San Francisco

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — In the decades after the Civil War, the nation’s first black Army regiments guarded Yosemite and Sequoia national parks against poaching and timber thefts, a role that in hindsight made them America’s first park rangers. Now as the National Park Service prepares for its 100th anniversary in 2016, there is a move in Congress to formally recognize the role of these “Buffalo Soldiers.” The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Monday by Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Francisco, allowing the study of a national historic trail between their home base at The Presidio in San Francisco and the Sierra Nevada. A similar bill is pending in the Senate. Supporters hope recognizing the soldiers leads to awareness of the role African-Americans played in formation of the national parks. Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

Pussy People is a short quirky film directed by London-based filmmaker Andrew Lang in 2011 about folks who really love cats. via Vimeo Staff Picks

When Liquid Plumr failed to clear things up, the city filed suit. The lawsuit argues MLB’s decree that the San Francisco Giants have exclusive territorial rights to San Jose, which the defending World Series champions refuse to relinquish, constitutes unlawful restraint of trade. “For years, MLB has unlawfully conspired to control the location and relocation of major league men’s professional baseball clubs under the guise of an ‘antitrust exemption’ applied to the business of baseball,” said the 44-page complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose. The suit, which accuses MLB of a “blatant conspiracy,” is being handled at no cost to the city by the Burlingame law firm of Joseph W. Cotchett, which has handled some of the largest antitrust cases in the nation and represented the NFL in similar litigation. ... “Whereas baseball may have started as a local affair,” the lawsuit said, “modern baseball is squarely within the realm of interstate commerce. MLB Clubs ply their wares nationwide, games are broadcast throughout the country on satellite TV and radio, as well as cable channels, and MLB Clubs have fan bases that span from coast to coast.” But lower court rulings on the exemption since the early 1970s have gone both ways, leaving it unclear how the Supreme Court might rule if it chose to revisit the issue. “Since the law is so murky, there’s no uncontroversial answer,” said Stuart Banner, who teaches law at the University of California, Los Angeles and has just written a book, The Baseball Trust, a History of Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption. “It all depends on which group of cases you think is more persuasive.”

The 2012 season was a failure for many teams in the NFL, including the Cardinals, so which team in most likely to go from 'worst to first'? Former Cleveland Browns and current ESPN scout Matt Williamson shared his thoughts All eight teams finished with the bottom 11 records in the NFL last season, with the omissions of the New York Jets, the Tennessee Titans and Oakland Raiders. Let's assess the teams with the best chance of going from 'worst to first' which we can determine as making the post-season, as the Indianapolis Colts achieved last season. Philadelphia Eagles: With Mike Vick (seemingly) back under centre for the Eagles, they should be primed for a bounce-back season in the wide-open NFC East. With a new coach calling the shots in Philly in the mould of Chip Kelly, his supposed offensive structure should fit the pieces in place. Although plagued by injury, their offensive line, fitted with new offensive tackle Lane Johnson, is the most athletic in the league, and are capable of playing in an up-tempo offense. Wide receivers DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin are elusive characters with speed and agility, ready for a breakout season, along with running backs LeSean McCoy and Brice Brown, they emphasis really is on speed fir the Eagles. Defensively, they continue to add bulk to their defensive line, adding Isaac Sopoaga in free agency, and drafting defensive tackle Bennie Logan give Philly a strong interior presence. Ex-Texan Connor Barwin, Trent Cole and Fletcher Cox should add pressure from the outside, and releasing veteran corner Nnamdi Asomugha and signing Cary Williams, Bradley Fletcher and Patrick Chung will give them a new-look secondary. Presuming the banged-up offensive line can protect assumed starting quarterback Michael Vick, I do expect the Eagles not only to return to competitive play, but be in contention to win their division. Kansas City Chiefs: After finishing 2-14 in 2012, the Chiefs enter offseason with little hope. Following the acquisition of quarterback Alex Smith from the San Francisco 49ers, they now have a viable option at the position which has been burdened with Matt Cassel and Brady Quinn. Although having such a dire season, they had six Pro Bowlers, including star running back Jamaal Charles, it's pretty clear they had some talent to work with. One of eight newly placed Head Coaches going into 2013, Andy Reid will bring his prolific offense down to Kansas City to rejuvenate the passing game. They have talented weapons also; Pro Bowl receiver Dwayne Bowe, former first-round pick Jon Baldwin, tight-end Tony Moeaki, draftee's Travis Kelce and Knile Davis, the list goes on. With a competitive quarterback, they have the offensive fire-power to compete in a less-than competitive AFC West. Defensively, the likes of Tamba Hali, Justin Houston and Dontari Poe give the Chiefs high-sack potential and an imposing front-seven. Pro Bowl safety Eric Berry is quickly becoming one of the best at his position, and adding Sean Smith and Dunta Robinson during free agency, in addition to Brandon Flowers give the Chiefs a very-strong secondary. Sleepers for obtaining a Wild-Card spot in a relatively open AFC, Andy Reid should manage to make the Chiefs a stronger team; reaching the .500 mark is a real possibility. Arizona Cardinals: After winning seven of their last nine games in 2011 to give the Cards an 8-8 record, many thought Arizona were dark horses to sneak into the play-offs in 2012. The Cardinals experienced a catastrophic collapse in the latter half of the 2012 season, similar to their remarkable comeback in 2011. Winning just one of their final 12 games, the Cards became a laughing stock. Now, under the watchful eye of Bruce Arians in the Desert, the Cardinals are set for a competitive year in a tough division. Carson Palmer under centre give them a proven quarterback in a system heavily reliant upon a functional passing game. There's talent there, likely Hall-of-Fame wide-out Larry Fitzgerald i

