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Day Around The Bay: Google Removes Pledge From Its Website That It Won’t Use AI For Weapons Or Surveillance

Bob Geary, 1980s ventriloquist cop, has died; Trump dumped 2.2 billion gallons of water from two California lakes last weekend; and a Wisconsin Democrat is set to introduce a bill called “Eliminate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy.”

Lyft Sues San Francisco Over Alleged $100M Tax Overcharge

The lawsuit, first filed Friday in California state court, alleges that San Francisco engaged in tax methodology that is “distortive and will grossly overstate Lyft’s gross receipts."

Watered-Down Version Of SF's Tech Cafeteria Ban Returns To Supes' Agenda

A controversial proposed ban on in-house cafeterias at San Francisco tech companies is returning in a revised (and much less onerous) version before the Board of Supervisors this week.

Business & Tech

Teacher Documents How Many Phone Notifications Her Students Get During One Period And It's Stress-Inducing

We are raising a generation of constantly distracted chatbots and an experiment by one beleaguered teacher illustrates this in a most upsetting fashion.

High-Profile Tech Bro Robert Scoble Faces Barrage Of Sexual Harassment Allegations

The only enduring legacy of the stupid Google Glass fad of 2013-14 is the image of fanboy Robert Scoble wearing the contraption in the shower. While the Glass device has mercifully been more

SFMTA Cracks Down (Sort Of) On Chariot, Other Private Buses

It’s been a bumpy ride for the tech-loving private shuttle service Chariot, which arrived three years ago to make “transportation better only for some people” in the words of Muni Diaries. Chariot

Bollocks To Uber, Which Is Now Banned In London

A series of cock-ups has rideshare Uber arse-deep in trouble on the other side of the pond. In the wake of a Guardian report on sexual assaults committed by Uber drivers, the regulatory

Google Slapped With Gender Bias Suit, Might Owe Money to 21,000 Female Employees

Ex-Googlers can do more than just found a Bodega startup that the internet loves to hate. Some ex-Googlers might force the search giant to cough up back pay and a hefty slice of

Testy Tesla Owners Bring Battery Boost Backlash

Wunderkind electric car brand Tesla probably thought they were doing something nice this weekend when they boosted the battery power capacity for their drivers escaping the perilous path of Hurricane Irma. Owners of

Racist, Sexist Internal Facebook Forum Surfaces As Zuck Vows To Remove All Hate Speech From Facebook

It's tough out there for a Jewish CEO whose online empire has become a potent messaging and organizing tool for neo-Nazis and anti-semites. While the spread of online hate is not unique to

Alt-Right Plans 'March on Google,' Doxxing Campaign To Defend Fired Brogrammer

Here we see James Damore, who had himself a sad little two-person protest at Google’s Mountain View headquarters Thursday afternoon. (Mr. “Fired for Truth,” of course, fudged the truth on his resume.

Report: Self-Driving Cars Are Hilariously Easy To Fool

Hell hath no fury like tech bros being told that their self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, and machine-learning technologies are overhyped and nowhere near ready for market. But with that in mind, SFist will

Texas Firm Finds It Cheaper To Commute To Silicon Valley By Private Jet Than To Operate There

Lawyers from the Houston-based intellectual property firm of Patterson and Sheridan want the big-money tech clients of Silicon Valley but not the big-money price tags of Bay Area real estate and salary expectations.

Google Fires Engineer Who Wrote Controversial Anti-Diversity Memo

The Google software engineer who suggested that women are biologically less well-suited to engineering work in an internal memo last week was fired on Monday. Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote, "First, let me

Google Employee Writes Internal Memo Railing Against Women, Diversity; Rage Ensues

A memo from a senior software engineer that went "internally viral" at Google last week titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" reportedly laid out a manifesto for why women are less well suited for

Travis Kalanick Claims He Is 'Steve Jobs-ing It' To Get Back Inside Uber

It remains unclear which tech titan will take over running Uber following Travis Kalanick's recent departure, but the ride-share company founder and former CEO wants back in. According to Recode, Kalanick told several

Ex-Googler Launches Nonprofit To Stop Google & Facebook From 'Hijacking Our Minds'

It is not a particularly unique observation that the culture of constantly looking at our phones has spawned an app economy whose emotional manipulation, trampling of our privacy, and spread of misinformation has

Trump Claims Apple CEO Promised To Build Three 'Big, Big' Plants In US

Are Apple's CEO Tim Cook and America's CEO Donald Trump best buds? Trump is sure making it sound that way (despite some photographic evidence that would suggest otherwise). In a recent 45-minute interview

TechCrunch Writer Details Sexual Harassment Experience With SF-Based Venture Capitalist

TechCrunch writer Catherine Shu repeatedly declined the advances of 500 Startups venture partner and entrepreneur-in-residence Tristan Pollock but that didn't stop him from allegedly grabbing her and groping her. Disgusted with what she

BuzzFeed Exposé Details Uber's Out-Of-Control 'A**hole Culture'

There has not been a new Uber scandal breaking today (though we're still a while from the end of the business day Pacific Daylight Time). There is, however, an epic, 6,500-word exposé

Self-Driving Car Was The Grand Marshal Of Concord's July 4 Parade

The robots are indeed already taking our jobs, at least the job of Independence Day Parade grand marshal in the East Bay community of Concord. ABC 7 reports that an autonomous car was

Behold The Bizarre Towers That Amazon Has Designed To House Delivery Drones

The future has arrived. Amazon has begun to design towers to house their delivery drones. We're all mere steps away from having groceries, drugs, and vegan Thai food delivered by drones. Seattle-based online

The Mom And Pop Company Behind The Netflix Leak Reveal How They Got Hacked And Blackmailed

It's safe to say that last Christmas was completely ruined for Rick and Jill Larson of Larson Studios, a small, family-run, Hollywood-based audio post-production business for big-name television shows. In an exclusive obtained