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☆ California Rep. Ro Khanna passes on Senate run and backs liberal icon Barbara Lee over Reps. Katie Porter and Adam Schiff: 'She stood up so strongly against the war in Iraq'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-26 | by ( John L. Dorman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Ro Khanna on Sunday announced that he's backing Rep. Barbara Lee in the 2024 California Senate race. The progressive congressman is endorsing Lee over fellow Democratic Reps. Katie Porter and Adam Schiff. Khanna during his announcement said that Lee would bring a "unique voice" to the upper chamber. Rep. Barbara Lee of California. Scott Applewhite, File"Barbara Lee is a unique voice," Khanna said.

LOS ANGELES, March 22 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of storm-weary Californians were without power and under evacuation warnings on Wednesday as the latest storm packing wind-blown rain and snow threatened to bring more flooding to the rain-soaked state. Any more rain that we get today is only going to cause more flooding or worsen the flooding that is ongoing," said Bill South, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Hanford, California. [1/3] Floodwaters from the Tule River inundate the area after days of heavy rain in Corcoran, California, U.S., March 21, 2023. Total snow accumulations of up to 4 feet (1.22 m) and locally up to 5 feet, were in the forecast, the weather service said. California's harsh winter has caused widespread property damage and upheaval for thousands of residents, with more than 20 deaths attributed to the storms.

☆ California braces for next bout of heavy rain, snow and high winds
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Steve Gorman | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

High-wind warnings and advisories were posted for a vast region stretching from the Mexico border through Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay area. The National Weather Service (NWS) issued an excessive- rainfall notice for much of the Southern California coast, warning of an at least a 40% chance of showers exceeding flash-flood conditions. Heavy showers began drenching the Los Angeles region before dawn and triggered some street flooding but tapered off by early afternoon. Up to 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of rain was expected in coastal regions and valleys of Southern California, and as much as 6 inches in lower mountains and foothills, the NWS said. Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles.

☆ Tesla is rolling out its first Full Self-Driving update after a recall — see the new features
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Nora Naughton | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Tesla is addressing a recall issued last month to some cars equipped with Full Self Driving, or FSD. The latest FSD update is rolling out gradually, and drivers should be notified by April 15. The update comes with a variety of new features, including a merging of FSD and Tesla's Autopilot highway driver assist software. This week's update is also designed to address NHTSA's recall, according to text from the update posted to a Tesla blog that crowdsources from owners. Tesla's driver assist features are under investigationTesla's Autopilot driver assist software has drawn the scrutiny of regulators for several years.

☆ Gen Z Investing in Real Estate, Buying Homes Early, Learning From Millennials' Mistakes
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( James Rodriguez | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +14 min

Unlike millennials before them, Gen Zers have grown up during a boom in home prices. In a 2020 survey by Gen Z Planet, a research and advisory firm, 87% of Gen Z respondents said they wanted to own a home in the future, while just 63% of millennial respondents said the same. The survey suggested that 68% of Gen Zers viewed homeownership as a way to build wealth, compared with 60% of millennials. But the ranks of Gen Z homeowners will almost certainly grow in the coming years as they scale corporate ladders and amass savings. All this new technology and information is fueling the real-estate-mogul dreams of ambitious Gen Z investors.

☆ San Francisco Bay area to phase out natural gas heating appliances
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

REUTERS/Carlos BarriaMarch 16 (Reuters) - The San Francisco Bay area will phase out natural gas-powered furnaces and water heaters beginning in 2027 to improve local air quality and public health. It is the latest move by local officials in the United States to eliminate natural gas, a fossil fuel, from heating homes and buildings. Eliminating natural gas appliances would mean transitioning to electric equipment such as heat pumps. Currently about two thirds of Bay Area households use natural gas appliances, according to the regulator. They will apply to water heaters in single-family homes in 2027, furnaces in 2029, and multifamily and commercial water heaters in 2031.