July 9-10, 2013 San Francisco, CA Tickets On Sale Now Y-Combinator startup Filepicker.io has rebranded as Ink and announced the close of its $1.8 million seed round. The “file system as a service” startup went through YC’s Summer 2012 class. It builds tools to make it easier for developers to integrate access to cloud services within their apps on the web, iOS, and Android, making it easier to share content stored in different places. The company’s mission is to create an environment where all devices, applications, and services can talk to each other. Ink builds “the layer that lets the applications work together” so users can access whatever they need online, regardless of their connectivity point. The original team of 4 — Liyan Chang, Anand Dass, Thomas Georgiou, and Brett van Zuiden — met at MIT in Fall 2011. “We noticed that more and more people are using services like Dropbox and Facebook to store their files, but that those online file sources didn’t work well with mobile and web applications,” the founders said on the site. “As developers ourselves, we were frustrated by the time and effort we had to spend on these integrations, which took away from our ability to focus on core functionality that mattered to the user. Wanting to help other developers build better applications, faster, we built up the infrastructure needed so that these developers could hook into user’s content, wherever it lives.” They went on to win the MIT 2012 $100K Entrepreneurship Competition and move to the Bay Area, where they were admitted into YC. As their technology and client base grew, they realized they needed a brand that could grow too. Filepicker.io turned into Ink File Picker, which grew into Ink Files, a “cross-browser filesystem SDK.” “With the new name and logo, we wanted a brand that could grow with us as we build out more products beyond just picking files,” CEO Brett van Zuien said. “Also, as we invest more resources in the design and user experience of our products, we didn’t want the logo to not match the quality of the rest of the design.” The startup now works with 20,000 web and mobile applications to connect them to photos, documents, and videos, and has transferred 1.1 billion files to date. Clients include SurveyMonkey, Livefyre, Udacity, Crowdtilt, Urbanspoon, Rapgenius, Fitocracy and Haiku Deck. using just two lines of code, these companies can connect their apps to 19 sources like Facebook, Dropbox, Gmail and GitHub, and File Picker will “handle the mess of uploading files” as well as all the javascript and backend APIs. The business is based on a freemium model. Up to 5000 files a month is free,  and then it costs $99 for a Pro plan with up to 50,000 files a month. Andreessen Horowitz and Highland Capital Partners led this round. Filepicker is based in Palo Alto. Photo Credit: Filepicker.io/Facebook Filed under: Business, Deals, Dev, Entrepreneur, Mobile .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat { width:278px; margin:0px 0px 10px 20px; padding:10px; float:right; border:1px solid #e4e4e4; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; color:#000; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .logo-date-wrap { width:100%; display:block; float:left; margin-bottom:8px; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat img { float:left; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .date-location { float:right; font-size:12px; line-height:14px; text-align:center; padding-left:7px; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:3px; border-left:1px solid #e6e6e6; color:#585a5b; } .boilerplate-before .event-boilerplate-mobilebeat .cta { display:block; clear:both; width:100%; border-radius:5px; border:1px solid #1864b1; color:#fff; text-shadow: 0px -1px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.3); text-align:center; text-decoration:none; font-weight:600; font-size:18px; line-height:17px; padding:4px 0px 6px 0px; background: #1

Bioshock creator Ken Levine has signed on to write the screenplay for Logan’s Run, the highly-anticipated remake of the 1976 science fiction film, according to a report by Deadline. The first film was based on the 1967 novel of the same name by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson about a dystopian society in which all people are executed at the age of 21 to control the human population. The main character works as a Sandman — one who tracks down citizens who try to escape their executions — before going on the run himself. image via IMDB via Deadline

