All 2013 finalists. (Photo: Erin Ashford Photography, courtesy the Thiel Foundation)

Get ready to feel like you frittered your youth away on terrible entry-level jobs!

Peter Thiel and co. just announced the latest class of "20 Under 20" Thiel Fellows. In exchange for foregoing traditional higher ed, each of these baby Einsteins gets $100,000, some mentors and the mandate to start a company.

Let's hope they also get a crash course in life skills and also how to tell their bewildered parents why they did this.

There are three locals among the honorees. New York City-raised Zach Hamed is leaving Harvard's computer science program to work on "a suite of beautifully-designed tools for K-12 teachers." Guess a post-grad Teach for America stint just wasn't his speed. 19-year-old Armonk native James Schuler has already done Y Combinator with a healthcare startup, and now he wants to build a crowdfunding platform for campaign finance.

And, out of Brooklyn, 18-year-old fashionista Maddy Maxey is peacing out of the Parsons School for Design to "focus on optimizing the clothing patterns and the enterprise software that make our current garment industry inefficient," making it possible to manufacture domestically.

Other projects in the works: "3D-depth mapping and projection of interactive holograms," software to "end the wasteful litigation epidemic" (someone's a Young Republican!), "broad-spectrum viral therapies," a desktop electronics fabricator, another funding platform, interactive software to teach technical skills, collaborative learning, and, uh, "challenging copyright."

There's also a startup to "improve how we interact with technology." We'll assume that's got something to do with the Singularity.

In the announcement, Thiel Foundation president Jonathan Cain also offered a little top-line where-are-they-now for the classes of 2011 and 2012: “Over the past two years, they have launched more than thirty companies, and raised more than $34 million in outside funding, including venture investments, company sales, revenue, grants, sponsorships, and awards."

Wonder whether any of them have returned to campus, just to visit.

Come on, Peter, not even a giggle? (Tumblr)

How many times does Peter Thiel have to tell you that unless your startup disrupts death or advances the singularity, he's just not that impressed?

CNN Money reports that Mr. Thiel took the conference stage with Twitter investor Marc Andreessen earlier this week. And while he's pretty sure that Twitter will still be around in 10 years, and he thinks the company's $10 billion valuation is fair, he just can't get all that excited about it.

He told the crowd: 

"New technologies are being used to send pictures of your cat halfway around the world," Thiel said. "We've talked ourselves into thinking that throwing cats at birds is the best we can do. We can do more than that."

Is that a reference to Twitter's logo? Or is there some cat-related startup we've missed?

(Photo: theybf.com)

Real Genius Andreessen Horowitz invested $15 million in Rap Genius to help its Ivy League cofounders to annotate the Internet. But how much will they have to pay to rein in the braggadocious Mahbod Moghadam?

In a recent issue of Wakefield, a newsletter covering "tech and startup insight not captured elsewhere," Maboo was up to his old shenanigans, volunteering information about a “feud” with Mark Zuckerberg, who also happens to be backed by Andreessen Horowitz.

Apparently, Mr. Moghadam was at Ben Horowitz’s home, “chilling” with Zuck and Nas as is the new mode of Silicon Valley socializing. (Mr. Horowitz happens to be close friends with Steve Stoute, Nas’ former manager.) Despite Zuck's heightened privacy concerns (it's complicated?) Rap Genius cofounder couldn't resist Instagramming his good fortune.

Apparently Zuck never leaves his house because he’s so afraid of people photographing him, and then our investor – his house is one of the only places where Zuck feels safe – so our investor invited Zuck and Nas over. They were chilling together, and I asked if I could take a photo. He was like “Let’s hold off, let’s hold off,” and I just couldn’t resist – I was drunk, and I went paparazzi and Instagrammed it, and I didn’t even think it would be a thing.

But then the press picked it up and apparently Zuck gets home and his whole PR crew is calling him every five seconds, and he told us to take it down. We wrote a letter of apology and I feel sorry. I regret taking it, I hope this has taught me some maturity, it certainly got me in a lot of trouble. But then on the other hand, fuck that fool – that’s Nas the Don.

