Arts & Entertainment People Are Spotting That OpenAI Movie Being Shot at Locations Around San Francisco A Hollywood comedy about OpenAI’s firing and rehiring of Sam Altman as CEO is now being shot around San Francisco, and people are spotting big stars like Jason Schwartzman and Monica Barbaro in Dolores Park, the Marina, and SoMa.
Business & Tech Tesla Rolls Out Ride-Hail Service In Bay Area, Careful Not to Call It 'Robotaxi' So, it seems that Tesla still doesn't have permits to operate a self-driving taxi service in California. But after launching just such a service for a select few users in Austin, the company appears to be doing the same thing in the Bay Area, but here they're not calling it self-driving.
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Yet Another SF Cafe Trying ‘Robot Baristas,’ This Time at the Former Creamery Spot Near SoMa Caltrain “AI slop” may soon be available in liquid form, as yet one more forthcoming SF cafe is trying the robot barista idea, but also adding AI-generated art and music plus “tech-forward coffee” at the former Creamery space on Fourth Street.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Wag! Pet Care Company Enters Bankruptcy A Palestinian teacher who tried to come to the Bay Area last month has been killed; Wag!, the pet-care company, has filed for bankruptcy; and there was a shooting today outside the Manhattan headquarters of the NFL.
Business & Tech Local Tech Company’s AI Agent ‘Panics,’ Deletes Production Data, Then Hallucinates Cover-Up Replit, a Bay Area–based coding platform, made headlines after its AI deleted a live database during a “vibe coding” session. Investor Jason Lemkin says the cover-up attempt was worse, but he’s still using Replit after what he called “mega improvements.”
Business & Tech Tesla Is Maybe Launching Robotaxis In San Francisco This Weekend, For Testing An internal memo apparently informed Tesla employees that the company was planning to put its robotaxis, with drivers behind the wheel, on the streets of San Francisco this weekend — but do they even have a permit for this?
SF Restaurants, Food & Drink That Tesla-Branded Diner Has Opened In LA, and Predictably It Is Being Yelp-Bombed The 24-hour Tesla Diner just opened earlier this week in West Hollywood, serving smashburgers, hot dogs, chicken and waffles, breakfast tacos, and more. But apparently you can't park there unless you drive a Tesla.
Business & Tech Sam Altman Warns of Coming AI-Created 'Fraud Crisis' OpenAI CEO Sam Altman issued a fairly dire warning about how some personal security apparatuses — particularly things we use to guard our bank accounts and the like — are highly vulnerable to AI-based fraud.
Business & Tech Tourist In SF For Conference Ends Up Stuck In Weird Waymo Garage Limbo "This was like, out of a science fiction movie," says attorney Darren Findling, describing a brief ordeal he had during his first-ever Waymo ride on Monday morning in San Francisco.
Business & Tech Tesla Lawsuit Underway That Could Temporarily Yank Its License to Operate in California State Attorney General Rob Bonta has Tesla in his crosshairs, and is aiming to temporarily suspend the company’s ability to do business in California, charging that Tesla’s “autopilot” and “full self-driving capability” claims are misleading bunk.
Business & Tech Tech Bro Builds App to 'Cheat on Everything,' and a Former Classmate Creates One to Detect It A 21-year-old Columbia dropout built Cluely to help users “cheat on everything.” Now rebranded as a productivity tool, it’s facing scrutiny from critics, as well competition from Truely, an app by another Columbia student that detects stealth AI.
Business & Tech Turns Out, Meta's AI Data Centers Use Up a Lot of Water In Addition to Electricity Something that hasn't gotten enough attention is whether the entire AI enterprise is even sustainable, given how the computing power currently required, scaled upwards, uses incredible amounts of energy and water.
Business & Tech The Grok Chatbot Is Apparently Programmed to Check for Elon Musk's Opinions to Answer Questions Well well. Should it be at all shocking to learn that Elon Musk's xAI has built an AI chatbot that essentially seeks to parrot Musk's own views of the world whenever it gets the chance?
