![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
pennyarcade_feedI mean, I gotta make comics and stuff because it's a big part of my job. And Tim Sweeney and I probably wouldn't get along in real life; some people are literally too smart to talk to and I think he's probably one of them. I really, really want him to be wrong that AI will be involved in all future (game) production but I'm afraid he isn't.
sjmerc_ca_feedMilpitas Mayor Carmen Montano has announced her intention to run for State Senate in California’s district 10, asserting more moderate voices are needed to collaborate across partisan lines.
“I’m not really about the party, I’m about the people and the community,” said Montano. “I feel that I could make a difference in people’s lives.”
Montano, 70, is a retired schoolteacher who has long been a figure in Milpitas public office. She served for eight years as a school board trustee for Milpitas Unified School District starting in 2000, before being elected to city council in 2012, where she served for two non-consecutive terms. In 2022, Montano made history when she became the first woman to be elected mayor of Milpitas, and in 2024 was re-elected as a mayor in a close race with a crowded field of four candidates.
Montano said she would prioritize public safety and “accountability” for those who commit crimes — including by providing more funding for Prop 36, which has struggled to meet its promise of mass treatment — citing smash-and-grabs as a particular concern. She also touted “balanced housing policies” for affordable housing, improving literacy and academic success and working on ways to make home insurance more affordable.
Montano also called both parties “too extreme and out of touch with everyday needs” and focused on “common-sense” solutions. “People forget that they’re representing the people and not just representing the party,” she said.
California’s district 10 includes Fremont, Hayward, Union City, Newark, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara.
Currently, State Senator Aisha Wahab represents District 10. Wahab also made history in 2022 when she became the first Muslim elected to the California State Senate. She previously served as a mayor of Hayward City Council and currently is chair of the Senate Housing Committee and Assistant Majority Leader in the Senate. Wahab’s campaign did not respond to an email inquiry for this story.
Primaries for the California State Senate will take place in June 2026, after which the top two candidates will continue to the general election in November.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rachelmanija
luzulasjmerc_ca_feedSAN JOSE — A big data center is being planned at an empty San Jose office building in the latest example of the changes the artificial intelligence boom has brought to the Bay Area’s economic and tech landscapes.
In late 2024, Nvidia leased the north San Jose building, according to several sources familiar with the rental transaction. The office and research building at 300 Holger Way in north San Jose totals approximately 97,800 square feet.
An affiliate of Bay Area real estate firm Menlo Equities owns the building and floated the proposal for the data center. The Menlo Equities affiliate bought the building in 2021.
A wide-ranging revamp of the exterior of the building has been underway for several months, according to multiple on-site surveys that this news organization conducted in 2025.
In response to multiple requests for comment, Nvidia said it had nothing to share regarding the property. Menlo Equities didn’t name a tenant or client in its application.
Tech companies are seeking to develop more data centers as demand rises for digital hubs that can store and process massive chunks of information arising from the artificial intelligence boom.
The development of the data center itself will begin in December 2026 and should be complete by July 2027, planning documents show.
The proposal doesn’t disclose how many people might be working inside the building, or the number of parking spaces. Erik Schoennauer, a land-use consultant, is helping Menlo Equities with the plan.
“The data center (will be) a continuously operating facility,” the project proposal stated. “Operations (will) run 24 hours per day, seven days per week, including holidays.”
Operations technicians will be on site in rotating shifts on a 24/7 basis, the plans state. Security personnel will be on site on a 24/7 basis. Access will be controlled through badges, and the site will have full camera coverage.
“The operator will maintain communication with neighboring properties and adhere to all municipal codes, particularly regarding noise, lighting, and environmental controls,” the planning documents stated.
sjmerc_ca_feedSOUTH SAN FRANCISCO — One person died in a fire at an apartment complex early Monday morning, authorities said.
Firefighters responded around 4 a.m. to reports of a fire alarm and smoke at the complex on the 500 block of Baden Avenue, according to a news release from the South San Francisco Police Department.
Upon arrival, firefighters found that one unit was entirely engulfed by flame. The rest of the building was evacuated.
Firefighters then worked to extinguish the burning unit and put out the fire quickly, authorities said. Damage to the unit was limited.
After the fire was extinguished, responders located an unresponsive person inside, authorities said. Despite being given life-saving measures, the victim was pronounced deceased at the scene of the fire.
The victim’s identity and cause of death will be confirmed by the San Mateo County Coroner’s Office.
