Don’t tell Bernie Sanders, but Forbes’ latest World’s Billionaires list for 2025 contains 3,028 names — up 247 from a year ago. And they’re richer than ever, at $16.1 trillion in combined wealth.

While the richest person on the planet has no trouble attracting attention these days, you don’t have to get too far down the list from Elon Musk before you start running into the super rich who call Washington state home — there are a dozen of them.

From Steve Ballmer to MacKenzie Scott, Washington’s wealthy class includes Microsoft money, Amazon money and more across industries ranging from video games to coffee to real estate tech. (Remember to skip over No. 3 — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bolted for Miami in 2023.)

Here are the details on Washington’s billionaires, with each person’s overall ranking and net worth:

10. Steve Ballmer, $118 billion.

• The former CEO of Microsoft, he led the company from 2000 to 2014, and is now owner of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team; founder of USAFacts; and co-founder of Ballmer Group

13. Bill Gates, $108 billion.

• The Microsoft co-founder is chair of the Gates Foundation and founder of Breakthrough Energy.

58. Melinda French Gates, $30.4 billion.

• The founder of Pivotal Ventures left her position as co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation after a nearly 24-year run.

68. MacKenzie Scott, $28.2, billion.

• The author and philanthropist was married to Jeff Bezos for 25 years and has given away $19.25 billion to more than 2,450 non-profit teams over the past several years.

293. Gabe Newell, $9.5 billion.

• President of Valve Corp., the video game developer he cofounded in 1998 with former Microsoft colleague Mike Harrington.

453. Charles Simonyi, $7.2 billion.

• Early Microsoft employee behind some of the company’s most successful software, including Word and Excel.

1045. Howard Schultz, $3.5 billion.

• Took charge of Starbucks in the 1980s and turned the regional coffee company into one of the world’s top brands.

1513. John Stanton, $2.4 billion.

• The wireless pioneer is chairman of the Seattle Mariners baseball team, serving as managing partner of a group of investors that has owned the franchise since 2016.

1763. Craig McCaw, $2 billion.

• Another wireless pioneer who, along with his brothers, took over their dad’s cable-TV business in 1966.

2623. Rich Barton, $1.2 billion.

• Co-founder and CEO of Seattle real estate company Zillow Group and co-founder of travel giant Expedia.

2790. Orion Hindawi, $1.1 billion.

• Co-founded cybersecurity firm Tanium with his father in 2007 before they moved from San Francisco to Seattle in 2020. Private investors valued the firm at $9 billion in June 2020.

2933. David Hindawi, $1 billion.

• Co-founded cybersecurity firm Tanium with his son in 2007.

By the end of last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was asking people to “please chill” on making images with his company’s updated AI image generator. “Our team needs sleep,” Altman said on X.

In another post, Altman said “our GPUs are melting” and OpenAI had to introduce rate limits to cope with “biblical demand.”

Seattle software engineer Grant Slatton deserves a bit of the credit for overwhelming OpenAI just a couple days after the release of the ChatGPT-4o update. He was among the throngs of users who turned to the image generator to make a Studio Ghibli-style animated artwork based on a simple photograph of himself with his wife and dog at the beach.

In his post last Tuesday, the day of the update release, Slatton wrote, “tremendous alpha right now in sending your wife photos of yall converted to studio ghibli anime.”

Slatton has a decent following on X, and by Friday he was the subject of a Business Insider article on the flood of people rushing to use AI to make artwork in the style of the Japanese film studio. His post has now been viewed 46 million times and his X thread is loaded with artwork from others who responded in kind with their own AI-generated family images.

But not everyone has been thrilled with Slatton’s viral image generation. He’s received some nasty feedback from what he calls a “vocal minority,” and while he’s just been deleting the messages and moving on, he’s been left to consider AI’s impact on art and the source of people’s resentment.

“This isn’t to say there aren’t completely valid criticisms of AI image generation from everyday artists, ranging from IP theft, economic concerns, to more philosophical topics like the meaning of art,” he said. “But the people who have thoughtful and cogent opinions here aren’t the ones calling for tech bro lynchings.”

Slatton is a founding engineer at Row Zero, a 4-year-old Seattle startup that describes its product as the “world’s fastest spreadsheet.” He previously spent eight years at Amazon Web Services.

Row Zero co-founder Breck Fresen posted his own “Ghiblified” family image on LinkedIn, writing that Slatton “won the internet” last week, and adding that Row Zero received its share of angry emails over it all.

Slatton, who generated the new Ghibli image with a simple text prompt, has been attracted to the style previously. For their wedding announcement in 2019, he and his wife enlisted an artist friend to draw a Ghibli-style portrait of their family. Slatton said that artist is “thrilled” by the possibilities of the new tech, and sent him a bunch of photos of her family for ghiblification since she didn’t have access to the new model yet.

While many rushed to generate their own Ghibli-style images last week, others rushed to defend original art and artists. Some even shared a 2016 quote from director Hayao Miyazaki (“Spirited Away”), in which he appeared to express his disdain for AI as “an insult to life itself.”

One user on X called Slatton a “bozo” and told him to learn to draw. He responded with a painting he did of his wife, illustrating that his interests in art go beyond his computer.

OpenAI told Business Insider that ChatGPT does allow for generating images with “broader studio styles,” but that it would block requests for “generations in the style of individual living artists.”

“Our goal is to give users as much creative freedom as possible,” a spokesperson said.

Slatton said that while most of the rhetoric focuses on “stealing” the style, he doesn’t think the extreme vitriol is downstream of that belief. He pointed to gig apps such as Fiverr, where artists will do Ghibli-style drawings of people for a few dollars. Are they stealing the Ghibli style, too?

“I think the hate is predominantly due to completely valid fears of economic insecurity of small-time artists, combined with the general anti-big-tech culture wars that have been going on since people were throwing bricks at the Google commuter shuttles 12 years ago,” Slatton said. “The recent rightward political reorientation of some prominent technologists is also feeding this much broader culture war.”

Slatton added that his position on AI image generation remains mostly unchanged, as he feels like the same conversation has been going on for years.

“This particular reaction is nothing new in kind, only in magnitude — due to the mass scale of the Ghibli trend,” he said. “There’s been the same rhetoric going back to the first decent AI image generators (DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, etc).”

Related: Even VC firms are getting in on the viral hype around ChatGPT’s updated image generator

You might not remember seeing Matt McIlwain or S. “Soma” Somasegar in “Spirited Away,” but the managing directors of Seattle VC firm Madrona are among the latest “characters” to get the Studio Ghibli treatment thanks to OpenAI’s updated image generator.

In a post on LinkedIn on Thursday, Madrona shared images created with ChatGPT-4o in the style of the beloved Japanese animation studio.

“We couldn’t resist,” the post read. “From AI agents to animated founders, we’re always exploring what’s next.”

Images show McIlwain raising a toast and Somasegar interviewing Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at last week’s annual meeting and 30th anniversary celebration for the firm. The animated renderings possess very close similarities to actual photographs from the event, which Madrona shared in an earlier post.

OpenAI released its new AI image generator on Tuesday, and since then the internet has been flooded with Studio Ghibli-style treatments of everything from President Donald Trump to “Star Wars.” As TechCrunch pointed out, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even updated his X profile image to the style.

The image generator — which can create content from a text prompt — is also generating a fair share of concern about how such models are trained and the copyright infringement implications.

OpenAI said it trained ChatGPT-4o on “publicly available data” as well as proprietary data from its partnerships with companies like Shutterstock, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The company said on its website that “combined with aggressive post-training, the resulting model has surprising visual fluency, capable of generating images that are useful, consistent, and context-aware.”

How the AI tools are trained to imitate styles is where violation of copyright law can come into play, TechCrunch noted. A group of news organizations, including The New York Times, are already suing OpenAI and Microsoft, its major investor and partner, alleging that copyrighted works are used to train ChatGPT.

“We’re respecting of the artists’ rights in terms of how we do the output, and we have policies in place that prevent us from generating images that directly mimic any living artists’ work,” Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer, told The Wall Street Journal this week.

Meanwhile, if you’re tempted to make a Studio Ghibli-style image of you and your dog or kid or whatever, the view on AI of the director behind the films might sting a little.

Mashable reported that fans are pointing to a clip from the 2016 documentary series “Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki,” in which the filmmaker said of AI: “Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”

Are the Seattle Mariners poised to level up this season? Perhaps, if a jersey patch is the boost the team needs.

The Mariners announced Thursday that Nintendo of America will be the baseball team’s first-ever official jersey sleeve partner.

A red and white Nintendo racetrack logo will be featured on Mariners home jerseys, and a Nintendo Switch 2 logo will appear on away jerseys for all regular and postseason games. The Mariners are the first team in Major League Baseball to feature different marks for home and road games.

The patch will debut next week on Opening Day, March 27 vs. the A’s at T-Mobile Park.

In a new video, Mariners star Julio Rodriguez is shown wearing a jersey with the patch — after a red Mario hat is shown next to his M’s cap in his clubhouse locker. “Play ball,” he says as video game music plays while he takes a swing of the bat. “This is gonna be fun.”

The All-Star centerfielder will serve as a brand ambassador for the collaboration.

“It’s a me Julio,” one fan wrote on Reddit, in a nod to Mario’s iconic video game catchphrase.

Nintendo of America, headquartered in Redmond, Wash., bought the Mariners in 1992 under then Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi. It sold the majority of its shares in 2016 and maintains a minority stake.

“Nintendo and the Mariners have been inextricably linked since 1992,” Seattle Mariners President of Business Operations Kevin Martinez said in a statement. “Now, each time the Mariners take the field, our jersey sleeves will help serve as a reminder of all that Nintendo of America has done for the Northwest community and the team.”

The M’s are the latest MLB team to secure a uniform patch deal. The Athletic reported last summer that 23 teams had such deals, and that the league average for the patches is around $7 million to $8 million a year. The biggest sponsorships are believed to be the Yankees and Blue Jays in the low-to-mid $20 million range annually, and the Red Sox at around $17 million, according to The Athletic.

Satya Nadella is a fan of multimodal AI interfaces — the ability to interact with a chatbot not just through text but through voice, for example — so much so that it has completely changed the way he “listens” to podcasts.

Speaking recently on the Minus One podcast from South Park Commons, the Microsoft CEO said he has set the Action Button on his iPhone with Apple CarPlay to activate Microsoft Copilot voice mode. That allows him to easily engage with Microsoft’s AI in the car, including an alternative way of consuming podcasts.

“The best way for me to consume podcasts is not to actually go listen to it but to have a conversation with the transcript on my commute using my Copilot. Who’d have thought?” he said.

“But it is more convenient because of the modality, the fact that I can speak to it, I can interrupt it,” he said. “Think about it, right? This full-duplex conversation which was never possible — that is a fantastic new modality. … There’s no going back.”

