Neowin News Feed for: California

Larry Page leaves California to protect $12.5 billion from proposed wealth tax

Paul Hill — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 09:46:01 +0000

Google's co-founder has preemptively moved his multi-billion-dollar entities to Delaware. Is this the start of a major billionaire capital flight? Read more...

Meta seeks government intervention to block OpenAI's for-profit dreams

Hamid Ganji — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 19:42:01 +0000

In a letter to the California Attorney General, Meta demanded legal intervention to block OpenAI's transition to for-profit status. Read more...

Popular AI-powered "undressing" websites might get banned in San Francisco

Hamid Ganji — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 17:16:02 +0000

San Francisco City Attorney's office confirmed it is taking legal action against some popular "undressing" websites that let users create deepfake versions of a person's real image with AI. Read more...

Microsoft agrees to review leave policies after California settlement

Paul Hill — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 18:16:01 +0000

Microsoft has agreed to pay a $14 million settlement to workers who it allegedly discriminated against. Microsoft has also hired an independent consultant to help it improve its practices. Read more...

Google is removing some links to California-based news sites from its search results

John Callaham — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 22:08:01 +0000

Google announced today it will cut some links to California-based news sites in its search results to prepare for future actions against the state's possibility of charging Google for news links. Read more...

Apple lays off more than 600 California-based workers

Paul Hill — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 04:50:01 +0000

Apple is laying off 614 employees who were believed to have been working in California on self-driving car project. The affected employees were informed on March 28 and they will depart on May 27. Read more...

Tesla's misleading autopilot safety ads under investigations by California Attorney General

Ishtiaqe Hanif — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 02:28:01 +0000

California's Attorney General is investigating Tesla's Autopilot safety claim advertisements for being false and misleading. He collected customer complaints from FTC filings via the online database. Read more...

Elon Musk sues law firm over huge fee Twitter paid hours before he took over

Paul Hill — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 22:42:01 +0000

X Corp has filed a complaint against law firm Wachtell Lipton over an excessive "success fee". The fee payment was approved by Twitter's board hours before Elon Musk took over the company. Read more...

San Francisco reverses its decision of using robots as a deadly force option

Fiza Ali — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 15:30:01 +0000

San Francisco has decided to reverse its decision of authorizing the police to use robots as a deadly force option against dangerous suspects after protesters gathered on the steps of city hall. Read more...

Waymo gets CPUC approval to start its autonomous cab services in San Francisco

Karthik Mudaliar — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 13:16:01 +0000

Waymo has finally gotten its permit that will allow it to run driverless operations in the San Francisco area. The company already operates its autonomous services in downtown Phoenix. Read more...

Uber Eats will trial robot deliveries in Los Angeles with Motional and Serve Robotics

Paul Hill — Mon, 16 May 2022 13:10:01 +0000

Uber is working with Motional and Serve Robotics to carry out an autonomous delivery trial. The firms still want to charge people for these deliveries despite there being fewer employees to pay. Read more...

California net neutrality laws survive legal attack from ISPs, perhaps setting national precedent

Alap Naik Desai — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 21:32:01 +0000

California's net neutrality laws are here to stay ruled an Appeal's court, delivering a severe blow to leading telcos and Internet Service Providers that had been strongly opposing them. Read more...

Amazon servers were down for a brief period of time, yet again

Karthik Mudaliar — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 16:58:01 +0000

Amazon cloud servers situated in the Oregon and North California regions faced a short outage yet again after the east region servers were down last week, although, Amazon has fixed the problem now. Read more...

Uber is paying $9 million to California as part of its sexual assault report settlement

Karthik Mudaliar — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 15:58:01 +0000

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has fined Uber $9 million against its failure to respond regarding the request for information about sexual assaults and harassment of Uber passengers Read more...

Argo AI will now provide free rides in California in its autonomous vehicles

Fiza Ali — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 21:10:01 +0000

Argo AI has secured the Drivered Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service Pilot program which allows companies to operate a ride-hailing service using autonomous vehicles while adhering to specific rules. Read more...

Nuro approved to become the first driverless delivery service in California

Ather Fawaz — Thu, 24 Dec 2020 08:20:01 +0000

In a first, the California DMV approved Nuro to operate its autonomous delivery services in the streets of California. Nuro plans to kickstart its service in two counties with a fleet of Priuses soon. Read more...

Voters in California say gig economy drivers are contractors

Paul Hill — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 17:34:01 +0000

People in California have voted in favour of Proposition 22 which means app-based drivers will still be considered contractors but Uber, Lyft and others will have to make some concessions. Read more...

Global Privacy Control is a new initiative to help people enforce their rights

Paul Hill — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 18:54:01 +0000

Several organisations and individuals have announced Global Privacy Control. It's hoped GPC will become an open standard that lets people enforce their rights under privacy laws like CCPA and GDPR. Read more...

Apple announces more money for Californian housing crisis

Paul Hill — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 17:00:02 +0000

Apple has allocated $400 million that will go towards various housing initiatives to ease the housing crisis in California. Tech firms in the area have attracted people, pushing up housing costs. Read more...

Elon Musk defies lockdown order and asks to be arrested

Usman Khan Lodhi — Mon, 11 May 2020 23:24:01 +0000

Tesla has asked California employees to return to work in defiance of county orders. The automaker has sued the local county for alleged violation of the constitution by defying the governor's orders. Read more...

