geeks-gone-wild

Facebook Parties Could Be Banned in Germany

Ryan Tate · 07/05/11 08:41PM

The riots spread from Hamburg to Wuppertal, but the terror reigns over an entire nation. Or a municipality, at least: Lower Saxony could ban Facebook parties following a string of violent incidents involving open party invitations.

Googler's Barely-Legal Party Scandal

Ryan Tate · 06/07/10 02:06PM

They say money can't buy happiness, but Marissa Mayer sure has been trying. And now the Google VP's hedonism/masochism roller coaster has, we hear, earned her a police spanking after a birthday party went too wild.

Google's Chief of Fabulous Opens a Disco — In His Penthouse

Ryan Tate · 02/08/10 05:45PM

We couldn't persuade Orkut Büyükkökten to invite us to his opulent birthday-and-housewarmingparty Saturday, but we won't hold it against him. After all, Google's ambassador to the gay party scene had to fit several billionaires between his new dance poles.

Naked Calendar Nerds Push Limits of Geek Chic

Ryan Tate · 11/12/09 02:38PM

If a Googler can pose in Vogue and Glamour, and if Justin Timberlake's playing a Facebook exec, surely London tech geeks can strip off their clothes for a sexy calendar. It'll sell furiously. Or at least, uh, get tweeted furiously.

What Gets a Freaky Google Overlord Excited at Night

Ryan Tate · 10/26/09 11:21AM

Google co-founder Sergey Brin is a weird guy. A smart programmer whose ideas lifted humanity, but a weird guy nonetheless. A coder who dislikes coffee. An American who knows virtually nothing about baseball. And then there are his evening jollies.

Tech Exec's Gay Side Truly Unleashed

Ryan Tate · 10/12/09 01:52PM

They say the West Coast tech scene is mostly a straight-guy fraternity. For proof, look no further than Jason Goldberg. He played the heteronormative role while running Jobster; it took a relocation to Germany to really loosen him up.

Google Cancels Prom

Ryan Tate · 08/12/09 07:38PM

The annual "Google Dance," which drew thousands of search conference attendees to Google's Mountain View headquarters each summer, has been canceled this year, a victim of cost cutting. The outcry only confirms our early judgement of the event: hopelessly lame.

Googlers' Pilots Are Real Boobs

Owen Thomas · 01/13/09 04:51PM

The Google Jet really is a party plane. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin travel the world on a Boeing 767 they bought and tricked out. But who flies it for them? A wild bunch.

Angry, angry IT guy goes to jail

Paul Boutin · 11/05/08 10:00AM

Drugs! Alcohol! Baseball bats! Hey, it's a good story. IT contractor Steven Barnes will serve a year in prison and pay a $54,000 restitution after being convicted of logging into a client's network and deleting the Exchange database, among other things. Barnes claimed he acted after coworkers from Blue Falcon Networks, now known as Akimbo Systems, came to his home and took away his personal computers by force. Barnes reconfigured Blue Falcon's server as an open relay for spammers, causing the company to be automatically blacklisted from delivering real mail. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with Barnes's temper that a little prison time won't — haha! I almost finished that sentence without laughing.

Ex-Yahoo CEO's daughter: "Google me"

Owen Thomas · 10/30/08 01:20PM

Terry Semel, the former Warner Bros. chief who used to run Yahoo, can't catch a break from wild-child daughter Courtenay, who continues to embarrass him. The latest, via celebrity blog TMZ: Testimony from a court case about an incident last August where Courtenay — who's now dating MySpace hottie Tila Tequila — got handcuffed after swearing at Jaroslaw Jarczok, a security guard at Pure, a Las Vegas nightclub. The line that did her in: "Do you even know who I am, f**king idiot?...Google me, you dumb f**k." You would think, if she had any respect for Daddy whatsoever, she'd have told Jarczok to search for her name on Yahoo.

SXSW hangover joint closes

Melissa Gira Grant · 09/03/08 02:40PM

It's the end of an era, they'll all Twitter: Austin's Las Manitas Avenue Cafe has closed. Las Manitas, if you were too passed out to recall, is where the rest of us nursed our South By Southwest hangovers while uploading photos from the events that caused them to Flickr. If you didn't spill salsa verde on yourself there at least once while attending the warm-weather Web 2.0 junket, then why did you pay $400 to get into SXSW in the first place? (Photo by wordridden)

Yahoo engineer: Take your job offer and shove it

Paul Boutin · 08/25/08 05:00PM

Yahoo programmer Isaac Schlueter is gunning for a spot in our hearts. His cranky resume demands $400,000 a year up front, non-negotiable. Not that he's going to land that high a salary — Schlueter's real goal is to chase off recruiters who won't leave him alone. Those who bother to read his online CV are greeted with a nasty blowoff: