(Photo By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Do you ever look at a centuries-old spiritual practice and think, "Huh, how can I use this to make myself a better employee of Google?" Apparently someone does: Wired reports that meditation and mindfulness are the hottest thing going in Silicon Valley.

Googlers are signing up in droves for "Search Inside Yourself" training, and the company has instituted "mindfulness lunches." Facebook and Twitter apparently have "regular in-office meditation sessions and arranging for work routines that maximize mindfulness."

Meanwhile, bigwigs turn out for Wisdom 2.0 conferences (previous speakers include Evan Williams and... Arianna Huffington?).

It's almost like a form of prosperity gospel designed just for the Valley!

But this is a little different from the approach of ascetic monks and those friendly, silver-haired ladies that audit college courses in comparative religion. "Entrepreneurs and engineers are taking millennia-old traditions and reshaping them to fit the Valley’s goal-oriented, data-driven, largely atheistic culture," according to Wired.

In other words, the tech biz has finally gotten around to disrupting inner peace:

Forget past lives; never mind nirvana. The technology community of Northern California wants return on its investment in meditation. “All the woo-woo mystical stuff, that’s really retrograde,” says Kenneth Folk, an influential meditation teacher in San Francisco. “This is about training the brain and stirring up the chemical soup inside.”

Wonder what the Buddha would make of the Facebook IPO, anyhow?

Imagine the videos she'll create.

Vine killer? Instagram is rumored to be adding a video function this week. [TechCrunch]

Saudi Arabia might block WhatsApp within the next few weeks unless it establishes a local server so government officials can monitor activity. [CNET]

Not to be left out, Apple says it has collected between 4,000 to 5,000 requests for user data from the government. [TNW]

Google is building a high-tech system to scrub the Web of child porn. [Telegraph]

It finally pays off to have purchased a Samsung phone: Jay-Z is giving away 1 million free copies of his new album to owners next month. [Verge]

$$$ (BAY ISMOYO/AFP/Getty Images)

"Right on cue, we hear cynics asking, 'But how will they ever make money?' let alone 'enough money to justify the valuation.' Just this weekend, the rumors (and doubts — for example, read the comments) were all about Snapchat." No, but seriously. [Medium]

Speaking of cash, though: Base salaries for New York City tech jobs are skyrocketing. No surprise there. [Crain's]

Fred Wilson, cool mom: "I like to be the person the founder calls when he wants advice and counsel." [PandoDaily]

As appealing as we find the idea of a real-time Google Maps based on Waze's data, that sounds like it'll take even longer to load. [Forbes]

In the trial hashing out whether Apple conspired to drive up ebook prices, exec Eddy Cue admitted yesterday that yeah, he totally expected prices to increase as the result of Apple's plans. But hey, more books! [CNET]

Jobs or Kutcher? (Photo: ScreenRant)

"Talk about a waste." That's how former Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein described the purchase of the company from HP. As an aside, remember Palm? [Fierce Wireless]

Google is still the most popular search engine in the U.S., but Bing's market share is rising. Microsoft's site registered a 17.4 percent slice, compared to Yahoo's 11.9 percent. [CNET]

Interns at Google are living the good life as they earn as much as $6,000 per month. That can buy them a lot of tickets for The Internship. [CNN Money]

Reddit is adding even more benefits for its Gold subscribers! The site is teaming with Uni Qlo to randomly select a member to receive a fancy gift from the Japanese clothing retailer. Hint, hint? [TechCrunch]

Get excited! Ashton Kutcher's biopic Jobs is slated to be released August 16. [Entertainment Weekly]

Google's possible new purchase.

Is the long saga of 'Who's Acquiring Waze Today' finally nearing a finale? The Israeli startup is nearing a deal with Google to be snapped up for a cool $1 billion. [WSJ]

On the heels of reportedly raising $100 million in new funding, Snapchat is ramping up its sales department [TechCrunch]

AT&T is extending its upgrade window from 20 months to two years. [AllThingsD]

Apple is expected to unveil iRadio, Siri, and a revamped iOS at the company's developer conference, which kicks off today. [CNET]

Speaking of the new iOS7, screenshots of it have supposedly leaked. It's very flat, but colorful. [9to5Mac]

In the future, this is how we'll unlock phones. (Photo: Getty)

Bluetooth, Google Glass, FaceTime -- all of these things can make you look like an idiot in public. But when it comes to doltish behavior in the name of technology, there just may be a new sheriff in town.

