SF News SFPD Says New License Plate Readers Have Already Nabbed Numerous Carjacking, Sexual Assault Suspects Some 100 of the eventual 400 law-endorsement license-plate readers coming to San Francisco are already up and running, and SFPD says they're making arrests on the daily with the data these are bringing in.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Flips Out Over Apple's Deal With OpenAI, Threatens to Ban All Apple Devices In his ongoing quest to convince the world that OpenAI is up to no good and that only he can build the world's best and most ethical generative AI models, Elon Musk sounded off on Xitter Monday in the wake of Apple's announcement that it is partnering with OpenAI.
Business & Tech Apple Announces Their Plunge Into Generative AI in WWDC Keynote Apple’s WWDC keynote showed the tech giant’s jump into AI is along the lines of a personal assistant with more privacy emphasis than its competitors, though many features are copycats of what Google and Facebook have already offered for years.
Business & Tech Nvidia Stock Rally Made the Company More Valuable Than Apple This Week, But Government Antitrust Probe Looming Santa Clara-based chipmaker Nvidia briefly toppled Apple as the second most-valuable company in the US after a market rally on Wednesday, but the feds may have Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI in their sights for an antitrust investigation.
Business & Tech Sigh, Someone’s Trying to Do This NFT-Only Club and Workspace Thing Again, Calling It a ‘Crypto Sanctuary’ Despite the collapse of the so-called “NFT restaurant” that was supposed to come to Salesforce Transit Center, and the broader flame-out of the NFT and Web3 boondoggles, someone still thinks that an NFT-only members club in SoMa can appeal beyond a shrinking subset of crypto bros.
Business & Tech Google Scales Back 'AI Overviews,' Admits the AI Has Been Getting Things Wrong Despite what they said was extensive testing before launch, Google is admitting that its "AI Overview" system has been prone to spreading untruths, and some very weird untruths at that.
Business & Tech Nintendo Announces They’re Opening a Store in SF’s Union Square, Only Their Second Store in the US Mario, Luigi, and Pokémon are swooping in to hopefully save San Francisco’s Union Square, as the video game giant Nintendo just announced they’re taking over one of the many vacant retail spots in the beleaguered shopping district sometime in 2025.
Business & Tech Facebook Remains Bad at Restoring Peoples' Hacked Accounts If this has happened to you, then you know what an incredible pain it is to get Meta to help you get your account back. And some states' attorneys general are pushing back.
Business & Tech Google's 'AI Overview' Gets Facts Wrong, Is Worse Than a Regular Search You may have noticed if you've Googled something in the last week that the search results page on the site is now topped with an "AI Overview" that purports to answer whatever question you may have been trying to get answered. The trouble is, some answers can be blatantly wrong.
Business & Tech Report: Many SF School Crossing Guards Say Self-Driving Cars Have Nearly Hit Them or Children A new investigative report shows that one in four San Francisco school crossing guards have had a “close call” with a self-driving vehicle, though many of the other guards say that the autonomous cars drive better than people do.
Business & Tech Can We Talk About How Creepy and Meta It Is That OpenAI Made a Voice Assistant That Sounds a Lot Like Scarlett Johansson? Did OpenAI think it was cool to try to turn 'Her' into reality with the help of voice actor Scarlett Johansson?
Business & Tech Pixar Hit With Layoffs Affecting 14% of Its Staff As parent company Disney pushes for budget cuts, Pixar Animation Studios is going forward with some previously announced layoffs, primarily impacting staff working on series production for Disney+.
Business & Tech Waymos Waylaid In Their Lot After Robbery Suspects Ram Into One at 14th and Folsom An unoccupied Waymo was reportedly hit in a hit-and-run collision early Monday just outside the Waymo dispatch lot at 14th and Folsom streets, and the suspects had apparently just stolen a car in SoMa.
Bay Area Sports Steph Curry Just Bought a Building in Dogpatch That Will Serve as His Business Headquarters Warriors all-star Steph Curry is single-handedly trying to reverse SF’s commercial real estate doom loop, paying six times the 2021 sale price for a building at 20th and Illinois streets that will be his business headquarters.
Business & Tech Ex-Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt Starts New ‘Bot Company,’ Gets Handed $150 Million Despite Having No Products Proving again that tech executives can always fail upwards, the CEO that ran self-driving car company Cruise into a ditch, Kyle Vogt, has just been handed $150 million for his new venture called the Bot Company that claims it will eventually develop robots to do household chores.
Business & Tech Waymo Now Under Federal Investigation For 22 Crash and Safety Violation Incidents Self-driving car company Waymo may have its time in the barrel coming just like the now-suspended Cruise, as the NHTSA is probing 22 separate crashes and safety incidents with their cars. Oh, and Amazon’s Zoox is being investigated too.
Business & Tech ChatGPT Reportedly Rolling Out a ‘Google Killer’ Search Engine, But Failed to Do So In Underwhelming Monday Demo There are reports that new tech industry darling OpenAI is working on an AI-powered search engine they hope will overtake Google, but the company’s ballyhooed Monday announcement did not show anything that will have Google shaking in their shoes.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink We Are On the Verge of Another Sriracha Shortage! Maker Huy Fung Foods Halts Production Until Fall Sriracha lovers, brace yourselves for finding some alternative hot sauces this summer as popular sriracha maker Huy Fung Foods is halting production due to a bad chili pepper supply.
Business & Tech Apple Apologizes For Disastrously Tone-Deaf Ad Showing Machine Crushing Human Creativity Apple was uncharacteristically way off the mark with its latest splashy ad for the new, ultra-thin iPad Pro, which drew a ton of criticism on social media. And now they're apologizing.
Business & Tech Sure Enough, OpenAI Is Considering Allowing Its Tools to Generate Porn The artificial intelligence company OpenAI is considering allowing its tools to “responsibly” create AI-generated NSFW content, though it's hard to imagine users would have many goals other than to create a tidal wave of deepfake pornography.
Business & Tech Google Is Bailing From Its Offices at Trophy SF Building One Market Plaza A prize tenant is leaving a prized property at the luxe waterfront offices of One Market Plaza, as Google is reportedly vacating its 300,000 square feet of the property when the lease expires next year.
Arts & Entertainment Giant Mystery Laser Dazzles and Confuses SF, Turns Out to Be a Tech Conference Thing Did you see the giant blue and green lasers shooting into the sky near Coit Tower Monday night? They're scheduled to be back again Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and are brought to you by a company unsurprisingly named MegaLasers.
SF News Waymo Spotted Driving in Red Bus Lane, About to Make Illegal Left-Hand Turn A video from Sunday shows a self-driving Waymo robotaxi driving in the red ‘bus only’ lane on Van Ness Avenue, and apparently about to engage in an illegal left-hand turn.
SF News US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Bay Area Today There may be a motorcade or two complicating traffic near Moscone Center Monday afternoon, as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will be downtown to give a keynote at the RSA Conference.
Business & Tech Williams-Sonoma Fined Nearly $3.2 Million for Labeling Products as ‘Made in USA’ When They Were Not San Francisco-based houseware and cookware purveyor Williams-Sonoma just got nailed with a $3.18 million fine for claiming that products were “Made in USA” when they were actually made in China, and it’s not the first time the company has done this.