This resonates with me. I’ve done this not just with videos and podcasts but also with entire books (as a way of refreshing my memory before an interview with an author for example).

Having a conversation with a transcript like this is doable in Microsoft Copilot and other AI tools, particularly if the podcasts are on YouTube, with transcripts.

In Microsoft Copilot, for example, one way would be to start the conversation on a computer in the Edge sidebar before leaving the house, and then continue it in the Copilot app in the car, assuming you’re logged into your account in both places. You could do something similar in ChatGPT or other AI tools.

But it’s not always seamless, or at least not obvious to most users. It can also be tough to find the transcript for a podcast, depending on where it’s published. It makes me wonder if there’s a startup opportunity here.

We’re going to miss Glenn Kelman’s earnings calls.

Redfin’s CEO, who last week announced a $1.75 billion deal to sell the tech-driven real estate company to Rocket Companies, has a rare knack for delivering colorful quotes and off-the-wall zingers — keeping analysts and investors entertained, at least, in what’s normally a dry and obligatory exercise for public companies.

“Plan B is to drink our own urine or our competitors’ blood — stay in the foxhole,” Kelman said in one striking example from June 2024, emphasizing Redfin’s resilience and determination in response to an analyst who asked about the company’s backup plan if mortgage rates were to rise unexpectedly again.

Redfin’s brand will remain intact after the deal. But as part of a larger company, Kelman won’t have quite the same opportunity to hold court with Wall Street, even if he does end up joining Rocket CEO Varun Krishna on earnings calls.

After this came up on the latest GeekWire Podcast (while discussing the deal with Stephanie Reid-Simons of RealEstateNews.com and Tim Ellis, former Redfin market analyst) I was inspired to compile a list of Kelman’s best earnings quips, by mining GeekWire’s reporting and creating a database of transcripts in NotebookLM.

(This doesn’t include his legendary quote on 60 Minutes in November 2007, “Real estate, by far, is the most screwed up industry in America.” Nor does it include his writing, such as the 2012 essay in which he observed, “We have a government to solve the problems that greedy, short-sighted businessmen like me can’t.”)

The end result is a case study in using levity, candor, and humility — plus ample references to pop culture — to navigate the ups and downs of leading a business.

With that, let’s turn it over to Glenn …

“I spent half the Super Bowl in the bathroom or upstairs making nachos because I didn’t want to see these competitor ads.” Kelman explained in 2024 that Redfin saw more website traffic despite rival CoStar Group’s massive spending on Homes.com ads during the big game.

“Nobody is more afraid of Amazon than me. I mean, those guys are animals.” Addressing questions about a 2019 collaboration between Amazon and Realogy, Kelman offered this perspective as context for his opinion that the partnership wouldn’t amount to much. He was right.

“Redfin believes in technology, but technology on its own is just a glorified toaster oven.” Describing Redfin’s culture and approach to innovation, Kelman said in May 2019 that what really matters is its people and how they treat each other.

“This analogy makes no sense, except the images of the exploding blood and the flamethrower are what always come to mind when people ask me about today’s housing market.” Kelman made a vivid comparison to the movie The Thing in a November 2020 earnings call.

“If you are not scared running a seasonal, cyclical business with fixed costs, there’s something wrong with you.” This how Kelman, in November 2021, explained his clear-eyed, pragmatic and “jittery” approach to running a business that depends so much on external market forces.

“Our goal is just to gain share every quarter for the rest of time.” Kelman explained the company’s rare form of eternal KPI in a February 2021 earnings call.

“iBuying isn’t going away. … It isn’t the end-all and be-all, the future of real estate. And it isn’t the alpha and omega, the death, the Vishnu god of destruction.” In the November 2021 call, Kelman used cosmic mythology to dismiss extreme views on iBuying, in which Redfin and other real estate companies bought and sold homes. He was wrong about it not going away.

“It’s sort of like a Delayed Blast Fireball, if you’ve ever played Dungeons & Dragons.” On an August 2019 call, Kelman offered this geeky analogy to explain the long-term impact of mass media on brand value.

“They were really in the sort of cryogenic suspension like Han Solo at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.” On a May 2021 call, Kelman explained the impact of bankruptcy and a scuttled acquisition by CoStar on RentPath’s business prior to its acquisition by Redfin.

“Man, that sounded so canned, but I swear, I just made it up on the spot.” That was Kelman’s self-assessment after making this-off-the-cuff comment on a February 2021 call: “What we’re trying to do is grow long term by offering a durable value proposition to customers and investors.”

“I love the idea of a music soundtrack next quarter. Let’s guide to that.” Kelman responded in May 2022 to an analyst’s suggestion that his prepared remarks should be accompanied by a dramatic score.

And it seems only appropriate to end with Kelman’s concluding remarks from the company’s most recent call, in February: “We’re going all-out, baby. Thanks for coming to the call. We appreciate how many of you show up. And now, we’re going to get back to selling houses.”

Grant Hinkson spent almost nine years at Amazon, leading design engineering within the company’s Devices and Services Design Group. He left a little over a year ago to launch his own game development project and pursue passions that do more to scratch a longtime creative itch.

The first upcoming release from Hinkson’s Parietal Lab is “Connectome,” a virtual reality, 3D connect-the-dots-style “art and game experience,” as he describes it. It’s available for pre-order on Meta Quest.

“There are elements of game play within the space, and there are elements of mystery, and you’re not immediately clear exactly what you’re supposed to do — and that’s kind of the game aspect,” Hinkson said.

Pinching, grabbing and connecting dots, players in “Connectome” find points within rooms that can be interacted with, and they create and reveal objects that open doors to other rooms as they move through the VR space.

The meditative experience is further enhanced by the ambient musical score, which was also created by Hinkson. Rather than farm out that aspect of building “Connectome,” he called writing the music one of the biggest joys of the past year.

“I’ve played the piano since I was in first grade, and I’ve pretty much always written,” Hinkson said. “As a musician, I know what the feeling is that I want to evoke in each of these spaces, and so I have been really hands on with it.”

Hinkson spent more than five years at Microsoft before his move to Amazon, where he worked on the Echo family of products, Fire TV, Fire tablets, and the Alexa mobile app. He led a team of design technologists within the design studio who did some prototyping work in VR, but he wasn’t the person who was hands on in Unity, so he wasn’t an expert in the space.

When asked whether leaving to build a trippy VR game was his answer to the intensity of working at a tech giant, Hinkson acknowledged there’s probably some psychology to it.

“I think I’m a creator at heart,” he said. “Building and making is what just lights me up. The most fun I had at Amazon was when we were inventing new things and creating experiences.”

He thinks VR is the best place right now to tell stories as an artist, where he has complete control of world building. The success of “Connectome” and whether he can get people to buy his experience will be a test, to prove whether he can keep creating in VR.

Hinkson has assembled the pieces that many creators chase — he left a successful career, he’s making art and music, he’s programming his own game, he’s working from home and calling all of his own shots. Can he make a living doing all the things that he loves?

“That is the final piece, right?” he said. “That I get to keep doing this, because it is so fulfilling and satisfying. These things that I loved 10, 15, 20 years ago are still in me. And they still mean a lot.”

The amateur highlight of Jane Broom‘s dancing past came while growing up in Spokane, Wash., as a member of the 1987 Lewis and Clark High School drill team.

“We were good. We were really good,” Broom said of her high school days.

Forty-plus years later, Broom, the senior director of Microsoft Philanthropies, will show off her moves dancing the salsa on Saturday night. She’s part of “Seattle Dances,” an annual event put on by Plymouth Housing, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing permanent supportive housing for adults experiencing chronic homelessness in Washington state.

“It’s different,” Broom said of her new dance adventure. “The salsa is all about moving your hips and moving your shoulders. I don’t know if the drill team set me up well for salsa.”

A University of Washington graduate and 32-year Microsoft vet, Broom is among the nine celebrity dancers being paired with pros for the “Dancing With the Stars”-style charity event at Fremont Studios.

Now in its 16th year, Seattle Dances is a signature fundraiser for Plymouth, which has brought in nearly $13 million through previous events. GeekWire previously profiled the 2023 dancing exploits of former Tableau and Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky.

Broom is paired with dancer Marcelo Garces, who she’s been practicing with for two to four hours per week, and who she called “an excellent, patient teacher.”

In her day job, Broom is responsible for Microsoft’s philanthropic strategy in Washington. She oversees the company’s investments in affordable housing, human services, arts and culture, and more. Microsoft launched its commitment to affordable housing in 2019 and later, alongside Amazon and others, donated $5 million to Plymouth.

“Plymouth and the work they do to promote permanent, supportive housing, to me, is the solution for homelessness that we need,” Broom said. “It’s not the only part of the solution, but it is a huge part. You need a place that’s permanent for a person to call home, where they have the services and support they need to stay healthy and ultimately get back on their feet.”

Broom is not only competing for the chance to be the best dancer on Saturday. Fundraising honors are also at stake:

• Top Promoter: Awarded to the dance team with the highest number of individual donors.
• Housing First Hero: Awarded to the team that raises the most money.
• Dynamite Dancer: Awarded to the Team with the most creative, passionate performance of the night.

Broom and Garces will perform their routine in a little under two minutes. She said it’s a little scary to put herself out there at an event like this, but she views the chance to put on a fancy dress and have her hair and makeup professionally done as a big positive.

“Microsoft and glam don’t necessarily go together all the time,” Broom laughed. “So I am kind of excited to get up on stage and stun my colleagues and others in the tech sector.”

Seattle Dances will livestream at 7 p.m. on Saturday on the Plymouth Housing website.

Academy Awards host Conan O’Brien took a couple shots at Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos during the opening monologue of Sunday night’s ceremony.

O’Brien, the late-night TV vet and first-time Oscars host, discussed the recent news that Amazon MGM Studios has taken over creative control of the James Bond film franchise.

“They just announced the next James Bond,” O’Brien said, preparing to reveal what would have been a major scoop on Hollywood’s biggest night. Instead, O’Brien said, the new 007 is Amazon senior vice president of global affairs Steve Belsky. “Ladies love him,” O’Brien added as a fake corporate headshot appeared on screen.

Amazon’s real chief of global affairs is David Zapolsky, a 25-year Amazon vet.

O’Brien also shared what he said was footage of Bezos arriving on Oscars red carpet. The video showed an Amazon delivery driver dropping off a long box. “There he is! He seems undamaged,” O’Brien joked.

But when cameras cut to the audience and an empty seat, O’Brien wondered where Bezos was. More footage from outside the theater showed a “porch pirate” making off with the Bezos box.

