San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/technology/)
Many creative professionals — including visual artists, writers, actors, singers and musicians — are concerned that companies are feeding existing creative work into data troves and applying generative AI to produce content based on their original work without giving credit or compensation. Creative professionals say their work is being used and monetized without their permission.
A new collaboration between residents and the San Francisco Police Department to address crime and homelessness may result in an increase in surveillance cameras — specifically, Amazon’s controversial Ring products.
The collaborations have emerged after residents reached out to Mission Station for assistance in managing tents, drug use and trash on their streets.
An unsanctioned sweep of a homeless encampment in central San Francisco has cost the event company Non Plus Ultra a big customer. The company rousted eight people in the middle of the night on Sept. 10, and – while city officials have largely remained silent – the action didn’t sit well with TechCrunch, which is renting Non Plus Ultra’s SVN West event space at Market Street and South Van Ness Avenue.
Non Plus Ultra, a company providing event space for TechCrunch’s Disrupt, an influential trade show for technology startups that began yesterday and typically draws thousands of attendees, conducted an independent sweep of a homeless tent encampment outside one of its San Francisco locations early this month.
On Aug. 20, a state appeals court gave Uber and Lyft more time to argue their case that they shouldn’t have to abide by a California law that requires them to classify their drivers as employees, who would be entitled to unemployment, sick leave and other benefits mandated in California.
OPINION: Studying the surveillance technology in use by law enforcement in the Bay Area has led us to believe camera registries and networks are so prevalent that residents could rightly question whether their purpose is for surveillance instead of security. But uncovering how and when these cameras and other technologies are being used is not easy.
When a tech executive helped bankroll a private network of security cameras in San Francisco, it was touted as crime-fighting technology that would not be directly in the control of law enforcement. But a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy advocacy group, shows that the San Francisco Police Department gained remote access to this private camera network for days at a time during protests in late May and early June. The privacy group says that access was a violation of San Francisco law. The camera network in question is managed by the Union Square Business Improvement District. Emails obtained by the foundation show that the group received, and approved, a request from SFPD to obtain remote access to the cameras for 48 hours on May 31.
At least two Bay Area startups are scrambling to address California’s testing shortage for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that has unleashed a global pandemic and triggered economic freefall.
Oakland-based Renegade.bio, created just four weeks ago, has raced to obtain federal authorization and develop tests, while also formulating a plan to make it easier for people to access the tests. San Francisco-based Carbon Health, founded in 2015, started gearing up to offer COVID-19 testing in February, and created a free online symptom tracker to help more easily and quickly identify those infected with the virus.
UPDATE: How antimalarial drugs could be used
Scientists at Gladstone Institutes are using techniques developed in AIDS research to understand the life cycle of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Guest opinion: Low-income San Francisco seniors are facing a connectivity crisis as well as a health crisis. For most Bay Area residents coping with the mandate to shelter in place as the coronavirus spreads, home internet access, devices and software platforms enable us to work from home, communicate with family and friends, use telehealth services and stay informed.
