San Francisco, CA
Fortune Tech: The sheer scale | Fortune
Good morning. Extremely lean and mean (well, merry, really) for the rest of this week as we head into our annual winter break.
We’ll hang things up for the year on Dec. 24 and pick things back up on Jan. 5.
Happy holidays. (Yippee-Ki-Yay.) —AN
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What happened when Waymo robotaxis met a San Francisco blackout
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu/Getty Images
An extraordinary experiment happened over the weekend in San Francisco.
What would a fleet of autonomous vehicles do when a widespread power outage knocked out traffic lights across one-third of the city?
We quickly found out—and the results were plastered all over social media.
On Saturday afternoon, Waymo vehicles throughout SF opted to stop where they were or pull over and throw on their hazard lights—“blocking intersections” and “compounding gridlock,” observed the San Francisco Standard—leading the Alphabet-owned robotaxi operator to suspend service throughout the city. (It resumed Sunday evening.)
In a statement, Waymo said that its vehicles are “designed to treat non-functional signals as four-way stops” but “the sheer scale of the outage led to instances where vehicles remained stationary longer than usual.”
As locals worked through the outage, a moderate debate about the robotaxi fleet continued online. Was it so wrong to expect Waymo’s vehicles to play it safe when infrastructure stopped working? After all, aren’t human drivers predictably chaotic when things go sideways? What exactly should robotaxis optimize for: traffic flow or citizen safety?
And: Just how safe is stopping if you prompt traffic to go around you?
Waymo resumed service Sunday evening, no doubt grappling with these questions (and what city officials might have to say about them). “We are already learning and improving from this event,” it said. —AN
More tech
—Pirates scrape Spotify. Activists Anna’s Archive release hundreds of terabytes of music and metadata via torrent files.
—Shield AI: Sitting at a global inflection point for fully autonomous warfighting.
—SoftBank cashes out to back OpenAI. The Japanese conglomerate is looking under every rock to fulfill its “all in” OpenAI funding promise.
—Chaos at CISA. A failed, unsanctioned polygraph by its acting director has the U.S. cybersecurity agency in disarray.
—PE firms acquire Clearwater Analytics for $8.4 billion. Permira and Warburg Pincus lead the investor group seeking to buy the fintech firm.
—Uber goes to London. A robotaxi trial in partnership with Baidu will begin in the first half of next year.
—Data center deals reach $61 billion worldwide in 2025, according to S&P Global.
—Chatbots’ uncanny valley. Making AI agents more human-like creates cognitive dissonance and trust issues, researchers say.
—Daylight between David Sacks and tech lobbyists. Tech reps say the AI czar’s push to use Trump’s executive order to suppress state AI regulation is the right idea, wrong execution.
San Francisco, CA
SF Supervisor Jackie Fielder hosts listening session after medical leave
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco Supervisor Jackie Fielder hosted her first community listening session Thursday night since returning from a three-month medical leave.
Dozens of District 9 residents packed the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center to welcome back Fielder and voice concerns about issues affecting their communities.
“We are thankful that you took time for yourself to equip yourself to be sitting here today,” one attendee told Fielder. “So I thank you and commend you for returning.”
Fielder returned to City Hall last month after taking a three-month medical leave.
“I’m just grateful for the outpouring of support that I had and glad to be back on the job,” Fielder said. “Mental health is really prevalent, and I’m not going to shy away from the fact that I had a mental health crisis. This is a challenging job, and I’m very privileged to be here.”
Fielder said she is hosting a series of town hall-style meetings to give residents an opportunity to voice their concerns.
“To me, the biggest issue locally is the homeless issue, and it’s citywide,” San Francisco resident Maggie Weis said.
Fielder was joined by members of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and San Francisco Police Department to answer questions about pedestrian safety, city budget cuts and other issues.
The supervisor said one of her priorities moving forward is expanding access to clean, well-maintained public restrooms.
