Business & Tech Guess Who's Helping Pay For Trump's Ballroom? Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Palantir Given how the billionaire CEOs all lined up to throw money at Trump's second inauguration, helping the despot feel like the king he's always wanted to be, his royal ballroom is also being funded by these billionaires, including the Bay Area's tech-wealthy.
Business & Tech Palo Alto-Based Startup Admits Its ‘Smart Weather Balloon’ Likely Hit and Grounded a United Airlines Flight A Palo Alto startup that makes weather balloons admits it was “likely” their balloon that struck a United Airlines flight this past Thursday, cracking the windshield, injuring a pilot and forcing an emergency landing.
Business & Tech Academy of Art, Which Assembled Huge and Controversial SF Real Estate Portfolio, Now Selling a Portion of That Portfolio It's a sign of the times for Academy of Art University, the San Francisco-based art college that once attracted students from all over the country and now has many of its students taking classes remotely.
Business & Tech Regarding Benioff's Trumpy Turn: Salesforce Was Pitching a 'Talent Acquisition' Contract to ICE We need only follow the money to figure out what has turned the once-liberal-leaning Marc Benioff into a full-throated Trump supporter. And now we see that Salesforce was hoping to land a new contract helping ICE to expand its reach.
SF News AI Companies Now ‘Disrupting’ SF Rental Market By Giving People Free Apartments, Rent Stipends It will make renters sick that they have to compete with AI sector workers whose cash-flush companies pay their rent for them. It will make renters even sicker to hear those AI companies do this to make their workplaces like “a frat house.”
Business & Tech Potential SF Vanderbilt Campus Could Occupy the Chronicle Building, According to the Chronicle Some intriguing developments in San Francisco’s quest to lure Vanderbilt University to build a satellite campus here in SF, as the Chronicle reports that Vanderbilt might want their own Chronicle building to be part of the campus.
SF Politics Trump Yanks Mark Zuckerberg’s Leash Again, Meta Deletes Page That ICE Didn’t Like Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook content moderation had “gone too far” earlier this year, and promised less censorship. Until his boss man Trump told him to censor a Facebook page that ICE complained about, and Zuck quickly complied.
Business & Tech 50 Waymos Sent to Dead-End SF Street In Prankster's 'DDOS Attack' Local novelty app-maker Riley Walz is on something of a tear, garnering local media attention from the Chronicle and others for the third time in almost as many weeks with a prank on Waymo vehicles.
SF News SFO Overwhelmed by Flight-Delay Chaos Right as Dreamforce Kicks Off, Nearly Half of Flights Delayed The ‘perfect storm’ of an actual storm, government shutdown short-handedness, and a deluge of Dreamforce attendees left SFO all higgledy-piggledy on Monday, with thousands of travelers facing flight delays and reroutes.
Business & Tech Benioff Walks Back National Guard Comment as Salesforce Pledges $15B Investment In San Francisco The crisis PR team over at Salesforce has been working overtime since CEO Marc Benioff went full Trumpy in a New York Times interview Friday, going so far as to say he'd welcome the National Guard being illegally deployed in San Francisco.
SF News Feds Launch New Tesla Probe After Several Cars Run Red Lights, Veer Into Traffic in Self-Driving Mode NHTSA opened its third probe into Tesla of the year. The agency said it's received 58 reports of the manufacturer’s "Full Self-Driving" system ignoring red and green lights, veering into oncoming traffic while changing lanes, and using the incorrect lane to turn or go straight.
Business & Tech Sam Altman-Backed SF Company Making ‘Legal Ecstasy’ Wins Approval to Conduct Clinical Trials An SF-based biotech company is working on a safer, reformulated version of MDMA, better known as ‘molly’ or ‘ecstasy,’ and we’re not tripping when we say they just won FDA approval to begin Phase 1 clinical trials.