☆ People who moved to Tennessee for cheaper homes and a laid-back life say they're happy — for the most part
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-26 | by ( Jordan Pandy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

The 50-year Florida resident decided to pack up and move to Memphis, Tennessee, for a more manageable mortgage payment while on a fixed income. Foster said clients have recently moved to Tennessee from New York, New Jersey, and California. He traded snowy Buffalo for the ease of southern livingMichael and Danielle Ekstrum moved to Tennessee after becoming empty nesters in 2018. A retiree fed up with California's overcrowding bought a home in Tennessee without thinking twiceMichael and Bonnie Tyler moved from Sacramento, California, to Jonesborough, a historic town in eastern Tennessee. "There's too much traffic, too many people, it's way too expensive, and there's no water," Tyler told Insider.

☆ Despite Tech Layoffs and Housing Slowdown, San Francisco’s Real-Estate Market Creeps Back to Life
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( E.B. Solomont | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Attorney Ken Kumayama and his wife, Hiromi Kumayama, were on a mission to finally buy a house in the San Francisco Bay Area. Serial renters in towns around San Francisco since 2010, they jumped into the market in earnest in 2022 but quickly got outbid on several homes, including one in Atherton that was asking $5 million and ultimately sold for $6.5 million, said Mr. Kumayama, 44. Then over the summer, the market turned in their favor. Mr. Kumayama said he and his wife, 46, a homemaker, homed in on a nearly $5 million house in Los Altos, an affluent city between San Francisco and San Jose, that had been sitting on the market for about a month. Knowing the sellers had already moved to Florida, Mr. Kumayama said they offered $4.58 million with no contingencies and closed in September 2022.

☆ Comerica Bank's chief economist breaks down why home prices will continue their slide through most of 2023 — and shares why California's biggest markets will see some of the country's largest price de
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( William Edwards | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Housing prices around the US will see declines in the high single-digits, says Bill Adams. Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area in California face unique challenges, he said. That downward trend will continue into the fourth quarter this year, Adams said, and peak-to-trough prices declines will end up being in the high single-digits. According to Kiplinger, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco, and Oakland are all in the top 11 most expensive cities in the US. According to S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data, home prices in Los Angeles are down 7.5% from their peak, and prices in San Francisco are down 14.2%.

☆ Tesla to base engineering headquarters in California
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Companies Tesla Inc FollowHP Inc FollowFeb 22 (Reuters) - Electric-vehicle maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) will make its global engineering headquarters in California, Chief Executive Elon Musk and California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday. Tesla in December 2021 moved its corporate headquarters from Silicon Valley’s Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, where it is operating a new car factory. Billionaire Musk himself moved from Los Angeles to the Lone Star State, which does not have state income tax. California remains a key source of talent for tech companies, and the Tesla engineering headquarters will be in a former Hewlett Packard building in Palo Alto. "This is a poetic transition from the company that founded Silicon Valley to Tesla," Musk said.

☆ Google asks some employees to share desks amid office downsizing
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Google is asking cloud employees and partners to share their desks and alternate days with their desk mates starting next quarter, citing "real estate efficiency," CNBC has learned. Google also used its internal data it has on it its employee office return patterns to inform the decision, the FAQ stated. In addition to slower office return patterns, the company has slowed hiring and laid off 11,000 employees in January. A Google spokesperson explained, "Since returning to the office, we've run pilots and conducted surveys with Cloud employees to explore different hybrid work models and help shape the best experience. In the fourth quarter, Google Cloud brought in $7.32 billion, growing 32% from the prior year, considerably faster than the company's overall growth rate of less than 10%.

☆ California water officials raise State Water Project allocation after storms
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Emma Newburger | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

The reservoir, part of the State Water Project, is currently at 35 percent capacity, below the historic average of 43 percent. As California prepared for a powerful winter storm system on Wednesday, state water officials announced that they are increasing supplies for water agencies serving about 27 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland. The Department of Water Resources (DWR) said in a news release that the modest increase in forecast State Water Project deliveries this year comes because of early gains in the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which translated to an additional 210,000 acre-feet of water. DWR now expects to deliver 35% of requested water supplies, up from 30% forecasted in January. The State Water Project collects water from rivers in Northern California and delivers it to 29 public water suppliers.