Fast forward to the 9:18 mark of the video below for the start of the Amazon/Bezos jokes:

Will James Bond finally return to action? The prospect for a new film in the long-running spy thriller series increased dramatically on Thursday with the announcement that Amazon MGM Studios had reached a new 007 deal.

Amazon MGM and longtime Bond producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli announced that they’d formed a new joint venture as co-owners of the Bond intellectual property rights and franchise, with Amazon taking over creative control.

“Since his theatrical introduction over 60 years ago, James Bond has been one of the most iconic characters in filmed entertainment,” said Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, in a news release. “We are honored to continue this treasured heritage, and look forward to ushering in the next phase of the legendary 007 for audiences around the world.”

Wilson said that he was stepping back from producing Bond films to focus on art and charitable projects and that he and Broccoli agreed it was time for Amazon MGM to “lead James Bond into the future.”

Amazon acquired MGM Studios in 2022 for $8.5 billion — its second-largest acquisition ever behind its $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods in 2017.

With the purchase came a catalog of more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows that have collectively won more than 180 Academy Awards and 100 Emmys — and the rights to distribute all of the Bond films.

The Bond series features 25 films. The last, “No Time to Die,” was released in 2021 and starred Daniel Craig as 007 in his fifth and final turn in the role. The film earned $775 million. 

Beyond the question of when fans can expect a new Bond film, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos got straight to the point Thursday wondering who fans would want to see in the leading role.

“Who’d you pick as the next Bond,” Bezos asked on Instagram and X.

The popular consensus in the comments so far on Thursday seems to be around Henry Cavill, best known for his portrayal of Superman in the DC Extended Universe. Cavill is already attached to plans for a “Warhammer 40,000” TV series with Amazon MGM.

Actors Idris Elba, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy and others also got a shout-out for possible Bond status.

Bezos himself even got a nod — with an image that’ll probably be his new social media avatar any minute …

Mark Cuban tapped Bill Gates for some perspective on a recent business decision that reshaped the Dallas Mavericks, the NBA team he used to own, and he used a Microsoft analogy to help make his point.

Gates was in Dallas last Friday for a stop on his book tour for “Source Code: My Beginnings.” During their conversation, Cuban brought up the surprise trade that sent Mavericks superstar Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis.

“You’ve been in unique situations and maybe you can help,” Cuban said, before asking Gates if he could imagine a hypothetical situation in which, after Gates left Microsoft, he found out that former CEO Steve Ballmer traded Windows 11 (“the new hot operating system”) for Windows 10 (“the hall of fame but older operating system”).

“What would you do?” Cuban asked.

“I might have to hide from the press,” Gates said to audience laughter.

Cuban, the billionaire former majority owner of the Mavericks, now holds a 27% stake in the team. He was not involved in the Feb. 2 trade of Dončić, a five-time NBA All-Star who took the Mavericks to the NBA Finals last season.

Bleacher Report noted that Cuban once joked in 2020 that he would divorce his wife before trading Dončić.

Related:

• Double Billing: Bill Gates and Bill Nye geek out on computers, science and changing human history

Talk about a double Billing. Bill Nye, the “Science Guy,” and Bill Gates, the software guy, came together on one stage Thursday night in Seattle for an epically geeky conversation.

Over the course of an hour at the Moore Theater, Nye and Gates discussed everything from the Microsoft co-founder’s life-changing early obsession with computers and coding to his current drive toward finding clean energy solutions. The event was part of the promotion around Gates’ new book, “Source Code: My Beginnings.”

Nye, the famed television personality with engineering and entertainment roots in Seattle, peppered Gates with a barrage of questions related to Gates’ upbringing, schooling at Lakeside in Seattle and then Harvard University, friendships and early jobs, the start of Microsoft, and philanthropic pursuits with the Gates Foundation.

“We could start anywhere, but I’m going to start at the beginning,” Nye said. “You had an extraordinary grandmother, Gammy, and you played cards with her. … And now you changed the course of human history.”

Nye’s humor, sarcasm and a get-a-load-of-THIS-guy style of audience interaction played to Gates’ own deadpan wit, starting with his lack of discipline as a young boy.

“They had arbitrary rules,” Gates said about his parents. “I didn’t think they could explain why or where their authority derived from. They thought because they fed me that there was some inherent slave status.”

Gates said that two years with a therapist, from age 11 to 13, helped work out that need to give his parents a hard time. He buckled down at school and seized on his mathematics prowess. Asked about his perfect score on the SAT, Gates said dryly, “A lot of people get that,” to which an audience full of people, who did not “get that,” laughed.

Keep reading for more highlights from the conversation:

Dumpster diving: Gates and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen would raid the garbage at Digital Equipment Corp. for printed software listings to learn more about how to program a PDP-10 mainframe computer.

“I’m in [the garbage] with the coffee grounds, finding these listings,” Gates said. “And slowly but surely, we got the entire operating system listing, which was unbelievable, and fairly cryptic at first. But we’ve got a lot of time on our hands, and we’re obsessed. … I didn’t do sports.”

Playing to a Seattle/UW crowd: Gates mentioned that Allen was ahead of him in school, and after finishing a year at Washington State University, Allen was “kind of bored.”

“Well, it’s WSU, I mean … ” Nye said to audience laugher. “I kid! It’s a joke!”

Leaving Harvard: Allen’s purchase of a 1975 copy of Popular Electronics magazine heralding the arrival of the Altair 8800 and personal computing was the spark that ended Gates’ formal education pursuits.

“We’re like, ‘Oh my god, it’s gonna happen. This is it. It’s gonna happen without us,'” Gates said.

He added, “I enjoyed Harvard and there were interesting people around. They gave me good grades. But Paul … won the argument. As soon as this [magazine] comes out, I know we got to go. We got to lead this software revolution.”

All the luck: “You had the insight to start a company and to sell software from your software factory — that is amazing,” Nye said. “You were in the perfect place with the perfect ability and the perfect background, and with respect, the perfect parents.”

Gates agreed: “The luck is mind blowing, that everything was lined up.”

Billionaire pursuits: Nye’s biggest cheer of the night came when he asked Gates about what Gates was not pursuing. “So, you’re a billionaire. Our society is lousy with them now. But you do not have a rocket company,” Nye said, in reference to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

Gates countered by explaining his focus on solving problems on Earth.

“As fascinating as it is to know what’s out there — you know, I watched all that Carl Sagan stuff — the thing that caught my attention was, ‘Why do children die?'” he said. “I think SpaceX is very amazing, this thing where you recover the stages and you lower the cost and all that.”

He added, “But you know, for me, the thing that’s really fulfilling is that millions of children who are now not only surviving, but because of what we’re doing with nutrition, they’re thriving.”

Gates and Trump: Staying on the topic of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, Gates revealed that he met again this week with President Trump, and pleaded with Trump to maintain critical polio and HIV work being done by USAID, one of numerous federal agencies being targeted for gutting or shut-down.

Are you experienced? Nye concluded by asking Gates about one sentence in particular in “Source Code” in which Gates wrote,”That was one of the last times I took LSD.” “That was a thing with you?” Nye asked.

“Well, Paul … ” Gates began.

As the audience roared, Nye seized the moment, ending the discussion right there. “Thank you, Bill!”

Related:

• Bill Gates’ book ‘Source Code’ is a surprisingly candid memoir of the Microsoft mogul’s early years
• Interview: Bill Gates on his early years, key influences, and outlook on the world today

Whether or not you subscribe to the notion that the “Seattle Freeze” is definitely a real thing, there was no denying the realness of a giant bear hanging out near Amazon’s offices in South Lake Union on Wednesday.

OK, so the bear was fake, and was actually a guy in a bear suit, but it looked real and cute enough to stop tech workers and others in their tracks along Terry Avenue at lunchtime.

And that was the point. To stop and engage, smile, connect. And to disrupt the status quo that says Seattle puts off a chilly vibe to newcomers and can be an unwelcoming place.

“I’ve never seen Terry Avenue this lit up!” said Lakshmi B., an Amazon vet and a volunteer with U.S. Chamber of Connection, a new civic organization that is using Seattle as its pilot city in a bid to help repair the social connections that it believes are lacking in modern society.

Over the course of two hours on a cold and grey day, dozens of people stopped to hug the bear, give it a high five, snap a selfie or pose for photos taken by co-workers. Dogs barked at the bear and sniffed at its legs. A pair of workers said they spotted the bear from their office above the street and had to come down to see what it was all about.

Charlotte Massey, director of community building at Chamber of Connection, said the bear’s biggest success prior to Wednesday was hanging out at the Ballard Farmers Market.

“People are ready to hug,” she said.

Asked if he was ready to hug, Aaron Chasan, the guy in the bear suit, said, “Yes, absolutely.”

As the bear moved in a small circle, trying its best to give big hugs and side hugs, Massey shouted to anyone willing to listen on their walk past. Plenty of people breezed right by, either exhibiting Freeze tendencies or because they were actually freezing on a 40-degree day in January.

“We’re trying to turn the Seattle Freeze into the Seattle Bear Hug!” she said. “We’ll make Seattle the most welcoming city in the U.S.! That’s the goal!”

As Amazon has grappled with the thorny issue of bringing corporate and tech workers back to the office five days a week, many in its ranks have expressed little to smile about. They’ve protested a loss of remote-work flexibility and a return to time-sucking commutes.

But the bear wasn’t out there to cheer up the RTO crowd — as much as that appeared to be working. The hope was that the Chamber of Connection could show people how nice it can feel to pick your head up from a phone, or slip off your headphones and say “hi” to a stranger. Even a large furry one.

And the group was actively promoting “Seattle Welcome Day,” a monthly interactive, community-driven event aimed at newcomers and people who feel like newcomers in the city, to help foster connections with others who share similar interests and goals. The events are held Saturdays at Town Hall, and the next one is Feb. 8.

Ashley Brunner has been in Seattle for about 12 years, and she called the Seattle Freeze “super real.”

“It took me a while to build a community in Seattle. I just had to find my places,” said Brunner, who works at Amazon. “It can take some time to make friends, and this is especially a hard time of year, as people want to be inside. With the lack of sun I don’t feel like people are as social or friendly in general.”

Brunner said she thinks people are eager to make connections, and she referenced studies that stress how our happiness is directly correlated with the amount and quality of friendships that we have.

“I know it can be challenging to break in, especially with more established communities,” she said. “So to have a space [like Chamber of Connection] where newer folks can all come together to connect, sounds like a good idea.”

She also said it was good to step out of her “little bubble” every day.

“It’s nice to have these little engaging moments to just change it up and make it a little bit more fun coming into work,” Brunner said.

BB Santiful has been at Amazon just six months, and after 27 years in Seattle he said he’s never personally experienced the Freeze. But he hears about it all the time.

“All my interactions with the people I’ve met in night life, or just in general, have always come across so nice and genuine,” Santiful said. “So when people talk about Seattle Freeze, I personally have never seen it.”