Asked by Wakefield if there was anything else he wanted to discuss, Mr. Moghadam again volunteered:

Alright so I told you the New York Times is Carlos Slim’s ho, I told you Zuck can suck my dick, what else is there?

When Betabeat asked Mr. Moghadam about the tenor of those comments on gChat, he said, “i am so sorry, i love zuck, i think he should've made the photo w nas his fb profile pic. I talked to nas, nas loved him and loved the photo.” It was all “tongue in cheek,” he added, “but obvi this offends mark, he got me my last girlfriend, i feel terrible!”

Later, Mr. Moghadam requested that we note that he had taken a Vyvanse to prepare for a UC Berkeley Rap Genius colloquium after the Wakefield interview and was therefore “being negative on the come up." He also noted that he was “not surprised that the ‘guy’ (pun intended) who runs [Wakefield] went to harvard since havartis (as i call them) are little bitches. Also ‘harvard = illuminati, yale = KILLuminati (princeton = chilluminati).’”

Wonder what he calls Andreessen Horowitz?

Bloglords Never Worry In Emily Nussbaum's review of "Girls" for the New Yorker this week, she defined "concern trolling," as "the Internet term for one who ices her sneer with dignified worry." Valley regulars don't seem too familiar with the term. So for a fine example, let us direct you to Sarah Lacy's comments about her former coworker Alexia Tsotsis on Jason Calacanis' This Week In Tech. Whatever happened to putting the blog first?

The Bachelor: Silicon Valley Congratulations to investor Peter Thiel, who made Out magazine's third annual list of "Most Eligible Bachelors." Local suitors, please let us know if you get an invite to his raging Upper East Side dinner parties.

Nap Time Bre Pettis is a busy guy. Between running MakerBot Industries and traveling around for meetings and conferences, he has to get his zzz's in where he can. "Parking lot nap," he wrote alongside an Instagram of his car with a bridge in the background. Perhaps MakerBot should invest in some sweet nap pods a la Google.

(Photo: Instagram)

Be Mine If you didn't get enough fill of Valentine's Day yesterday, perhaps this tool for determining your Twitter crush will come in handy. Twitamore analyzes who you follow, @-reply and favorite to figure out who your Twitter Valentine is. Our favorites? The ones who love themselves.

Belly up the bar Wired editor Ryan Tate has a bone to pick with the makers of the bourbon Maker’s Mark, who recently announced they’d be adding just a little more water to their product. Quartz took questions for the company’s COO via Twitter, and here’s what Mr. Tate demanded to know: “What will you do for a living after burning the American bourbon industry’s reputation to the ground and destroying your company?” Two words, Mr. Tate: Woodford Reserve.

Attention, please Consider this a cri de coeur from your friendly neighborhood scolds: Please, please, please stop making these Harlem Shake videos. Rumor has it that even Sheryl Sandberg is somewhere in this Facebook video. It’s nice to break up the workday with a little caper, but unfortunately, tech companies seem to have trouble rounding up employees with rhythm.

There’s only one exception to this blanket condemnation, and that’s the dude who appears front and center in Google’s version, thrashing about in what appear to be lederhosen. He looks like he’s on serious party drugs, and he is mesmerizing, and he is now a GIF:

For those who read and run? When Atlantic Media launched Quartz, it positioned the digital only business publication as the news source for the new global elite: the type of jet-setting professionals more likely to read a news story from a tablet while sipping complementary champagne at 30,000 feet than to hunker over a desktop PC. It stood to reason then that Quartz would be an early adopter of the smart-watch Pebble.

Quartz reporter Christopher Mims also brushed off concerns that nerdlinger arm candy might look pretty goofy once it actually hit the market.

Rappers will gold-plate their iWatches and Google Glasses, and some guy will wear a phablet on a chain around his neck. You'll see.

— Christopher Mims (@mims) February 14, 2013

We think we know just the fella.

Except to see more of this. (Photo: Guest of a Guest)

It's never too early to start speculating about the next election cycle. So we're calling it, less than a month into the new year: 2013 will be New York tech’s debut as a political force.