“[We’re] still seeing a lot of feces around the district and city,” Fielder said. “Would love to see our city have more public bathrooms and be able to maintain them as well.”
The next listening session is scheduled for July 23 at 6 p.m. at La Fénix in the Mission.
Watch the full report from KRON4’s Sara Stinson in the video player at the top of the story.
San Francisco, CA
Man reported missing in San Francisco
(KRON) — A 32-year-old man has been missing in San Francisco for two days, police said. Gabriel Carreon was last seen at noon on July 7, when he left his home in the Castro neighborhood to go see a movie, the San Francisco Police Department said.
The following morning, a 911 caller told dispatchers that Carreon was missing.
Police described the missing man as Asian, 5’8’’ tall, and weighing 170 pounds. He has black hair dyed pink, and brown eyes.
Anyone who locates Carreon should call 911 and report his current location, police said. Anyone with information on his possible whereabouts should call the SFPD Missing Persons Unit Tip Line at 415-734-3070.
San Francisco, CA
Flight of fancy: San Francisco moves to build private luxury airport terminal
Sick of the TSA lines? Tired of playing musical chairs at the gate? Rather sit as far from your fellow airplane passengers for as long as possible, in the comfort of your own private, luxury airport terminal?
Soon you may get your wish. And San Francisco international airport wants to be your genie – for a fee.
The airport is hoping to build a brand-new terminal exclusively for passengers who pay a premium, gaining access to a luxurious airport experience complete with private security lines and valet service from terminal to tarmac. It will service commercial flights, not business or corporate jets, and the terminal will have its own Transportation Security Administration (TSA) lines as well as Customs and Border Protection (CBP) lines for international travel.
SFO is seeking bidders to take on the development, construction and operation of the private terminal, which is planned for a 75,000-sq-ft site located across the runway from all current public terminals. The airport will accept proposals between late September and early October, and is looking to award a contract by early December with hopes of opening the terminal in late 2028.
SFO’s interest in a luxury development comes from what airport spokesperson Doug Yakel called a “high level of demand” for “premium experiences” in travel, citing the popularity of existing credit card and premium lounges. A private terminal is essentially the next step up in exclusivity from those lounges – and the best chance at avoiding airport crowds entirely.
“Somebody that uses this product really wouldn’t see the other passengers they’re traveling with until they’re taken up the stairs of the jet bridge and onto the aircraft,” Yakel said.
Spending on “pay-to-play” luxury experiences at large is on the rise, according to a new report by Bain & Company and Altagamma. The airline industry has bought in, revamping lounge and onboard experiences with chef-designed menus and expanded premium seating for the highest-paying passengers.
Many see a market in San Francisco, where an AI-driven wealth boom is already agitating the local housing market, with homes sold at the fastest pace in five years and the single-family median home price clocking in at $2.2m.
Yakel said SFO felt now was the right time to enter the market of luxury travel.
“We see the level of interest that’s being invested onboard aircraft, inside terminals, around airports, and clearly this is something that other airports are rolling out,” Yakel said.
The price to pay for a private airport experience will be decided by whoever wins the bid for operations, and will be offered on a membership or per-use basis. The traffic experienced at public terminals likely won’t change, Yakel said.
Private terminals have become popular worldwide. London Heathrow and Paris-Charles de Gaulle airports in Europe have long operated luxury terminals, and São Paulo/Guarulhos international airport recently opened the first private terminal in Latin America.
If SFO is successful, it would become the next major American airport to open a luxury terminal. Los Angeles, Dallas Fort Worth, Miami and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airports all offer a private terminal through PS (formerly known as the Private Suite), a company owned by security firm Gavin de Becker and Associates. Multiple representatives from PS and Gavin de Becker and Associates attended a June conference hosted by SFO about the private terminal, and PS has said it hopes to open a private terminal at every major US airport by 2030.
Access to existing PS private terminals can cost passengers $1,295 for a one-time experience, or up to $4,850 for a yearly membership. Heathrow’s private terminal costs thousands of pounds per person.
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