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.
Business & Tech Twitter Bird Logo Blown Up In the Desert as Marketing Stunt By Classifieds Site In a silly and probably misguided marketing stunt, online classifieds site Ditchit just "ditched" one of the 500-pound Twitter bird signs that used to adorn the erstwhile Twitter Building in San Francisco by way of explosives.
Business & Tech OpenAI Lands Government Contract, Reportedly Might Want Divorce From Microsoft The tech world drama of the week comes via a new report about growing tensions in the relationship between OpenAI and its major backer Microsoft, and today we learn that OpenAI has just landed a $200 million government contract.
Business & Tech Instagram Users Complain of Mass Suspensions of Accounts, Likely By AI Something appears to be up in the Instagram universe, with many users turning to other platforms like Reddit and Xitter to lodge complaints about their accounts getting falsely flagged and suspended.
Business & Tech Facebook Suspends, and Then Reinstates, Author Rebecca Solnit’s Account Over LA Protest Post, In an Apparent AI Flub SF author Rebecca Solnit had her Facebook account suspended after she posted an essay about the LA protests, but Facebook undid the suspension about 24 hours later, and this all likely happened because of the slapdash AI that Facebook uses for content moderation.
Business & Tech Waymo Suspends Service In Parts of SF and LA After Its Cars Were Vandalized In ICE Protests Waymo is suspending service Monday in parts of San Francisco and Los Angeles following acts of vandalism on Sunday that targeted the robocars in both cities, amid raucous protests against ICE activities and the Trump administration.
Business & Tech San Mateo Company Claims They’ve Got a ‘True Flying Car,’ Taking Pre-Orders Now A local startup says their flying car is now operable, they’ve got a hype video for it, and insist they are now taking pre-orders for this $300,000 vehicle. But there may not be many places in the Bay Area you can legally fly it.
Arts & Entertainment Hollywood Making a Movie About That OpenAI Sam Altman Firing Drama, and It Will Be Partially Shot In SF The movie industry trade publications are buzzing that SF will be the backdrop of a forthcoming movie about Sam Altman getting fired and rehired at OpenAI, and it’s likely going to be a comedy starring Andrew Garfield.
Business & Tech It’s Not Your Imagination, Your Waymo May Be Driving More Like a Human The behavior of Waymo’s self-driving taxis has apparently shifted in recent weeks or months, based on safety data collected by the company, and it means the cars are doing certain things more like real people do behind the wheel.
SF News Crypto Mogul Chris Larsen Kicking Down Nearly $10 Million to SFPD for More Surveillance Efforts Ripple Labs and its co-founder Chris Larsen are trying to kick down a $9.4 million gift to the SFPD in the form of drones and surveillance gadgets, a new “surveillance gadget” coordinating center, and an apparent $2 million video wall.
Business & Tech X/Twitter Goes Down for Third Time In a Week, Just as Musk Drug Story Drops Xitter had something of a meltdown Friday, with many users reporting a total outage on the platform in the US, India, and elsewhere.
Business & Tech 1,500 Residential Units Proposed on Former Tennis Club Property In SoMa A change made in March to the Central SoMa Plan has already yielded some interest from a developer, with a long-stalled development property at 88 Bluxome now back in the mix as a high-rise residential complex.
Business & Tech The Old Lucca Ravioli Space to Become a ‘Corner Store’ for Tech Payment Processing Company Square Valencia Street’s former Lucca Ravioli space will now be handling a different kind of dough, as the point-of-sale system Square is taking the place over and turning it into something like an Apple Store for their own products.
Business & Tech Former Apple Designer Jony Ive's Secretive Startup Working on AI Hardware of Some Kind, OpenAI Acquiring It A big deal in the local tech world was announced Wednesday, as OpenAI is reportedly acquiring Johnny Ive's secretive hardware startup io for $6.5 billion.
