Silicon Valley's leaders usually do a good job finding things to agree on (regulations: bad; disruption: good; workplace diversity: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). But when it comes to campaign finance reform, the tech industry can't make up its damn mind. While Bay Area billionaires are financing super PACs focused on getting money out of politics, they're simultaneously spending millions on their favorite candidates and parties.

USA Today interviewed Justin Edmund, an early employee at Pinterest. The 24-year-old engineer first caught Silicon Valley's attention with a candid personal essay about growing up black, where he said he had "not seen a single technology leader," besides Jack Dorsey "acknowledge the crisis in Ferguson. And why would they bother?"

Scratch "software is eating the world." From the mouth of babes, Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans pulled a new pronouncement: "mobile is eating the world" while "technology" eats all our time and attention.

Multiple traffic lights were molested last night as crowds of fans flocked to San Francisco's Mission District following the Giants' World Series victory. As the riot grew in size and SFPD officers began losing control of the situation, dozens of fires were ignited as helicopters beaming spotlights swarmed overhead.

Since he took control of Apple after the death of Steve Jobs, it feels like the only person who didn't say how Tim Cook is the most powerful gay executive in the world was Tim Cook. Today, he lets it all out.

For much of Ed Lee's first term as Mayor of San Francisco, he enjoyed both the popular support of the public and the financial backing of tech tycoons. Last March, a stunning 65 percent of local voters approved of Lee's handling of the job. Then the Google Bus protests happened, the cost of living kept rising, and evictions hit crisis levels. Within 13 months, Lee's approval rating sunk by 20 points.

Whisper CEO Michael Heyward has turned more forceful in dismissing allegations from The Guardian that his anonymous app was tracking users, including people who opted out of geolocation before sharing their secrets.

Microsoft cut another 3,000 jobs today. Meanwhile former CEO (and current Clippers owner) Steve Ballmer is on stage at a Wall Street Journal conference singing lyrics that Fergie custom-recorded for his new basketball team.

Uber just got caught trying to play the LA Weekly. Within a day of publishing an expose on the company, a "PR handler" representing a former taxi driver contacted the Weekly, looking to publish a piece praising Uber. After the paper did some digging, they discovered the $17 billion startup was trying to plant the story.

When Reddit quietly announced their new Redditmade project last night, we worried it'd be a quasi-Kickstarter knockoff where titillated teenagers crowdfund the release of hacked nudes. But Redditmade is much, much more pitiful: it simply allows Reddit's moderators to hawk depressing merch to the site's volatile masses.

When Benchmark Capital's Bill Gurley first expressed his concerns about "burn rate," the rate at which companies burn through his venture capital, startups started wondering whether they were setting money aflame too fast.

Wall Street wasn't happy with Facebook's latest earnings report. TechCrunch thinks it's because Facebook "refused to break out any data about usage levels of teens, which are widely thought to be abandoning Facebook for apps like Snapchat." C'mon, TechCrunch, where's that fist-pumping Facebook apologia when you need it?

Benchmark confirmed that it has invested* in Tinder, a rumor we reported in August. No details were given about the deal, except that IAC continues to own "a controlling stake," deterring other venture capitalists buzzing around the popular hookup app. *Update: Recode says no money has changed hands, it's a "sweat equity" arrangement:

The Bay Area's tech boom might be benefitting the scores of white men that mainly make up the industry, leaving women and minorities behind. But techies have found a new way to redistribute their fortunes: paying women to service them.

Tech's biggest players have been clamoring for the federal government to reform their immigration policies, demanding the expansion of the H-1B visa program. But tech's current crop of immigrant workers often find themselves "trapped" by "labor trafficking" rings that are rarely held responsible for abuses.

Garrett Camp, cofounder of Uber and Blackjet, has launched a beta test for Reserve, a "digital concierge" that works like a souped-up OpenTable. Solving the problem of getting a table at high-end restaurants has become a real passion project for entrepreneurs lately.

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 the head for tech kind.

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.

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.

With the election fast approaching, Airbnb investor Reid Hoffman is continuing his disingenuous campaign against David Campos as a favor to a pro-Airbnb politician.