Business & Tech SF-Based Telehealth Startup Hims & Hers Gets Negative Attention From Congress After Super Bowl Ad You may have seen a prominent ad that aired during the Super Bowl Sunday for the weight-loss meds known as semaglutides that can be ordered inexpensively as non-FDA-approved compounds through SF-based Hims & Hers. Well, a pair of US senators are now crying foul.
SF news Developer Abandons Housing Plans, Puts Portola’s Historic Greenhouse Site Up for Sale San Francisco’s historic 770 Woolsey St. is back on the market after a failed housing plan, frustrating community efforts to turn it into an urban farm. Its future remains uncertain.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Claims Tesla Will Have Self-Driving Robotaxis This Year, Which He Has Claimed in Five Previous Years This is at least the fifth time that Elon Musk has declared he’d have self-driving cars this year, though if it ends up being true, at least they would start rolling in Texas and not San Francisco.
Business & Tech PG&E Rolls Out Ads In Which Execs Talk to Real-Life Customers — Is Anyone Buying It? PG&E has an awkward new PR campaign with ads airing in NorCal markets in which company executives sit and have frank-seeming conversations with customers about the company's horrible reputation when it comes to wildfire safety.
SF News Day Around the Bay: OpenAI Says DeepSeek May Have Used Their Tech to Build Their AI Model OpenAI says DeepSeek may have improperly harvested data from their tech; a San Mateo man has filed suit against Amazon for secretly tracking customers; and the brother of Oakland rapper Too Short was killed in a shooting this morning.
Business & Tech DeepSeek R1 Model Shows China Flexing Its Muscles In AI Race, Causing Silicon Valley Stocks to Slide A new AI model released by Chinese startup DeepSeek has caused a great flurry of buzz and consternation in the American tech world, and that was reflected in a bunch of Silicon Valley companies' stock prices Monday morning.
SF News SF Gets an Early Morning Taste of SpaceX Rocket Activity in Our Skies Some crazy lights and cloud formations created a mysterious celestial display around 6 am Friday morning in San Francisco skies, and it was all because of a SpaceX rocket launch that happened more than 300 miles away in Santa Barbara.
Business & Tech Latest Robotaxi Criticism Claims They’re Blocking SF Housing Development Here’s a complaint we hadn't considered about Waymos and self-driving cars, as at least 600 units of proposed housing are not getting built, because the property owners are getting quicker and easier money by renting out the lots as vehicle charging stations.
Business & Tech Conspiracy Theories Fly as Meta Users Find Themselves Suddenly Following Trump and JD Vance Millions of Facebook and Instagram users were shocked to find that they were suddenly following Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Melania Trump, but the company insists it was just the normal switching of official accounts that happens for every presidential transition.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Fumes as $500 Billion AI Data Center Investment Comes From Sam Altman and Not Him The completely unproven and unreliable AI sector says it’s going to build $500 billion worth of data centers with Trump’s blessing, and with AI safeguards now repealed, that’s a lot of deepfake porn to produce. But Elon Musk is mad that he’s not in on the action.
Business & Tech SF-Based Hims & Hers Healthcare Company, Founded By Owner of New West Portal Doughnut Shop, Donates to Trump Inauguration Hims & Hers Health, the SF-based telehealth startup founded by Andrew Dudum, just kicked $1 million to Donald Trump's inauguration fund, perhaps because they're concerned about the administration's future plans when it comes to mail-order drugs.
Business & Tech Big Tech Bigwigs Agree to Strict New EU Hate Speech Moderation Rules, But They’re Free to Just Ignore Them Xitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have signed on to a European Union agreement to prevent and remove hate speech from their platforms, which seems meaningless, because all of their CEOs and founders were at Trump’s inauguration today.
Business & Tech Trump Launches Meme Coin Ahead of Inauguration In Likely Pump-and-Dump Scheme This weekend, President Donald Trump and his family launched their own Trump-branded cryptocurrency, just days ahead of his inauguration.
Business & Tech Apple Pulls Its AI News-Summary Tool After Major Errors Apple is yanking one of its first Apple Intelligence features to roll out, the one that summarizes news headlines from various sources to turn them into push notifications, which have turned out to be sometimes wildly false.
Business & Tech SEC Gets In Parting Shot at Elon Musk, Sues Him For Swindling Investors by Hiding His Twitter Shares Purchase The US Securities and Exchange Commission is accusing Elon Musk of cheating shareholders out of $150 million by not disclosing his secret 2022 purchase of 10% of Twitter shares, as was legally required.
Business & Tech Walgreens CEO Admits Locking Up Items Was a Mistake: ‘When You Lock Things Up… You Don’t Sell as Many of Them’ On a quarterly earnings call, the CEO of Walgreens conceded that putting items behind lock and key has hurt the company’s sales, because no one wants to shop in a store where even the toothpaste is behind glass.
Business & Tech Meta to Lay Off Around 3,600 More Employees as It Faces 'Intense Year,' Zuckerberg Says Fast on the heels of Meta's announcement that it is curtailing a significant subset of its social media operations — namely content moderation — the company says it is also going to trim its workforce by 5%.
SF News Day Around the Bay: DOJ Sues Airbnb Over Hosts With Anti-Child Policy The DOJ is suing Airbnb over a policy that allows hosts to ban children under 12; a Kentucky man is accused of a road-rage incident over another driver's high beams in San Mateo; and a look back at SF's last mega-rich mayor.
Business & Tech Jill Biden Arriving In San Francisco, Speaking Tuesday During JP Morgan Conference The infamously high-priced JP Morgan Healthcare Conference is underway at the Hyatt Regency, and expect motorcades and heavy security on Tuesday, as First Lady Jill Biden will be popping in to give a speech.
Business & Tech It's the Biden Administration's Fault That Big Tech Embraced Trump, Says Marc Andreessen This all feels like a political merry-go-round we've been on for too long, but as the post-election analyses continue to roll in, the New York Times podcast 'The Daily' is looking into why so many Silicon Valley bigwigs rolled over and got in bed with Trump this time around.
SF News Union Square Macy’s Escapes the Ax In Latest Macy’s Closure List, But Its Days Are Likely Still Numbered Department store chain Macy’s just announced they’re closing more than 60 stores nationwide, and while the SF Union Square store is not on the imminent closure list, it is still clearly on the chopping block.
SF News Two Stalled Waymos Gummed Up Lurie’s Chinatown Inauguration Party, But Cops Just Jumped In Them and Drove Away Police can apparently now hop into stalled, confused Waymo robotaxis and drive them away manually, and this reportedly happened twice Wednesday night at Mayor Daniel Lurie’s inauguration party.
SF News Walgreens Closing 12 SF Stores In Late February, Here’s a Map Showing Which Ones are Closing Those 1,200 nationwide Walgreens closures are starting to kick in, and 12 Walgreens stores in SF will close in late February, including the one where Banko Brown was shot. The company blames high rent, but legal settlements probably have a hand in this too.
SF News Massive Office and Housing Development Proposed for What Is Now Just a Bunch of SF Caltrain Tracks The latest twist in the ambitious plans to extend Caltrain to the Salesforce Transit Center is a developer hoping to send Caltrain tracks underground, and cover that land with new towers, one of which would be taller than the Transamerica Pyramid.
Business & Tech Waymo Passenger Says He Was Late to the Airport Because Robocar Kept Doing Circles In a Parking Lot This week in robocar snafus: A Waymo in Phoenix went a little haywire recently, and its passenger says he was late getting to a flight because the car refused to stop circling the same parking lot.