Tech moguls and politicians have always been willing bedfellows, of course. Last year, technophiles in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area outpaced "Hollywood celebrities and Wall Street moguls" in funding President Obama's reelection campaign, according to a report from MapLight.com. On the other side of the aisle--like far, far to the right--Facebook investor Peter Thiel "almost single-handedly" funded Ron Paul's super PAC. After his fringe candidate dropped out of the race, Mr. Thiel donated $1 million to Club for Growth Action, a Tea Party super PAC.

Locally, however, New York's tech set has been able to rely on the Bloomberg administration asking for their two cents on what might benefit the community. Cornell-Technion's applied sciences campus and the software engineering high school, for example, were responses to founders and investors bemoaning the talent crunch for engineers.

The dialogue was mutually beneficial. After Wall Street's collapse, New York City Economic Development Corporation president Seth Pinsky kicked off a number of initiatives, like funding General Assembly's urban campus and launching app competitions, in the hopes that a robust startup sector would mitigate losses in the financial industry.

But with the countdown clock ticking on Mr. Bloomberg's third term and the success of defeating SOPA/PIPA, New York's techies are taking a more proactive role in making sure City Hall is invested in their success.

This week, the New York Tech Meetup announced plans to host a series of candidate forums in advance of upcoming citywide elections. Leaders of the 30,000-member group are also soliciting input on seven proposals under the banner “Help Us Make NYC the Best City for Tech in the World!" The slate includes creating a deputy mayor for technology innovation and providing New Yorkers with the fastest broadband at the lowest possible price.

Local entrepreneurs and investors are also voting with their wallet, a pattern the Wall Street Journal says is "likely to continue as the campaign season heats up":

Kevin Ryan, chief executive of online luxury retailer Gilt Groupe, contributed $1,000 to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a Democrat expected to vie for mayor, and gave the same amount to state Sen. Daniel Squadron and Reshma Saujani, two Democrats preparing to run for public advocate. Andrew Rasiej, chairman of New York Tech Meetup, gave $100 to mayoral hopeful Bill de Blasio. Fred Wilson, of Manhattan-based Union Square Ventures, has contributed the maximum of $4,950 to Mr. Squadron and Ms. Saujani.

As Crain's later reported, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss--who have been hosting political fundraisers at the Hollywood mansion financed by their Facebook settlement--each donated $4,950 to Mr. Squadron's campaign as well.

In fact, the race for public advocate between Ms. Saujani, Mr. Squadron, and Letitia James--all Democrats--is an early sign of the tech sector's eagerness to flex its newfound political clout. Mr. Squadron has been involved in tech initiatives like successfully advocating for an applied sciences campus in Brooklyn. But Ms. Saujani, a former hedge fund lawyer, has cultivated more visible ties to the tech world.

Last year, she founded the very well-regarded non-profit Girls Who Code, which secured backing from Twitter, eBay and Google to educate and encourage teenage girls toward careers in technology and engineering. At private fundraising events, Ms. Saujani has advocated for bringing the same energy and job opportunities in the Flatiron's tech enclave to the outer-boroughs. She recruited Uber to sponsor transportation for volunteers to Far Rockaway after Hurricane Sandy. Her husband, Nihal Mehta, is the founder of the successful advertising startup LocalResponse.

Indeed, while The Village Voice estimated that 40 percent of donations for her 2010 Congressional campaign came from Wall Street big wigs--in addition to high-profile support from Jack Dorsey, Chris Hughes, and Randi Zuckerberg--Ms. Saujani's campaign for public advocate has greatly benefitted from advocates in New York tech, beyond just the Fred Wilsons and Kevin Ryans. No surprise considering she was the first candidate, back in 2010, to accept donations using Square.