Business & Tech Good News for Union Square, as Bang & Olufsen Is Returning, in the Old Britex Fabrics Location Danish luxury electronics retailer Bang & Olufsen actually closed their Union Square store long before the pandemic and subsequent downtown SF downturn, but they're coming back this October in the former Geary Street Britex Fabrics space.
Business & Tech Musk Threatens to Bring Tesla's LiDAR-Free Robotaxis to Bay Area Within Months Lest we thought that Elon Musk was finally done with the Bay Area, having closed down Xitter's offices and moved several of his companies to Texas, he's now claiming that Tesla's robotaxis will be coming to compete with Waymo soon.
Business & Tech Linda Yaccarino Is Taking Her Leave of X After Two Years as CEO Nobody really thought she'd make it a full two years being CEO at Elon Musk's more chaotic version of Twitter, but Linda Yaccarino somehow did — or she was under contract — and now she'll be taking the rest of the summer off.
Business & Tech Silicon Valley Startups Duped by Developer Who Faked Resume, Worked 4 Jobs Simultaneously A Mumbai-based engineer who excelled in interviews reportedly held multiple Silicon Valley startup jobs at once, often disappearing after landing offers of up to $200K. Soham Parekh impressed on paper, but founders say most of his resume was fake.
Business & Tech Walnut Creek-Based Canned Foods Giant Del Monte Files for Bankruptcy, Hopes for New Owner Yes, Del Monte Foods is based in Walnut Creek, but it may not be for much longer, as the company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and it seems like Trump’s steel tariffs had a lot to do with this.
SF News Tech Bro Wants to Use Federal Land at Alameda Point for 'AI City,' Drafts Sample Executive Order A tech founder is calling for an executive order to fast-track a new “AI city” on 512 acres of federal land at Alameda Point — the site of an existing VA project and nesting grounds for endangered birds. City officials were never contacted, and the mayor called it a "head-scratcher."
Business & Tech Alarming Study Suggests Most AI Large-Language Models Resort to Blackmail, Other Harmful Behaviors If Threatened It's not far off from the world imagined in '2001: A Space Odyssey,' in which an AI opts to kill the humans it was working for when they are conspiring to shut it down. A new study by SF-based Anthropic suggests that such potentially harmful behaviors are common across most existing AI models.
Business & Tech Federal Judge In SF Rules That AI Company Anthropic Did Not Violate Copyright Law In Training Its Chatbot A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled that Anthropic did not break the law when it used copyrighted material to train its AI chatbot Claude. The company will have to go to trial, however, over its use of pirated copies of books.
SF News Fremont Battery Company Allegedly Brought in Unlicensed Chinese Lawyer, Called US Workers ‘Foreigners’ A Fremont battery company with ties to China is accused of calling non-Chinese staff “foreigners,” using unauthorized Chinese workers on B-1 visas, and flying in a Chinese lawyer who's unlicensed in the US to advise on bringing in more illegal hires.
Business & Tech Zoox Opens Factory In Hayward, City Very Pleased About This Amazon-owned autonomous taxi company Zoox has opened a new production facility in Hayward, which is already employing around 100 technicians, and the City of Hayward is quite happy to welcome them.
Business & Tech Meta's AI Efforts Include Huge Privacy Flub; Sam Altman Says Meta's Been Trying to Poach OpenAI Staff It looks like we're back to "move fast and break things" at Meta, with Meta.ai appearing to be off to a troubled start, exposing users' very private search queries in a bizarre public feed. And the company has reportedly been offering $100 million signing bonuses to OpenAI staff?!
Business & Tech TikTok to Remain in Legal Limbo Another 90 Days as Trump Signs Another Executive Order Chinese-owned company ByteDance is getting another 90 days to figure out how to separate its American user base of TikTok and sell the business to an American company, even though there's been no movement on this since Trump announced his tariffs.
