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Cafe X TechnologiesCafe X claims to be the first robot-powered café in the US. The kiosk takes customers' orders from a number of tablets stationed nearby, and serves coffes, lattés, and cappuccinos made with beans from local roasters. It opens January 30 in the city's Metreon shopping center. The robot, which is encased in a round, plexiglass shell, isn't all that intelligent. Hu says you can find six-axis, industrial robots like his on all sorts of assembly lines. It performs a pre-defined set of motions, such as moving a cup from under the milk dispenser to the syrup dispenser, or...

Bay area restaurant industry employment and even general retail employment have fallen, and are possibly headed towards a steep decline. One has to wonder how obvious things will have to get before the press takes the negative effects of the area's mandated sky-high minimums seriously. ... Upward of 60 restaurants around the Bay Area have closed since the start of September alone, with many citing difficulties like the cost of finding and keeping good employees, rising rents, new requirements for providing health care and sick leave, and doing it all while competing with the slew of new dining options. ......

The widow of Omar Mateen, the shooter in the Orlando nightclub massacre, has been arrested in San Francisco, sources tell CBS News. Noor Salman is facing charges of aiding and abetting, as well as obstruction of justice in the case of the worst mass shooting in American history. She moved to the San Francisco area after the June shooting, in which her husband was killed by SWAT team members after slaughtering 49 people inside a popular gay nightclub.“Noor Salman had no foreknowledge nor could she predict what Omar Mateen intended to do that tragic night,” her attorney, Linda Moreno, said....

WASHINGTON — The wife of the man who carried out a deadly terrorist attack in Orlando, Fla., has been arrested in connection with the mass shooting, a law enforcement official said Monday. Noor Salman was taken into custody by F.B.I. agents at her home outside of San Francisco.

Our readers may be aware of the recent decision in the lawsuit by the family of Kate Steinle, a victim of San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy. The following represents the analysis of the Steinle ruling by someone whose expertise is the law. The court dismissed the family’s lawsuit against the County and City of San Francisco and former Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. The court did allow one claim to go forward: the negligence claim against the federal government because a federal Bureau of Land Management ranger left his handgun in a backpack in an unlocked car in downtown San Francisco, which...

When the 49ers announced their team awards Friday afternoon, Kaepernick was the recipient of the Len Eshmont Award, given to the 49er who "best exemplifies the inspirational and courageous play of Len Eshmont, an original member of the 1946 49ers team." The award, which was established after Eshmont died in 1957, is considered the most prestigious honor the players vote on.

The streets of San Francisco are used to weird smells. However, on Wednesday morning, a mysterious rotten-egg and sulfur-like odor that baffled city and federal agencies and prompted dozens of phone calls of complaint. [Snip] The calls initially came from the downtown area and then moved toward the Marina, Sunset and Richmond neighborhoods. SFist said complaints also poured in from Bayview, the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, the Marina, SoMa and the Mission. Officials with SF Environment, San Francisco Public Works and the city’s Department of Emergency Management, as well as Recology, were reportedly notified, KQED reports.

San Francisco.. stands as a profound example of the damage ultra-liberal policies can do. After 20 years of envelope-pushing changes to grow government and ease law enforcement, the once-shining City by the Bay has turned into a place where: Property crime runs amok. An online map is needed to track human feces on city streets. Discarded syringes are common sightings. Public urination is so widespread it has damaged subway elevators and escalators, building walls and power poles ... San Francisco has the dubious honor of being at or near the top of numerous national surveys tracking homelessness, the cost of...

You will not see a box but instead My delight, ‎ You see my Love for you can not be contained for its borders are out of sight, It reaches far beyond where you are right now, In fact further than the East is from The West is my promise and my vow, So just open up your Heart and I will place it in, It's very simple just receive me and that's when it begins, For truly I AM a Wonder for I live inside of you! So My True birthday is when you say I DO!

San Francisco, this probably isn’t a ranking to be proud of. The city apparently is the most hungover city in the country, according to a recent ranking by Trulia. The Trulia ranking took into account the cities’ number of bars, the number of young people and amount of party suppliers. It also surveyed how many of a city’s residents reported having at least one binge drinking incident in the past month. “The city with the most party suppliers, young people and binge drinkers scored higher as a place to party,” a Trulia news release said. Behind San Francisco came San...