According to the New York City Campaign Finance Board, Ms. Saujani has raised $759,711 to Mr. Squadron's $820,008. But Ms. Saujani got a last-minute boost from techies, using the mediums they love best: 150 of her donations were made in the final hours via Twitter and Facebook. Mr. Mehta galvanized last minute social media efforts while he was at Summit Series' mountain in Utah. Gary Vaynerchuk, Adam Braun from Pencils of Promise and Scooter Braun Project CMO Brad Haugen, who has nearly 60,000 Twitter followers, tweeted out their donations, encouraging others to join.

That's in addition to support and fundraising efforts from Gotham Gal and angel investor Joanne Wilson, who donated $4950, as well as Google's community affairs manager Alex Abelin. Last Spring, Gilt Group's Alexis Maybank also headlined an event for her campaign.

"I think with a new mayor there's an awareness in the tech industry that things could change in the relationships between city government and the community--whether it's getting RFPs for incubators or partnering on the academies," Ms. Saujani told Betabeat. It was a morning after the Presidential Inauguration and Ms. Saujani, a former bundler for President Obama, had been in D.C. for the inaugural ball, followed by a party hosted by Electronic Arts. "The change presents a real opportunity for people in the tech sector to be active in the 2013 elections, like we're seeing with New York Tech Meetup and with supporters of my Public Advocate campaign," she continued. "So there's a lot of excitement too."

The startup sector likes to present itself as a positive force for world change. But with more political lobbying, is there a danger, we asked Ms. Saujani, of the tech sphere seeming more like a special interest? "The conversation about innovation in New York City is not just happening in the tech community in Manhattan--it's happening in all five boroughs. Elected officials citywide are interested in bringing more 21st century jobs to their communities, and that means partnering with tech."

Those divergent conversations are part of the reason tech voters are unlikely to present a unified bloc. As Anil Dash told the Journal: "It's venture capitalists and 23-year-old graphic designers in Bushwick. It's labor and management. It's not traditional allies."

Heaven! (Photo: Blueseed)

Paging Peter Thiel! Blueseed, a sea-faring tech incubator that aims to skirt visa laws by hosting its programs in international waters, has raised $300,000 from Silicon Valley investor Mike Maples. The startup incubator and business center intends to provide a place for non-US citizens to have the same access to the ideas and capital in the Valley without having to go through the complicated visa process. Though it's just a fraction of the $10-30 million needed for the project to actually take off, no doubt Silicon Valley's principled libertarian population will be excited to hear the news.

Last we checked in with the Valley libertarians, Peter Thiel pal Patri Friedman was preparing a book on Seasteading, the practice of living at sea in order to avoid national laws. Blueseed, meanwhile, raised $500,000 in September 2011 and is planning to launch at the end of this year.

According to the venture's site, it will cost about $1,600 per month per person to live and work on the floating incubator, which will be anchored approximately 12 miles from Silicon Valley. "We’ll charge a combination of rent and equity to accommodate the stage of your startup," reads the site. "The price per person will include living and office space, and will range from $1200 for a shared cabin to $3000 for a top-tier single accommodation cabin."

This may be the closest to a libertarian paradise we'll get any time soon, as the Peter Thiel-funded Future Cities project, which sought to build its own autonomous utopia within Honduras, was shut down in October 2012.

Fear not: we're sure the high-rolling Mr. Thiel has plenty of soft $100 bills to wipe his tears away.

(Photo: IMDB)

If Singularity lover and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel can't have Mars, he will instead control earth. Business Insider reports that the early Facebook investor has bestowed a $300,000 investment upon Canadian inventor Louis Michaud so that he can create man-made tornadoes.

Of course, these wouldn't be just any old tornadoes; if executed properly, they could actually use vortex-power to produce energy at a cheaper cost than sources like coal. Mr. Michaud's company AVEtec is building "a prototype of its Atmospheric Vortex Engine to create tornadoes about 40 meters high that can produce energy from waste heat."

The seed grant comes from Breakout Labs, a sector of the Thiel Foundation that invests in early-stage science companies. As the tornadoes will be created for energy purposes, sadly we don't think we'll see Mr. Thiel starring in a Twisters remakes any time soon.