John Baltazar moved from Southern California and has been at Amazon two years.

“Trying to meet local folks here is definitely tough,” said Baltazar, adding that he thinks it’s easier to connect with fellow transplants. But he often finds they don’t stay long-term and he has to “start all over, friendship wise.”

But he does plan to stay.

“It’s started to grow on me. First three months, it was depressing, but as soon as I got more outdoorsy and explored outside of Seattle, I started loving it,” Baltazar said.

Keep scrolling for more photos:

Barnes & Noble is back in downtown Bellevue, Wash., and book lovers turned out Wednesday for a grand opening to show their appreciation for the longtime chain’s return — and for the continued ability to browse a physical bookstore in the age of Amazon.

Before closing in 2022, Barnes & Noble operated a store in the city’s urban core for 29 years. The company has a store in Bellevue’s Crossroads shopping center, 2 1/2 miles away. The new location, in Bellevue Square, is part of the company’s resurgence as it experiences strong sales and opens new stores across the U.S. following years of closures.

The bookseller expects to open over 60 new bookstores in 2025, including five this month. Another location is opening in Issaquah, Wash., next month.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said Bellevue store manager David Rossiter, a 20-year Barnes & Noble veteran, when asked about the company’s newfound success. “To me, when I walk into a mall or town square, I’m always like, ‘Where’s the fun location to shop?’ That’s how I feel about our stores.”

Amazon, which accounts for more than 50% of the book market, got its start as an online bookseller. On its way to disrupting multiple retail verticals, the tech giant’s e-commerce dominance took a toll on physical bookstores, including Barnes & Noble. Amazon even opened physical Amazon Books locations, a concept that lasted about seven years before they were shut down in 2022.

Barnes & Noble has also faced criticism over the years for pushing smaller, independent bookstores out of business.

In the sprawling mall, the new 8,000-square-foot store maintains an intimate feel, with a variety of book sections and multiple tables featuring thematic displays. There’s also plenty of room for vinyl records, magazines, games, toys and assorted gift items.

The store is also in Amazon’s backyard — the company employs 12,000 corporate and tech workers in the city where it has grown its office footprint considerably in recent years.

GeekWire caught up with several customers for their read on the new store:

Kim Howe of Snoqualmie, Wash., is a fan of Barnes & Noble and physical bookstores, and especially the ability to check out the product she’s buying in person.

“I’m particular, so I get to look at the book and if something’s not correct on it then I go to the next book,” Howe said. “Whereas, if I order it off of Amazon and the book comes and there’s a scratch on it, it’s like, ‘That’s not what I ordered.'”

Jinhua Lou of Bellevue was holding travel books for France and Portugal — by popular Edmonds, Wash., author Rick Steves — as he moved through the store.

“To be honest, I don’t read much, but I like to travel, so that brought me here — I bought some travel books,” Lou said, adding that he also picked up a birthday card for his daughter.

Asked why he doesn’t just use his phone instead of physical travel guides, Lou said he likes the hidden secrets that Steves points out in his books — like a ferry he previously took from Norway to Denmark.

“I could Google the destination, but Rick Steves probably has more experience than AI, I think,” Lou said.

Kay Neill drove up from Federal Way, Wash., where there is a Barnes & Noble location, but she wanted to see the new store. She was a sporting a “May the books be with you” Star Wars-style sweatshirt.

“I like to be able to look at books,” Neill said. “I buy a lot of books online, but sometimes it gives me an idea. I can physically see the book and have a sense of it better than I can just looking at it online. I love to read, and I buy lots of books.”

Peyton McQuain recently moved to Bellevue from Portland, Ore. — a city known for its love of books and the iconic Powell’s bookstore.

“I really love all things printed. I’m an artist, so I’m very connected to that. And I think having something physical is more meaningful in a way,” McQuain said, adding that she enjoys wandering around a physical bookstore to see what she can find.

“I think online you kind of search for something that you already know you want, and it’s easier to explore in a bookstore,” she said.

Cindy Wong helped lead the ribbon cutting at Wednesday’s opening. The self-published author was promoting her first book, “Starhug.”

“It’s amazing,” Wong said of the experience. “[Barnes & Noble] has always been so supportive of local authors,” she said, adding that the chain reminds her of the theme of her book — “the staff are very kind and compassionate; they’re always trying to help people find their inner star by finding the right magical book for them; it’s a very inclusive community; and if people wanted a hug, they could ask them for a hug.”

Marci Larsen drove down to Bellevue Square from Mukilteo, Wash. She frequents the Barnes & Noble at Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood, Wash.

Larsen has a Nook e-reader by Barnes & Noble, and she’ll often visit a store to further explore books so she knows what to download. She loves written staff recommendations on shelves.

“I try to choose something that is an author maybe that I know and love. And I try to do a one off, something that forces me to do something new and different,” Larsen said.

She said she’s a little surprised by Barnes & Noble’s comeback.

“I’m glad,” Larsen said. “That’s part of the reason I give them my business. I want them to stay open.”

Keep scrolling for more images from the store opening:

Forget spending money on ads during NFL games, Amazon should just hand out books to players as a marketing ploy.

After Philadelphia Eagles star A.J. Brown was spotted reading on the sideline during Sunday’s playoff game against the Green Bay Packers, the book — “Inner Excellence” by Jim Murphy — shot to No. 1 best seller on Amazon overnight.

“This step-by-step training manual from one of the world’s top mental skills coaches will teach you how to train your mind like the very best,” reads part of the description for the 2020 book, which previously peaked at 523,497th in Amazon rankings.

“I was not expecting that. A real gift,” Murphy told The Associated Press, adding that his phone started blowing up with texts once his book was spotted on TV.

Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, which includes the tech giant’s online and mobile shopping experiences, posted about the viral moment on LinkedIn on Monday, saying that he grabbed a Kindle copy of the book himself.

While most players and coaches dedicate their sideline time to reviewing plays on a Microsoft Surface tablet, Brown said he often reads — he just happened to get caught by cameras this time. After the game, he posted images of the book on social media with highlighted passages and told reporters about how reading helps him refocus during a game.

Tyler Lockett has run plenty of routes in his 10-season career as a Seattle Seahawks wide receiver. Now he wants to just take a walk — and he’ll do it with a lucky fan’s dog in a new contest launched by Seattle-based pet-sitting company Rover.

“Walk it with Lockett” kicked off on Thursday, and fans can enter by first creating an account on Rover and then emailing a picture of their dog and brief description about why their pup is Seattle’s biggest football fan.

Submissions will be accepted until next week, Jan. 16. One dog and dog parent will get to meet Lockett and go for a walk on Jan. 23. As part of the campaign, Lockett is also donating $5,000 to Seattle Humane.

Lockett and his wife, Lauren, have a pair of Goldendoodles named Chase and Cannon. He’s most interested in seeing how the dogs of Seahawks fans show off their football skills — whether they can run and catch a football, or if they “juke” their owner like a good receiver when they return.

He’s hopeful that the winning dog knows command words and isn’t bigger than he is. No roughing – or ruffing? — penalties, please.

“When you’ve been a Seahawk for so long, you already know that the fans here are crazy,” Lockett told GeekWire. “But you never really hear about how crazy the dogs are. I guess we’re gonna really see as we get this competition underway.”

Founded in 2011 out of a Seattle hackathon event, Rover has expanded over the years beyond dog sitting into cat care, pet grooming, pet gear and more. The company was acquired by asset manager Blackstone in a deal worth approximately $2.3 billion in 2023.

Lockett has a year left on his Seahawks contract, but has acknowledged that his All-Pro career in Seattle may be coming to an end. But he said he still plans to play next season, with the Seahawks or elsewhere.

And beyond walking dogs and getting ready to be a first-time father, Lockett is also busy with his side gig as a real estate agent, a job he got into because he felt like he could evaluate houses as well as he evaluates football players.

We asked him for his quick takes on a few other tech topics (edited for brevity and clarity):

• Views on tech and athlete performance? “The more you play, the more everybody in football has gotten to the point where they focus a lot on the chips that they put on you in order to keep track of your numbers and keep track on how many yards you’re running, or how many explosive movements or explosive cuts that you make within a game. … It’s kind of a double-edged sword when it comes to saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to use this to help you,’ but they can also say, ‘He’s not as explosive anymore, he’s not as quick anymore.'”
• Thumbs up or down on AI? “There’s a lot of cool things about AI that can make everybody more efficient within their jobs. It really depends on what it’s being used for. When you see things on Twitter, people will try to use AI to change photos and stuff, to make it seem like a person is doing something that they’re not. People can’t tell the difference. That’s not gonna benefit anybody in the world.”
• Favorite app these days? “I’m not really on a lot of the apps. If anything, I’m in my [email]. That’s where I get more notifications … people saying they need help looking for a house, or saying they want to work with me.”
• Favorite video game? “We play a lot of ‘Call of Duty’ and a lot of ‘College Football.'”

Searching for “Google” on Microsoft Bing right now (when logged out) brings up a search experience that looks a lot like Google, with a graphic akin to one of the search giant’s signature Doodles, but is actually still Microsoft Bing.

The results page automatically scrolls down slightly, hiding the Microsoft logo.

This doesn’t happen when logged into a Microsoft account in the browser.

The fine print under the search box does reference Microsoft Bing, in the context of a charitable initiative related to search queries.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but Microsoft spoofing the Google homepage is another tactic in its long history of tricks to confuse users & limit choice,” writes Google Chrome VP/GM Parisa Tabriz, in a post on X. “New year; new low @Microsoft.”

The Verge calls it “a clear attempt from Microsoft to make Bing look like Google for this specific search query.”

Windows Latest first spotted the situation, describing it as a “genius move to keep you from Google search.” It’s part of a larger pattern by Microsoft to get Google users to switch to Edge and Bing, taking advantage of their positions as the default browser and search engine in Windows.

GeekWire sent a message to Microsoft seeking comment.

Microsoft faced antitrust claims in the 1990s over allegations of preferential treatment of its Internet Explorer browser in Windows. More recently, Google’s position in the search market has been under the regulatory microscope.

Google’s search market share is around 90%; Bing is in the single digits.

Sounding like veterans of the tech industry that they are hoping to better collaborate with, the co-founders of Seattle-based Future Arts have their sights set on a “big, hairy, audacious goal” (BHAG).

The 3 1/2-year-old women-led nonprofit was founded as a way to bridge the tech-arts wage gap and to strengthen the connections between those working in tech and those creating tech-infused art in the city.

The big goal is to have an artist-in-residence at every tech company in Seattle in 10 years. They’re particularly interested in targeting startups on the GeekWire 200 — our ranked index of fast-growing companies in the Pacific Northwest.