☆ Investors and techies gather in San Francisco to bathe in generative A.I. hype sparked by ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

They were there to discuss the latest craze capturing the attention of the tech world: generative artificial intelligence. The underlying AI software powering ChatGPT, a kind of machine-learning technology known as a "large language model," isn't new. As Bessemer Venture Partners' Sameer Dholakia told audience members, generative AI could change "the lives of billions of people." Blackwell credits OpenAI and ChatGPT with showing people what's possible with generative AI, shining a spotlight on the industry at large. But for one day in San Francisco, generative AI was more than just a tool.

☆ Homebuyers have a better shot at scoring a deal on a house in the 14 cities where home prices have plummeted the most
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Aj Latrace | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

According to Black Knight, 14 of the 50 largest US markets have seen home prices fall by 6% or more. The San Francisco Bay Area leads the nation with the largest drop in home prices. Softening home prices in some of the most expensive cities will benefit buyers. But there's a chance for them to come off the sidelines — in fact, some already have — as prices fall in some key areas. Leading the nation with the largest drop from the 2022 peak is San Francisco, where home prices have fallen nearly 17%.

☆ Dropbox hit with $175 million real estate loss for 2022 as San Francisco office space sits empty
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Its total real estate impairment for the year was $175.2 million, which is still well below the $400 million hit the company took in late 2020. That reduced the company's need for office space and pushed it to find tenants to sublease significant chunks of its headquarters. "And there's certainly been an increase in supply for real estate for sublease, which has pushed out our anticipated time to lease." Salesforce , Airbnb , Uber and Zendesk are among other companies that have taken real estate impairments in the city. Dropbox executives had expected to sublease the company's San Francisco property in the middle of 2023.

☆ Commercial real estate's biggest investors are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the grittiest land in America. Here's why.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Big commercial-real-estate players from Brookfield to Fortress are snapping up industrial land. Brookfield is one of several big-name investors that are paying increasing attention to lowly industrial land. Industrial land also generally has lower operating costs and taxes compared to other real estate. It's hard to find big enough portfolios of industrial landThere are challenges, too, in breaking into the business of owning industrial land. Atkins said he has been impressed by the robustness of the IOS market, even with fears about the broader economy.

☆ Test proves that CO2 sucked from the air can be trapped in concrete
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

To do that, two things are needed: first, capturing carbon dioxide with nature or technology, and second, locking it up for centuries. The rock is then heated to release the collected ambient carbon dioxide, and the cycle repeats. Canada's CarbonCure, the concrete technology company, mixes CO2 with concrete ingredients, turning it into a mineral that strengthens the concrete, cutting the need for cement — the part of concrete with the biggest carbon footprint. The U.S. government and industry broadly see $100-a-tonne carbon dioxide as a reasonable price for broad deployment. However, concrete's ubiquity is attractive, because there are few places to securely hold carbon dioxide at present.

☆ Roadkill rate for California cougars puts population at risk
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Steve Gorman | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/2] National Park Service photo of the Griffith Park mountain lion known as P-22 is shown in this remote camera image set up on a fresh deer kill in Griffith Park in this November 2014 photo. P-22, a radio-collared puma that became a wildlife celebrity, was one of the many mountain lions struck by a car in California. The data adds to research showing mountain lions, also known as cougars or pumas, are under growing pressure from traffic and urban sprawl that have left their territories increasingly isolated from one another, shrinking their gene pools. The study cataloged a total of 535 mountain lion deaths on some 15,000 miles (24,140 km)of state-managed highways over eight years, from 2015 through 2022. A public celebration of P-22 is planned for Saturday in Griffith Park.

☆ The ChatGPT and generative AI 'gold rush' has founders flocking to San Francisco's 'Cerebral Valley'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Because of pandemic-era closings, San Francisco became somewhat of a ghost town for two years. Now, a race to succeed in the fledgling space of generative AI has founders flocking back. Generative AI takes training data — for instance, a vast corpus of written text — and teaches itself how to produce completely new, unique works. After giving New York a try for several weeks, the generative AI boom picked up. Thomas Maxwell/InsiderPerez said that the sense of urgency to get working on building better AI models comes from how generative AI improves with more data.