The incident is under investigation by SSFPD, the South San Francisco Fire Department and the coroner’s office.
sjmerc_ca_feedAmericans attempting to clear airport security checkpoints without a Real ID or a passport will soon be charged $45, the Transportation Security Administration announced Monday.
The new fee will go into effect on Feb. 1, TSA leaders said. The agency teased a potential $18 fee in federal paperwork last month, but eventually decided on a significantly higher number.
“The fee was necessary because we needed to modernize the system. We needed to make sure that the system is safe,” Steve Lorincz, TSA’s deputy executive assistant administrator for security operations, told ABC News.
After decades of delays, Real ID requirements finally went into effect back in May, but travelers were still allowed to fly without the upgraded identity cards.
However, TSA officials signaled their plans to clamp down last month, when they proposed the $18 fee for travelers without a Real ID or passport.
The fee was designed “to address the government-incurred costs,” the agency said in a notice posted to the Federal Register.
After Feb. 1, anyone without a Real ID or passport will need to confirm their identity on the TSA website or through a series of forms at the airport, according to ABC News. Someone who reaches the front of the security line without a Real ID will be pulled out of line and required to fill out the forms in person.
“We still need to go through the process to make sure that we verify who you are. And for whatever reason, if we can’t do that, then you can’t go through the process,” Lorincz told ABC News.
The Real ID Act was passed in 2005 in response to the 9/11 attacks and was initially supposed to be implemented in 2008. However, years of administrative delays continued until 2025. According to the TSA, 94% of travelers already have a Real ID.
sjmerc_ca_feedBERKELEY — A motorcyclist died Sunday afternoon on Interstate 80 after colliding with two vehicles, the California Highway Patrol said.
His name was not released by the coroner’s bureau.
The collision happened about 3:07 p.m. Sunday in the eastbound lanes of the freeway east of University Avenue, the CHP said.
The CHP said the motorcyclist was ejected onto the roadway after colliding with an Acura TSX and a Honda Accord. What led up to the collision is under investigation.
He was pronounced deceased at the scene.
The vehicle drivers remained at the scene and were cooperating with investigators, the CHP said.
According to initial reports, drugs or alcohol were not believed to be factors in the incident.
Three eastbound lanes and two westbound lanes of the freeway were shut down for several hours during the course of the investigation.
Anyone with information about the collision may contact the CHP Oakland office at 510-457-2875.
sjmerc_ca_feedSan Jose police have announced the arrest of a teen boy in connection with a Black Friday shooting at Westfield Valley Fair that wounded three people — including a teen girl bystander — and sent shoppers fleeing for the exits at the city’s largest indoor mall on one of its busiest days of the year.
Police stated on social media Monday morning that “we got him. Last night SJPD located and arrested the suspect responsible for the triple shooting at Valley Fair Mall that occurred on November 28th.” An SJPD spokesperson later confirmed that the suspect, who had previously only been described as male, is a minor.
The police department declined to release additional information, but scheduled a Monday afternoon news conference to share more details about the investigation and arrest.
The Friday afternoon shooting garnered national headlines, due in part to its location inside a mall and broader news media interest in consumer mayhem on Black Friday, which for about two decades has been an unofficial start to the holiday shopping season.
Police said the shooting was reported around 5:40 p.m. on a second-floor walkway just outside of the Macy’s department store on the San Jose side of the mall.
Valley Fair, located on Stevens Creek Boulevard, sits both in San Jose and Santa Clara, with the city border bisecting the property. There are two Macy’s anchor stores, with the women’s and jewelry sections located on the San Jose side and the men’s, children’s and housewares sections located in Santa Clara.
The gunfire stemmed from an individual clash and was not targeted at shoppers at large, police said, adding that the suspect shot a man with whom he had a dispute — potentially gang related — and that the shots also wounded a woman and 16-year-old girl who were not involved.
All of the shooting victims are expected to survive, police said.
After the shooting, the mall was evacuated while San Jose police officers scoured the facility in search of the shooter and to ensure the property was safe.
A mall worker who spoke to The Mercury News said he was working at a bar when he saw hordes of scared shoppers “storm in,” and realized they were seeking shelter from the shots. He said people left through the rear exits and were greeted by arriving police officers carrying rifles and urging everyone to get clear of the mall.
Social media soon became populated with photo and video accounts of the frenzied reaction to the shooting, as some sought shelter and others rushed toward any nearby exit. One shopper recounted hiding in a storage room with her children.