“If we’re really looking at Seattle to be the leader in tech arts, tech media, tech innovation and culture, that’s what we’re interested in,” said Yuliya Bruk, Future Arts co-founder and executive director. “We know for a fact that residencies work in terms of community engagement, cultural development, vibrancy in a creative economy.”

Bruk is leading the organization alongside Anna Czoski, the creative technology director. Both are graduates of the University of Washington’s Digital Arts and Experimental Media program.

Czoski was focused on computer animation, games and mechatronic art in college. She spent time in the game industry and UX design and founded a short-lived VR company. Bruk has a background heavy in photography and filmmaking.

When the tech boom in Seattle reshaped the landscape and pushed art spaces out of South Lake Union and elsewhere, Bruk said she decided she needed to go to Amazon and to “the belly of the beast” to better understand what artists were up against. She spent more than seven years at the tech giant in marketing/advertising roles.

As Seattle has emerged as a leading city in attracting workers skilled in the latest technologies, median earnings for tech workers hit record highs of $157,000 in 2023. That’s more than double what artists in Seattle make. And Future Arts sees a city in danger of losing more of its cultural and creative identity.

“We’re an amazing incubator for creativity and creatives. And then they leave to New York, they leave to L.A.,” Bruk said. “We have to have an environment and ecosystem where folks want to come to Seattle … for interdisciplinary creativity and support and artist residencies. Not just, ‘Oh, it’s an old tech town.'”

Through partnerships, sponsorships, and grants, Future Arts has been able to facilitate a number of programs, initiatives and public art installations for underserved artists working with technology. The nonprofit has a strong focus on youth education and also runs a “hybrid livestream experience” called Future Arts Live! to facilitate conversation and interaction with artists.

In a bid to be able to pay more artists and the people helping to run Future Arts, the organization launched a new membership program called Future Sparks. Monthly contributions as low as $10 are meant to help community members contribute to the cause of supporting the arts and gain access to future events.

Companies such as Amazon, Meta and others have demonstrated a willingness to bring art and artists into their buildings in different ways. Amazon does have an artist-in-residence program, and the company dedicated space in its re:Invent office tower for the new home of Gage Academy of Art.

But Bruk and Czoski think every tech company should be running to have an artist working alongside engineers, developers, program mangers and others. They envision their BHAG as the spark that moves Seattle beyond being just a tech hub.

“We have a beautiful, beautiful city, but its heart needs to keep beating into the future,” Bruk said. “We’ve got to create some new things.”

MrBeast is jumping from YouTube to Prime Video today as the new reality TV competition “Beast Games” premieres on Amazon’s streaming network.

One thousand contestants will compete over 10 episodes for the chance to win $5 million — the largest cash prize in television history, according to Amazon.

The first two episodes dropped at 9 a.m. PT. on Thursday.

Episode 1 starts with contestants entering an arena outfitted in blue tracksuits, each emblazoned with their contestant number. Within 2 minutes, MrBeast is already ready to give away $1 million — or a slice of it — to everyone who taps out before the competition even starts. I won’t spoil how that goes.

MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is the star of YouTube’s most-followed channel, with 337 million subscribers, in which he gets people to take part in extreme stunts and challenges in exchange for prizes. He is serving as host and executive producer of “Beast Games.” 

“I poured everything I have into this show,” MrBeast said on X on Nov. 25, adding that he spent over a year creating the series, “breaking 40 world records, building the craziest sets in entertainment history.”

MrBeast and Amazon were sued earlier this year by five contestants who alleged workplace abuses including unpaid wages and sexual harassment. The class-action suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in September, states that the participants were subjected to “chronic mistreatment” and neglect while filming the show.

Move over, Oprah. Panos Panay is the new king of daytime giveaways.

“You get a Kindle, and you get a Kindle!” Panay should have barked from inside a banana stand at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters on Monday as the company’s senior vice president of Devices and Services handed out his new baby.

In a video posted on Instagram on Monday, Panay peeled away from his day job and is seen giving away the new Kindle Paperwhite — a $159 item — to employees and members of the public stopping by for a free banana at the trailer located between the Spheres and Amazon’s Day 1 office tower on 7th Avenue.

“What is it?” one woman asked.

“What is it?” Panay replied. “It’s the fastest Kindle we’ve ever shipped. It’s also the thinnest one.”

“This is your first banana at Amazon? That’s so cool,” he said in the video to one new employee. He engaged with another over the Kindle’s sustainable packaging, another over the name of his dog, and another who works on the Kindle team. One guy even bonked his free Kindle off a nearby garbage can.

“Just throw it across the room, it’d be fine,” Panay joked. (Hey, this isn’t the NFL and that’s not a Surface tablet.)

Amazon said Panay staffed the banana stand for 20 minutes. The company called it a surprise giveaway, and said that there are no specific plans for future giveaways at this time, Amazon is “always looking for fun ways to engage with our community.”

Panay, who made a surprise departure from Microsoft more than a year ago to join Amazon, heads up the division that includes the e-readers as well as the Alexa voice assistant, Echo devices, Fire tablets, Zoox self-driving taxis, Eero wireless networking devices, Ring and Blink cameras, Fire TV devices, and Kuiper, the company’s nascent satellite internet business.

And now, bananas.

Related coverage:

• Podcast: Amazon devices chief Panos Panay on the color Kindle, AI, and his first year on the job
• Amazon unveils first color Kindle, and new Kindle Scribe with ability to write directly in books
• Hands-on with the new Kindle Colorsoft: Is Amazon’s color e-reader worth the premium price?

The drones arrived in Seattle over the Seahawks game at Lumen Field Sunday night — but they didn’t travel all the way from New Jersey.

The light show at halftime of the game against the Green Bay Packers featured a planned and choreographed drone show in honor of the 12s, the home team’s fan base. The Seahawks called it the first-ever NFL halftime drone show, and it came during a time of increased scrutiny over mysterious drone activity on the East Coast.

More than 500 drones assembled in sky-high formation in Seattle to show off the classic Seahawks logo, the Kingdome, a 12 jersey, Marshawn Lynch’s “Beast Quake” touchdown, the Legion of Boom, Richard Sherman’s famous tip against the 49ers, and more.

NBC “Sunday Night Football” announcer Mike Tirico made mention of the show when the broadcast returned to Lumen Field after halftime.

“I know drones have been in the news,” Tirico said. “This is a planned and a fabulous drone show here to help honor the 40th anniversary of the retirement of the number 12 by the Seahawks to honor their fans.” He called it a “classy, impressive performance.”

Drone flights of unknown origin have been sparking concern and conspiracy theories in New Jersey, where sightings have been happening around that state for a few weeks. Near Eugene, Ore., pilots reported seeing unidentified lights moving at extreme speed in an incident earlier this month.

The White House, working with senior officials from the FBI, Pentagon, FAA and other agencies, sought to assure people that the New Jersey drones are not a national security or public safety threat or the work of a malicious foreign actor, according to The Associated Press.

President-elect Donald Trump had his own theories about what’s going on, saying Monday “the government knows what’s happening” and “something strange is going on.”

Drone light shows have been a regular experience in recent years at sporting events and other public gatherings.

Sunday’s show was produced by Sky Elements, a Fort Worth, Texas-based company that has put on previous shows in Seattle. It was the company’s first NFL game.

“Almost all of our shows have some level of complexity and the Seahawks game was no different,” Sky Elements Vice President Kyle Pivnick said in an email to GeekWire, adding that there were a lot of logistical hurdles for legal approval of the show. “We approach each and every show as if we are on the world stage, and for the Seahawks game last night, it felt like we were in the pocket of our usual operations.”

The Seattle Mariners have had baseball-themed shows at T-Mobile Park. And the team was up in lights near the Space Needle during All Star Game festivities in 2023.

Drones have also become part of the New Year’s festivities at the Needle, as an added compliment to the annual fireworks show.

A drone show during Fourth of July celebrations south of Seattle near SeaTac, Wash., went awry this summer when 55 of 200 drones used in a light show descended into Angle Lake and sank.

Check out more photos from Sunday’s show:

Microsoft’s hometown is now home to an especially geeky snowplow.

Residents of Redmond, Wash., chose “Ctrl + Salt + Delete” as the runaway favorite among monikers submitted for its fleet of five plows.

With the tech giant’s headquarters occupying some of the 152 miles of Redmond roads that are plowed during snow events, the contest was sure to draw submissions from techies. Perhaps they even tap-tapped their name ideas on keyboards featuring the very name that would win.

In a news release this week, the city called it a “fitting name to represent one of the world’s greatest tech hubs.”

Other winning names included: Scoop Dogg, Snow-begone Kenobi, The Big Leplowski, and Betty Whiteout.

Redmond officials said more than 580 participants offered up 482 unique names, which were narrowed to 14 by city staff before residents selected up to five of their favorite names.

The names will be painted on snowplow doors and this winter the city says it will introduce a new live plow-tracking map for the community to follow plow activity.

Redmond says it applies liquid calcium deicer when an overnight freeze is forecast, to prevent ice from forming. When snow starts falling, plows apply mixtures of calcium chloride, road salt and sand, depending on surface conditions.

FOB Sushi Bar is reopening its restaurant locations in Seattle and Bellevue, Wash., on Tuesday morning, two weeks after closing to review food safety standards after a popular food critic’s TikTok video sparked concerns that a worm was visible in raw fish he was eating.

“After a brief, voluntary closure, we have thoroughly reviewed our restaurant’s supply chain, food suppliers, food storage, and safety protocols, and confirmed that all ingredients are safe for consumption, in compliance and up to code, and we look forward to serving you delicious sushi once again,” FOB Sushi said in a statement emailed to GeekWire on Monday. The news was also shared on the restaurant’s Instagram feed.

FOB Sushi said that a visit from Public Health – Seattle and King County on Nov. 27 found no food code violations and that the restaurant provided “all necessary paperwork related to parasite destruction” in the fish it serves.

FOB said its Belltown neighborhood location where TikTok creator Keith Lee bought his meal continues to have an “excellent” food safety rating from Public Health, the highest in the agency’s four-tiered food safety rating system. Health investigators will return at an unannounced time and date after the chain reopens for an additional inspection, and FOB said it remains fully cooperative with the agency.

Lee, a Texas-based social media personality with more than 16 million followers on TikTok, posted a video of himself eating sushi in Seattle during a visit to the city in which he dined at a number of eateries. In his review, now viewed more than 21 million times, viewers said they spotted movement of a possible worm in the fish.

FOB initially pushed back on the claim, saying on Instagram that “the movement in the video is due to natural elasticity in the fish — not worms.” The restaurant argued that such rumors could be harmful to a small business.

But on Nov. 18, FOB closed its two locations voluntarily to investigate the matter, writing that customer health and safety were its “highest priorities.”

