Ambitious!

Amazon is planning a big biodome at the foot of its new HQ, because Jeff Bezos. [Gizmodo]

More people are using their tablets on planes. Someone actually paid to conduct this study. [USA Today]

Square has expanded to Japan. [The Next Web]

Kim Dotcom says he invented two-factor authentication and Google, Twitter and others are engaging in "massive IP infringement." [The Verge]

Foursquare now offers more specific search and filter capabilities. [TechCrunch]

The happy couple. (Photo: Instagram/aubrey)

Leaning Out of Tumblr Jessica Bennett, the Tumblr employee who was laid off with the shuttering of Storyboard, announced today on Twitter that she's taken a job with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. "Turns out being fired ain't that bad," she tweeted, along with a link to a Facebook post by Ms. Sandberg herself announcing Ms. Bennett's hiring:

"So excited to welcome Jessica Bennett to the Lean In team! Jessica is joining us to run Editorial - helping us connect women all over the world with their passion for leaning in! Special thanks to Nell Scovell and Rachel Sklar for introducing us to Jessica!"

How much leaning in was required to land that job?

Must Square TV You may not have realized it, but the most recent episode of Parks and Recreation was actually one big native ad for Square. An excited @Jack Dorsey retweeted a fan noticing that the mobile payment dongle was being used at the digitally attuned boutique owned by Tom Haverford. If Rent-A-Swag is the first Pawnee outpost to employ Square, what will be the second? We’re guessing Paunch Burger.

https://twitter.com/ShawnMarieH/status/330153591467802626

Sunglasses at Night Since an appeals court judge blocked the TLC’s ehail pilot program again, the city’s would-be disruptors have kept quiet (for now). Now, they’re not totally hunkered down: Last night, Ed Casabian, Uber New York’s senior community manager, made the brief stroll from the company’s Long Island City HQ to demo their black car app at the Queens Tech Meetup. But mum was the word about yellow cabs. He prefaced the Q&A: “I can’t say anything about taxis.”

But he didn’t turn up wholly empty-handed. He brought a discount for new users, and, for loyal customers, Mr. Casabian pulled a pair of white faux-Wayfarers out of his back pocket and said he could offer “a shiny new pair of Uber shades.”

“Come see me, I have a big box over there.”

Disrupt This Monday brought the yearly entrepreneurial orgy that is TechCrunch Disrupt New York. Tech stars like Dennis Crowley, John Borthwick and the bros of Rap Genius all took their turn onstage, leading the tech blog to triumphantly announce in a post, “New York City Turns Out For The First Day Of Disrupt NY 2013.” Well, Meetup founder Scott Heiferman has his doubts about that. He retorted on Twitter, “actually vast majority of ny tech is busy making internet.” Pardon the cliched expression, but ZING!

Dinner Club Oh, so this is what FOMO really feels like. Four Silicon Valley power players had dinner the other night and you weren’t invited. In attendance were the CEOs from Twitter, Pinterest, Square and something called Box. Scarfing down a roast chicken at Zuni Cafe in, where else, San Francisco, they probably talked about Amanda Bynes' breakdown or something equally important.

Checking Into Married Life Foursquare VP of Engineering Harry Heymann tied the knot with social software researcher Alice Marwick at Bayard's Private Dining Hall in the Financial District on Saturday. Former Tumblr employee Rick Webb officiated the ceremony, which hosted attendees like Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley and his fiancee Chelsa Skees, Sailthru VP of marketing and gal-about-town Aubrey Sabala, Vizsla founder Alex Rainert, Business Insider executive editor Joe Weisenthal, Etsy CTO Kellan Elliott-McCrea and Fashism founder Brooke Moreland.

Here's a Vine of the duo having their first dance (to Goldfrapp!), posted with the official hashtag #hplusa. Mazel, you two!

https://twitter.com/fimoculous/status/328578677480771584

GOOD MORNING. (Photo: Google+)

News broke late Friday night that daily deals site LivingSocial was hacked, exposing the personal data of 50,000,000 users. [New York Times]

Robert Scoble showered in his pair of Google Glass and everyone on the Internet cried themselves to sleep. [Google Plus]

Jack Dorsey has a new plan for world domination: revamping how McDonald's charges you for that Big Mac. [USA Today]

Facebook is losing users quickly as many decamp for new social network experiences on platforms like Path. According to one study, just last month the site lost 6 million U.S. users, a 4 percent drop. [The Guardian]

What you Google can predict how the stock market behaves. Time to buy all the stocks in "Sergey Brin arms" then? [BBC]

Zuck apparently wears a t-shirt while swimming in the ocean. Who's surprised? [Valleywag]

Mr. Dorsey and Ms. Brown. (Photo: Courtesy Hearst)

Twitter cofounder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey took the stage in a non-Silicon Valley venue this afternoon: an auditorium in the Hearst HQ, for a chat with Harper's Bazaar executive editor Laura Brown. 