Typical for Art Basel, said the source, brushing off complaints. “Less so for tech startups :)” Too bad they missed Demi Moore’s highly gif-able turn on the dance floor next to Lenny Kravitz. Perhaps our partier will have better luck with Tumblr, which is hosting its own Art Basel extravaganza tonight.

(Photo: NYMag)

Ball So Hard Venture capitalists have certainly replaced i-bankers as the finance boyfriend of choice. But does that mean they have as much disposable income? Lerer Ventures and Thrillist cofounder Ben Lerer almost had us fooled on Instagram when he posted a receipt of a $50,000 tip on $251,769 bill at The Dutch, the Soho restaurant that boasts a $19 bagel. Mr. Lerer captioned the image, “dinner was good.” It wasn’t until the next day that he mocked friends for believing he would bro down like that. “dude, that wasn’t actually mine. hahaha. what kind of maniac do you think I am??,” he commented on the photo, adding, “whoevers bill that was is a psycho.”

Sorry, DABA girls. Might want to stick closer to Wall Street.

(Photo: Instagram)

Holiday Cheer There’s been much ado about 3D printed guns and drugs, but we fear there may have been one damning oversight when it comes to the adult industries touched by 3D printing technologies: where are all the sex toys? Luckily our fears were squashed when we saw MESA+ partner Jacob Brody tweet a photo from the 3DEA pop-up shop, a temporary holiday store featuring objects assembled by a Shapeways printer.

Though much merriment was made--the printer was making holiday ornaments for the store’s tree!--there was also a cordoned-off XXX section. “The sign actually says you need to be 18 years or older or accompanied by a guardian, which I think is super funny,” Mr. Brody said. Behold: it was a room of dildos, with one even molded into the shape of a fist. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

(Photo: Jacob Brody, Instagram)

The Lo Down The Hills’ Lo Bosworth is trying to shirk her MTV image and make a name for herself in New York’s startup scene, and rubbing shoulders with Randi Zuckerberg probably doesn’t hurt. Ms. Bosworth Instagrammed a photo of the two of them out for a fancy sushi dinner, along with former CNBC anchorwoman Nicole Lapin. Perhaps Ms. Zuckerberg wants to pick Lo’s brain as to who to cast for the Start-Ups reboot casting in New York?

(Photo: Instagram)

24-Hour Party People It seems Square CEO Jack Dorsey might want to rearrange his medicine cabinet. Earlier this week, just before before midnight California time, he announced to his 2.2 million Twitter followers: "I just mistook NyQuil for mouthwash. Goodnight!" What Mr. Dorsey was doing drinking what he thought was mouthwash is anyone's guess.

Does Not Compute Lots of us get annoying pings from sad, sexy bots just looking for companionship. Most of us just delete and block. Not Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose! He can't resist the chance for a little fun:

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Here's a Friday afternoon head-scratcher: What will legal systems look like in 1,000 years? No, really. If our arbiters of right and wrong become more highly automated, will we be smoothing over the imperfections of Lady Justice, or placing our respective fates in the hands of heartless machines. What will sentencing guidelines be like after the singularity?

If it's not clear yet, we've been reading an account of a Peter Thiel guest lecture in a Stanford Law School course on legal technology. This is not for the faint of heart.

"So the set of all intelligent machines would be the superset of all aliens," write Blake Masters in an essay describing the lecture. "The range and diversity of possible computers is actually much bigger than the range of possible life forms under known rules."

In other words, who the hell knows. But also, probably we would be better in the hands of computers, and maybe here's how:

Our human-based legal system is dependent on the arbitrariness of the actors, that's sometimes bad, and sometimes good. Bad in the case of a biased jury or a pissed off judge. Good because if we all got hauled into court every time we broke the law we'd spend our lives shuttling back-and-forth from jail.

But if automated legal technology means fewer law-breakers escape the long arm, something will have to give:

If uniformly enforcing current laws would land everyone in jail, and transparency is only increasing, we’ll pretty much have to become a more tolerant society.

In which case, we may join Mr. Thiel in looking forward to a Hal of justice.