Lee never got sick, but another TikTok user posted a video in which he said his girlfriend had been hospitalized after eating at FOB Sushi Bar after Lee’s visit. And Lee said that while he didn’t believe in tearing down any business, accountability should be taken if people were getting sick.

“We are so grateful to the Seattle community for helping us navigate this time and are thankful for your continued support,” FOB Sushi said in its statement on Monday. 

A TikTok star who reviews restaurants around the country did a swing through Seattle this month to critique a variety of food, and a popular sushi spot has closed in the wake of one of his videos.

Keith Lee, a Texas-based social media personality with more than 16 million followers on TikTok, posted a review of FOB Sushi Bar on Nov. 9. The self-serve restaurant has locations in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood and in Bellevue, Wash.

The video shows Lee picking about 10 pieces of sushi before he proceeds to eat them all and rate them on a 1-10 scale. Around the 1:50 mark of the video, there’s a closeup of one piece of sushi held in Lee’s chopsticks. Other TikTok users seized on this segment to make their own videos, contending they spotted movement of a possible worm in the fish.

The viral nature of Lee’s initial video, which now has more than 19 million views, and the worm conspiracy videos, caused FOB Sushi to put out a statement on Instagram over the weekend thanking Lee for his visit and stating that claims about worms in the sashimi are “entirely false.”

“The movement in the video is due to natural elasticity in the fish — not worms,” FOB Sushi said. “Rumors like this can harm small businesses, so we’re addressing it head-on. Thank you for trusting us and supporting FOB Sushi.”

By Monday, FOB Sushi had closed both of its locations until further notice, issuing a new Instagram statement in which it said, “Your health and safety are our highest priorities. We are conducting a thorough investigation to address the situation and will take all necessary measures to prevent it from happening again.”

In the meantime, another TikTok user named Joshua Rivera posted a video in which he said his girlfriend had been hospitalized after eating at FOB Sushi Bar after Lee’s visit. In the caption, Rivera asked Lee, “how ur stomach feeling?” In a second video, he offers time-stamped images and text messages to back up his story.

KING5 reported that the King County Department of Health confirmed it had received and was looking into complaints related to the videos.

On Monday, Lee posted a follow-up video addressing all that transpired since his visit, saying that he didn’t believe in tearing down any business, but if someone has been hospitalized and there is “something moving in food, I actually think there is accountability that should be taken.”

Lee said he has had sushi a thousand times and held sushi with a thousand different ways, and “not once have I seen sushi behave in that way. … Again, that’s not me saying it was a worm or that it was a parasite. I’m just saying, it was nothing that I did on my end. I was literally just eating it as a customer.”

During his visit to Seattle, Lee also reviewed King’s BBQ House in the Chinatown International District; an organic apple cider stand at Pike Place Market; Senait Ethiopian Restaurant in Lake City; several teriyaki restaurants; and Hood Famous Bakeshop, also in the ID.

As I pulled away from the Seattle International Auto Show on Thursday during a test drive of the highly anticipated Volkswagen “ID. Buzz” electric van, a driver in a Tesla Cybertruck offered a thumbs up.

It was all the confirmation I needed that the Buzz was going to be the buzzworthy vehicle at the annual show at Lumen Field Event Center.

And perhaps it further signaled some of the fatigue that could be settling in with Tesla and the company’s politically polarizing CEO, Elon Musk. As the company’s dominant U.S. market share finally dips, new buyers appear to be turned off by Musk, and current owners are finding ways to express their displeasure as well.

Joined by Tom Voelk, an auto industry journalist, spokesperson for the show and host of the YouTube channel Driven, I set out to find the Tesla alternatives, and “shop” for five EVs that could rev up potential customers. Here they are:

Volkswagen ID. Buzz

The biggest buzz this weekend is sure to be around Volkswagen’s modern electric take on the classic peace, love and happiness van. It’s the first time the much-hyped vehicle has been available at an auto show in North America and I may have taken one of the first test drives.

“It’s got such a nostalgia about it,” Voelk said when asked what makes the Buzz buzzworthy. “People love the old microbus, but now it’s got this beautiful, modern design. They’ve done a great job with it.”

With a starting price around $60,000 and range of 260 miles, this isn’t a well-worn Vanagon struggling to make it over Snoqualmie Pass on a Sunday drive. The Buzz is immediately recognizable and it definitely turned heads during a short drive around the SoDo neighborhood.

The van is super roomy and sits up high, and there’s a ton of light coming in through the expansive moon roof. The acceleration is shocking, especially for a van with a lineage that includes slow-moving hippie buses.

“I keep looking at this and thinking, ‘If IKEA built a car,'” Voelk said from the passenger seat. “It has that quality and design, but yet, this is obviously not an Audi.”

The Buzz won’t eclipse Tesla — or iconic old VWs — anytime soon, especially in the U.S. There’s a long wait list and there’s only one factory in Germany making them for the entire world.

Chevy Equinox EV

With over 300 miles of range, Voelk liked that the Equinox EV crossover is still affordable. With the federal tax credit, you can get a base model for under $30,000.

“This isn’t a tiny little car,” Voelk said. “This will seat five average-sized adults, relatively comfortably. People complained when [Chevy] took away the Bolt, but this is actually less expensive than the Bolt, and it’s larger. It’s more usable.”

Kia EV9

This is the EV Americans want, in Voelk’s opinion.

“It’s a three row SUV crossover,” he said. “It’s roomy. You can actually put adults in the third row. It easily has a range of 260-270 miles in the real world. Also, if you’re traveling and you have access to a 350kw charger — Electrify America and EVgo — you’re looking at a charge from 10 to 80% in about 22 minutes. Which is pretty fast.”

GMC Sierra EV

Voelk called this giant pickup the alternative to the Cybertruck.

“Frankly, I think this is a much, much better vehicle,” he said. “For starters, the range is over 400 miles on a charge. It’s incredible.”

The truck boasts generous front storage and an internal mid gate that opens to allow for loads of almost 11 feet. And it also has the “best tailgate in the business,” Voelk said. “No contest, in my opinion, this is the best electric pickup you can get.”

Porsche Macan EV

The loaded turbo electric model on display at the Seattle show is about $150,000, but price isn’t really an obstacle when you’re fantasy shopping.

“This is in every way a Porsche,” Voelk said. “It’s super fast. It handles really well. The battery pack is in the floor, which lowers the center of gravity. That’s what Porsche is all about. These things are awesome.”

The Seattle International Auto Show runs through Sunday at the Lumen Field Event Center. Show and ticket info here.

Keep scrolling for more GeekWire photos:

Film and video game fans looking for another escape from reality have a new option in downtown Seattle with the opening this week of the new “Tomb Raider Experience Seattle: Escape from the Temple of Fire.”

The immersive escape room, previewed by GeekWire on Monday, puts players in the world of protagonist Lara Croft, the British archaeologist and treasure hunter, as they have to avoid danger and solve an assortment of puzzles to move from room to room.

The action takes place in an ancient volcanic temple in Chile — accessed via fake helicopter ride, one’s imagination, and an elaborately built-out 4,000 square-foot space at 1122 Post Ave., a block off Seattle’s downtown waterfront.

The experience officially opens on Saturday, and is from Seattle-based Hourglass Escapes, under its banner Hourglass Attractions, in partnership with “Tomb Raider” creator Crystal Dynamics.

Seth Wolfson, owner and creative director of Hourglass Escapes and co-owner of Hourglass Attractions, is a film and theme park veteran who has been designing and operating escape room experiences and video games since 2016.

“I think we surpassed what we wanted to do,” Wolfson said of the build-out, limited in some part by building dimensions. “We’re still kind of a mom-and-pop company. We didn’t have $20 million like you would for a ride at Disney.”

Wolfson thinks the 28-year-old “Tomb Raider” franchise is still a big enough draw to attract tourists and others drawn to downtown Seattle by the nearby Pike Place Market, aquarium, redeveloped waterfront and more.

“We want to be something that can be family friendly,” he said. “It’s educational because you’re doing puzzles. It’s away from screen time for kids. It’s great for team building.”

The first “Tomb Raider” video game was released in 1996, and since then, the franchise has sold more than 95 million copies. There have also been three feature films.

The last time I played the “Tomb Raider” video game was in the late ’90s when the debut title was available for my PlayStation 1. I would spend hours and hours trying to get Lara Croft through various adventures unscathed. In the experience on Monday, it took 90 minutes to move through six rooms.

The puzzles were definitely challenging for our team of five people, and our guide Alex, armed with a touchscreen tablet, definitely broke the fourth wall on occasion to help us along.

The experience is augmented by a good deal of technology along the way, including various video displays, sound and lighting touches, the piped-in voices of Croft and evil scientists, and some realistic haptics including a good amount of shaking on the final escape pod out of Chile.

There is no physical encounter with Croft or any other actors, with the exception of the guide. The experience can accommodate up to 10 people at a time on a team, spaced out every 20 minutes. There are no jump scares of note — the thrill is designed to come from racing the clock to escape each room — but the age requirement is 10 and up. The rooms are mostly filled with blinking lights and props that make the spaces feel like an ancient tomb accented with modern scientific and tech touches.

The attraction, which will employ about 25 people, comes at a time when Amazon is developing a film reboot of “Tomb Raider” as well as a streaming TV series. And it could serve as another way that the City of Seattle hopes to lure more visitors to the downtown core as part of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan.

Wolfson said the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Seattle Association, and Visit Seattle have all been “really, really great” to work with and Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson has been an advocate for the business.

“Tomb Raider Experience Seattle: Escape from the Temple of Fire” will be open seven days a week from 9:20 a.m. to 10 p.m. Prices start at $49.

Keep scrolling for more photos:

Hunter Irving is like a tech time traveler.

Or he’s just a guy who can’t shake the impact that working at Seattle’s former Living Computers: Museum + Labs had on his love for vintage computers.

A former guide and systems engineer at the Paul Allen-founded facility, which announced its permanent closure in June, Irving decided to his marry his expertise with a bit of childhood nostalgia when he came across a 1986 Apple Macintosh Plus in a thrift store.

Now living in Blacksburg, Va., Irving didn’t think twice when he spotted the machine, and he plopped down $150 to take it home.

“When I plugged it in, it failed quite violently and filled my office with smoke,” he said via a call with GeekWire this week. “It was a pretty gross experience.”

A blown capacitor was easy enough to replace, but Irving’s ultimate goal of getting the nearly 40-year-old machine hooked up to the modern internet would take a bit more effort.

Seattle fuels a love for vintage computers

Originally from North Carolina, Irving’s first computer was a hand-me-down from his dad — a Macintosh SE/30, that’s similar to the Macintosh Plus.

