Valleywag
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distractions
Blue Angels save San Francisco from sucky workday
Stock market be damned, it's Fleet Week. While Owen grumbles about the racket overhead that drowns out his phone calls, I'm up on the roof screaming Yeeeeeeeeeah baby YES WE CAN!! The Angels are doing practice runs for this weekend's performances, Saturday and Sunday from 3-4 pm. I feel kind of sorry for the guy flying the little red Oracle biplane. Larry Ellison clearly needs an F-18. Four of them. -
sex trade
Online escorts want to launch your startup legally
The fiercest supporters of a ballot measure to keep the cops off San Francisco prostitutes' backs are Internet-based escorts. In a Los Angeles Times interview, online sex worker Patricia West is described like any other Web-savvy entrepreneur, with an obvious law-challenging twist. More » -
San Francisco can't find greenbacks for Gavin Newsom's public utility palace
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission had plans to build a monument to renewable energy in a project that Gavin Newsom pitched to congress as an example of cutting-edge green building practices. But the mayor's newly appointed SFPUC director Ed Harrington, who sagely noted that The City can't balance the books and the cost of the building might spur protests from ratepayers, has nixed the $190 million proposal. Too bad — would have looked really good on Newsom's CV when he applies for the governor's job in 2010. [Curbed SF]
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Leave Terry Childs Alone!
Why San Francisco deserved to lose control of its network
Terry Childs is the San Francisco government systems administrator who, threatened with losing his job, took over the network. Childs finally gave in from his jail cell and handed mayor Gavin Newsom the passwords he'd changed, along with a liturgy of hate for his pointy-haired bosses. San Francisco bureaucrats make Childs out to be another Kevin Mitnick, capable of breaking into confidential data. Truth is, he's a grunt router admin who got sick of being on call 365 days a year. Here's a rundown of the exaggerated claims San Francisco officials are heaping onto Childs: More » -
San Francisco's systems mess still unsolved
Terry Childs, the IT guy gone wild who worked for the City and County of San Francisco and effectively froze municipal systems when he went rogue, infamously stashed all sorts of backdoors around the network. Now engineers brought in to solve the mess still can't find one router, which when accessed over the network replies: "This system is the personal property of Terry S. Childs." How much will this cry for job security cost taxpayers? $197,000 has already been spent out of $1 million estimated for the repairs. Childs remains behind bars on $5 million bail and faces a maximum sentence of seven years. [Network World] (Photo by Morten Skogly)
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san francisco
Rogue IT guy costs city a million bucks
Remember Terry Childs, the disgruntled San Francisco IT guy who locked other admins out of the city's network, but finally surrendered the passwords only to superuser-of-love Gavin Newsom? The city's Department of Technology has set aside $1 million to pay for upgrades to the network, which require a mix of pricey consultants and overtime pay for city workers. I hate to put it this way, but by showing the pooh-bahs how easily their critical information systems could be taken over, yet not making use of his takeover to harm anything other than his bosses' egos, Childs may have done us all a white-hat favor. -
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i hate it here
The east coast's love affair with Gavin Newsom
Time magazine gives renewable energy credit to hunky God-mayor Gavin Newsom. None was due. The august journal hails our fair mayor for a nonexistent wind-energy installation:
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom may be known nationally as the patron saint of gay marriage, but back home, Newsom has built his career on things like buying fleets of hybrid vehicles and installing windmills near the Golden Gate Bridge.
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real estate
SF luxury homes hold value, unlike LA
It's not surprising, but the number's good to know: Stats from First Republic Bank place San Francisco luxury homes at an average $3.01 million in value. It's a new high and a slight increase from last year. By contrast, high-end homes in Los Angeles are off 3.8 percent. San Diego luxury home values dropped a full 7.8 percent. Does that mean Brentwood bulldog daddy Jason Calacanis will pay lower taxes now? That guy has an angle on everything. (Photo by Jason Calacanis) -
your privacy is an illusion
Clear exposes customer passport numbers in SFO security breach
A laptop with personal information including drivers license and passport numbers of up to 33,000 customers in the Clear airport security-pass program was discovered missing from a locked room at San Francisco International Airport. It has since mysteriously been returned, and there's no word of any security breach as of yet. Still, the laptop's data was apparently unencrypted, though Steven Brill, CEO of Verified Identity Pass, the company which runs the Clear program, said the personal information was behind "two levels of password protection." More » -
recap
Jackson West, please come home -- all is forgiven
Why did I let Jackson West take a vacation? While our associate editor was away, we actually wrote something nice about Gavin Newsom — and he only had to save San Francisco from a rogue IT guy to do it! Microsoft's Windows chief, Kevin Johnson, ended up in Sunnyvale, Calif. — but not, as he'd hoped, in the corner office at Yahoo HQ. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg flubbed more media interviews this week, prompting us to suggest he get help. Maybe he could take tips from the Internet-famous Julia Allison, who crashed his developers' conference? More »
San Francisco
San Francisco, 4:57 AM
Sun Nov 23
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