The Startup Swindlers have a long history of running scams. A Valleywag tipster alerted us to another lawsuit filed against the Pashanin brothers. This time, it's a 2009 lawsuit in which pair were accused of squatting a San Francisco SRO hotel room for three months, once again refusing pay rent or vacate the premises.

The Airbnb squatters want to make sure their "10/10, would squat again" experience lasts as long as possible. Forcing their "host" to undergo months of expensive legal work to evict them was only the beginning. Now the startup swindlers are reportedly wearing disguises to avoid being served an eviction notice.

With Google Bus protests failing to generate the same impact they carried eight months ago, San Francisco's housing activists shifted their energies towards peer-to-peer hoteliers Airbnb and VRBO today.

The two brothers that have been squatting on an Airbnb rental since May have a history of exploiting peer-to-peer startups. Before exploiting California tenant laws to secure months of free rent, they managed to milk nearly $40,000 out of gullible Kickstarter donors. And they're pleased with their racket, saying they "would squat again."

You wouldn't guess it from the ubiquitous subway ads or astroturfing campaigns, but Airbnb's legislative efforts are a little behind the times. For example, the company spent "tens of millions" on a New York "advertising blitz" after a judge first ruled on a subpoena from the state attorney general.

Everyone is saving a buck with Airbnb, from New York sex workers turning apartments into brothels to "XXX Freak Fest" promoters locking down their next venue. Now a pair of Texas brothers have found a new exploit: squatting on vacation rentals.

The Hotels.com of unregulated sublease bedrooms got a big makeover today, and thousands of words have been typed out over how it represents "community," "butts," "belonging," and or some other stuff, I don't know—who read this? It also represents a bad copy job.

The resemblance apparently did not look familiar to any Airbnb employees. In a rare display of design virtuosity, it also kind of looks like a butt. [Image via @SeamusCondron]

New Yorkers agree: Airbnb's subway ad campaign is trying too hard [via Twitter]

Earlier this year, a woman startup founder told me she'd once been hit on, persistently, by Airbnb's founder and chief executive. But she was grossed out, she said, because of his history as a competitive bodybuilder. Wait, what?

The story of how a young programmer named Aaron Swartz convinced celebrated academic Lawrence Lessig that no political progress could be made without first reforming campaign finance is now part of Silicon Valley lore. In May, Lessig launched a radical initiative to address the issue: MAYDAY, a SuperPAC that secured funding from two Silicon Valley billionaires in order to curtail the influence of big money.

The San Francisco Chronicle analyzed local Airbnb listings in order to measure the site's impact on the housing shortage. Among nearly 5,000 listings, two-thirds were entire houses or apartments where the host would not be present, "contradicting" the $10 billion company's self-portrayal as a "sharing economy" service.

Uber and Airbnb should "pay zero attention to government regulations," because "built into these platforms is a far better regulatory system than the government could ever wish to concoct," argues Estimize CEO Leigh Drogen, who missed a few news cycles.

Airbnb is a novel, potentially income-saving measure for people who need to squeeze some extra cash from their homes. And then there are Airbnb users like Eileen Hickey-Hulme, who allegedly rented out her Tribeca pad for triple what she was paying while hanging in the Hamptons.

Airbnb's gearing up to acquihire by the looks of this now deleted job listing. We heard the company is struggling to retain engineers; rumors also swirled around the design team. Okay, sharing economy, time to share what's going on at Airbnb: tips@valleywag.com

Airbnb is finally making good on the food end of the bed and breakfast deal, as the sharing economy hotelier has begun testing a program that would have the site's hosts throwing dinner parties for strangers.

Airbnb hosts in New York are about run into the business end of the sharing economy. According to a newly agreed upon subpoena, the $10 billion rental site will submit anonymized data on local hosts. But if the Attorney General suspects illegal activity, Airbnb will turn over your name, social media account, exact address, Tax ID number and more.

Airbnb is not in the clear yet. In court papers filed today, New York State Supreme Court ruled in favor of the $10 billion rental company and quashed a subpoena for data about illegal Airbnb hosts. However, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman plans to reissue the subpoena this week, narrowing it down to the judge's specifications.