Business & Tech Cruise Is Offering $75K to Settle CPUC Investigation Into Crash In Which Woman Was Dragged General Motors-owned robotaxi outfit Cruise is offering $75,000 to "resolve" an investigation by California regulators into a gruesome October 2 crash incident involving one of its vehicles, which set off a cascade of negative impacts on the company's operations.
SF News CNBC Host and Strident SF Hater Jim Cramer Now Says He’s ‘Fired Up’ to Be In SF Cable news shouter Jim Cramer once claimed SF and the Embarcadero were so dangerous he wouldn’t let his staff “go out there by themselves, even in daytime.” But guess who’s now tweeting pictures from a luxe Embarcadero hotel, saying he’s “fired up” to be here.
Business & Tech Report: Elon Musk’s Alleged Drug Use Creating Problems for Tesla, SpaceX Board Members After a Wall Street Journal report this weekend said Elon Musk has been using cocaine, ecstasy, LSD, ketamine, and magic mushrooms, Musk issued non-denials, but top executives of his companies remain worried about the fallout.
Business & Tech Judge Rules That Musk's X Must Abide By California's Content Moderation Law In another blow to Elon Musk's quest for absolute free speech, a federal judge has rejected Musk and his attorneys' argument that a California law requiring social media companies to disclose their content-moderation policies and procedures.
Business & Tech GM Sues San Francisco Over Cruise Tax Bill, Which It Says Is Unfair General Motors, the parent company of autonomous taxi outfit Cruise, has filed suit against the City of San Francisco over a $108 million tax bill that it says was incorrectly charged. And this may be some sort of revenge for the city and state's treatment of the company.
Business & Tech New York Times Sues OpenAI, Microsoft Over Use of Copyrighted Content In what may prove a pivotal legal moment for the artificial intelligence industry, the New York Times has filed suit against OpenAI over the unauthorized use of years of journalistic content in the training of its generative AI models.
Business & Tech Lawsuit Over Twitter/X Employees' Unpaid Bonuses Moves Forward After Judge's Ruling A lawsuit brought by one former Twitter exec who stayed on with company following the Fall 2022 purge by new owner Elon Musk, claiming that Musk reneged on a promise of bonuses for all those didn't resign, is moving to trial.
Business & Tech Apple's Legal Woes Over Apple Watch Oxygen Monitor Leads to Device Removal From US Shelves, Biden Declines to Help The newest models of the Apple Watch have been pulled from shelves across the U.S. due to an ongoing patent-infringement legal battle with the maker of blood-oxygen monitoring technology.
Business & Tech Elon Musk's Hyperloop One Is Shutting Down After Nine Years, Laying Off Everyone Elon Musk's dreams of building a high-speed steel-tube transit network that would theoretically make train and short-haul airline travel obsolete appear to be dead. Hyperloop One, founded in 2014, is shutting down.
SF News Sure Enough, Shoplifting Was Not the Reason For the Closure of Target at Folsom and 13th Streets When Target announced they were closing an SF store in SoMa, they blamed “theft and organized retail crime.” Uhh, turns out that Target had the least reported crime of any Target store in the entire Bay Area.
Business & Tech Once High-Flying Scooter Company Bird Declares Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Scooter startup Bird already left San Francisco in February blaming “onerous regulations,” but ten months later they’re declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy as their stock is down 97%, so you have to wonder about their business acumen.
Business & Tech In Contrast to Cruise, Waymo Is Touting Its Vehicles' Safety In New Report We started the year with two main competitors in the robotaxi space, but we are ending the year with just one. And that company, Waymo, has a new peer-reviewed study to share that shows how safe its autonomous cars are compared to cars driven by humans.
Business & Tech Google Agrees to Pay $700M to Settle States' Antitrust Case, Will Let Developers Take Direct Payments In Play Store We are now learning the details of a settlement reached in September between Google and 50 state attorneys general over antitrust claims about its Play Store, and they are mostly time-limited and minor for Google/Alphabet.
Business & Tech Former Facebook Executive Pleads Guilty to Swindling Company Out of $4 Million A one-time Facebook executive based in Atlanta has pleaded guilty to defrauding $4 million out of Facebook parent company Meta, by embezzling money from her company credit card, and directing contracts to friends in exchange for kickbacks.
Business & Tech Google Loses Antitrust Suit Brought By Fortnite Maker Epic Games Epic Games, the maker of popular mobile game Fortnite, has prevailed in a federal lawsuit brought in San Francisco against Google over anticompetitive practices relating to the company's app store for Android phones.
Business & Tech OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Has Coyote Trouble at His $27 Million Russian Hill Mansion Even buying a $27 million home in a tony SF neighborhood will not keep the coyotes off your property, as artificial intelligence mogul Sam Altman admits in an interview with Time magazine that he’s got a coyote that refuses to leave his San Francisco yard.
Business & Tech Google Launches Updated AI Chatbot That They Say Is More Powerful Than ChatGPT Google’s new Gemini update to their so-called “ChatGPT killer” Bard claims to make it more powerful than its competitor, but says so in corporate-speak that makes little narrative sense, and in language that sounds like it was written by AI.
SF News State Commission Alleges That Cruise Withheld Evidence, Misled Public in Pedestrian-Dragging Incident The California Public Utilities Commission is hauling self-driving taxi company Cruise to court for allegedly “failing to provide complete information” by leaving out the rather significant detail that their car dragged a pedestrian 20 feet in an October 2 collision.
SF News A New Muni Mobile App Launched Today, and They’re Killing Off the Old App, So Use Up Your Old Tickets Muni’s new trip planner and digital ticketing app MuniMobile is now up, running, and available for download, and the old app’s being discontinued on January 15, so it’s time to use up any fares you bought on the old one.
SF News YouTuber Who Deliberately Crashed Airplane In 2021 Sentenced to Six Months YouTuber Trevor Jacob made a poor example of himself and YouTube stunt artists in general two years ago when, while promoting a wallet for a sponsor, he filmed a video in which he deliberately crashed a small plane in Santa Barbara County.
SF News More Westfield Mall Woes, as SF’s Only LEGO Store There Has Closed Permanently Things apparently weren't connecting anymore in San Francisco’s only LEGO store, located in the beleaguered mall formerly known as the Westfield San Francisco Centre, as that LEGO store quietly closed permanently last week.
Business & Tech Kara Swisher Slams Elon Musk's 'F U' to Advertisers as the 'Meltdown' of an 'Adult Toddler' Tech writer and podcaster Kara Swisher didn't mince words in condemning the behavior of Elon Musk Wednesday evening at the New York Times' DealBook Summit.
Business & Tech Elon Musk to Fleeing Advertisers: 'Go F**k Yourselves' Well, the countdown clock may be ticking to X CEO Linda Yaccarino's predictable departure from the platform formerly known as Twitter. Company owner and virtual CEO Elon Musk has just told skittish advertisers "Don't advertise."
Business & Tech Google Will Begin Mass-Deleting Unused Accounts on Friday, Purging Accounts Not Used In Two Years If you have an old Gmail account you haven't used in two years, be warned it is on the chopping block, as on Friday Google will start deleting accounts that have not been used in two years or longer.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Went to Israel to Show He's Not Antisemitic Musk decided to pay a visit Monday to Israel and to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following a week and a half of negative attention about antisemitism on X/Twitter.
