SF News Humpday Headlines: Former Twitter Execs Hauled Before Congress A House committee is grilling three former Twitter execs over the Hunter Biden laptop business, the SFMTA says Muni's "financial cliff" is coming in 2025, and Pelosi attacker David DePape is appearing in federal court today.
Business & Tech Google, Facebook, and Twitter to Be In the Crosshairs In Biden's State of the Union Address In his likely-to-be fruitless quest to boost bipartisanship in Congress, President Joe Biden is expected to launch some rhetoric in the direction of Big Tech during this evening's State of the Union address.
Business & Tech Report: Child Exploitation Content Proliferating on Twitter, Despite Musk’s Claims He’s Stamping It Out Elon Musk purports to have run a crusade against child sexual abuse material on Twitter, but researchers say it’s still spreading like wildfire on the platform, likely because so many content moderators have been laid off.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Prevails, Cleared of Wrongdoing By Jury Over His 2018 Tesla Tweets The last thing anyone should be doing is encouraging him, but Elon Musk has just won in the case of a class-action suit over his 2018 tweets about trying to take Tesla private, which turned out to be a false alarm that briefly impacted the stock price.
Business & Tech SF DBI Just Might Let Twitter Keep Its Unpermitted Bedrooms, If They Get Some Paperwork In Order The permitting dustup over unsanctioned beds and bedrooms at Twitter’s SF headquarters just might end peacefully, as the SF Department of Building Inspection is giving them a path to keep the beds, though the larger problem remains that Twitter is simply not paying rent.
SF News SF Regulators Have Had It With Self-Driving Cruise, Waymo Mishaps, Ask State To Halt Expansion In light of 92 incidents in seven months of self-driving Cruise and Waymo cars stopping, idling, and causing havoc on San Francisco streets, the SF County Transportation Authority is asking the state to hold off on giving them more expanded permits.
Bay Area Sports DoorDash Delivery Guy Walks Onto Floor During Basketball Game, Internet Debates If It Was Publicity Stunt Wednesday night’s Loyola Chicago-Duquesne college basketball game was interrupted by a fake DoorDash delivery person wandering onto the court, and angry school officials insist it was a publicity stunt.
Business & Tech Facebook Is Letting Trump Back On the Platform After Two-Year Suspension Two years and change after inciting an insurrection and showing no remorse or sympathy for the deaths and injuries of Capitol Police personnel, former president Donald Trump is being allowed back on Facebook and Instagram. But the big question: Will he be invited into the Metaverse!!?!
Business & Tech Now Even King Charles III Is Suing Twitter Over Unpaid Rent Elon Musk’s office-space squatting strategy is making waves of litigation on the other side of the pond too, as the real estate manager for the Royal Family’s Crown Estate is also hauling Musk to court over refusal to pay rent at Twitter’s London office.
Business & Tech Netflix Cofounder Reed Hastings Steps Down From CEO Role After a bumpy year for Netflix, co-CEO and cofounder Reed Hastings is stepping down but will remain in the role of chairman.
SF News Whole Foods Moves In Again On Long-Vacant Former Best Buy Location at Geary and Masonic Whole Foods has submitted new plans to occupy the space that Best Buy vacated way back in 2017, as the grocer continues its now nearly-six-year quest to be the new anchor tenant at City Center plaza at Geary Boulevard and Masonic Avenue.
SF News Elizabeth Holmes Booked One-Way Ticket to Mexico After Conviction, Prosecutors Say As federal prosecutors push to get Elizabeth Holmes more quickly into prison, they have revealed in a new court filing that she booked a one-way ticket to Mexico last year not long after her conviction on four counts of fraud.
Business & Tech Meta Looking to Offload All Of Its Office Space at 181 Fremont Adding to the already historic level of office vacancy in San Francisco, Meta is looking to dump 435,000 square feet of offices that it leased for Instagram employees five years ago in 181 Fremont.
Business & Tech Fed-Up Artists Now Suing AI Startups For Stealing Their Work To Create Those Stupid ‘Avatar’ Selfies The AI tool behind that Lensa Magic Avatar selfie fad that came and went last month is named in a new batch of copyright lawsuits, as artists say their work was swiped without permission or attribution.
Business & Tech There Are Currently 15 Salesforce Towers Worth of Empty Offices In San Francisco You've been hearing for over a year from the businesses downtown that used to host busy lunch crowds and happy hour hordes that the area is a ghost town most days. But it's not just because the companies that are still there are letting everyone work from home.
Business & Tech Trump Now Wants Facebook to Make Good On Its Promise to Reinstate His Account After a Two-Year Ban The Trump campaign has formally petitioned Meta to reinstate the Donald's former Facebook account, now that his two-year timeout has expired, and given that his dormant account still has seven times more followers than he has on Truth Social.
SF News Tuesday Morning Topline: Twitter Auction Kicks Off There were shots fired on Geary Blvd. near Laurel Heights early this morning; a stabbing in the Mission left a man with serious injuries; and bidding has kicked off in the Twitter surplus office-furniture auction.
Business & Tech Musk Heading to Trial Over 2018 Tweets About Taking Tesla Private — Which He Was Already Fined For By the SEC Elon Musk failed in an attempt to get a trial moved out of the Bay Area, and now he will face a lawsuit here brought by Tesla investors who are still sore about tweets he published four years ago claiming he was about to take the car company private.
Business & Tech Self-Driving Waymo Drives Self Into Construction Site, Doesn’t Know What To Do The latest San Francisco driverless car mishap involves an autonomous Waymo vehicle driving upon a construction site, stopping in front of a trench in the ground, then having no idea what to do as construction workers have a good laugh at the robot car’s confused state.
SF News We Now Have Video of the Eight-Car Pileup Allegedly Caused By Self-Driving Tesla A reporter’s public records request has produced video of the Thanksgiving Day multi-car crash that the driver claims was caused by his Tesla in “full self-driving” mode, and hmmm, the reporter who obtained the video is suddenly shadowbanned on Elon Musk’s Twitter.
Business & Tech Laid-Off Twitter Employees Finally Get Severance Offers, Which Are Unsurprisingly Less Than Promised That three-months severance for laid-off Twitter employees is more like a one-month severance, does not include owed bonus and stock money, and comes with a lifelong commitment to testifying on Twitter’s behalf in lawsuits.
Business & Tech Twitter Now Trying To Auction Off Extra Office Stuff As New Lawsuit Is Filed Over Rent Elon Musk’s Twitter has unpaid bills and lawsuits piling up, and now the company is trying to auction off its furniture, office supplies, kitchen supplies, and neon signs from their lobbies.
Business & Tech Salesforce Is Laying Off 10% of Its Workforce, Nearly 8,000 Employees San Francisco‘s largest private employer will be a less-large private employer, as Salesforce dropped a bomb Wednesday morning announcing that they’re laying off nearly 8,000 employees.
SF News Disgraced Crypto Mogul Sam Bankman-Fried Stuck At Parents’ Place on House Arrest, But Mulling Book, Movie Deals The downfallen crypto founder is stuck under house arrest in his parents’ house in Palo Alto, now a “heavily guarded fortress” with a $10,000-a-week security detail, but one person who’s been able to get into the house is 'Moneyball' author Michael Lewis.
Business & Tech TikTok Parent Company Admits It Spied On Two U.S. Journalists Who Exposed the App‘s Surveillance TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance admits it spied on two Buzzfeed journalists, though the journalists say at least four people were spied on and tracked after breaking stories about the seemingly innocuous app’s surveillance of U.S. users.
