Good morning to you Menlo Park! Catch up on our news and events right here. Keep reading to stay in the know. ☀️
In today's newsletter:
Also on today's calendar: Sunday Lunch, Wine & Cars at Auto Vino and 9 more events.
Today's riddle: What has a neck but no head? 🤔 (Answer below!)
1. For former TIDE students, a rocky start and missing programs at Woodside High (almanacnews.com) — Families of former TIDE Academy students are grappling with a rough transition after the Menlo Park school's closure, from long early-morning bus rides out of Menlo Park to missing promised STEM and dual-enrollment programs at Woodside High. Parents say poor communication and unfulfilled commitments are disrupting schedules, accommodations and college preparation for students who once relied on TIDE's small, supportive environment.
2. Menlo Park Joins Growing List of Bay Area Cities Reining in Flock Cameras (kqed.org) — Menlo Park police are tightening how they share license plate reader data after an audit found a regional intelligence center conducted about 700 searches outside department policy. The city will cancel all existing data-sharing agreements and require new ones, while adding regular audits, as other Bay Area agencies reconsider or drop their contracts with Flock Safety over similar misuse concerns.
3. What could Meta's US settlement mean around the world – and what now for other claims against firm? (allusanewshub.com) — Meta's Menlo Park headquarters is at the center of a huge U.S. settlement over allegedly addictive features aimed at young users, but the deal's ripple effects abroad are far from clear. The piece follows ongoing lawsuits from Kenya to Europe, raising questions about how much responsibility a Menlo Park–based tech giant bears for real-world harms linked to its algorithms worldwide.
4. 'This is not the end': Experts welcome Meta's new teen protections, with caveats (fresnobee.com) — Meta, based in Menlo Park, has agreed to a massive settlement with nearly every U.S. state that will force new protections for teen users of Facebook and Instagram, including time limits and nighttime restrictions. Bay Area experts from UCSF, UC Berkeley, and Stanford say the changes are promising but warn families in Menlo Park and beyond to keep setting their own boundaries and monitoring teens' social media habits.
5. Mark Zuckerberg hatched secret jobs bloodbath plan to ax 60% of staff — and then it blew up in his face (nypost.com) — Meta's Menlo Park headquarters was the backdrop for an internal clash over a secret plan to replace large swaths of staff with AI tools and slash some teams by up to 60%. After an initial round of layoffs, employee backlash, legal concerns, and technical problems forced Mark Zuckerberg to scale back the so-called Project OT and publicly re-emphasize a more "people-centric" direction.
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Ok Menlo Park! So now you're in the loop about what's happening today. Thanks for reading, and see you in your inbox next time! Oh -- and if you like what you're reading, invite a friend to Patch AM!
-- The Patch AM Team
P.S. The answer to today's riddle: A bottle (Thank you Netty W. for sending it in!)
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