✨Some news: Today is my first day at
@Forbes
✨ I’m super-excited to join this expanding newsroom where I’ll continue covering Google, in addition to the delightfully broad ~ artificial intelligence ~ beat.
Hellloooo! This is my first week as a business reporter at
@sfstandard
, where I’ll be covering local issues, trends and entrepreneurs, retail, real estate, the realities of running a business in this city and moooore
Some professional news… This is my first week as a Local Editor at
@SFGATE
! I am over-the-moon excited to join such an amazing team (including co-editor
@McleanTessa
) to help tell stories about a place I love so much 🌁❤️
"The human capital risks are not theoretical or long-term, they’re already here," says Google engineer presenting shareholder proposal around diversity, citing a number of long-time employees who left in the last year & mentioned management /culture issues in resignation letters
It’s a bad time for ~ personal news ~ but I’ve got some all the same.. This was my last week at Forbes! I’m grateful to have worked with such a thoughtful and smart team here (and I have one more story publishing next week that I look forward to sharing!)
A note on the
#NotOkayGoogle
town-hall today about retaliation: As one employee pointed out to me, this was the first event of its kind where TVCs (Google's "shadow workforce") could easily participate because it was "hosted by employees for employees" vs organized by corporate
Some professional news: Last Friday was my final day as SFGATE’s Local Editor. It’s been a joy to learn from everyone, and I’ve had such a blast working on a wide range of stories 💙
Google political ads update: Election ad targeting now limited to age, gender, and general location. Also, more explicitly prohibiting ads w deep fakes, misleading claims about the census process, or w/ "demonstrably false claims" on an electoral process
Super excited for the launch of Forbes’ new AI 50 list, a collection of promising, U.S.-based startups that are wielding some subset of artificial intelligence and demonstrating real business potential 💸💸💸
Already loving Year of the Tiger by
@SFdirewolf
- especially how it mixes essays, interviews, Twitter threads, photos, artwork, and more. Find more info and buy your copy here:
OpenAI's Sam Altman bought a $27 million Russian Hill mansion complete with “Batcave” and infinity pool. But now a new lawsuit claims the home is a “lemon” rife with shoddy construction.
Some news: Reversing part of its widespread ban on crypto ads, Google will start allowing regulated exchanges to buy ads in the US and Japan The new policy takes effect in October
Glad that these numbers were released (thanks to persistent pushing by my hardworking coworkers), but extreeemely disappointed in the glaring disparities
As for what’s next… I’ll be taking on a new adventure as a business reporter at
@sfstandard
— I am *beyond* excited to dive in, starting May 20. In the meantime, plz send me story and staycation ideas :)
Y i k e s - Google reportedly did *nothing* after one of its self-driving cars caused another auto to crash into a median, according to this massive new New Yorker piece
The most interesting part to me about Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepping down is that they'll retain their voting stock and $GOOG isn't changing the structure that gives them all their decision power
NEW: Google employees are circulating a petition calling for the removal of conservative think-tank president Kay Coles James from $GOOG's outside AI ethics council, citing her anti-trans views (One other member has already resigned, 1 wk after launch)
Some professional news: Yesterday was my last day editing Insider’s stellar Enterprise Tech section! It’s been such a joy to work with and learn from everyone here
Robert Downey Jr just announced a new project called the Footprint Coalition focused on cleaning up the planet. "Between robotics and nanotechnology we could probably clean up the planet significantly, if not entirely, within a decade."
Wild to see YT defend its stance to not take down homophobic videos by leaning on the term "debating," which is often a dog whistle for trolls / harassers
YouTube told me that it won't remove videos of Steven Crowder taunting
@gaywonk
with racist, anti-gay harassment because Crowder was "focused primarily on debating". that's right. debating
Organizers are demanding more transparency from Google around its handling of sexual harassment and pay and opportunity inequity, as well as more employee empowerment overall (for example, having an employee representative join the company's board). In their words:
Years after the infamous consumer flame out of Google Glass, it continues to live on in warehouses and on factory floors. Now, $GOOG's releasing a new enterprise version:
"The human capital risks are not theoretical or long-term, they’re already here": Rereading these words from
@ireneista
at Alphabet's shareholders meeting last year in light of Google's treatment of Timnit Gebru is really bleak.
"The human capital risks are not theoretical or long-term, they’re already here," says Google engineer presenting shareholder proposal around diversity, citing a number of long-time employees who left in the last year & mentioned management /culture issues in resignation letters
Jeeze — Facebook walks back what it told Recode (and presumably other reporters) about data collection and its Portal smart speaker: Data the device collects about a user *can* be used to target Facebook ads 🤦♀️
Today marks my ~ one year anniversary ~ at CNBC! Fitting that today's story covers one of the major themes that's emerged in the past year: how tech workers are increasingly organizing within, and against, their companies
Bears repeating: If you work // have worked at YouTube, Google, or any Alphabet company, I’m always down to chat. DM, email, Signal, call — I'm easy to get in touch with 🙋🏻♀️
.