Elon Musk threatens to pull Tesla factory out of California

Usman Khan Lodhi — Sun, 10 May 2020 04:48:01 +0000

Tesla's Fremont plant, which was closed in mid-March due to the coronavirus lockdowns, is the only automaker in California. Musk is threatening to pull the firm's operations out of the state. Read more...

Tesla plans to resume operations in Fremont factory on Friday

Usman Khan Lodhi — Fri, 08 May 2020 15:22:01 +0000

The plant has been closed since mid-March after lockdowns were put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus. However, the company is planning to resume operations at the factory on Friday. Read more...

Alphabet's Verily establishing Covid-19 testing sites in California

Paul Hill — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 13:42:01 +0000

Alphabet's Verily is helping fight the Coronavirus by setting up testing sites in California. It has also created an online tool to help people figure out if they have the disease. Read more...

Mozilla announces that it will comply with Californian privacy rules worldwide

Paul Hill — Tue, 31 Dec 2019 19:36:01 +0000

Mozilla has announced Firefox users will benefit from the CCPA protections, no matter where they are in the world. The firm also said users can delete telemetry data in an update due January 7. Read more...

Hyundai begins public ride-hailing pilot in California

John - Patrick Thackeray — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 16:20:01 +0000

Launching November in Irvine, California, Hyundai is entering the self-driving market in a first of its kind for the company offering public rides free to all users during a pilot scheme. Read more...

Facebook pledges $1 billion to the California housing industry

Namerah Saud Fatmi — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 00:24:01 +0000

Social media goliath Facebook announced today a commitment of $1 billion to tackle the affordable housing crisis in the State of California. The investment will be injected over the span of a decade. Read more...

California bill identifies gig economy workers as employees

Namerah Saud Fatmi — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 16:18:01 +0000

The California State Assembly is one step closer to passing a new bill which will make it legally obligatory for companies in the gig economy to recognize their workers as employees. Read more...

Huawei's research firm, Futurewei, has sandboxed itself from parent company

Paul Hill — Tue, 25 Jun 2019 03:06:01 +0000

Huawei's research and development arm, Futurewei, has sandboxed itself from Huawei in a bid to mitigate the damaging effects of the U.S. government's actions against the Chinese phone maker. Read more...

Tech firms back amendment to CCPA for even stronger protections

Paul Hill — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 16:34:01 +0000

Several technology companies have backed a new amendment to California's upcoming privacy laws. The amendment extends protections for end users; it was largely backed by privacy-first firms. Read more...

Amazon plans to hire 1,000 new full-time workers with Beaumont fulfillment center

Paul Hill — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 17:30:01 +0000

Amazon has announced plans to create 1,000 full-time jobs picking, packing, and shipping items at a new fulfillment center in Beaumont, California. Workers will earn at least $15/hr and get benefits. Read more...

California passes robust net-neutrality laws, Trump administration sues

Sharath Ravishankar — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 11:06:01 +0000

California has reinstated the net-neutrality regulations that were recently scrapped by the Ajit Pai-led FCC. In retaliation to this state-level legislation, the Trump administration is suing. Read more...

Verizon throttles Santa Clara fire department's "unlimited" data during a wildfire

Sharath Ravishankar — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 10:54:01 +0000

The Santa Clara County fire department had to pay Verizon twice its regular subscription fee in order to stop them from throttling its supposedly "unlimited" data in the middle of a wildfire response. Read more...

Lawsuit alleges Facebook gathered unauthorized biometric data

Sharath Ravishankar — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 11:00:02 +0000

A California judge has ruled that Facebook must face a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of illicitly using facial recognition technology without the explicit consent of its users. Read more...

Verizon and Samsung team up for 5G commercial launch

Paul Hill — Wed, 03 Jan 2018 19:40:01 +0000

Samsung Electronics America and Verizon have plans to bring 5G Fixed Wireless Access to Sacramento in the latter half of the year in a commercial launch. It was announced after trials last year. Read more...

Ex-workers file suit against Tesla over racism

Paul Hill — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 13:44:01 +0000

Three ex-employees of Tesla have filed a suit against the company alleging they were the target of racism while at the company's Fremont factory. It's the second such case this year for Tesla. Read more...

Apple receives permit to test self-driving cars in California

Mina Esapa — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 21:52:01 +0000

A list of approved testers of autonomous vehicles on the website for California's DMV was updated on April 14th, showing that Apple now holds a permit to test autonomous vehicles in the state. Read more...

Ex project manager suing Google for encouraging employees to spy on each other

Steven Parker — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 08:56:01 +0000

Google could find itself in hot water for its internal confidentiality policies that all of its employees are required to sign, as it encourages violations of Californian labor laws and spying. Read more...

Woman sues Microsoft over her forced Windows 10 upgrade and wins

Rich Woods — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 15:48:53 +0000

A woman from California has won $10,000 in a lawsuit against Microsoft over a forced Windows 10 upgrade. The upgrade was allegedly not authorized and thus failed, causing other problems. Read more...

Google and Ford to come together in pursuit of a self-driving car

Paul Hill — Wed, 23 Dec 2015 02:42:02 +0000

Ford and Google are believed to be forming a partnership around self-driving vehicles. The announcement is expected to be revealed at CES in January. Read more...

Ford will test autonomous cars in California next year

Paul Hill — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 16:38:01 +0000

Ford has been given a permit to drive an autonomous version of a Ford Fusion on Californian roads. This will let Ford test in snow and heavy rain which autonomous vehicles have a hard time with. Read more...