Business & Tech Elizabeth Holmes Sentenced to 11 Years In Federal Prison It was a bad day to be Elizabeth Holmes, as she appeared in a San Jose federal courtroom Friday to learn her fate, which is a sentence that is nearly as harsh as prosecutors were asking for.
Business & Tech On Day of 1,200 More Departures at Twitter, Activist Projects Insults to Elon Musk On Side of Building Thursday was another day of chaos at Twitter as Elon Musk continues his master class in how not to take over a company. And of course someone began projecting a scroll of insults directed at Musk on the side of Twitter headquarters.
Business & Tech As Deadline Passes For Twitter Employees to Commit to Being 'Hardcore,' Some Wonder If It's All a Trap Elon Musk's erratic behavior and flippant comments since taking the helm as Chief Twit two weeks ago have some Twitter employees worried that he might be setting them up to fail — or that he might not follow through on his severance offer.
Bay Area Sports Now Someone’s Suing Steph Curry and the Warriors Over Promotions of Bankrupt Crypto Fund FTX Did you lose money in the collapse of cryptocurrency firm FTX? Maybe you can get some of it back by suing Steph Curry and the Warriors, because there’s a class action lawsuit against them and other sports stars like Tom Brady who endorsed the now-worthless digital currency exchange.
Business & Tech Google Agrees To Pay Nearly $400 Million Settlement Over Basically Lying About Letting You Turn Off Location Tracking Google was tracking people even who turned off location tracking, which is kind of a problem in the era of abortion bounty hunter laws, so they’ve agreed to pay a $392 million settlement and they pinky-finger swear they’ll let you turn it off (eventually).
Business & Tech Scooter Company Bird May Go Bankrupt, or Even Out of Business, After an ‘Overstatement’ of Revenue The scooter startup Bird, which also does business in San Francisco as Scoot, is getting its wings clipped after reportedly overstating revenue for two years, and is now mulling bankruptcy, or discontinuing business altogether.
Business & Tech In Dueling Sentencing Memos, Prosecutors Push For Elizabeth Holmes to Get 15 Years, While Defense Brings Up Recently Deceased Dog After a federal judge last week denied Elizabeth Holmes a new trial, quashing a last-ditch — and highly aggressive — effort by her defense team to keep her out of prison longer, it all comes down to her sentence.
Bay Area Sports Crypto Giant FTX’s Massive Implosion Likely Means Curtains for Cal’s $17.5 million Stadium Naming Rights Deal Cryptocurrency brand FTX went from $32 billion to bankrupt in just nine days, and the Cal football stadium’s $17.5 million naming rights deal is likely to go down the drain with it.
Business & Tech Twitter Has Already Paused Those $8 Checkmark Subscriptions Amid Fakes Once again proving that Musk et al have not thought any of this through, they've paused the $8 Twitter Blue subscription thing two days after launching it, because, yes, there are a lot of nitwits and bad actors out there who want to pose as celebrities.
Business & Tech Throwback Thursday: Remembering the Last Big Tech Layoff Bloodbath, the Dot-Com Bust of 2000-2001 As hundreds or even thousands of tech layoffs again become everyday news this week, we look back to the dot-bomb implosion of 22 years ago, when the Bay Area became a graveyard of f*cked companies.
Business & Tech The Musk Era of Whack-a-Mole With Fake 'Verified' Accounts at Twitter Has Begun, and More Execs Are Resigning If a verified, blue-checkmarked LeBron James account is tweeting at you, don't be alarmed. It's probably not LeBron James. Also, several key Twitter executives in charge of safety and privacy just resigned. WHAT COULD GO WRONG.
Business & Tech Flywheel Taxicabs Are Now on the Uber App in San Francisco Uber’s long war on the taxicab industry has ended with a whimper and a merger, as Flywheel cabs are now incorporated into the Uber fleet, in a pilot that’s starting here in SF and hopes to fly nationwide.