(Photo: Piccsy)

Perk up, Peter Thiel: if our brains aren't transplanted into robot bodies some time soon, we can always bank on human immortality. Researchers at Kiel University in Germany believe they've discovered a gene that is linked directly to the aging process. This opens up new opportunities for research focusing on how to prolong human life.

According to KurzweilAI, the scientists were studying a freshwater animal called the polyp Hydra, unique because its plethora of stem cells make it "capable of continuous proliferation," rendering it effectively immortal. By studying the FoxO gene (also called the "longevity gene") in animals, scientists now know that the gene has an impact on the production of stem cells:

The study has two major conclusions: It confirms that the FoxO gene plays a decisive role in the maintenance of stem cells, and thus determines the life span of animals; and it shows that aging and longevity of organisms depend on two factors: the maintenance of stem cells and the maintenance of a functioning immune system.

If scientists can figure out how to effectively maintain both stem cells and a functioning immune system, we'd be one step closer to realizing our longevity dreams.

In layman's terms: fucking eternal youth, brah.

Now we just need those longevity orgasm-giving sex bots to truly arrive.

Mr. Karnjanaprakorn (Photo: About.Me)

The Principal of New York

Before Mayor Bloomberg signed up for Codecademy, before General Assembly signed its first lease in the Flatiron—even before Peter Thiel started paying kids to skip school—Skillshare founder and CEO Mike Karnjanaprakorn was trying convince New York investors to finance his peer-to-peer learning startup. He billed the company as the Etsy of education, since it set up a market for anyone to teach—and learn—practical skills through an affordable hands-on class, starting at $25 a night. (The hybrid online classes that Skillshare launched this August, with Livestream office hours, start at just $20 a night.)

But in 2010, two years before The New York Times dubbed 2012, “The Year of the MOOC” (massive open online course), venture capitalists weren’t biting. As with hardware and clean tech, investors begged off education—burned by one too many startups shut out by the gatekeepers of traditional K through 12 and higher ed. “Some of my favorite notes that we got from investors were, ‘We don’t think education is a big market,’ ‘We think education is a shrinking market’ and ‘We don’t think people enjoy learning at all after they graduate,’” he said. “‘You have to get a master’s in education before you can teach,’ was another.”

Economic realities like persistent unemployment, mounting student debt and an army of jobless graduates without the skills to fill open positions quickly proved otherwise. The time was right for Skillshare’s modernized approach. Through its online platform, the company promotes the classes, procures students, processes credit cards and books rooms for in-person offerings—often in a tech company’s lounge or lecture hall—all in exchange for a percentage of the sales.

In the early days, Mr. Karnjanaprakorn, whose previous employer Hot Potato was acquired by Facebook, and his co-founder Malcolm Ong, a product manager at game-maker OMGPOP, gravitated toward the kind of programming and entrepreneurship classes they wanted to take, like Mr. Karnjanaprakorn’s popular course, “Launch Your Startup Idea for Less Than $1,000.” As the Silicon Alley refrain goes, meeting tech people is easy: just take a Skillshare class and drop by General Assembly.

Skillshare’s emphasis on nonacademic classes with real-world application paved the way for other local players like CourseHorse, Lore and Codecademy. Signing up felt less like an indulgence than a practical necessity. “There’s a real-world application” to Skillshare classes, he said, “something that you could use immediately.” Headlines about an instructor quitting his day job with the $100,000 a year he made teaching Ruby on Rails to aspiring programmers helped attract instructors as well.

In 2012, the company expanded to other U.S. cities like San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles, and kicked off its large-scale online-only classes with an offering from Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson—a Skillshare investor—that reached 2,500 students all over the world. Mr. Karnjanaprakorn said that it would take him two years to teach that many students if he taught every week here in New York City.

Mr. Karnjanaprakorn compared making a case for accessible education outside of a university to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. “If the first phase is awareness and huge institutional change,” he told The Observer, “The second step is making something that will fix it or being a company that tries to solve it. I can feel that happening. It’s less about why should people learn. Nobody asks that question now anymore.”

Next: Rick Webb, Tumblr: The Undercover Ad Man

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