Digital Trends reports:
Waymo is planning to relaunch its fleet of self-driving minivans into Bay Area streets on June 8, according to an email acquired by The Verge. However, instead of transporting passengers, the vehicles will instead focus on delivering packages for non-profit organizations #DrawTogether, which gives art kits to children, and Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired… The pending return…
Tag: bay area
Small Protest Outside Tesla Plant Calls For Arrest of Elon Musk
A small group of protesters “rallied outside Tesla’s Fremont manufacturing plant Saturday, calling for CEO Elon Musk to be arrested and jailed,” reports a local Bay Area news site:
Carlos Gabriel is an employee, and has refused to return to work. “I’m worried for my health,” said Gabriel. Gabriel is worried about the spread of COVID-19 and the difficulty of social distancing…
2 views from space: San Francisco Bay
We thought many of you would enjoy these two images from space of one of Earth’s most captivating places: San Francisco Bay. The European Space Agency (ESA) shared the image above on May 15, 2020. It’s a view of San Francisco Bay from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, which consists of twin Earth-observing satellites, launched in…read more » Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/esa-satellite-image-san-francisco-bay…
Elon Musk Restarts Tesla Factory In Defiance of County Orders
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Monday that the company’s factory in Fremont, California is open and has restarted production despite a stay-at-home order issued by Alameda County. TechCrunch reports: Musk said in tweet Monday afternoon that he will “be on the line,” a reference to the assembly line at the factory where Tesla makes the Model X, Model S, Model 3…
Tesla Files Lawsuit Demanding Reopening of Plant As Musk Faces Criticism
Because a California county is preventing Tesla from reopening its plant, “The County’s position left us no choice but to take legal action,” Tesla announced Saturday. Reuters reports:
Tesla filed a lawsuit against the county in San Francisco federal court on Saturday, calling the continued restrictions a “power-grab” by the county since California’s governor had said on Thursday that manufacturers in the…
Why You Shouldn’t Wear a COVID-19 Mask That Has a Valve
In some states and major cities, it’s now mandatory to wear a mask in public to prevent the spread of COVID-19. That mask could be anything from a handkerchief to a designer cotton mask to a full-blown N95 respirator, so long as you have something between your mouth and nose and the world around you. But in California’s Bay Area, there’s…
Coroner finds earliest coronavirus death in early February in Bay Area
The novel coronavirus may have been spreading in the San Francisco Bay Area well before anyone knew, as a coroner has reported two COVID-19 fatalities there in early February. Source: https://www.livescience.com/earliest-covid-19-coronavirus-deaths-california.html
Will the Pandemic Inspire Silicon Valley to Do Good?
The global pandemic “has stirred up a missionary zeal throughout Silicon Valley,” writes Bloomberg:
Apple and Google put aside a decadelong rivalry to form an alliance to track the spread of infections. Facebook and Salesforce.com are procuring millions of masks for health care workers. Jeff Bezos is donating $100 million and Jack Dorsey $1 billion. In other corners of the Valley, people…
Tech’s Early Work-From-Home Mandates Helped California, Washington Flatten Curve
gollum123 shares a report from CNBC: On March 19, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a statewide shelter-in-place order to stem the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus. Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee followed four days later. While they were moving aggressively relative to the rest of the country, the top employers in their states were weeks ahead of them. Twitter was the…
‘Abolish Silicon Valley’ Author Urges ‘Expropriating’ Platforms, Making them Open-Source Public Services
The Bay Area Newsgroup just interviewed the author of “Abolish Silicon Valley: How to liberate technology from capitalism”. Q: How do you fix this broken system? A: Overall the goal that I’m thinking about is that you have the private sector so overfunded and glorified that it seems like the only way to do things, but things could be much better…