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Valleywag
Recap
Recap
Caption Contest
Le rock star
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg signs autographs at an event for developers in France. Can you think of a better caption for this photo? Leave it in the comments. The best one will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: Scalawag, for "On Sequoia's firing line." (Photo by mauriz)
Larry Ellison
Larry's buying!
At today's annual meeting, Oracle's top dog told shareholders, "Acquisitions that we have been looking at for some time may now be more attractive." He wasn't any more specific than to say he meant small, growing companies rather than large, public ones. Ooh, I know this great little blog network. Does Oracle have dental?(Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)
Gordon Crawford
Yang-hater now owns 10 percent of Yahoo
Capital Research Global Investors now owns a 10.1 percent stake in Yahoo, according to a new SEC filing. Even Silicon Alley Insider is stumped as to why Capital Research chief Gordon Crawford, who fought to get rid of Yang last year, would be buying more YHOO. I go with Owen's theory: It's simple dollar cost averaging. When Yahoo falls to $13, buy it. Regardless of who's in charge. (Photo by AP/Douglas C. Pizac)Distractions
Blue Angels save San Francisco from sucky workday
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Stock market be damned, it's Fleet Week. While Owen grumbles about the racket overhead that drowns out his phone calls, I'm up on the roof screaming Yeeeeeeeeeah baby YES WE CAN!! The Angels are doing practice runs for this weekend's performances, Saturday and Sunday from 3-4 pm. I feel kind of sorry for the guy flying the little red Oracle biplane. Larry Ellison clearly needs an F-18. Four of them.
Hackers
World Bank computers repeatedly raided for over a year
Fox News scored this memo from inside the World Bank. In what one manager termed an "unprecedented crisis," the bank's servers were cracked over and over again beginning in the summer of 2007. They don't know yet what sensitive info on national economies has been stolen. Here's the breakdown on the break-ins: More »
Thanks Sponsors
Sponsor Shout-out
Thanks to this week's sponsors: Adobe, Blackberry Curve, Casio, Chevy Fuel Solutions, Energizer, Gyration, HP TouchSmart, IE8, Register.com, Sharp Aquos, T-Mobile, TiVo. To become an advertiser, click here.
Quotable
Yahoo shareholder trades stake for bag full of literary allusions
Eric Jackson, the sassy activist investor who made so much trouble for Yahoo this year, has given up the ghost, crapped out, sailed into the sunset — pick your truism, Jackson has probably used it! He gave hunky videoblogger John Paczkowski a block-that-metaphor-worthy explanation for why he sold his hedge fund's Yahoo stake at $20: More »Politics
How Lessig made the GOP's hit list
A couple of friends want me to blog about how Larry Lessig has been added to the evil friends of Barack Obama at the anti-Obama parody site BarackBook. Why oh why, they ask? RTFM! The one live link on the BarackBook page explains it all: It's not Lessig's hard-to-follow opinions on copyright that honked off the right-wingers. It's this video he's shown at talks, in which a campy Jesus character gets hit by a bus. One man's Monty Python is another man's blasphemy. I wonder if the Professor would dare show a remix where, oh, let's make it Joe Biden gets run over instead. I know people who would love that.
Layoffs
Fast Company publisher to lay off 20
Times are tough all over. That's the excuse bosses are now using for cleaning house, making hard decisions they were too timid to execute in bubblier times. We've just heard that Mansueto Ventures, the publisher of Fast Company and Inc. magazines, is laying off 20 people. Inside the company, it's being spun as an "economic move" — but if it's a financially motivated maneuver, why is Fast Company magazine being left untouched in the layoffs? More »
cutbacks
Meebo didn't get Sequoia's memo
Was Seth Sternberg, the CEO of Meebo, not in attendance at Sequoia Capital's recent summit for all of the venture capital firm's startups? In its now-famous "R.I.P. Good Times" presentation, Sequoia's partners scolded the entrepreneurs the firm has funded to cut all unnecessary costs. The online-chat startup's apparent response: Listing all of the free food and drink it buys employees. The one concession to frugality: They don't buy chocolate milk, because it's too expensive. (Chocolate soy milk, on the other hand, is deemed an affordable luxury.) Any bets on how long it will take for Sequoia's Roelof Botha, the lead partner on its Meebo investment, to tell Sternberg to stop paying the grocery bills? (Photo by ifindkarma)
Layoff Memos
Laid off before sunrise
We've got our first layoff-memo story — and it's actually about a layoff conducted without a memo. Read on, and don't forget to send in your own: More »
meltdowns
Sequoia's complete gloom-and-doom presentation
Silicon Valley is obsessed with a presentation by Sequoia Capital, the backer of Google, titled "R.I.P. Good Times". The venture capital firm's partners delivered it to its portfolio companies at a special meeting, predicting a long, painful recovery and advocating immediate cost cuts. We'd gotten notes from an attendee, but VentureBeat got its hands on the actual PowerPoint deck: More »
death of print
Scoble kills newspapers
"What's killing the newspaper business — with thousands of jobs lost and even the Washington Post Co.'s reporting its first loss in 37 years — is its inability to reach people like me." — Fast Company videoblogger Robert Scoble, in a column some Fast Company editor wrote for him, in which Scoble goes on to relate all of the ways he obsessively consumes newspaper articles online.meltdowns
The long march
"Slash expenses, cut deep and keep marching. You can't be a general if you turn back." — Sequoia Capital partner Eric Upin at a mandatory all-CEO meeting on Thursday. For you, just remember that creep in the corner office isn't happy as your CEO. He wants to be a general.
Ted Ullyot
Is Facebook's new lawyer a Harvard-legacy hire?
A Harvard degree seems practically required at Facebook these days; founder Mark Zuckerberg never finished his, but COO Sheryl Sandberg and top flack Elliot Schrage have theirs. Newly hired general counsel Ted Ullyot, the veteran of several legal scandals while serving in the Bush Administration, has one, too. But we noticed something curious: Reports of his hire at Facebook had him graduating Harvard in 1989. Past employers, like Time Warner and Kirkland & Ellis say he graduated in 1990. I called up Harvard's news office and asked which one it was. It's complicated. More »
valleywag calendar
Go go gadget music
Put the tech in techno tonight. San Francisco's Apple Store on Stockton is "Making Electronic Music with Tenori-On." The digital instrument uses a grid sequencer and LEDs to create a bizarre visual soundscape even Björk could love. Would you rather spend your night playing Rock Band? You're in luck. On Saturday, Rock Band Live is hosting a battle of the bands for all of you living room rock stars. Win and you might just get to play the San Jose State Event Center Arena with the likes of actual musicians, Dashboard Confessional and Panic at the Disco. On Sunday, New York Times business and technology columnist Randall Stross will be pushing his new book, "Planet Google: One Company's Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know," at Keplers at 7:30 p.m.(Photo by gabreal) More »
Hackers