Irving studied computer science at Appalachian State University, and first came to Seattle in 2016 to visit a cousin. He knew he had to stay after a visit to Living Computers.

“I went there, spent an entire day there, and I was like, ‘I’ve got to work here,'” Irving said. “And over the next few months I applied to every job posting that they posted, and I eventually got in.”

As a guide, Irving gave tours and interacted with guests. He also helped keep machines on the floor operational, running a boot sequence or using magnetic tape to load operating systems on old equipment. He shadowed members of LCM’s engineering team on restorations, including a CDC 6500, teletypes, and an Apple Bandai Pippin that he helped get working.

Irving left the museum after almost two years for an engineer job at Seattle University, before heading back east for a job at Virginia Tech. He was saddened but not surprised by the eventual permanent closure of LCM.

“It had been closed for so long, I kind of saw it coming,” he said. “It was of course sad to hear that it was all going to kind of be scattered to the wind.”

When Christie’s auctioned computers and other items from Allen’s collection in September, Irving dreamed about bidding on several things, including a PDP-8 Minicomputer and chess set that eventually sold for $35,280.

“While I worked at the museum, I got to design a few different exhibits,” Irving said. “Guests could come and play chess against this machine. If they beat this 1980s chess program, we would take a Polaroid picture of them and put that into a binder, and that was sort of our Hall of Fame.”

‘Like the future meeting the past’

Irving calls himself a treasure hunter. He regularly goes to estate sales and thrift shops, and he’ll often pass on old computers because he doesn’t really need to add to the growing collection in his garage.

“Most of the time you don’t find anything. That’s the thrill of the hunt,” he said. “When you do find something, like a Macintosh Plus, that’s a special day. I had to go for it.”

After replacing the blown capacitor — a procedure he learned from a former LCM systems engineer — Irving caught up on some games he played as a kid. But he soon wanted to connect to the internet. And while he figured out a relatively simple solution for that via a BlueSCSI hard drive emulator and Raspberry Pi Pico chip, actually browsing web pages was more involved because of modern HTTPS.

All that nitty gritty is explained in a 14-minute video (above) that Irving uploaded to his YouTube channel.

There are existing solutions to get vintage Macintoshes online, including the tool MacProxy, but “modern web pages just really aren’t designed with vintage computers in mind,” Irving said.

So he built his own tool, called MacProxy Plus, which translates and simplifies things to make it possible to view sites such as Reddit, Wikipedia, NPR.org, WayBack Machine, and more, as well as a reasonable facsimile of YouTube called “(not) YouTube” that (very slowly) plays videos.

Everything is documented on a GitHub page where Irving shares all of his code, because he wants others to have the same fun and breathe life into vintage machines everywhere.

“The end result is something that I feel would have been right at home in Allen’s museum,” Irving said.

And in 2024, when artificial intelligence and generative AI are the buzzwords of our time, Irving’s project has even allowed him to run OpenAI’s ChatGPT on the vintage interface, looking as if it were created in the 1980s.

For kicks, I asked ChatGPT if I could run the AI software on a 1986 Macintosh Plus computer. GPT replied that it was not possible due to limitations including hardware, the operating system, and lack of internet access.

ChatGPT, update your data collection and meet Hunter Irving.

“What’s cool about it is it shouldn’t be possible, it shouldn’t be able to exist,” Irving said. “It’s like the future meeting the past. It’s a time machine that shocks you a little bit initially, and then you’re like, ‘Whoa, OK, this is kind of fun.'”

Shivaas Gulati needed a break.

More than 11 years after helping to start Remitly, the Seattle digital remittance company, Gulati said building a tech company had taken its toll. In 2022, he moved with his family to London to step back and recharge and see how a couple years away would feel.

Energized and starting to think again about the passions and hobbies that excite him, Gulati zeroed in on something earlier this year.

“One day I was like, ‘I see a lot of football,” he said, using the more ubiquitous term for soccer outside of the U.S.

He began to explore where his passion for sports and soccer could intersect with his tech background, seeking to better understand how soccer clubs are run, what the business challenges are, and if and how they use technology.

“Tech is everywhere,” Gulati said. “Every company uses it in some way or the other. And sports is no different.”

After talking to numerous clubs, Gulati seized on the opportunity to join an ownership consortium that purchased Southend United, a football club founded in 1906 and located in Southend-on-Sea, about an hour from London. The team competes in the National League — the fifth tier of English football, in which the Premier League is tops.

The announcement was made official on Friday, and with his investment and board seat, Gulati becomes the 11th member of the consortium — dubbed Custodians of Southend United.

Gulati has also returned to Seattle where he remains plugged into Seattle’s tech scene. The longtime angel investor recently joined the board of Foundations, an organization to support startup founders with shared workspace, mentorship and more.

But from a distance and via frequent trips back to England, Gulati will pursue his soccer passion and use his background to help guide a more robust technology adoption at Southend. As with teams in Seattle, such as the Sounders and others, that translates to advances on the playing side — wearables, player analytics, game analytics, scouting, recruiting — and the business side — fan engagement, commercial opportunities, strategic partnerships, etc.

“We can reach every fan individually in a personalized way today that wasn’t possible a decade-plus ago,” Gulati said.

And artificial intelligence, as it seems to be doing across every other industry and business, will play a role. Gulati said the more forward-thinking organizations are already considering how to invest in and use AI.

“If you think about a startup’s journey, you have an idea, you prototype it, you test it for a few months, and then you start to grow it, and you want to hit product market fit,” he said. “I think AI and sports will be similar, where clubs will start testing it, and then they’ll hit product market fit with that initiative, and then it’ll take off.”

Half a million people live in Essex County where Southend is based, Gulati said. To engage with and deepen the relationship with that potential fan base, he’s thinking about software and AI.

“I don’t have to go out and hire a team of, let’s say, performance analytics, people,” he said. “I can build those things in house and have AI help us to augment our coaching staff or uncover new business opportunities in the region.”

Gulati and Justin Rees, an Australian entrepreneur who is chairman of the consortium, even used AI to bypass lawyers and draft Gulati’s purchase agreement and contracts.

Sports businesses are not any different than any other business, in Gulati’s view. Challenges such as strategic alignment, execution, tracking goals, measuring performance, coming up with metrics, coming up with ideas — those same problems exist in a football club.

And there are a lot of similarities in terms of execution.

“The same kind of grit, tenacity, planning and iteration you need in a startup or a tech company, I hope to bring all that to Southend and use that as an advantage,” Gulati said.

In an age when a smartphone or an AI voice assistant can provide the answer to nearly any math-related query, it’s fascinating to imagine using a hand-held calculator built from a collection of intricate moving parts.

Now picture that device being designed by a prisoner in a German Nazi concentration camp during World War II, with few resources and the specter of death permeating everything.

Curt Herzstark’s famed invention is the Curta calculator, a selection of which will be on display starting Sunday at the Holocaust Center for Humanity in Seattle.

Herzstark first started developing the Curta in Austria in the 1930s. His work stopped in 1938 when the Nazis ordered Herzstark’s company to help manufacture equipment for the German army.

In 1943, Herzstark was imprisoned at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was eventually allowed to resume design work on the Curta with the promise that it could earn him his freedom after the war. The camp was liberated by U.S. forces in 1945 and Herzstark went on to manufacture the world’s leading portable calculator until the 1970s and the arrival of electronic calculators, like the HP-35.

Don Rosen, a mechanical engineer and collector of the devices, will speak about their importance at the Holocaust center. A Seattle native whose grandfather started Alaskan Copper Works in 1913, Rosen, 87, still works at the business as an engineering manager.

“I had an interest in the Curta calculator because Curt Herzstark had a background similar to my own,” Rosen said. “He worked for his family business, and he was a mechanical engineer, and so on. And I thought to myself, ‘I want to preserve a few of these things just to have them and give them to my grandkids.'”

Here’s a YouTube video explaining how the Curta works:

Rosen said interest in the Curta spiked around January 2004 after an article in Scientific American titled “The Curious History of the First Pocket Calculator.” With the advent of eBay, people could start selling and acquiring the devices, and today Curta prices on the site average around $1,500.

Between 1948 and 1972, there were 140,000 Curta calculators manufactured, according to Rosen, and he said he bets there are about 3,000 of them left. He has 71 or so, ranging from the fourth oldest one known to exist, some of the very last ones made, and a lot in between. His are all museum quality.

“That was the fun of it, to restore them,” Rosen said. “A lot of people were curious and took them apart and couldn’t put them back together. It’s made like a watch, and it feels like a watch when you turn it.”

The device fascinates Rosen because it was all designed by one person who figured out how to miniaturize what was anywhere from 35-pound to 45-pound desktop-style calculators at the time.

“The design of the parts was done from memory in Buchanwald,” Rosen said of Herzstark. “He not only had to draw it, he had to put on the tolerances, and he had to select the materials. And he was doing that without any books or any knowledge. He had a fantastic memory.”

Don Rosen will speak about the Curta exhibit at the Holocaust Center for Humanity on Sunday, Nov. 10, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. The center is located at 2045 2nd Ave. in Seattle.

Learn more about Curta calculators here or here.

Dreams apparently do come true, for more than one singing janitor.

Amazon’s new holiday ad, titled “Midnight Opus,” tells the story of a theater janitor whose vocal talent is discovered by his colleagues as he sings his way through a shift, polishing mirrors and mopping the stage floor.

“What the world needs now, is love, sweet love …”

An usher with a smartphone opened to the Amazon app is among those who can help deliver that love, as she purchases a tuxedo jacket for the janitor. Others work behind the scenes to set up the stage for a performance, and when the jacket is delivered to the theater and then to the janitor, his singing dream is truly realized in front of co-workers in the theater’s seats.

In a story about the ad, Seattle-based Amazon calls the 1965 song “What the World Needs Now Is Love” a reminder “of the enduring power of love, connection, and compassion.”

In an email statement to GeekWire, Jo Shoesmith, Amazon global chief creative officer, said the inspiration behind the ad was the joy we get from doing something special for the people in our lives.

“We all know how wonderful it feels to be the recipient of even the smallest act of kindness — whether that be a thoughtful gift or an encouraging word — and we wanted to bring that ineffable emotion to life,” Shoesmith said.

The theater janitor in Amazon’s ad sounds different, but follows a similar path to the real life Indiana elementary school janitor who won season 19 of NBC’s reality competition show “America’s Got Talent” in September.

Richard Goodall opened his audition by telling the show’s judges that he was a longtime janitor whose passion in life is singing. He said the title of the song he was performing — Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” — speaks for itself, and he proceeded to belt out an impressive version of the 1981 hit.

He went on to perform songs by Michael Bolton and Survivor, and another by Journey, before being backed by the actual band in the finals.

