San Francisco

Born Winner: San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick hooks up with Roc Nation protégé J. Cole. Photo taken from Colin Kaepernick's Twitter

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With all due respect to the San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks, Chicago Bears and others, Cleveland Browns rookie linebacker Barkevious Mingo believes the Cleveland Browns could have the best defensive unit in the league this season. According to Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Mingo believes the Browns have the pieces in place…

Nope, it's not just you, Facebook is currently experiencing some technical difficulties. Around 6 p.m. PST, the site was merely showing an error page, denying scroll-happy users immediate access to their friend's recent activity, Instagram shares and, yes, possibly even this very post. Feel free to panic as you see fit. Or just go read a book. [ more › ]

S.F. Newspaper Company President Todd Vogt spoke with CBS5's Joe Vazquez today, in an attempt to either clarify or obfuscate (we're still not quite sure ourselves) his company's reasons for bringing Michelle Shocked back to San Francisco for a free concert on Pride weekend, just months after she went on a confusing anti-gay rant onstage at Yoshi's. [ more › ]

July 9-10, 2013 San Francisco, CA Tickets On Sale Now Seemingly out of nowhere tonight, graphics chip maker Nvidia has announced one of the biggest changes to its business in some time: It will begin licensing its new Kepler GPU core, as well as future designs, to third-party companies. The move will give Nvidia a completely new source of revenue, but more importantly it will help bring its technology to even more mobile devices. The company has been struggling to get into the mobile market with its Tegra processors, but so far we’ve yet to see a killer Tegra device hit the market. By licensing its technology, Nvidia won’t have to rely solely on Tegra as its mobile workhorse, and it also opens the door for some interesting new spins on its technology from third-parties. Additionally, Nvidia also announced that it will be licensing out its visual computing portfolio, which includes more than 5,500 patents and its CUDA parallel computing platform. “Not so long ago, we only made and sold GPU chips, albeit the world’s fastest ones,” wrote David Shannon, executive vice president and general counsel at Nvidia, in a blog post tonight. “Five years ago, we introduced Tegra, a system on a chip… But it’s not practical to build silicon or systems to address every part of the expanding market. Adopting a new business approach will allow us to address the universe of devices.” Nvidia is best known for its powerful graphics cards, which have been accelerating 3D performance for PC gamers (and emptying their wallets) since the mid-90s. But with Tegra, and more recent announcements like its GRID game streaming system and the Shield Android console, Nvidia has desperately been trying to make itself relevant in an entirely new wave of computing devices. While the licensing announcement was surprising, it makes a lot of sense for Nvidia. Its new Kepler GPU technology can scale from smartphones all the way to powerful supercomputers, making it perfectly suited for other companies to manipulate for their own uses. Licensing also makes Nvidia’s technology viable for companies that would never adopt its Tegra chips, hardware guru Anand Lal Shimp points out. Now Nvidia will be able to push its technology for future chips from Apple and Samsung, both of which would likely leap at the chance to outdo the other in graphics performance. Filed under: Business, Gadgets, Games, 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: #1f80e4; background: -moz-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%, #1862ae 100%); background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#1f80e4), color-stop(100%,#1862ae)); background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: -o-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: -ms-linear-gradient(top,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); background: linear-gradient(to bottom,  #1f80e4 0%,#1862ae 100%); filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#1f80e4', endColorstr='#1862ae',GradientType=0 ); }

The "other shoe" in the Edward Snowden NSA leaks has been the potential effect of all these disclosures on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's efforts to force the government to account for itself in court. Since 2005 -- when Mark Klein, a former AT&T worker came into EFF's offices with documentary evidence of a secret room at AT&T's Folsom Street switching center, where the NSA was effectively making a copy of all the traffic on AT&T's network without a warrant -- the EFF has been trying to get the government to explain to a judge why they think this kind of bulk surveillance is legal. But at every turn, the Bush and Obama DoJs have convinced judges that these questions can't be asked in court, let alone answered. The invocation of state secrecy has stymied all attempts to date at getting the government to square the circle on the Fourth Amendment and bulk, warrantless surveillance of every American's Internet traffic. As Wired's David Kravets notes, judges may be a lot more skeptical about state secrecy now that this stuff just isn't much of a secret anymore: First it was the President George W. Bush administration and then the President Barack Obama administration, which for years have been arguing in court that the state-secrets privilege shields the government from lawsuits accusing it of siphoning Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants. But with the recent Spygate leaks, including one that all calling metadata of Verizon customers is being forwarded to the NSA, the government is hard-pressed to maintain that line with a straight face. “By contrast, the recent disclosures have greatly undermined the factual and legal basis for the government defendants’ separate and distinct state secrets motion,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a recent court filing. The EFF’s lawsuit, which has had a tortured history through the courts, is based in part on allegations of internal AT&T documents, first published by Wired, that outline a secret room in an AT&T San Francisco office and others which allegedly route internet traffic to the NSA. Spygate Leaks Imperil State-Secrets Defense [David Kravets/Wired]

Dave Burkhart, Anchor Brewing‘s resdient historian, put together a great little video all about the connection between beer and baseball in San Francisco, along with its rich history, of course. The video brings to mind this great quote, by Peter Richmond. “Beer needs baseball, and baseball needs beer — it has always been thus.”