Google has just patented "facial unlock technology" that will enable users to access gadgets by making a series of facial expressions, according to Engadget. The patent claims a method through which the tech apparatus takes two photos of its user. The user must then make those two faces in order to unlock the phone.

So your new password, instead of that high-security birth-month-birth-date PIN you've been rocking, may involve raised eyebrow followed by a raspberry. And here we thought being caught mid-selfie was embarrassing.

[H/T Engadget]

Tone it down a couple notches, guys. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images for 20th Century Fox)

Much has been made of the fact that The Internship, the new buddy comedy starring Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, and the Googleplex, is basically an advertisement for Google. This is completely true. It seems every couple of minutes the movie is trotting another feature of life at Google. Nap pods and free food are lovingly lingered over, and the concept of "googleyness" is treated with deadly seriousness.

The movie climaxes with the protagonists attempting to sell the owners of a small pizzeria on the virtues of advertising via Google, and AdSense and Google Places somehow, vaguely, becomes a magical means of expanding from a family business to a thriving chain. Guess everything Google touches just turns to gold!

But under all the sunshine, The Internship is actually pretty much a total bummer. (Spoilers ahead, in the event anyone wants to pay for a Google commercial.)

Let's try scratching all the rah-rah off the premise: Two dudes--who, the movie bends over backwards to establish, are actually fantastic salesmen, though a bit downmarket--are laid off from their jobs selling watches, which theoretically no one wants anymore. To drive home the point, an ancient secretary pulls out an iPhone to tell them the time.

Things rapidly become desperate: Nick (Owen Wilson) takes a job selling mattresses for his sister's gross boyfriend (played by Will Ferrell, yukking it up). His pal Billy (Vince Vaughn) can't even get that far. He comes home to a foreclosure notice, his girlfriend yells at him for never delivering on his upbeat promises and dumps him.

Sound like summer fun so far?

So Billy sits down at his computer and starts researching jobs for people without any skills. There aren't really any, but hey! Brainstorm: Maybe they can go to work for Google. Billy wrangles himself and Nick an interview, and despite their blatant lack of qualifications, they land internships (because Google's committed to diversity).

But when they arrive in Mountain View--which is portrayed like some combination of Oz and nirvana, but with Sergey Brin and driverless cars--they learn that all the interns will be divided up into teams, and only one team will get job offers. It's make or break, and given that Billy and Nick know zip about code and diddly about startups, the odds don't look good.

To make matters worse, after managing to unite the young'uns with a trip to a strip club--on the Google bus, naturally!--Billy fucks up a big contest (involving manning the Google helpline, which, LOL), and it completely crushes him. He quits and, resigning himself to the fact that he's a loser who isn't meant for great things (seriously, this is how the movie portrays this) he takes a job selling electric scooters to nursing-home residents.

But then! In a not-so-shocking twist, the last competition is actually a sales competition, so he comes back, they nail it, and it's a validation of Billy's entire existence. Google believes in him. He's a winner! His and Nick's economic futures (doing something at Google--it's not really clear what) are assured. The pair are personally congratulated by Sergey. All is right in the world, now that they're Googlers. Salvation: achieved.

Now, it's pretty hard to believe Google would run its internship program in such an inefficient manner. They'll take every talented coder they can get their hands on, to the point they're buying entire startups to strip for parts. They're not going to artificially cap themselves at six people and then let the rest of those promising young engineers escape to Facebook or wherever.

But if you think about it on a bigger scale, this is exactly how Google runs its internship program. Sure, they don't limit themselves to six people, but they do only take a certain number of people who meet specific, stringent qualifications. The spots are far from infinite: Google has something like 30,000 employees worldwide. (Even General Electric, whose most job-creating days are probably long gone, still employs around 130,000 Americans.) Most of you folks who didn't learn to code will just have to shift for yourselves, "googleyness" be damned.

