Kim Kardashian Illuminati West was on stage with Recode founder Kara Swisher this afternoon at the tech blog's Code/Mobile conference. I have no idea whether she arrived from Calabasas with a list of questions Swisher couldn't ask, but regardless this is one stiletto-heeled step for Kardashian and one giant kick in… » 10/27/14 8:40pm Yesterday 8:40pm

PSA: On today's earnings call Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was saying "eccentric circles" of users, not "concentric circles." Either way, Twitter's stock is down despite meeting expectations. If only Wall Street cared as much about circles as it does about MAUs. » 10/27/14 6:15pm Yesterday 6:15pm

Rob Rhinehart thinks he's hacked food. As the inventor of Soylent, he's managed to replace the inefficient process of chewing food. But his lifestyle is still full of luxuries like water. Now the monkish nu-food mogul is torturing his body to save some H₂O. » 10/27/14 5:26pm Yesterday 5:26pm

In recent months, companies like Facebook, Google, and Yahoo have dialed back their most egregious political donations, pulling support from climate change-denying groups like ALEC and the Chamber of Commerce. But tech firms continue funneling money into right-wing campaigns, and the Silicon Valley liberals who… » 10/27/14 2:30pm Yesterday 2:30pm

It's hard to cast a better clusterfuck—or a worse caricature of Silicon Valley hustle—than what happened to tech investor Jason Calacanis. "Someone hacked my voicemail and changed my outgoing message to get me to invest," he wrote on Instagram yesterday, along with a recording of the new message. » 10/27/14 1:20pm Yesterday 1:20pm

Tech's armada of PR professionals can be their own worst enemy. But their protective shield occasionally hides the chauvinism of tech founders. Otherwise you get dudes like Blake Francis, founder of the question and answer app Need, who tried to buy favorable press from a female reporter with a wildly inappropriate… » 10/24/14 7:00pm Friday 7:00pm

Airbnb is set to be "worth" $13 billion. Having just received a $10 billion valuation in April, the new jump in value comes as the home-renting startup seeks to allow "some of its employees to cash in some of their private stock," the San Francisco Business Times reports. » 10/24/14 3:30pm Friday 3:30pm

Last night, Hewlett-Packard hosted a launch event for its new Helion Development platform at Temple, a nightclub in San Francisco's Financial District. To celebrate cloud computing, the company offered guests a giant fake pink cloud, "loads of light up glow sticks," and a performance by Flo Rida. » 10/24/14 1:30pm Friday 1:30pm

The last time a startup programmer taught a homeless man to code, the naive vanity project failed. A few engineering lessons failed to solve socioeconomic realities and the man was still sleeping in the streets eight months later. But Twitter has higher hopes for its new "learning center" where employees can "teach… » 10/24/14 1:10pm Friday 1:10pm

There's a cool new trend sweeping Sand Hill Road and it's called self-doubt. Just look at your Tweetdeck. Everybody who's anybody is suddenly spazzing out. According to the Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index, confidence levels have chilled for the first time since early 2012. » 10/23/14 6:00pm Thursday 6:00pm

When a small group of disgruntled Facebook users decamped to Ello four weeks ago, a million more people followed looking for The Next Big Thing in Social Networking. But Ello's newcomers didn't find much reason to stick around, and the anti-advertising "Facebook killer" is already fading away into the internet's… » 10/23/14 4:06pm Thursday 4:06pm

Whisper sold itself to the world as the safest place to spill your secrets online, and it turned out that wasn't really true. Now the privacy backlash has reached so far, even this 77-year-old dude cares about it. » 10/23/14 2:30pm Thursday 2:30pm

Facebook's habit for blowing app launches has doomed another debut. Rooms, a pseudo-anonymous forum app that appears to be Reddit crossed with 90s-era forums, was supposed to make a big splash in the press today. Instead, people are taking to Twitter to complain the app has been pulled from the App Store. » 10/23/14 2:20pm Thursday 2:20pm

Mark Zuckerberg has already won the race to become San Francisco's most obnoxious techie homeowner. But a report says another Noe Valley manse owned by a "tech couple" could surpass Fort Zuckerberg as the most expensive property in the neighborhood. » 10/22/14 5:50pm Wednesday 5:50pm