Business & Tech Marc and Lynne Benioff Give Major Donation To Gut Biome Research Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne just announced a $35 million donation to research into the under-studied field of the human microbiome — specifically into research that could lead to new therapies for asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and other ailments.
Business & Tech Verizon Is Selling Off Tumblr To SF-Based Owners of Wordpress Tumblr is changing hands once more, and Yahoo parent company Verizon is reportedly offloading it for less than one percent of what Yahoo paid for the company in 2013.
Business & Tech FBI Seeks Contractor To Harvest Facebook and Twitter Data To Identify Potential Shooters, Terrorists The FBI put out a request for proposals last month seeking a contractor that will trawl social media to identify potential threats to American interests — something that Facebook and Twitter explicitly prohibit any third party from doing.
Business & Tech Women Complain Of Inadequate Responses From Lyft to Harassment Complaints About Drivers Lyft may be on the road to losing its "woke" image, in comparison to Uber, as the Washington Post reports on a pattern of cases in which complaints about drivers from women resulted in little or no disciplinary action.
Business & Tech Netflix Sees First Subscriber Decline In Almost A Decade Bay Area-based Netflix had a not-great second quarter this year, with an overall loss of 126,000 subscribers in the US — the first quarterly decline in US subscribers in eight years, basically since it began streaming content.
Business & Tech Juul CEO Full-On Apologizes For Teen Vaping As Vape Ban Ballot Fight Heats Up The San Francisco-based e-cigarette giant might have just taken a hit in their attempt to undo the local vape ban, as their CEO goes deer-in-the-headlights under tough questioning from CNBC.
Business & Tech Twitter Goes Down For Half Hour, World Paralyzed [UPDATED] Back Up! Twitter went down for a full half hour on Thursday, bringing the world's armchair pundits briefly to their knees.
Business & Tech Jay-Z Signs On As Brand Strategist For Bay Area Marijuana Company A San Jose-based weed concern called Caliva has just "partnered" with rapper and Beyonce baby daddy Jay-Z, naming him Chief Brand Strategist.
Business & Tech Uber Eats Adds Order-Ahead/Dine-In Option For the Truly Impatient If your entire goal in dining out is shoving some fuel in your pie hole and getting out a restaurant as fast as humanly possible, then Uber Eats has a swell new option for you.
Business & Tech Screen Time Takes Worldwide Dip As Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp Suffer Outages Can't load your friend's Insta Story? Guess what! There are major outages worldwide on all of Facebook's social properties.
Business & Tech Over 120 LGBTQ Google Employees Say They Don't Want Google Marching In SF's Pride Parade An open letter from disgruntled Google employees comes after the company refused to allow them to protest from within the company's contingent at Sunday's Pride parade. But SF Pride says Google is still marching.
Business & Tech Uber and Lyft Pushed Drivers To Email State Legislators To Oppose Bill That Would Make Them Employees Both Uber and Lyft are anxious about a bill that could potentially make California the first state where rideshare drivers — and all delivery-app drivers — can't be classified as contractors.
Business & Tech Slack Stock Soars, Triples Company's Valuation In its untraditional public offering Thursday, Slack's stock took off in early trading, and currently is at over $41 per share — well over the reference price announced late Wednesday of $26 per share.
Business & Tech Local Companies Slack and Grocery Outlet Both Hit The Stock Market Thursday Slack Technologies will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange, while the much less-online Grocery Outlet Bargain Market will also debut on the NASDAQ.
Business & Tech Facebook Unveils Details On Its Crypto Coin, Libra, And Its Plan To Track Every Dollar We Spend It's been the buzz of Crypto Twitter and tech blogs for months, but today we have details of Facebook's next step toward world domination — and the next move that's most definitely going to raise eyebrows among regulators in Washington.
Business & Tech Bay Area Billionaire Vinod Khosla Believes That AI Will Replace Musicians and Songwriters In 10 Years You may be hooked on your algorithm-generated Discover Weekly playlist listening on Spotify, but what if machine learning could auto-generate music tailored to your exact taste and mood? That's what local billionaire Vinod Khosla thinks will be happening within 10 years.
Business & Tech Launch Announced For Uber Air, The On-Demand Helicopter Service That They Say Will Be As Cheap As Uber X Following on but unrelated to its more luxury-focused Uber Copter, which launches in New York City in July, Uber this week announced Uber Air, an all-electric flying taxi service that it hopes to begin testing in Australia next year.
Business & Tech Questionable Study Shows How Much Ad Revenue Google News Has Siphoned From The News Industry News organizations nationwide have been complaining how Big Tech was thriving on the backs of journalists. Now a new report finds that Google made almost as much ad revenue last year on news searches as the entire news industry combined made on its own content.
Business & Tech Apple Kills Off iTunes, Adds iOS 13 Dark Mode Apple kicks off its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Jose today, and the big announcements have begun rolling in — even though no major product announcements are expected at this one, except maybe a new Mac Pro.
Business & Tech Google Cloud Outage Shuts Down Everything From Smart Locks To Snapchat A significant outage with Google Cloud Services Sunday had widespread impacts that included right here on SFist — there were some scary moments there — but the most noticeable impacts for users were probably on Snapchat, YouTube, and Nest.
Business & Tech Salesforce Steps Into Gun Debate, Drops Customers Who Sell Automatic Weapons Salesforce made a change to the acceptable-use policy for its e-commerce software this week, adding a range of firearms and accessories to the list of products it forbids customers from selling.
Business & Tech Low Uber Rating? Company To Start Kicking 'Below Average' Riders Off The App Have you made a driver pull over one too many times so you could boot? Or worse, actually puked in the backseat of an Uber? You may just find yourself removed from the privilege of using Uber in the near future.
Business & Tech Judge Orders Uber To Turn Over Illegal Parking, Safety Hazard Data Police estimate that rideshare drivers commit 65% of San Francisco traffic violations, and the city attorney just won a round in the fight to prove it.
Business & Tech Don't Want To Chit-Chat With Your Uber Driver? New 'Quiet Mode' Is For You Uber has just rolled out a new feature for its black-car service: Quiet Mode. Without having to say so or be passive-aggressively terse, this new option will let your driver know you'd like to ride in silence, thanks.
Business & Tech Airbnb House Fire in Sonoma Tests Company’s Insurance Response A Sonoma couple learned the hard way that Airbnb's $1 million “Host Guarantee” is not exactly a guarantee, or at least not a quick one.