Eduardo Barocio, an 18-year-old Oakland man, said he had just arrived at the mall when he heard what sounded like eight to 10 gunshots, and soon saw people running. He told this news organization that he ran to a parking lot and later saw two officers leave the mall with a man who had an apparent chest wound.
On Saturday morning, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan lamented how “a holiday shop became a survival mission” at Valley Fair. Police Chief Paul Joseph announced stepped-up patrols in the mall area and a pledge for a swift arrest. The mall reopened that same day.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Staff writers Jason Green and Kyle Martin contributed to this report.
runpunkrun posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fancake
sjmerc_ca_feedSAN RAMON — A two-car crash that police said they believe to have been caused by driving under the influence killed a 41-year-old Castro Valley woman on Saturday.
In a statement, police said they arrested a 27-year-old Pleasanton man on suspicion of DUI causing injury. The wreck on Crow Canyon Road happened about 3:25 p.m. and involved a Ford Bronco and a Tesla Model 3. Police said they arrested the driver of the Tesla.
Authorities did not identify the woman who died immediately Monday, with police noting they were not identifying the victim “out of respect for the family’s privacy.” They said she was a passenger in the Ford Bronco.
Police did not release details about how the crash happened but said that the preliminary investigation showed it was caused by the Tesla driver. Police said they also suspect the person of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.
Jail records indicated he remained in custody Monday morning at the Martinez Detention Facility in lieu of $300,000 bail.
The Ford Bronco’s driver went to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek by ambulance and was treated there before being released.
Police said they are still investigating what happened and asked anyone with information to contact them at 925-973-2779.
sjmerc_ca_feedOAKLAND — A Hayward man was sentenced to one year of probation in a case that started when the parents of a teen girl allegedly walked in on her sexting with him, court records show.
Edgar Coc-Sacul, 24, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was originally charged with two felonies — contacting a minor with intent to commit a sex crime and sending harmful material to a minor — but those charges were dropped in a plea deal, court records show.
Coc-Sacul was sentenced to one year of probation, given one day of credit for time served in jail and ordered to stay away from the victim, according to court records. He has been out of jail since his arrest in 2023.
At the time of his arrest, police said they reviewed messages between Coc-Sacul and the girl and found they’d made plans to meet up in person. Authorities also alleged that he sent her lewd pictures of himself.
sjmerc_ca_feedBy Shona Ghosh, Bloomberg
Nvidia Corp. has struck a deal to invest $2 billion into chip-design software maker Synopsys Inc.’s stock as part of a broader engineering and design tie-up, the latest massive investment by the chipmaker into one of its own suppliers.
Nvidia purchased the shares at $414.79 each, the companies said in a statement on Monday, compared with a closing price of $418.01 on Friday.
The stake represents 2.6% of Synopsys’ outstanding shares. The Sunnyvale-based company is one of the largest providers of software and services used to design electronic components.
Shares in Synopsys were up 7.4% in pre-market trading. The stock was down almost 14% so far this year through Friday’s close. Shares in Nvidia were slightly down in pre-market trading.
Nvidia, the most valuable company in the world, has invested in a series of companies with the boom in artificial intelligence, including OpenAI and data center operators such as CoreWeave Inc. It even agreed to invest $5 billion in Intel Corp., a potential rival, as part of a partnership to co-develop chips for personal computers and data centers.
Those investments have raised concerns of circular deals that prop up the valuations of certain companies and put money into the hands of customers, who in turn buy chips from Nvidia.
Synopsys’ software aids with designing the complex layout of billions of transistors and connectors for modern chips, and also verifies that the hardware will work as intended before the production stage. That process is integral to creating chips central to artificial intelligence systems, such as those sold by Nvidia.
The new partnership involves integrating Nvidia’s tools into Synopsys’ chip-design applications, deploying AI agents and joint marketing activities.
Synopsys’ tech is used by a “broad list” of semiconductor and systems companies, including Alphabet Inc. and Tesla Inc., said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Niraj Patel. The move will allow it to to use more advanced chips for its own design and simulation tools for the automotive, aerospace, industrial and energy sectors, he said.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
antisoppist"I want some crackers
And I want some candy;
I think a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I don't mind oranges,
I do like nuts!
And I SHOULD like a pocket-knife
That really cuts.
And, oh, Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red india-rubber ball!"
oursinThere was hoohahing going on last week on bluesky anent people pirating books on account authors do not need the money and should be creating for Love of Art.