Business & Tech Proposed Pilates ‘Chain’ Studio on Valencia Street Rejected by SF Planning Commission Over Formula Retail Ban The 1,300-store chain Club Pilates was hoping to swoop into a Valencia Street storefront that’s been vacant for a year and a half. The SF Planning Commission still deemed this formula retail, and rejected their bid.
Business & Tech Some Optical Gaming Mice Can Be Manipulated to Spy on Users Through AI, Researchers Warn Researchers at UC Irvine uncovered a vulnerability that enables some gaming mice with polling rates of 4,000 Hz or higher — many of which are developed in the Bay Area — to be turned into spyware, capturing conversations through desk vibrations using AI.
Business & Tech Sam Altman Is Looking Forward to When AI Takes His CEO Job So He Can Be a Full-Time Farmer Aspiring farmer Sam Altman is excited to take on the role full-time once his side hustle as OpenAI CEO is made obsolete by artificial intelligence. Altman anticipates machines will have the capability to fully outsmart humans by 2030.
Business & Tech Here Come the Creeps: Meta Ray-Ban Glasses Dudebro Stalking Women at USF, Posting Videos to Social Media The new Meta Ray-Ban video-recording glasses are being used exactly as you would expect, as some lonely perv is harassing and recording women on the USF campus, and posting his videos of this to social media without the women's consent.
Business & Tech Waymo in Hot Water After Robotaxi Illegally Blows Past School Bus With Stop Lights On in Georgia The latest safety scare for Waymo robotaxis comes from all the way in suburban Atlanta, where a Waymo vehicle illegally drove around a school bus that was dropping off kids and flashing its stoplights, and Georgia lawmakers are furious.
Arts & Entertainment Levi’s Reopening Its Battery Street Museum, Redesigned and Triple Its Original Size The Levi Strauss & Co museum at Battery Street’s Levi’s Plaza has been closed since the pandemic, but they’ve been quietly redesigning it and overhauling it, and the museum reopens to the public in November, now three times its former size.
Business & Tech Apple Seeks Dismissal of Lawsuit Brought By Musk Over OpenAI Partnership Apple has formally replied in court to a lawsuit brought by Elon Musk and his company xAI alleging anticompetitive behavior in Apple's decision to partner with xAI competitor OpenAI.
Business & Tech That 'Farm' In Those Jennifer Garner Capital One Commercials Is a Real Berkeley-Based Company, and It’s Filing for an IPO Turns out that the business that Jennifer Garner hypes in one of her Capital One commercials is a real Berkeley-based company, though it's not really a farm, and they just filed to IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Heads Up, Tipped Employees: ‘No Taxes on Tips’ Still Means Some Taxes on Your Tips The devil is coming out of the details of Trump’s “no taxes on tips” policy, and it turns out tipped employees still have to pay taxes on those tips but then deduct them afterwards, and automatic service charges are still fully taxed.
Business & Tech Jared Kushner Partners With Saudis to Buy Bay Area-Based Game-Maker Electronic Arts Redwood City-based Electronic Arts could be taken private in a $55 billion deal announced Monday that's backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners, and private equity firm Silver Lake.
SF News YouTube Accounts Previously Banned for Misinformation Could Soon Be Reinstated YouTube’s parent company Alphabet announced Tuesday it’s allowing creators who received permanent bans over misinformation relating to COVID-19 and the 2020 election to apply to be reinstated. This likely includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Steve Bannon.
SF News Uniqlo Reportedly In Talks to Open a Downtown SF Store Again, Maybe in the Vacant Old Navy Space After the flagship, three-story Union Square Uniqlo store closed in 2021 as that shopping district dove down the abyss, we’re now getting word that Uniqlo may want back into the downtown SF game, and might even be eyeing the vacant Old Navy.
SF News SF’s Once-Biggest Landlord Veritas Defaulting on Another $652 Million in Loans, 66 Buildings May Be Up for Grabs A total of 66 apartment buildings with nearly 1,600 units belonging to the mega-landlord Veritas could be on the selling block come December, as Veritas is defaulting on yet another giant loan to the tune of $652 million.
