To the pronounced horror of some people who work at Google, a cadre of anti-tech-gentrification protestors today surrounded one of the company's private San Francisco shuttles, eventually smashing one of its windows.

Rich Kids of Instagram is being turned into a novel. Coming to an Urban Outfitters discount table near you next summer.

Twitter, quite literally, bought and paid for San Francisco's City Hall, which bled blue last night for the company's holiday party. Looks like Ron Conway's investment in Ed Lee was a real home run! Images via @Stop

Old guard investor Tim Draper made a name for himself with mammoth VC returns on mainstream companies like Hotmail and Skype, then surprised many by retreating from his own firm firm. Now we know why: he's pushing to divide California into six new states, with Silicon Valley as the new separatist jewel of the union.

Blackjet, the Uber for private jets backed by Jay-Z, Ashton Kutcher, Will Smith, and Shervin Pishevar, has laid off most of its employees after additional funding did not come through, reports Boston.com. Last month, we reported that Blackjet was "basically over" and "fucked" and it's hard to see how the company could recover from these revelations from a former employee.

The more Uber's price gouging is contested, the more its defense boils down to pay up, or fuck off. Menlo Ventures investor Venky Ganesan just offered up the most tone deaf version, comparing astronomically priced Uber rides to $200,000 cancer treatments.

Yesterday, during a Senate commerce committee meeting about data brokers—which make $156 billion tracking and selling your personal information—Senator Jay Rockefeller released the damning results of a year-long investigation. "I think it's a dark underside of American life, in which people make a lot of money and cause people to suffer even more."

If you live in the space-silent cultural vacuum of Silicon Valley, you might be surprised by these truths: black people enjoy apps, spend money, and are grossly underrepresented as both creators and consumers of tech. The New Yorker talked to star VC Ben Horowitz, and his eyes are opened.

A totally-not-dsytopian-at-all scene from Google's holiday party, where guests were immediately welcomed by three people wearing face computers.

If you're a startup that's taken investment money from First Round Capital, I'm not sure why you'd agree to participate in this video, unless they're threatening to take the money back. Or maybe they're threatening your family?

As part of a week-long exploration of income inequality in the midst of an economic boom, NPR has matched some faces with abstract dots on a map, demonstrating that you can work for Google and still go hungry.

A new $35 million Series D investment round should stave off worries of money implosion at Foursquare: AllThingsD reports the locational app is newly flush, coinciding nicely with a lovely redesign.

For Uber, this weekend's snowstorm was followed by a shitstorm, of a magnitude that would make most reviled CEOs tuck their tails for a few days. Not Travis Kalanick, the techno-libertarian mastermind at the wheel with invisible hands—he's too busy sneering at his customers.

As expected: NYT reporter Nick Bilton's treacherous Twitter tale has been optioned for the (small) screen—Lionsgate is going to spin it into a TV series, with the same producer as "The Hunger Games," which is oddly appropriate.

Coin, the frivolous wallet gadget that swept the frivolitysphere last month, just issued its first update to pre-order customers. A lot of them are pissed, because the miracle product they paid for doesn't exist yet.

This past weekend, several hundred researchers, students, and hobbyists streamed into Lake Tahoe to attend a conference called Neural Information Processing Systems. NIPS is one of the two machine learning conferences of note (the other is ICML). Acceptance rates are low; prestige is high. Anyone interested in machine learning, statistics, applied math, or data can come to the conference but do expect to be bombarded by 10,000 terms that you don't know, even if you have a PhD.

Candy Crush, the sugary time suck that rots your wallet, was the most downloaded iOS app of 2013. Keep in mind, however, that virality and value are two separate things.

After we wrote about Uber's weekend stupendous, wintry price-gouge-athon, a reader in otherwise lovely Los Angeles left a transit horror story of her own. Here's the brief tale of one woman's very expensive, very short trip to Hollywood.

President Barack Obama just wrapped up a meeting with some of Silicon Valley's brassiest brass. Marissa and Sheryl got very good seats. [Photo: Getty]