“Before ‘AGT,’ my life was very normal … I would have never thought any of this up. Never,” Goodall told NBC Insider after his win. “You’re just doing what you do. You don’t think you’re all that special. This is something you see in movies, and here I am.”

Amazon said its ad was produced by the company’s internal creative team in partnership with production company Hungry Man. The 90-second holiday spot will begin airing in the U.S. and Canada on Nov. 18 across broadcast TV, video on demand, online video, cinema, and social channels, through December.

Walking through Sea-Tac International Airport this week, I noticed a self-driving, electric wheelchair, on its way back through the concourse after taking a passenger to a gate. Recalling from GeekWire’s prior coverage that it was part of a test deployment, I decided to follow along and record video, to see how it did.

The answer: not so great!

At one point in its journey, the autonomous mobility device was stopped in its tracks by a short yellow tent and bucket, marking a wet floor.

“Excuse me, please step aside,” the wheelchair said repeatedly, until a human nearby took mercy on the machine and removed the obstacles. (I was determined not to intervene, just to see what would happen.)

An Alaska Airlines spokesperson explained via email:

“This is a safety feature. The WHILL chairs are mapped so they have a ‘lane’ they take to each approved point. Temporary obstacles are detected by the sensors, which trigger a standard response. Of course, this is generally a person or their belongings and not an unattended object.”

Turns out this is a known issue, previously documented here.

The wheelchairs are made by Whill, based in California and Japan. The company has been rolling out its devices for test programs as well as regular use at multiple airports in the U.S. and abroad.

Stepping into work never looked this good.

A digital “moment of zen” has taken shape at a downtown Seattle office building, using cutting-edge technology and AI tools to showcase iconic photography from around the Pacific Northwest.

“The Portal” is a new 180-degree art-filled entryway at the redeveloped lobby of One Union Square, a 36-story skyscraper built in 1981. Visitors entering and exiting the building are treated to massive images showcasing the region’s natural beauty and its built environment, from Mount Rainier to the Space Needle.

The Portal is 14-feet high and 42-feet wide, with walls and ceilings lined with 248 high-resolution LED panels that offer super high image resolution. For comparison, a high-end HDTV performs at 4K wide, while the Portal offers the equivalent of 13K wide, maintaining color and sharpness from any angle around the entryway.

Conceived by building owner Washington Holdings, the Portal was developed by Bellevue, Wash.-based Lightspeed Design, a longtime visual effects company that performs a variety of creative and technical work.

“This is a really exciting thing, because it’s embedded in the building. It’s part of the building,” said Chris Ward, president of Lightspeed Design, during a recent GeekWire tour of the display.

Lightspeed previously worked with the Space Needle to enhance a live New Year’s Eve fireworks display with a layer of augmented reality effects.

The Portal doesn’t just feature static images blown up to fill the desired space. Throughout a roughly 45-minute iteration of a 50-image “show,” panning and scanning across images is achieved in extreme detail with the help of artificial intelligence. Lightspeed relies on tools from Topaz Labs, makers of photo and video editing software.

“The AI has allowed us to do something new,” Ward said. “We would have done this years ago, and it would just look different. This is now allowing us to maintain the integrity of the original photography as it gets blown up to 13K.”

At one point, an aerial image shot high over Lake Union zooms way in on some of the houseboats and people swimming below, creating surprisingly sharp subcomponents of the main image.

“Mostly, it’s enhancing what’s there, and interpolating a blob into a smaller, sharper blob,” said Lightspeed art director Bob Mueller. “It doesn’t know what it’s looking at for the most part, but it knows through millions of images that it’s been trained on what this kind of blob should have looked like.”

Ward called AI a valuable tool that supports the artists and actually enhances their work.

“It’s not actually in competition with people,” he said. “I think people view AI in this suspicious manner in the creative community.”

Alongside photographs and videos there are real-time simulations mixed in, such as randomly generated sky and cloud formations. The simulations accurately update the position of the sun (and at night, stars) for Seattle’s exact day and time at The Portal’s exact longitude and latitude.

Washington Holdings has invested more than $120 million in upgrades to tenant-facing spaces of One and Two Union Square. The current renovation of One Union is by Seattle-based architecture firm GGLO.

The Portal does not produce any sound, and the only type in the display is credits to the artists and photographers. The Union Square website contains a list of those whose work is involved, with organizations such as the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, NASA, MOHAI, Seattle Public Library, and the Space Needle granting usage permissions.

From the courtyard outside, especially at night, the entryway could be viewed as a dynamic new piece of public art in the city.

Washington Holdings CEO Craig Wrench said the goal was “to create a visual, and perhaps unexpected, moment in the building where tenants and guests might be moved in a positive way as they passed by or through it.”

Standing in The Portal, between the glass exterior and interior walls of One Union Square, I watched as office workers came and went past the immersive display. Some moved through it heads down on phones or hurriedly to their next appointment. Others clearly took in the few seconds of whatever image was onscreen during their passing — the Blue Angels flying overhead; a crashing coastal wave; an owl in a forest; fireworks bursting over the Space Needle.

“Even if they don’t consciously see it, they’ll subconsciously see something of beauty,” Mueller said of those passing through.

Keep scrolling for more photos:

The New York gossip sites are abuzz over Melinda French Gates’ love life this week, as the billionaire Seattle philanthropist was spotted holding hands with her new entrepreneur boyfriend.

Page Six published photos of French Gates with Philip Vaughn after the two stepped off a helicopter in New York and later when they stepped out for dinner in Midtown Manhattan.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Vaughn is a Seattle-area tech vet who spent more than eight years at Microsoft as a program manager. He left in 2008 and started Raveable, a hotel reviews website that is now shut down. Vaughn also served as a mentor with Techstars in Seattle and was a founder and managing partner at Innovation Arts Group.

In 2013, Vaughn founded Tavour, a Seattle-based craft beer delivery app, where he is currently the chairman.

French Gates and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates announced their divorce three years ago after 27 years of marriage.

In June, she resigned from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — now Gates Foundation — to pursue her own philanthropic efforts mainly focused on women and families. Pivotal Ventures, French Gates’ independent company, is overseeing her giving initiatives. 

Earlier this month, she launched Action for Women’s Health, a $250 million open call that aims to reach organizations from around the world working to address women’s physical and mental health.

Bill Gates reportedly began dating girlfriend Paula Hurd some time ago, and they made their red carpet debut in April at the 10th annual Breakthrough Prize Ceremony in Los Angeles.

Want to spend a few nights in Hawkins, Ind., circa 1983? You can get there via the Atlanta area, 2024.

The house used for exterior shots in “Stranger Things” — home to the Byers family on the popular Netflix series — is now owned by Seattle-based real estate startup Arrived Homes, which officially launched the property as an Airbnb listing on Tuesday.

Arrived has painstakingly recreated the interior sets from the show, from the Christmas lights/alphabet wall in the living room to the retro decor in Will and Jonathan’s bedrooms, to the kitchen and game room.

Fans of the show can not only stay in the house and feel immersed in the Upside Down, they can own a piece of the property for as little as $100. Arrived, which launched in 2020, uses crowdfunding to help anyone purchase shares of rental properties. The idea is to open up access to real estate investing beyond wealthy individuals and institutional investors, and use technology to help identify and manage rental properties.

Arrived bought the home, roughly 15 minutes from the Atlanta airport, almost two years ago. The startup paid $400,000 for the house and spent another $500,000 or so in renovations, calling in professional set designers who worked on the show to recreate the look.

“It’s a crazy old house,” said Arrived COO Alejandro Chouza. “I’ve always been a big ‘Stranger Things’ fan, so it’s kind of like my pet project.”

Chouza said with other rental properties, Arrived would usually run data on AirDNA to get comparable property analysis for pricing purposes.

“There’s nothing like this on the market,” he said, adding that he expects the Airbnb rental rate to be about $350/night on weekdays and $700/night on weekends. The house sleeps eight.

The ultimate goal is for fans of the show to buy into the property and share in whatever income it generates.

Chouza clearly had fun helping find 1980s-era artifacts to help decorate the house. He said he spent months putting together a VHS collection. There are TV Guides and other magazines from the era. And some items, such as a yo-yo in Jonathan’s room, are either glued or bolted down to prevent theft.

During the last couple years that Arrived has owned the home, Chouza said visitors from various parts of the world would regularly stop by to see and take pictures of the house.

Chouza, who previously spent time at Oyo and Uber, co-founded Arrived with fellow tech veterans, including CEO Ryan Frazier (Simply Measured and Sprout Social) and CTO Kenny Cason, (Simply Measured).

The startup has funded 437 properties in 65 markets so far, with more than $200 million invested by 678,000 registered backers on the platform.

With the flexibility to go into any market, Chouza said Arrived has been investing aggressively mainly in the Midwest. Even though the company is based in Seattle, Arrived owns no properties on the West Coast, because the unit economics don’t work out.

“One of the benefits of this remote investing is it allows us to really pick the markets where we are more bullish, both on the rental income side, and also on the appreciation over time,” he said.

Arrived has looked at other film-famous homes, including the “Goonies” house in Astoria, Ore., which sold in 2023 for $1.65 million, and the “Home Alone” house in Winnetka, Ill., which sold for $5.25 million this year. Those prices were too steep for the startup.

“Stranger Things” launched in 2016, and the science-fiction series follows a cast of kids and other characters in a fictional town as they battle creatures and elements from an alternate dimension. The fifth and final season will stream in 2025.

Keep scrolling for more photos from the Byers house:

There are surely plenty of things in our modern world that Kurt Cobain might marvel at had he not died in 1994 at the age of 27. We didn’t have the global positioning system on the list, but Helen Mirren did.

The famed British actress made the peculiar reference about the Nirvana singer and grunge icon in an interview with the Evening Standard: “I always say, it’s so sad that Kurt Cobain died when he did, because he never got to see GPS,” Mirren said. “It’s the most wonderful thing, my little blue spot walking down the street. I just find it completely magical and unbelievable.”

Mirren, 79, was making a point about her appreciation for aging, countering with the fact that as much as she loves her GPS spot, she feels grateful to have lived in a world without technology. “I knew a world without technology in a deep and full sense … Human connection was a very different thing back then,” she said.

Variety points out that Mirren has referenced Cobain and what he missed technologically numerous times in the past:

• In 2014, she told Oprah Winfrey, “Look at Kurt Cobain — he hardly even saw a computer! The digital stuff that’s going on is so exciting. I’m just so curious about what happens next.”
• In 2015, she told Cosmopolitan, “I was thinking about Kurt Cobain the other day and he died without knowing the internet, and I’m totally blown away by that.”
• In 2016, she told the Daily Mail, “If I’d died at 27, the age that Kurt Cobain died in 1994, I’d never have even known there was an internet! Incredible things are happening all the time and I can’t wait to see what comes next.”