And I will concede that when it comes to Evil Exploitative Academic Publishing Empires, I cannot get my knickers in a twist over people downloading papers for which they have not paid the extortionate fee, none of which goes to author of the paper or the reviewers who reviewed it for the journal in question (wot, me, bitter?) - in fact I will be over here cheering or offering to use such library access as I have to get access and offer a copy.
But honestly the Average Author of fictional works is not making molto moolah but is probably supporting themselves by doing something else or being supported by someone else (hey, Ursula K Le Guin? e.g. mentions somewhere she was a housewife when she first started out) and writing is not their sole occupation or source of remuneration.
And even writers who we look back on as Important and Successful had their money problems: Hardship grant applications to the Royal Literary Fund... show authors at their most vulnerable:
Nobody goes into writing for the money: today, professional authors in the UK earn a median income of £7,000, according to the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society. Looking at the starry names awarded grants through the RLF’s history makes clear that the challenges are not new. However, Kemp thinks the problem has become more acute in some regards. “The kinds of deal you get with a publisher as a mid-list fiction writer has gone down, down, down, down, down.” Twenty or 30 years ago, such writers could survive; it is now much tougher, he says. Big publishers are “paying large amounts of money to a small number of writers”. A “tiny percentage actually survive on what they’re making from writing.”
“On the one hand there are people like Joyce and DH Lawrence, who are early in their careers, and indeed Doris Lessing, who are struggling to get going, who have made a mark but are finding it hard to make ends meet. And at the other end there are people like Coleridge, and more recently Edna O’Brien, who have had stellar careers, and you’d have hoped actually were doing OK, but the vicissitudes of a writer’s life mean that sometimes it goes to pot.”
Many documents show writers at the most vulnerable times of their lives, often in precarious positions early in their careers; everything from feeble book sales to illness to messy marriages to grief is chronicled here.... Nesbit, author of The Railway Children, wrote in an August 1914 letter that the shock of her husband’s death “overcame me completely and now my brain will not do the poetry romance and fairy tales by which I have earned most of my livelihood”.
sjmerc_ca_feedOAKLAND — A 27-year-old man was shot multiple times in East Oakland Sunday night after he got off his motorized scooter to talk to some people in a vehicle, authorities said.
The man was in stable condition Monday at a hospital.
The shooting happened about 9:15 p.m. Sunday in the 8600 block of Birch Street.
The man told police he was riding a motorized scooter when a vehicle, occupied by at least two people, drove by him and stopped.
He told police one of the occupants then said something to him which prompted him to stop his scooter, get off and walk up to the vehicle. Exactly what was said has not been released.
He was then shot at least twice by the front seat passenger, police said.
The suspects then drove off. The wounded man was transported from the scene by ambulance to a hospital.
Why the man was shot is under investigation. Detailed descriptions of the suspects and the vehicle they were in have not been released.
Anyone with information may call investigators at 510-238-3426.
pennyarcade_feed - Come In Clutchsjmerc_ca_feed - Milpitas mayor announces run for State Senaterachelmanija - Strange Pictures, by Uketsuluzula - Write every day: Day 1sjmerc_ca_feed - Data center planned for Bay Area office building site leased by Nvidiasjmerc_ca_feed - One person dies in South San Francisco apartment fire Monday morningxkcd_feed - Website Task Flowchartpurplecat in genprompt_bingo - Round 29: Sign-Upssjmerc_ca_feed - Travelers without Real ID will incur $45 fee, TSA sayssjmerc_ca_feed - Motorcyclist killed on Berkeley freewaysjmerc_ca_feed - Valley Fair mall shooting: San Jose police arrest teen in Black Friday attackrunpunkrun in fancake - Round 181: Amnestysjmerc_ca_feed - DUI suspected to have caused fatal two-car crash in San Ramontrope_mod in fandomcalendar - Multifandom: Trope of the Month - Fix-Itssjmerc_ca_feed - Hayward man got probation for allegedly sexting with teen girlsjmerc_ca_feed - Nvidia buys $2 billion of chip software maker Synopsys stockantisoppist - Advent calendar 1oursin - 'Twas ever thus....westiec in fandomcalendar - Multifandom: Love Yourself Selfcest Festsjmerc_ca_feed - Man shot in Oakland after getting off scooter to talk to vehicle occupantmomijizukamori and branchandrootmomijizukamori
