Business & Tech Google Suspends Gemini Image Module After Backlash Over Diverse Depictions of Founding Fathers, Nazis In case you missed the hubbub on Xitter, many people including Elon Musk have been flipping out this week over historic inaccuracies being produced by Google's Gemini chatbot image generator, which have included racially diverse images of "the Founding Fathers."
Business & Tech Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Hit With Wrongful-Death Lawsuit Over Fatal 2023 Plane Crash A private plane belonging to Google co-founder Sergey Brin crashed off Half Moon Bay last year, killing both pilots onboard, and one pilot’s widow is now suing Brin and Google for allegedly making improper modifications to the plane and obstructing the crash investigation.
Business & Tech Why Did Musk's 'Free-Speech Absolutist' X Platform Take Down New Account From Alexei Navalny's Widow? It is hard to say where we are in the evolution/devolution of Xitter under the leadership of Elon Musk. But in the absence of a robust human team dealing with content moderation, odd contradictions in policy are bound to occur.
Bay Area Sports The Giants Are Dumping That GM Cruise Patch on Their Uniforms That Fans Hated Here’s one reason to get excited for Giants baseball after the free agency flops in the offseason — the team won’t be wearing that cursed Cruise patch on their uniforms this year.
Business & Tech Big Investor and Protégé of Warren Buffett Looks to Buy 3 Million Square Feet of SF Office Space A man whose family fortune was built in part on investing in New York real estate during the dark days of the 1970s in the city is reportedly bargain hunting right now in the San Francisco office market.
Business & Tech The Reviews Are Rolling In For Google's New Chatbot, Gemini, But They’re Not Exactly Raves Google rebranded its public AI chatbot formerly known as "Bard" to "Gemini" last week. But reviews so far are mixed.
SF News Waymo Problems With Self-Driving Cars, as Waymo Collisions With Tow Truck Force Software Recall Two self-driving Waymo robotaxis hit a truck being towed in Phoenix two months ago, perhaps confused because the angle of a truck being towed but facing rearward, and the Google-owned company recalled the software running the vehicles.
Business & Tech X’s SF Landlord Is Suing Over Unpaid Rent, Seeking $13.6 Million Ahead of X's trial with its Market Street office landlord over rent nonpayment, court filings reveal that the landlord is looking for $13.6 million to refill a line of credit.
SF News Peskin Says SFPD Has ‘Promising Leads’ In Hunt for Who Torched That Waymo In Chinatown Saturday Whoever set that self-driving Waymo car on fire in Chinatown Saturday night may have reason for worry, as the district’s supervisor Aaron Peskin claims that SFPD has “promising leads” on suspects.
Business & Tech SF Pot Dispensary CEO In Hot Water Over Video Where He Brags About Not Paying His Bills The CEO of the Off The Charts dispensary chain, which has one location in San Francisco, has gone viral for the wrong reasons, in a video where he’s caught blustering to his colleagues he doesn’t pay “these f*cking mom and pops” vendors who supply his stores.
Business & Tech Uber Actually Turned a Profit For the First Time Since Going Public Five Years Ago Guess it’s time to knock off the jokes about how Uber loses so much money, as the company just posted a $1.9 billion profit for 2023, its first annual profit since Uber’s 2019 IPO.
Business & Tech Self-Driving Waymo Collides With Bicyclist In Potrero Hill A self-driving Waymo robotaxi apparently hit a bicyclist at about 3 p.m. Tuesday afternoon at 17th and Mississippi streets, which may put a dent in Waymo’s hopes to be considered the safer of the two big self-driving car companies.
Business & Tech The Kid Who Tracked Elon Musk’s Jet is Now Tracking Taylor Swift’s Jet, and Taylor is Seeing Red The young man who posted Elon Musk’s private jet coordinates has drawn the ire of Taylor Swift for tracking her private jet coordinates too (and posting her CO2 emissions), so Swift’s attorneys have handed him a pre-Super Bowl cease-and-desist letter.
Business & Tech Feds, DMV Investigating More SF Cruise Robotaxi Incidents Than We Realized, Two Cars Allegedly Almost Hit Kids The self-driving robotaxi company Cruise may have had a worse track record of highly dangerous near-misses than previously reported, and faces five state and federal probes into incidents like almost running over children.
SF News Elizabeth Holmes Seen Playing With Kids In Prison Yard For Her 40th Birthday Convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, who is nine months into an 11-year prison sentence for defrauding investors in her blood-testing startup Theranos, celebrated her 40th birthday over the weekend at the Texas women's prison where she resides.
Business & Tech SF Rapper and Local Pot Icon Berner Gets Lengthy New York Times Feature on His Cookies Dispensaries Local rapper Berner has become the Pied Piper of marijuana, with his Cookies brand now boasting 70 dispensaries globally, and he celebrated his recent New York Times profile by posting “I smoked a 10 gram joint in the @nytimes lol!”
Business & Tech Meta Oversight Board Rules Altered Biden Video Can Stay on Facebook, But Urges New Rules After the QAnon crowd widely shared an altered video clip of President Joe Biden last year, the Meta Oversight Board just ruled the video can remain on Facebook. But the board is also recommending a massive policy overhaul on manipulated content.
Business & Tech Lindsey Graham Tells Social Media Companies 'You Have Blood on Your Hands' and More Drama From Today's Senate Hearing A much anticipated Senate Judiciary Committee hearing took place Wednesday that gave Senator Lindsey Graham and others a chance to grandstand on an issue that has rare bipartisan support, the problem of social media and kids.
Business & Tech Lyft Hit With Rape Lawsuit From Woman Who Says She Was Impregnated by Her Driver We’ve heard untold numbers of sexual assault stories from women riding Lyft and Uber over the years, but the latest stands out, because the alleged victim says she was impregnated by a driver a driver who raped her.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Claims the First Human Subject Has Gotten a Neuralink Implant In Their Brain The first human patient has reportedly had the Neuralink computer chip implanted into their brain, according to a tweet from Elon Musk, marking either a milestone for people with neurodegenerative disorders, or one giant leap for oligarch mind control.
SF Politics Local Tech CEO and Political Donor Garry Tan Tweets That Some SF Supervisors Should ‘Die Slow’ In Late-Night Rant A seemingly drunken and now-deleted tweetstorm from Y Combinator CEO and political donor Garry Tan called on most of the SF Board of Supervisors to “Die slow motherf***ers,” which may be awkward for one supervisor candidate whose company funding is linked to Tan.
Business & Tech X and Other Platforms Restrict Searches for ‘Taylor Swift’ As Deepfake Pornography of Her Goes Viral Graphic AI-generated images of pop star Taylor Swift have snowballed on social media platforms from X to Meta to Reddit, exposing the limits of their content moderation and lack of legislation.
Business & Tech Waymo Looks to Expand to the Peninsula, SFO, and Sunnyvale Just as the City of San Francisco is suing the state's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) over the expansion of robotaxi permits, Alphabet-owned Waymo wants to expand its permits further to cover the Peninsula and part of Santa Clara County, as well as LA.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Will Probably Keep Mindlessly Casting Doubt on Mail-In Ballots and Election Integrity All Year on X Elon Musk has proven himself no better and no wiser than the many, many idiots who chatter about conspiracies and the "Deep State" on social media, the only difference being he's a billionaire who owns a social media platform who should know better.
SF News We Should Know the Winning Bidder on Anchor Brewing Co. in the Next Ten Days We are apparently in the final days of the auction that will determine what (if any) future there is for SF’s Anchor Brewing Co. and popular Anchor Steam beer, as the winning bidder will reportedly be determined by the end of January.