So yeah, unless you're an engineer, you might just want to skip The Internship. At least The Purge is upfront about its Darwinian worldview.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

It's apparently easier than ever to make like Neely O'Hara and hoard red pills, blue pills, all the pills, just by clicking a mouse. Thanks again, Internet.

The National Association of Attorneys General say a plethora of prescription drugs and their counterfeit counterparts are available online, and it's partly Google's fault.

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood charges that Google is still running (and presumably accepting payment for) ads for illegal online pharmacies, as reported in USA Today -- all this despite Google already having paid $500 million in 2011 to settle Justice Department charges over ads for fake pharmacies.

The gigantic search engine also isn't doing much to keep pill purveyors' websites from popping up in searches, the NAAG alleges.

Google says it's trying to curb the activity. From USA Today:

"'We take the safety of our users very seriously and we've explained to Attorney General Hood how we enforce policies to combat rogue online pharmacies and counterfeit drugs,' Google said in a statement late Thursday. 'In the last two years, we've removed more than 3 million ads for illegal pharmacies, and we routinely remove videos that are flagged for violating YouTube's Guidelines regarding dangerous or illegal content.'"

The attorneys insist, though, that it's not even hard to find digital pharmacies through Google.

In addition to the NAAG complaints, a separate advocacy group called Digital Citizens Alliance will release a report on Monday about how YouTube fosters drug use by having become a haven for how-to vids, some of which contain links to drug-selling sites, reports USA Today. Well, how else are teenagers supposed to learn to roll joints? The ads on YouTube are content-related, meaning an ad for managing chronic back pain will appear on a video explaining how to buy painkillers without a prescription, USA Today reports. Convenient!

The party poopers at NAAG have reportedly invited Google CEO Larry Page to come have a chin wag about the issue at a national meeting of the attorneys general (sounds like a riot!) on June 17, but Mr. Page hasn't yet responded to the invitation.

While Google and the attorneys sort this out, remember kids: drugs are bad.

[H/T USA Today]

Not worried. (Photo: Getty/Justin Sullivan)

Obviously the concerns of wearing Google Glass, the Internet-enabled face computer with a built-in camera and Keurig machine, are causing some alarm for privacy advocates. Because these paranoid people figure someone with a lightweight recording device strapped to their head might find some way to do evil, go figure. However, Google's CEO Larry Page isn't worried.

At the company's annual shareholder meeting (and group-viewing of The Internship?), Mr. Page said that people's fear of Glass infringing on people's privacy will eventually dissipate as people incorporate more wearable tech into their lives. A shareholder remarked that the $1,500 device is a "voyeur's dream come true," but that didn't faze Mr. Page who told them to pipe down:

"People worry about all sorts of things that actually, when we use the product, it is not that big a concern," he assured, adding that the company "gone through some pains" to ensure people's privacy.

OK, but what about people's privacy in places where it's sort of paramount, like restrooms:

"You don't collapse in terror that someone might be using Glass in the bathroom just the same as you don't collapse in terror when someone comes in with a smartphone that might take a picture," said Mr. Page.

Fine, we just hope it's not cold in there.

Google is king. (level343.com)

Uber has a novel idea to fend off competition: Lower its prices. UberX, its comparatively less expensive on-demand car service, plans to slash prices next week by 25 percent in San Francisco. [TechCrunch]

Google has won the popularity contest of which tech companies Americans love! Around 83 percent of respondents said their view of Goog is “favorable," with Apple (72 percent) and Facebook (60 percent) following behind. Let's see how long this lasts. [Washington Post]

Facebook is revamping its advertising plans by dropping several ad units to make it simpler. Rather, it will ask companies what results they want to achieve and help them pick the best plan. [AllThingsD]

Now real estate sites are creating apps for Google Glass with Trulia being the first one to do so. [New York Times]

Some YouTube founders have created a Vine knock-off in China. [TechCrunch]