Business & Tech During Wild Disinformation Election Day, Twitter Rolls Out (Then Quickly Cancels) New ‘Official’ Check Marks The twin traps of election disinformation and Elon Musk’s own impulsiveness both bit Twitter’s rear end over the last 24 hours, and unsurprisingly, advertisers are not exactly clamoring to buy ads on the platform.
Business & Tech Meta/Facebook Lets Go Of 11,000 Workers; Zuckerberg: 'I Got This Wrong' Mark it: Today, November 9, 2022, is the day that the seemingly unstoppable rise of Mark Zuckerberg's social media empire was stopped.
Business & Tech Report: Salesforce Set To Lay Off ‘As Many As 2,500’ Employees The latest San Francisco layoff-palooza shoe to drop is a big one, as towering software company Salesforce is reportedly set to lay off thousands, in job cuts that actually already started Monday.
SF Politics Elon Musk Says Vote GOP, Right As GOP Vows Boycotts Of Advertisers Who Leave Twitter It’s not surprising that Elon Musk continues his right-wing turn by tweeting that people should vote Republican in the midterms. What’s surprising is that people think he’s doing so out of principle rather than self-interest.
Business & Tech Reports: Facebook Parent Company Meta Planning Mega-Layoffs, ‘Many Thousands’ May Get the Ax This Week The long-feared Big Kahuna of tech-boom layoffs, massive cuts at Meta companies Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, could arrive as soon as Wednesday, and it’s beginning to feel a lot like 2001.
Business & Tech Elon Musk’s Twitter Begs Some Laid-Off Employees to Return, Amidst Botched, Delayed $8 Blue-Check Rollout The Elon Musk era stumbled out of the gate and stepped on a few rakes this weekend, as the skeleton crew still around was forced to delay the new $8 blue check system, and management are begging some freshly canned staff members to return.
Business & Tech Twitter Layoffs Cut Across Many Divisions; Musk Is Whining About Activists Whom He Blames For Advertiser Exodus The layoff sweep at Twitter was nothing if not chaotic and cruel, and after months of speculation and hollow denials about what was to come, employees are left either holding the bag or waiting to find out what their severance packages look like.
Business & Tech Twitter Building Shuttered Until Monday as Employees Get Emailed Pink Slips; Lawsuit Filed Over Layoff Notification Twitter employees in San Francisco, New York, Dublin and elsewhere got their emails Thursday night and into Friday morning informing them whether or not they still had jobs with the company.
Business & Tech AOC Says Her Twitter Account Was ‘Bricked’ After Musk Criticism, Possibly the Shape of Things To Come While Twitter employees are working 12-hour days under the threat of termination, their boss Elon Musk is engaged in trolling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and possibly limiting features on her account.
Business & Tech Lyft and Stripe Both Lay Off Hundreds of Employees, Citing Economy A day ahead of expected layoffs at Twitter that will thoroughly gut the company as we know it, San Francisco-based Lyft announced the laying off of 13% of its workforce, and South San Francisco-based Stripe is cutting 14% of its workforce.
Business & Tech Musk Reportedly Laying Off 50% of Twitter Staff, Layoffs to Begin Friday Black Friday is coming a few weeks early at Twitter, as reports come in that Elon Musk will lay off 50% of the company starting Friday, which hardly bodes well for the new paid blue-check system which is supposed to launch Monday.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Had a Zoom Meeting Last Night With Nonprofits About Hate Speech Chief Twit Elon Musk apparently had a hastily planned meeting with seven nonprofits via Zoom on Tuesday night, and it left them feeling some type of way about how hate speech and elections will be handled, going forward, at Twitter.
Business & Tech Musk Said to Be Demanding 12-Hour Shifts In First Week at Twitter; Has Set Up 'War Room' of Cronies to Lead Transition It can't be very fun to be inside Twitter HQ this week — and dad jokes aside, new Chief Twit Elon Musk is apparently presenting himself as a taskmaster seeking to test employees' devotion to the company, their skills, and their work ethic right out of the gate.