☆ $100 repair bill sparked Half Moon Bay shooting, prosecutor says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +2 min

SAN FRANCISCO — A farmworker charged with killing seven people at two Half Moon Bay mushroom farms reportedly told investigators he was spurred to carry out the shootings after his supervisor demanded he pay $100 to repair a forklift damaged at work. KNTV-TV, the NBC affiliate in the San Francisco Bay Area, was first to report the development. Zhao told KNTV-TV in a courthouse interview Thursday that he committed the shootings. He said he has a 40-year-old daughter in China and lived with his wife in Half Moon Bay. The coroner’s office has named six of the victims: Zhishen Liu, 73, of San Francisco; Marciano Martinez Jimenez, 50, of Moss Beach, California; Aixiang Zhang, 74, of San Francisco; Qizhong Cheng, 66, of Half Moon Bay; Jingzhi Lu, 64, of Half Moon Bay; and Yetao Bing, 43, whose hometown was unknown.

☆ Mercedes-Benz says it has achieved Level 3 automation, which requires less driver input, surpassing the self-driving capabilities of Tesla and other major US automakers
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Lloyd Lee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Mercedes-Benz announced it will introduce its Level 3 autonomous driving system in Nevada. Unlike a Level 2 system, which requires constant supervision from the driver as the vehicle steers and accelerates, Level 3 automation gives drivers more leeway. When The Drive's test pilot put a camera in front of his face, Mercedes's autonomous driving system disengaged. Some critics have also accused the company of misleading its customers by calling the company's autonomous driving system "Full Self-Driving." Spokespersons for Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, and SAE did not respond to a request for comment.

☆ NWSL Set to Expand With Record-Setting $50 Million Franchise Fees
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-28 | by ( Jessica Toonkel | Rachel Bachman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Portland Thorns FC pose with the trophy after winning the NWSL Championship in 2022. The National Women’s Soccer League is in advanced discussions to expand by three teams, according to people familiar with the situation, with two of those teams set to pay around $50 million each in franchise fees that dwarf previous payments required to enter the league. The new teams are set to launch in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston and Utah. The Bay Area and Boston groups each have agreed to pay about $50 million for a team. Owners in Utah will pay between $2 million and $5 million, an arrangement agreed to a few years ago.

But add a candidate representing the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, Ro Khanna, and a living legend who got her start with the Black Panthers and would become the only Black woman in the Senate, Barbara Lee — now you're talking about a California Senate race for the ages. Reaching voters isn’t easy in California, with a population approaching 40 million and a land mass bigger than that of many countries. But the race will affect the future of the Democratic Party, both in California and beyond. “An appointment would be a way to make sure that this country has the essential voice of a Black woman,” Allison said. And I don’t see and I don’t understand why it isn’t happening.”Meanwhile, as Lee watches Feinstein, Bernieworld is watching Lee.

☆ California Storms Leave Billions of Dollars in Damage to Businesses, Homes and Infrastructure
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( Jim Carlton | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

ANTIOCH, Calif.—Paradise Skate Roller Rink was preparing to host a New Year’s Eve bash when floodwaters poured in from a nearby creek, destroying the wooden floor and leaving the decades-old business in this San Francisco Bay Area suburb out of commission for months. “Mother Nature could have been a little nicer, but I think she has a head of her own,” general manager Bob Bruce said earlier this week, walking carefully on the warped floor as dozens of beach balls intended to drop at midnight Jan. 1 remained suspended in a ceiling net.

☆ AI bot that lets you chat with Jesus, Hitler is latest GPT-3 controversy
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( David Ingram | David Ingram Covers Tech For Nbc News. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +9 min

But this week, it sparked viral controversy online over its inclusion of Hitler, his Nazi lieutenants and other dictators from the past. Historical Figures, which also uses GPT-3, launched the first week of January, and as of Wednesday, it had about 9,000 signups, app creator Sidhant Chadda said in a phone interview. “People expect these historical figures to be truthful, but in reality, people are not always 100% honest,” he said. Asking a question costs one coin, and the app charges extra to get access to high-profile historical figures. The possibility of digitally re-animating historical figures has been gaining ground ever since, from the “The Simpsons” to holograms of dead idols such as Buddy Holly and Whitney Houston.

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