@dudejohan
scored a rare interview with Diane Bryant, who served as Google Cloud's chief operating officer for less than a year (and left the company almost exactly a year ago)
Enjoyed taking the stage at SF's AI Summit today to interview Coca-Cola's Thomas Stubbs and talk about the AI 50. If ya haven't read it yet, here: (also, yes, I did try to color coordinate my outfit with my slides)
Earlier this week, Google announced an internal reorg of its global partnerships team to better coordinate deal-making across its many different products
This presentation just happened, with Google engineer Irene Knapp saying that Alphabet must "immediately address human capital risks" and that a lack of diversity "fundamentally hurts" the company
Alphabet shareholders meeting today at 9! 🔤 In a rare move, a group of employees are attending to present a proposal about diversity and inclusion on behalf of shareholders
Do you work in downtown SF? You neeeed to check out the Educated Palate bakeshop where you can score delicious pastries and $1 baguettes (only open on Thursdays!)
What a mess: Because of a "technology coding issue" Equifax provided inaccurate credit scores for millions of people, with swings of 20+ points in either direction
While it’s hard to leave such an amazing team, I’m excited for what’s next, too, which will keep me entrenched in the fascinating world of enterprise tech.
But!
More on that after some ~ vacaaaation ~ (ft time with these 2 🥺)
There’s something about parking in San Francisco that makes people’s brains “short-circuit in a really specific way,” according to a guy who has had the city tow more than 100 cars that illegally blocked his driveway since June 2023
Amazon just showed off its latest delivery drone: It can carry packages up to 5lb (which $AMZN says covers 75-90% of all deliveries). No launch date for Prime deliveries aside from "you're going to see it delivering packages to customers in a matter of months"
Props to
@eugenekim222
for digging down into those 10k footnotes for this nugget: Amazon has committed to ~$22 billion in food purchases, mostly from Whole Foods supplier United Natural Foods
Introducing Tech Worker: Former Pando journo Paul Carr is starting a new tech pub w/ one of the top Google walkout organizers on board as a contributing writer via
@berber_jin1
Google is revamping its shopping experience as it continues to try to win back product searches from Amazon and fend off fresh e-commerce efforts from the likes of Instagram
Need a break from news about the coronavirus? Well I've got something for ya! I spent the end of my time at Forbes investigating complaints about Dandelion Energy, an Alphabet spinoff that installs geothermal heating systems in New York state.
I'm so proud of the work my colleagues and I at
@BusinessInsider
/
@thisisinsider
do every day and believe the
✨
@InsiderUnion
✨ will only make that work stronger and help us "get better every day"
Visit for more!
✊ The
@thisisinsider
/
@BusinessInsider
US editorial staff have organized one of the largest
@nyguild
union drives for a digital media company to secure what we've built and strengthen it.
Here's why 300+ members of our newsroom are taking this step.
Some non-advertising $GOOG numbers: Other revenues (Cloud, hardware) = $6.49 billion, up 30.6% year over year. Other Bets revenue (Verily, Waymo, Fiber) = $154 million, up 17.6% year-over-year. Also Alphabet now has a stunning 98,771 employees *not* including all its contractors
"In fact, FTX apparently managed its most important market risk ... more or less by someone writing Alameda’s position on a napkin & getting the math wrong & then handing the napkin to Bankman-Fried, & Bankman-Fried *being afraid to look at the napkin.*"
Google Sydney doing the
#GoogleWalkout
in recognition of, and solidarity with, the way our industry and and our company have (and continue to) condoned and allowed harrassment and maltreatment of women and other groups. Really proud right now.
Google's latest diversity report shows slow hiring gains for Black+ and Latinx+ groups in the US. However, the proportion of women leadership hires dropped (the company is still run predominantly by men - 73.9% globally)
I talked to one of the co-owners of
@JeffreysToys
– a local business that's been in the same family for 4 generations – about the store's struggle to survive in downtown SF. If you need to shop for any child in your life before Christmas, pay them a visit
About to depart on a trip to Japan ✨🇯🇵 If you have any favorite spots or experiences in Tokyo, Hakone, Kyoto, or Osaka, I wanna hear em! (Extra points for quirkiness or delicious cheap eats)
Google / YouTube employees speaking out against company's decision not to remove videos feat. harassment of Carlos Maza using the hashtag
#NoPrideInYT
>>
Despite YouTube capitalizing on Pride as a marketing campaign, it's clear they have no issue making policy decisions that harm LGBTQ people like
@gaywonk
. We have
#NoPrideInYT
As someone whose name is routinely mangled, I very much appreciate this article calling out how wild it is that web forms still can't handle apostrophes, umlauts, and hyphens
@mekosoff
On the second point: at a screening with the creators they said that there was a trove of leaked internal footage — apparently Theranos created a lot of its own tape, with a very different kind of eventual documentary in mind. On the first point, hard agree 😏