Business
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Cord-cutters are fuming over YouTube TV price hike. But streaming inflation is here to stay
Remember all that money you were going to save by canceling your cable TV subscription?
Cord-cutters are again dealing with the reality of rising programming costs after YouTube TV told subscribers Thursday that their monthly fee will go up by 14% to $82.99 starting in January.
Needless to say, many dissatisfied customers took to social media ...Read more
California issues landmark rules to improve home insurance market
Landmark regulations intended to encourage insurers to write more policies in risky wildfire neighborhoods through the use of complex computer models were released Friday by the state.
Under new rules intended to stabilize California's troubled home insurance market, insurers will be able to set rates by drawing on a wide swath of ...Read more
Writers Guild demands studios stop tech companies from training AI on their work
Writers Guild of America this week sent a letter to major Hollywood studios asking them to take action against tech companies that are using writers' work to train AI tools without their permission.
"The studios, as copyright holders of works written by WGA members, have done nothing to stop this theft," the guild's leadership said in a letter...Read more
OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment
SAN FRANCISCO — A former OpenAI researcher known for whistleblowing the blockbuster artificial intelligence company facing a swell of lawsuits over its business model has died, authorities confirmed this week.
Suchir Balaji, 26, was found dead inside his Buchanan Street apartment on Nov. 26, San Francisco police and the Office of the Chief ...Read more
Daniel Howes: What GM's exit from robotaxi space says about limits in race for AV leadership
Supremacy in the race to self-drive an electrified auto industry is harder than the masters of Detroit and Silicon Valley figured, proving that what players do is far more important than what they say.
General Motors Co. showed as much this week with confirmation it’s quitting Cruise LLC's robotaxi program after pumping $10 billion into it ...Read more
Michael Hiltzik: Good riddance to the merger of grocers Albertsons and Kroger, which would have cost you money
The inside stories of messy marriage breakups have been an entertainment staple since even before Tolstoy observed that "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." So let's thank the supermarket giants Kroger and Albertsons, whose $24.6 billion merger has collapsed amid mutual recriminations, for their outstanding contribution to the genre...Read more
What a 'Love Is Blind' labor filing could mean for reality TV
LOS ANGELES — “Love Is Blind” became a swift breakout hit for Netflix in 2020 by testing whether true love can form between two people without seeing each other. But just as quickly, the show has become a striking test case for the the growing movement to establish labor protections in reality TV.
The National Labor Relations Board issued...Read more
Amid intimidation claims, Wells Fargo investigators vote to unionize
Wells Fargo employees who review customer complaints and workplace issues have voted to unionize.
The move is the latest in a campaign to organize workers at the San Francisco-based bank, which is notable in an industry that historically has had low rates of unionization.
After a legal back-and-forth over the vote, in which the bank contested ...Read more
After Los Angeles County bought a skyscraper, a fight over whether to tear down its historic headquarters
With the ink dry on the County of Los Angeles' $200-million purchase of the Gas Company Tower office building downtown, a fight is brewing over what to do with the 1960s-vintage headquarters it plans to leave behind.
Supervisor Janice Hahn and preservationists are pushing back against a plan to move workers into the newly purchased skyscraper ...Read more
Auto review: Green and mean: the subversive 2024 Dodge Charger Daytona EV
Feast your eyes on the only new full-size coupe offered for sale in America, the 2024 Dodge Charger Daytona. Its bodyshell will be offered with four doors next year. Until then, it will only have two. But here’s the thing. While the 2024 Charger Daytona replaces the 2023 Charger and Challenger in Dodge showrooms, it comes purely as a battery ...Read more
With TikTok's help, influencers are hosting marathon 12-hour shopping livestreams and making big money
It is just past 10 p.m. and Aaliyah Arnold, the 20-year-old founder of BossUp Cosmetics, is selling to the TikTok universe.
As she livestreams from a Culver City, California, filming location, about 750 people around the world watch her announce a flash sale for a mystery box containing six to eight BossUp products. Typically priced at $101.96,...Read more
2025 RAM Rebel is ready to tackle everything
The 2025 RAM Rebel has hit the market and this truck is large and in charge. With a base price exceeding $64K, the RAM Rebel 1500 Crew Cab 4×4 is job-site ready, off-road ready — heck, its ready for anything!
It's powered by the 2025 3.0-liter Hurricane Straight-Six Turbo (SST) standard output engine, which provides 420 horsepower to the ...Read more
Auto review: Dodge Charger Daytona is an uncaged, tech-tastic beast – tethered to a plug
PHOENIX — Jaguar introduced its first electric vehicle with an ad featuring an elevator-full of gender-bending models. Dodge’s first EV ad boasted loud engine noises, tire smoke and a taunt.
“We’re building electric vehicles to save our planet ... FROM ALL THOSE LAME, SLEEK-LOOKING, SELF-DRIVING SLEEP-PODS EVERYONE ELSE KEEPS POLLUTING ...Read more
The great grocery merger is dead. Can Albertsons, QFC and others survive?
In Seattle and across the state, the dramatic collapse of the Kroger-Albertsons merger early Wednesday morning was greeted by a curious mixture of relief, anxiety and even disappointment.
Many grocery shoppers welcomed the news that Albertsons, which owns Safeway and Haggen, had killed the $25 billion deal with Kroger, owner of QFC and Fred ...Read more
Starbucks gives baristas smaller pay raises after tough year
Raises for many Starbucks Corp. baristas will shrink in light of the company’s worst financial results since the pandemic.
Pay increases will generally range from 2% to 3% depending on seniority, with some exceptions, according to a document seen by Bloomberg News. A year ago, the company announced retail workers would be getting raises of at...Read more
OpenAI says ChatGPT back online following global outage
OpenAI said it has identified and fixed an issue that left millions of global users unable to access ChatGPT and the recently released AI video generator Sora.
“We’re experiencing an outage right now. We have identified the issue and are working to roll out a fix,” the AI giant posted on X shortly after 6 p.m. ET. “Sorry and we’ll ...Read more
Michael Hiltzik: Trump-friendly billionaires are taking aim at the federal agencies that protect workers and consumers
"If the law is against you, talk about the evidence. If the evidence is against you, talk about the law, and, ... if the law and the evidence are both against you, then pound on the table and yell like hell."
Thus the poet Carl Sandburg's version of an ancient lawyer's adage in his epic poem, "The People, Yes." It isn't his fault that his ...Read more
Animation Guild board defends contract deal as some members critique AI terms
As Hollywood grapples with worries about the threat of artificial intelligence, the union that represents animators is facing dissent over its latest deal with major studios.
Three Animation Guild negotiations committee members said they will vote "no" on a tentative contract the guild reached with their employers, saying the AI protections ...Read more
Overdraft fees would be slashed under new Biden administration rule. What you need to know
If your bank account regularly flirts with negative balances, or you're just bad at keeping track of your debit card swipes, you've probably felt the sting of one of the banking industry's favorite charges: overdraft fees.
Thanks to a rule finalized Thursday by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, those fees could drop sharply next...Read more
Farmers Insurance expands home coverage in California, saying market has improved
Farmers Insurance plans to increase the number of homeowners insurance policies it will write and begin offering coverage again for new customers in other types of dwellings, citing improvements in California's home insurance market.
The Los Angeles-based company, the state's second-largest home insurer, said it will boost the number of ...Read more
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