Several days ago, a Los Angeles Uber customer decided to leave a party for home early via UberX, the company's affordable taxi replacement. Instead of taking her home, the driver took her on a nightmare ride to an abandoned lot—and Uber doesn't seem to care.

Yesterday, the district attorneys from San Francisco and Los Angeles sent letters to Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar threatening potential legal action, including an injunction to their service unless they make "major changes" regarding background checks and pricing. So where's the usual bombast and bluster about antiquated laws and taxi cartels?

Richard Rosenblatt shouldn't have much to complain about. The former MySpace CEO made a hefty fortune selling a few startups during the dotcom boom before co-founding Demand Media. But the tech titan still thinks Silicon Valley has punished him for living in Los Angeles.

When we first heard L.A. had a members only club for techies like The Battery in San Francisco, we were stoked. More Bling Ring, less Social Network, fingers crossed. But during a visit in March, I was told not to bother sneaking in: "There weren't enough members to support the place."

One good reason to avoid buying a $1,500 privacy-degrading headset is that people will hate you because of it. Another good reason is that you might get threatened with a stun device and robbed.

What's gnarlier than a startup office with a pool and ping pong table five blocks from the Santa Monica beach? Using a nice chunk of the $54 million you raised to inhabit a Venice "fortress" once owned by Anjelica Houston.

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.

When you can afford something like this, why not turn down $3 billion? Ha ha, joking, that's still baffling. At least Bobby Murphy, the other, 25-year-old, slightly less Machiavellian guy behind Snapchat, can ponder his business moves in a new, $2.1 million, ultra-modern Venice Beach fortress. [via Curbed]

It's July (almost August!), but a haunted house is never out of season: one third of the team at an L.A. digital ad company work—and sleep—in one abode. Without a salary. There is no Silicon Cult. There is no Silicon Cult.