Business & Tech SF-Based Instacart Now Under Scrutiny Over Their AI Price-Adjusting Tool A recent study found Instacart was charging some shoppers up to 23% more for the same items from the same stores in an AI experiment, and now the Federal Trade Commission is looking into the matter.
Business & Tech California Might Ban Tesla Sales for 30 Days Over Deceptive ‘Autopilot’ Marketing A state judge ruled that Tesla can’t sell or manufacture cars in California for 30 days over false advertising claims about their ‘full self-driving’ mode. But the California DMV cut Tesla some slack, giving them 60 days to fix the ads.
Business & Tech Sam Altman Posts Slutty AI Photo of Himself as Fireman to Promote ChatGPT Images 1.5 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is now maybe taking a page out of Elon Musk's and Trump's playbook, and posting a cheeky AI-generated photo of himself as a sexy calendar firefighter to Xitter.
SF News Anheuser-Busch Closing 50-Year-Old Budweiser Plant in Fairfield Next Month There will be no more Clydesdales a’clopping in Fairfield, as the Budweiser plant that opened there in 1976 will fully close down in January, because parent company Anheuser-Busch is pulling a national downsizing on production.
Business & Tech Altman, Musk, and Zuckerberg Named Person(s) of the Year by Time Magazine, as 'Architects of AI' Time Magazine, for what it's worth these days in terms of cultural relevance, has named the 'Architects of AI' as its Person of the Year for 2025, and these multiple persons include Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Business & Tech Waymo Stowaway: Man Found Hiding In Waymo Trunk, Offers Little Explanation Why He Is There A Los Angeles woman made a curious discovery when trying to put her daughter in a Waymo, which was a man hiding in the vehicle’s trunk, bringing up serious questions about how easy it is to just hop inside a Waymo and hide there.
Arts & Entertainment South Bay Congressman Raises National Security Concerns About Paramount Hostile Takeover Bid of Warner Bros. The corporate drama gripping Hollywood right now could have national security implications, says South Bay Congressman Sam Liccardo in a new joint letter to the board of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Business & Tech Report: SF-Based Instacart Charging Some Customers as Much as 23% More for the Same Items, Thanks to AI Pricing People buying the exact same item from the exact same store are sometimes paying a price as much as 23% higher on the platform Instacart, thanks to AI algorithms that show buyers different prices.
Business & Tech SF-Based Catering Website Swaps Restaurants’ Real Food Pictures With AI Pictures, Restaurants Get Pissed These bagels claim to be Boichik Bagels on the catering website Forkable, but they are fake AI-generated bagels, as perhaps evidenced by the oddly uniform size of the bagel slices, all slightly larger than a normal bagel half. Now restaurants listed on the website are furious.
Business & Tech Watch: Two Waymos Appear to Collide In SF, Then Cause Traffic Jam That Traps Residents on Street The latest Waymo dustup is a Saturday incident where two Waymos appear to have collided with one another, resulting in three Waymos just stopping in place, and blocking a dead-end street so residents could not drive out.
Business & Tech DMV Now Hammering Out Rules for Self-Driving Trucks to Come to California The next frontier of the self-driving car movement is likely to be self-driving commercial trucks, and the California DMV is creating the rules right now for the testing of autonomous semi trucks.
SF News Waymo Strikes Small Dog In Western Addition, Dog's Condition Not Known Weeks after one of its robotaxis struck and killed a beloved Mission District bodega cat, Waymo has confirmed that one of its cars also struck an unleashed dog.
Business & Tech Instagram Ordering Everyone Back to the Office Five Days a Week There's been a long tail on pandemic-era hybrid work across the Bay Area and the tech sector especially, but some big companies like Meta are now cracking the whip and calling for five mandatory in-office days, just like olden times.
Business & Tech NYT: Trump’s Silicon Valley ‘AI and Crypto Czar’ David Sacks Apparently Enriching Himself and Friends In White House Role SF’s own right-wing VC billionaire David Sacks was named the Trump administration’s ‘AI and Crypto Czar’ last year, and a New York Times analysis says that since then, his investments have hit the jackpot over policies he helped craft.
Business & Tech Report: SF Home Hit by $11 Million Crypto Theft Owned By Sam Altman’s Ex While Sam Altman’s one-time romantic partner Lachy Groom was not the person who had $11 million in crypto stolen from his account, Groom does own the home where the invasion happened, and reportedly lives there too.
Business & Tech East Bay Man Arrested for Alleged Scheme to Smuggle Nvidia GPUs and AI Chips to China The DOJ arrested a San Leandro man and three others as part of an alleged conspiracy to evade US trade laws by smuggling powerful Nvidia GPUs and AI chips to China through Thailand and Malaysia. The man allegedly bragged that his dad did the same work for the CCP.
Business & Tech The Hilton Union Square and Parc55 Sold for $408 Million, Though Were Previously Worth $1.5 Billion We’re just now learning the sale price of a hotel deal that happened three months ago, and SF’s largest hotel the Hilton Union Square, plus the also-very-large Parc55, sold for $408 million, though they’d been worth $1.5 billion in 2016.
Business & Tech DoorDash Wins Its Appeal to Test Food Delivery Drones in the Mission, and the Teamsters Aren’t Happy Delivery platform DoorDash bought a warehouse at 16th and Folsom to test delivery drones, but the Teamsters challenged their permit on zoning grounds. Now the drones will fly, after the SF Board of Appeals shot down the Teamsters' appeal.
SF Politics Marc Benioff, Elon Musk Attend White House Dinner With Murderous Saudi Crown Prince The billionaires were all back in their billionaire bubble alongside Trump Tuesday night, and even Elon Musk has been welcomed back into the fold after his teenage-style tiff with Trump.
Business & Tech Tesla Human Robotaxi Driver Falls Asleep at the Wheel While Driving Passenger, Video Goes Viral Tesla robotaxis currently have human drivers while the company gets its permissions worked out, but one SF Tesla robotaxi rider saw their human driver fall asleep at the wheel multiple times on their ride.
Business & Tech Meta Wins Antitrust Battle, Does Not Have to Spin Off Instagram or WhatsApp A yearslong fight between the FTC and Meta has ended with Meta prevailing, and a federal judge declaring that the company likely does not hold a monopoly in the social media sphere anymore.
Business & Tech Amazon-Owned Autonomous Taxi Company Zoox Begins Offering Public Rides Zoox, whose funny-looking, steering-wheel-free, four-seater robocars have been roving about San Francisco for a while now, is now launching its first program to give rides to the general public.
Business & Tech Travis Kalanick’s Cloudkitchens Closes Its East Oakland Ghost Kitchen Complex, Looking to Sell the Place Maybe ghost kitchens aren’t scaring up as much business these days, as Uber founder Travis Kalanick just shut down a ghost kitchen that his new megabucks startup Cloudkitchens opened there five years ago.
Business & Tech Anthropic Says Its AI Chatbot Was Used By Chinese Hackers for Large-Scale Cyber Attack In what sounds like both a word of warning and weirdly a little bit of bragging, SF-based Anthropic says that its AI chatbot Claude was used by state-sponsored hackers in China to commit a large-scale cyberattack on American companies.
Business & Tech Legal Dispute Continues Between Transamerica Building Owner and High-End Private Club That Was Set to Be a Tenant A legal battle that's been ongoing for about 18 months between upscale membership club CORE and SHVO, the developer behind the revamp of the Transamerica Building, appeared to escalate this week.