General Electric (NYSE:GE) is hiring thousands of engineers near San Francisco in an effort to support their Industrial Internet, a multi-billion dollar attempt to connect everything from jet-engines and medical imaging machines to the web with one common goal in mind: efficiency. “We’ve opened a software center in the East Bay, hiring thousands of software engineers to basically bring all the great innovation you’ve seen in Silicon Valley now to industry,” Beth Comstock, chief marketing officer at GE, said at the Bloomberg Next Big Thing Summit in Half Moon Bay, California. NEW! Discover a new stock idea each week for less than the cost of 1 trade. CLICK HERE for your Weekly Stock Cheat Sheets NOW! GE first announced the Industrial Internet last year, with the hopes that the gargantuan investment would pay off by building networks that track loads of data from machines, then providing customers with services to help analyze all this data. “We probably haven’t seen anything yet when it comes to data when machines start talking to machines and machines start talking to people,” Comstock said. “We have to make sense of it.” They’ve invested in a $1 billion facility in San Ramon, a city near Silicon Valley, to help them analyze the information. Bloomberg reports that they’ve also started hiring engineers away from Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), SAP AG (NYSE:SAP), and Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC), in addition to new hires from the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University. Jet engines, in particular, seem to be a crucial component of GE’s plans going forward. The company recently announced it would reduce maintenance and fuel costs of jet engines by incorporating ceramic parts that could withstand higher temperatures. CEO Jeff Immelt said that even a 1 percent improvement in commercial aircraft operations would translate into $2 billion less a year in fuel costs for GE customers, something Immelt hopes the Industrial Internet can help accomplish. NEW! Discover a new stock idea each week for less than the cost of 1 trade. CLICK HERE for your Weekly Stock Cheat Sheets NOW! Meanwhile GE’s chief rival in the jet engine business, United Technologies (NYSE:UTX), hasn’t been nearly as progressive. They have announced their plans to implement a Geared Turbofan engine, which could cut fuel costs by 15 percent. But the closest thing to the Industrial Internet that United can offer its customers is work done by the Integrated Media Systems Center, which was introduced years ago. The future appears bright for GE and the Industrial Internet, especially with jet engines. It’s now up to their competitors to find a way to stay relevant. Don’t Miss: As U.S. Energy Boom Begins, Is Exxon a Good Buy? Read the original article from Wall St. Cheat Sheet

ESPN’s Adam Schefter first reported the Falcons signing of tight end Colin Cloherty to a two-year contract. Cloherty has played 8 games over the past four seasons since entering the league as an undrafted free agent out of Brown University. For his career, he has caught 5 passes for 59 yards. He originally signed with the Indianapolis Colts in 2009, playing in their season finale and catching a single pass for 2 yards. In 2010, he played 2 games with San Francisco where he played predominantly on special teams where he had 2 tackles. In 2011, he joined the Jacksonville Jaguars, starting 1 games in 4 appearances and catching 4 passes for 57 yards. He also scored a touchdown on a blocked punt and added 3 stops on special teams. In 2012, he played in the Jaguars’ season opener, but was cut and out of football the rest of the season. Cloherty could add depth at H-back for the Falcons, able to compete for reserve tight end spot in Atlanta. Having experience in Dirk Koetter’s offense, as well as being an adept special teams could potentially give him a leg up over some others competing for a spot behind Tony Gonzalez and rookie Levine Toilolo.

Actress Sasha Grey stars in this hilarious parody commercial for the NSA that likens the government agency to a phone sex hotline. As Grey points out, NSA stands for “no strings attached.” The video is written and directed by Ryan Perez for Funny or Die. Are you lonely? Are you looking to make a connection? Do you want to listen in on the naughtiest ingoing and outgoing conversations? Then join the NSA.

From SF-ist: Professional attention-seeker and onstage ranter Michelle Shocked has announced she will return to San Francisco to play a free concert on Sunday, June 30th — the closing night of S.F. Pride festivities. Adding to the already bizzarre and controversial setup, Shocked's concert will coincide with a press blitz/egotrip coordinated across the SF Examiner and SF Weekly. While many, including ourselves, hoped Shocked's dubious relevance would fade once her tour was cancelled and the retweets died out, the alt-folk singer thrust herself back into limelight late last week. She took to Twitter on Friday to announce the free concert, the SF Weekly exclusive, a treasured spot in the 2013 Pride Guide spread and a forthcoming opinion piece in the Examiner. Continue reading »