Business & Tech Of Course a Waymo Got In the Way of Kamala Harris's Motorcade on Nob Hill Friday Night You can't even get a (vice) presidential motorcade through the streets of San Francisco these days without tripping over a self-driving taxi.
Business & Tech Meta Actually Paying Celebrities Like Judi Dench and Awkwafina to Use Their Voices For Its AI Tool Unlike OpenAI, which just went and hired an actress who sounded like Scarlett Johansson after ScarJo declined to voice an AI model for them, Meta appears to be actually paying some big-name celebrities to lend their voices for its new AI voice tool.
Business & Tech Xitter Releases First Transparency Report Since 2021, Shows Far Fewer Actions With Regard to Hate Speech Because the EU requires companies to produce such reports, Elon Musk's X has sucked it up and produced a transparency report — the first since Musk took over the company formerly known as Twitter in 2022.
Business & Tech Some Upheaval at OpenAI as Company Announces Plan to Become a For-Profit Enterprise OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made some public comments at a conference in Italy on Thursday indicating that the company intends to restructure and let go of its nonprofit structure, but he said the departures of several key executives a day earlier were unrelated.
SF News Waymo Gets Tagged With Rider (and Little Dog) Still Inside in Mission District The latest SF anti-self-driving car shenanigans were captured on a now-viral video where a team of taggers gangs up on a Waymo and tags the bejesus out of the vehicle, while a passenger and a little dog are stuck nervously inside.
Business & Tech What's Up With Mark Zuckerberg Talking to Trump on the Phone Twice This Summer? The New York Times and Mark Zuckerberg would like us to think that Zuckerberg is "done with politics." But is he, though?
SF News 1,500 S.F. Hotel Workers Have Gone on Strike in Union Square Unite Here Local 2, the union chapter representing the workers, says they've been in contract negotiations with the Grand Hyatt San Francisco Union Square, Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Westin St. Francis hotels for months, to no avail.
Business & Tech Cruise Comes Crawling Back, Re-Launching Driverless Cars, With Drivers, On Peninsula Autonomous taxi company Cruise is slowly trying to reintroduce its robocars in the Bay Area, one year after the company went into freefall following a brutal collision in which one of the cars dragged an injured pedestrian.
Business & Tech Dreamforce Commits to Three More Years In SF (But Benioff Gives Himself a Loophole to Leave) Salesforce announced they will keep their Dreamforce conference here through 2027 in a windfall for the city’s tourism industry, but Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff gave himself an out, saying Dreamforce will only stay as long as SF “remains safe and secure and trusted.”
Business & Tech Instagram Tightens Up Protections on Teen Accounts, Adds Major Restrictions for Users 16 and Under 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.
SF News Dreamforce Kicks Off Tuesday With Celebrity Speakers, Largest Crowd Since 2019 Salesforce's annual Dreamforce conference, which these days is all about AI, is set to bring in about 45,000 attendees when it kicks off Tuesday in SoMa, which is the biggest crowd it's had since the pandemic.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Offers to Impregnate Taylor Swift In Ill-Advised, Tuesday Night Tweet Elon Musk doubles down on the creepiness of his already weird polygamist-baby-factory lifestyle by tweeting at Taylor Swift Tuesday night, following her endorsement of Kamala Harris.
Business & Tech Ninth Circuit Sides With Musk In Case About California Social Media Content Moderation Law A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has taken Elon Musk's and Xitter's side in a case concerning a new California law that mandates broad disclosures for social media platforms about their content moderation practices.
SF News SFPD Touts That Their New License Plate Readers Nabbed an Accused $3,400 Lululemon Thief Those new automated license plate readers about town just popped another retail theft suspect, as the cameras’ use led to the arrest of a woman accused of stealing $3,400 worth of Lululemon gear.
Business & Tech Marketer Survey Suggests Future Advertiser Losses For X The advertising woes at soon-to-be-no-longer-SF-based Xitter look to be persistent, and a woefully small segment of advertisers has any remaining faith that their brands are safe when they might end up appearing next to some offensive content.
Business & Tech Lyft Laying Off More Staff, Scaling Back Bike and Scooter Division SF-based Lyft is going through a restructuring, and making some changes in its bike and scooter division to become more profitable, which includes laying off 1% of its staff.
Business & Tech Bye, Elon!: Xitter to Exit the Twitter Building For Good on September 13 Finally shedding the last vestiges of the company once known — and still often referred to — as Twitter, Elon Musk is shutting the operation down for good at the Twitter Building on mid-Market Street on Friday the 13th of September.
Arts & Entertainment Oprah Winfrey Hosting Prime Time Special on AI Featuring Sam Altman, Bill Gates Oprah is taking on the topic of artificial intelligence, and she'll be airing a prime-time special on ABC in September to ask the question "AI: What is it?" and other things your parents and grandparents have been asking.
Business & Tech Google Says It's Fixed Gemini People-Generating Feature, Also It's Releasing Customizable Chatbots Google's AI project Gemini hit a snag earlier this year when its image-generating feature was found to create wild historical inaccuracies in the interest of diversity. Google says it's been working on that, and the new and improved people-generator will made available to some paid users soon.
Business & Tech Zuckerberg Once Again Capitulates to Conservatives Over COVID Misinformation, Hunter Biden Laptop Faced with right-wing criticism that taking down false posts somehow “censored Americans,” Facebook-Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg threw in the towel and said that his social media companies will be more hands-off with misleading posts.
Business & Tech Amazon Submits Their Plans for That Mission Bay Delivery Warehouse They Had to Put On Ice The SF Board of Supervisors put Amazon’s proposed Mission Bay “fulfillment center” in a two-year time-out, but that pause is now finished, and Amazon just unboxed their plans for the facility at Seventh and Berry streets.
Business & Tech Apple Gears Up to Unveil First Generative AI Phone, the iPhone 16, on September 9 — But AI-Powered Siri Likely a Year Off It's once again about time for Apple's annual, post-Labor Day product launch event, and this year it comes with a semi-big new product, with a lot of caveats.
SF Politics Trouble for Trumper Silicon Valley Billionaires: Project 2025 Is Actually Pretty Anti-Tech Even though some of the biggest Silicon Valley venture capitalists are jumping on the Trump train, the Project 2025 that would apparently guide a second Trump term says that tech companies "prey on children, like drug dealers."
Business & Tech Beleaguered Self-Driving Car Company Cruise Teams Up With Uber for Their Comeback Bid Robotaxi company Cruise currently has its California permits suspended, but they are definitely plotting their comeback, and just announced they’re partnering to offer self-driving Cruise rides on the Uber app.
Business & Tech Elon Musk’s Secret List of Twitter Buyout Investors Made Public; It Includes Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter takeover was largely financed by a secret group of wealthy investors. Those investors’ names are now public, and the list includes Jack Dorsey, Larry Ellison, and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs.
