Marco Arment is well-known and well-regarded in Apple fanblogger circles. He's both a developer (he was CTO at Tumblr, and then created Instapaper) and a pundit whose articles often contain footnotes, just like David Foster Wallace. The main thing to know about passionate Apple bloggers and podcasters like Marco Arment is that Rule Number 1 is that you never say anything bad about Apple. That's why today the world of Apple lovers has been shaken to the core — because Marco Arment has violated the prime directive, and declared that Apple's software, well, kind of blows:

They're going to put ads on them.

Henry Ward, the CEO of eShares, recently published a pretty interesting essay on Medium about what a terrible job most startups do when it comes to keeping track of options and equity grants, and how employees at these companies suffer because of it. I suppose we should not be shocked that when people who have never run companies before, or in some cases have never even had jobs before, are given millions of dollars and charged with handling some rather complicated and arcane finance-related chores, things might go off the rails.

This painful and awkward video was published before the holidays, but in all the hustle and bustle you might not have seen it. Nevertheless, you really do need to see this, because it is quite possibly the worst thing ever — an excruciating masterpiece that squeezes a lifetime of kitsch and horror into only five minutes. This video has everything: cheerleaders, ballerinas, old men in wigs and leotards, huge plastic sunglasses, Google Glass, Sailor Moon, bloopers, demented lyrics about marketing.

Obnoxious but waggishly charming tech mogul Elon Musk is 43 years old and getting divorced for the third time. There's a twist this time because the woman he's divorcing is the one he divorced last time. It's like this. Elon married one woman, Justine Musk, and had a bunch of kids with her, then divorced Justine to marry an actress, Talulah Riley, then divorced the actress, then remarried the actress, and now they're divorcing again.

The photo above was published in April, 2013, when Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins announced the Glass Collective, which was going to invest in companies to develop apps for Google Glass, which they said was a "potentially transformative technology." Key word I suppose was potentially. Because now Google Glass is more or less dead, and good riddance to it, though it was entertaining when that woman claimed she was being persecuted for wearing Glass in a bar and then she went all Rosa Parks and the Glass dorks tried to make it a civil rights issue — that was fun. But overall: no. Glass sucked. Now it's done. This is a good thing.

One of last year's great moments in undeserved ego was Snapchat rejecting billions of dollars from Facebook, and allegedly Google, too. Now, straight out of leaked Sony emails obtained by Gawker, we know it was more than the reported number.

A second lawsuit filed in a California court this week accuses Zillow of being an "frat house" which promotes sexual and ageist harassment. This time, a single mother is suing after being fired by Zillow because she checked into a hospital to treat injuries sustained in a car accident.

Zillow has built up a $4.5 billion valuation by amassing an immense real estate database. But a lawsuit filed in a California court accuses the company of cultivating an "adult frat house" culture in which female employees are constantly solicited for sex by co-workers, ranked on their breast size, and fired if they refuse to play along.

Yesterday twelve U.S. Congressmen signed, sealed, and delivered a letter (embedded below) to members of the European Parliament lobbying their counterparts to leave Google alone. According to the Financial Times, at least three letters from American legislators were sent as part of a "rare and concerted public intervention" on Google's behalf.

Blue Bottle, the artisanal coffee retailer popular with hipsters from coast to coast, just informed employees that part-time workers will not receive health benefits, effective January 2015. A tipster reached out to Valleywag with the news and the company confirmed the change.

Clinkle, a well-funded startup run by Lucas Duplan, the Prince Joffrey of mobile payments, recently revealed its $30 million idea. After rounds of layoffs and many setbacks, young Duplan has bestowed the world with . . . a debit card. Not sold? Well how about if Clinkle gives you $20 from its Treat Bot vending machine?

How is Silicon Valley supposed to stay exceptional when its belief system keeps getting debunked? First empirical evidence proved there's no such thing as a meritocracy. Then they had to add a disclaimer that "change the world" may not mean for the better. Now the shortage of tech workers—a phenomenon used to justify both immigration policies and insane perks—"doesn't really exist."

This weekend Airbnb held its first-ever conference for hosts in San Francisco. Inside, executives restated the company's goal to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Outside, local cops allegedly shoved housing activists who were protesting Airbnb's role in the eviction crisis, confining demonstrators into a "free speech" pen.

Earlier today Tiffany Zhong tweeted out a list of "top" offers for undergraduate internships at tech companies. Her use of a single paltry money bag emoji in the caption barely cover$$$$$$$ it. The hospital bill for internal organ corrosion after staring directly at this list will be smaller than what these kids cop in a month.

Airbnb, a company that operates as a vacation home middleman, thinks it's under appreciated. In fact, their "hospitality guru" believes the company should win the Nobel Peace Prize.

For years, venture capitalists exuberantly assumed Fab, the online furniture store, could be worth $1 billion, despite mounting evidence that it was difficult to make money off of flash sales. Now TechCrunch reports that Fab may soon be sold to PCH International, an Irish supply chain company, for $15 million "and possibly as much as $50 million."

Silicon Valley is so flush with cash, tech companies are assaulting motorists' eyes with billboards of emaciated engineers for the fuck of it. Bloomberg reports that highway billboards have returned as a coveted status symbol for tech's directionless marketing departments:

When the PayPal cofounder came for your period, I did not speak out enough. So I blame myself, really, for this waste of science. According to Inc. magazine, two male bio-hackers just "previewed plans for a new probiotic supplement that will enable women to change the way their vaginas smell."

It is called it Sweet Peach, which sounds like a C-list rom-com with a similarly retrograde view on the priorities of the contemporary human female. If there was any doubt whether Austen Heinz and Gilad Gome, the duo who presented the peachy probiotics, were trying to enhance the female body or fix it, consider their other olfactory targets:

Facebook's fleet of shuttle bus drivers will vote today on whether to join the Teamsters labor union. The drivers have protested their work conditions, saying their employer requires them to work 15.5 hour-long split shifts, receive pay below the living wage, and say they're "held hostage" for the six hours between shifts when the shuttles aren't running.