or China, or Talk to the FTC Comedian Jon Stewart tore into his former employer on 'The Daily Show' Monday evening, suggesting that he severed his professional relationship with Apple over instances in which they instructed him to avoid certain subjects.
SF News City of SF Taking Over Lease for Five Floors of the Former Uber Headquarters, May Buy the Whole Building It’s like a 180-degree turn from the “Twitter Tax Break” days, as the City of San Francisco is grabbing office space in the 1455 Market Street building that used to be headquarters to Uber and Stripe, with an option to buy the whole building.