Business & Tech Conspiracy Theories Fly as Meta Users Find Themselves Suddenly Following Trump and JD Vance Millions of Facebook and Instagram users were shocked to find that they were suddenly following Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Melania Trump, but the company insists it was just the normal switching of official accounts that happens for every presidential transition.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Fumes as $500 Billion AI Data Center Investment Comes From Sam Altman and Not Him The completely unproven and unreliable AI sector says it’s going to build $500 billion worth of data centers with Trump’s blessing, and with AI safeguards now repealed, that’s a lot of deepfake porn to produce. But Elon Musk is mad that he’s not in on the action.
Business & Tech SF-Based Hims & Hers Healthcare Company, Founded By Owner of New West Portal Doughnut Shop, Donates to Trump Inauguration Hims & Hers Health, the SF-based telehealth startup founded by Andrew Dudum, just kicked $1 million to Donald Trump's inauguration fund, perhaps because they're concerned about the administration's future plans when it comes to mail-order drugs.
Business & Tech Big Tech Bigwigs Agree to Strict New EU Hate Speech Moderation Rules, But They’re Free to Just Ignore Them Xitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have signed on to a European Union agreement to prevent and remove hate speech from their platforms, which seems meaningless, because all of their CEOs and founders were at Trump’s inauguration today.
Business & Tech Trump Launches Meme Coin Ahead of Inauguration In Likely Pump-and-Dump Scheme This weekend, President Donald Trump and his family launched their own Trump-branded cryptocurrency, just days ahead of his inauguration.
Business & Tech Apple Pulls Its AI News-Summary Tool After Major Errors Apple is yanking one of its first Apple Intelligence features to roll out, the one that summarizes news headlines from various sources to turn them into push notifications, which have turned out to be sometimes wildly false.
Business & Tech SEC Gets In Parting Shot at Elon Musk, Sues Him For Swindling Investors by Hiding His Twitter Shares Purchase The US Securities and Exchange Commission is accusing Elon Musk of cheating shareholders out of $150 million by not disclosing his secret 2022 purchase of 10% of Twitter shares, as was legally required.
Business & Tech Walgreens CEO Admits Locking Up Items Was a Mistake: ‘When You Lock Things Up… You Don’t Sell as Many of Them’ On a quarterly earnings call, the CEO of Walgreens conceded that putting items behind lock and key has hurt the company’s sales, because no one wants to shop in a store where even the toothpaste is behind glass.
Business & Tech Meta to Lay Off Around 3,600 More Employees as It Faces 'Intense Year,' Zuckerberg Says Fast on the heels of Meta's announcement that it is curtailing a significant subset of its social media operations — namely content moderation — the company says it is also going to trim its workforce by 5%.
SF News Day Around the Bay: DOJ Sues Airbnb Over Hosts With Anti-Child Policy The DOJ is suing Airbnb over a policy that allows hosts to ban children under 12; a Kentucky man is accused of a road-rage incident over another driver's high beams in San Mateo; and a look back at SF's last mega-rich mayor.
Business & Tech Jill Biden Arriving In San Francisco, Speaking Tuesday at JP Morgan Conference The infamously high-priced JP Morgan Healthcare Conference is underway at the Hyatt Regency, and expect motorcades and heavy security on Tuesday, as First Lady Jill Biden will be popping in to give a speech.
Business & Tech It's the Biden Administration's Fault That Big Tech Embraced Trump, Says Marc Andreessen This all feels like a political merry-go-round we've been on for too long, but as the post-election analyses continue to roll in, the New York Times podcast 'The Daily' is looking into why so many Silicon Valley bigwigs rolled over and got in bed with Trump this time around.
SF News Union Square Macy’s Escapes the Ax In Latest Macy’s Closure List, But Its Days Are Likely Still Numbered Department store chain Macy’s just announced they’re closing more than 60 stores nationwide, and while the SF Union Square store is not on the imminent closure list, it is still clearly on the chopping block.
SF News Two Stalled Waymos Gummed Up Lurie’s Chinatown Inauguration Party, But Cops Just Jumped In Them and Drove Away Police can apparently now hop into stalled, confused Waymo robotaxis and drive them away manually, and this reportedly happened twice Wednesday night at Mayor Daniel Lurie’s inauguration party.
SF News Walgreens Closing 12 SF Stores In Late February, Here’s a Map Showing Which Ones are Closing Those 1,200 nationwide Walgreens closures are starting to kick in, and 12 Walgreens stores in SF will close in late February, including the one where Banko Brown was shot. The company blames high rent, but legal settlements probably have a hand in this too.
SF News Massive Office and Housing Development Proposed for What Is Now Just a Bunch of SF Caltrain Tracks The latest twist in the ambitious plans to extend Caltrain to the Salesforce Transit Center is a developer hoping to send Caltrain tracks underground, and cover that land with new towers, one of which would be taller than the Transamerica Pyramid.
Business & Tech Waymo Passenger Says He Was Late to the Airport Because Robocar Kept Doing Circles In a Parking Lot This week in robocar snafus: A Waymo in Phoenix went a little haywire recently, and its passenger says he was late getting to a flight because the car refused to stop circling the same parking lot.
Business & Tech Saying Its Content Moderation Has 'Gone Too Far,' Meta Now Set to Become Hotbed of Transphobia and Conspiracies In a shift akin to what Elon Musk has done with the platform we still call Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads will soon be more of a free-for-all when it comes to misinformation, with "community notes" inserted when facts are questioned.
Business & Tech Meta Continues Its Trump Turn, Adds UFC President Dana White to Its Board of Directors Facebook and Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg continues his mixed martial arts fascination, and his increasing kowtowing to Donald Trump, with the curious addition of UFC president Dana White to Meta’s expanding board of directors.
Business & Tech Turns Out Blind People Really Love Taking Trips in Waymo’s Self-Driving Robotaxis Here’s one demographic that does not loathe the robot cars driving around San Francisco, as blind people have rave reviews for Waymo’s dedicated features to accommodate people with visual impairments.
Business & Tech SF’s First On-Street, Curbside Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Are Coming to Duboce Triangle and Dogpatch People who don’t have garages can have a hell of a time finding a place to charge their electric vehicle, but hundreds of new SF curbside charging stations are in the works, and the first few will be in Dogpatch and Duboce Triangle.
Business & Tech Office Tower at Sixth and Market Getting Acquired By Tech Group for 'Post-AI Singularity' Vertical Village Well, this sure sounds like a positive, if kooky, sign for mid-Market as a Burning Man-esque tech collective is close to buying the 16-story building at the corner of Sixth Street that was once home to the Burning Man organization.
Business & Tech Now the Proper Hotel on Mid-Market Appears to Be In Financial Distress One of two boutique, luxury hotels that were meant to be part of a renaissance on mid-Market Street — which never really materialized — the Proper Hotel at Seventh and Market, now looks like it might fall into the hands of its lender.
Business & Tech Parents of OpenAI Whistleblower Don't Believe He Died By Suicide, Order Second Autopsy There is a bit more intrigue around the tragic death late last month of former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji, who was found dead in his Lower Haight apartment of an apparent suicide.
Business & Tech As Bluesky Blows Up, So Do the Bots With rapid growth, and without a robust content moderation system, Bluesky is already entering an era of bots and misinformation.