Last year we noted, via the Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, that rents in San Francisco and surrounding areas had grown so out of control that even Ivy Leaguers, like 31 year old Luke Iseman of The Wharton School, were having a hard time making ends meet. After growing tired of renting a run down, tiny apartment for $4,200 per month, Iseman decided to take a novel approach to housing. So he rented out a warehouse space and filled it with 11 steel shipping containers that he now rents out as makeshift apartments for $1,000 per month. We learn more from Bloomberg:...

After the Republican avalanche of a victory in last month's elections, there was still more good news for the Grand Old Brand New Party courtesy of Nancy Pelosi. It seems she's eked out a narrow victory over a Democratic insurgency against her stultified leadership of the party in the House, a leadership that has been rusting for the past 14 years. If everything isn't coming up roses for the GOP, at least there are tulips covering the horizon the way daffodils do Wye Mountain every spring. And all Nancy Pelosi could say about her aforementioned "leadership" was the same thing...

Pam Tebow, the celebrated mother of football superstar and Christian role model Tim Tebow,will share the story of her decision against an abortion as the guest speaker at the West Coast Walk for Life next month. Tebow will undoubtedly recount the story of her decision not to have an abortion. Tebow and her husband were Christian missionaries in the Philippines in 1985 and they prayed for “Timmy” before she became pregnant. Pam entered into a coma after she contracted amoebic dysentery, an infection of the intestine caused by a parasite found in a contaminated food or drink. The treatment for...

Hackers are holding San Francisco's light-rail system for ransom ‘You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted’ by Andrew Liptak@AndrewLiptak Nov 27, 2016, 4:16pm EST San Francisco Municipal Railway riders got an unexpected surprise this weekend after the system’s computer systems were apparently hacked. According to the San Francisco Examiner, the MUNI system had been attacked on Friday afternoon. MUNI riders were greeted with printed "Out of Service" and "Metro Free" signs on ticket machines on late on Friday and Saturday. MUNI first became aware of the intrusion on Friday, according to the Examiner. Computer screens at MUNI stations displayed a message: "You...

San Francisco’s chief judge says he and his colleagues discarded 66,000 arrest warrants issued over five years for quality-of-life crimes, like sleeping on the sidewalk, because it made no sense to lock people up for fines they couldn’t afford.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday fended off a challenge to her long leadership reign, defeating Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) in a closed-door vote prompted largely by Donald Trump’s unlikely ascension to the White House. Pelosi got 134 votes to Ryan's 63. The victory sends a message that while there's a growing appetite for major changes in the party's leadership structure and messaging tactics, it's not strong enough to loosen Pelosi's grip on a liberal-heavy group that's rarely challenged her authority. Ryan and his supporters had argued that the Democrats' grim performance in this year's elections — the...

For all Muni Metro passengers knew, the free rides they were getting Friday night and Saturday were a holiday gift from the transit system. Little did they know Muni was under attack from a hacker trying to squeeze $73,000 in ransom to unlock the agency’s computer systems. Muni refused to pay up. Instead, officials shut down the system’s ticket machines, threw open the fare gates as a precautionary move, and contacted the Department of Homeland Security and their own technology division to contain the attack, they said. ... The anonymous hacker used a ransomware attack — malicious software sent via...

WHEREAS, On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected to become the 45th President of the United States; now, therefore, be it RESOLVED, That no matter the threats made by President-elect Trump, San Francisco will remain a Sanctuary City. We will not turn our back on the men and women from other countries who help make this city great, and who represent over one third of our population. This is the Golden Gate—we build bridges, not walls; and, be it

<p>Theranos, the biotech company started by a 19-year-old Stanford dropout, has another hurdle to cross in its whole "we're totally a legit blood-testing company" campaign. This time, it turns out that tens of thousands of blood tests were voided, making them totally invalid. Whoops!</p>

We haven't really written much about the insane Theranos scandal, though we discussed it on our podcast. The whole story is pretty crazy -- involving a heavily hyped up company that appeared to basically be flat out lying to everyone about what it could do. The company still exists, but barely. The company's founder and CEO, who was plastered across magazine covers and compared frequently to Steve Jobs, has been banned from running a lab for two years, and the company is now facing a $140 million lawsuit from its biggest partner, Walgreens, who claims that Theranos repeatedly lied to...