Fittingly for an audience of stylishly attired editorial belles, Ms. Brown led by asking Mr. Dorsey about his leadership philosophy. The man, it seems, likes to think of himself as an editor.

"I've studied a lot of editors, I've studied a lot of newspapers and magazines," Mr. Dorsey explained. He thinks of his own job as editing the team (brings new meaning to "kill your darlings"), as well as crafting both mission and product for the company. "It's a constant chance to make it better and better and better and better. Sometimes the best edit is a complete rewrite," he concluded.

"Not when you're going to the printer!" rejoined Ms. Brown. "But you don't have to worry about that, because you're all in space," she added, making a grand hand gesture.

Speaking of magazines, the one he's learned the most from “in terms of just great product design" is The Economist. You can instantly tell the week's most important story by looking at the cover, and “it's snarky. It has a personality." Jack, why didn't you say something?

After a brief Vine-off with Ms. Brown, Mr. Dorsey waxed poetic about the humble video-sharing app: “I think it's an entirely new art form, and I think it's amazing--every picture I look at right now, I want it to move, I'm waiting for it to move. Where's the sound?"

"It's changed my perspective on media and art," he added. "Not only can you take a picture of the beach, but you can actually see the waves move. You can hear the beach."

Other odds and ends the audience learned about @jack: Yes, his breakfast really is boiled eggs with soy sauce (and mixed berries!) every single day; he took sewing classes long enough to make two skirts, but bailed before he reached pants; and he considered becoming a massage therapist who focused only on San Francisco programmers. (He gave up on that last one when he realized it was a categorically terrible idea.)

As for that longstanding desire to run this town, it sounds like Mr. Dorsey is a little puzzled by how his life's turned out: "I've always wanted to be a mayor." He added, "I've never wanted to be an engineer. I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I never wanted to be a programmer. I happened into it because those were the tools I needed to use to build what I wanted to build."

Oh, and about the AP's hacked Twitter account, which briefly sent the stock market plunging yesterday. Mr. Dorsey pointed the finger square at whoever was charged with managing it: "I think having really strong passwords is really, really critical." (A big laugh from the audience.) "I think security and privacy, a lot of people consider them end-points, but it's an evolution." Changing your password regularly, he added, would help.

As Betabeat filed out of the auditorium, we passed Nina Garcia. "He's fabulous, fabulous," we overheard her say.

What's wrong with that? (Photo: Wikimedia)

The Chat-rooming Classes Today, seemingly every tech reporter in the business tuned into Jason Calacanis's "This Week in Startups," presumably in the hopes that Mr. Calacanis would tell all re: the allegations of abuse against Michael Arrington. But as familiar names chattered away in the chat room, Mr. Calacanis had little to say beyond comparing himself to Obi Wan. That would make Mr. Arrington Anakin Skywalker, of course; Mr. Calacanis said he taught him how to be powerful in media, and "I regret that."

As for the allegations themselves, Mr. Calacanis was quick to say he wouldn't be commenting on whether they were true, citing his lack of direct knowledge. (He did, however, openly discuss the time that Mr. Arrington called a PR honcho "the c-word," thereby outing someone who'd never mentioned the incident publicly!) [Correction: Mr. Calacanis first mentioned the incident and the PR exec (Brooke Hammerling) by name in the comments of his Facebook post, prompting Ms. Hammerling to confirm the story, also in a Facebook comment.] All in all, it sounds like he (kinda sorta) regrets getting involved. He apparently thought writing a Facebook note wouldn't go very far. "I thought that that would be a place where it just lived there," he said. (Paging Randi Zuckerberg!) "I got a little P.T. Barnum in me and I feel like me commenting on all this stuff actually detracts from it," he added.

The Biggest Failure Silicon Alley fameballer and Vimeo cofounder Jakob Lodwick took to PandoDaily this week to lament his decision to sell his company Connected Ventures, which included CollegeHumor and Vimeo, to media conglomerate IAC in 2006. In the post, called “An acquisition is always a failure,” Mr. Lodwick wrote that selling the company to IAC was “the worst business decision of his life” because although it fattened his bank account, it stifled his ability to work creatively. Getting acquire is like giving up, he argued, which we’re sure delighted his fellow NYC entrepreneurs who are desperately groping for the exit sign.

We suppose you can’t have your cake and eat it too, even if the cake is made of millions of dollars.

Kenny Lerer's Got Ringtones In the midst of a recent phone call with Ken Lerer about Lure Fish Bar, his favorite power lunch spot, our conversation was interrupted by the dulcet sounds of Jim Morrison from his cellphone. Was that “People Are Strange,” we asked? Yes, Mr. Lerer confirmed, revealing that he spends “way too much time” picking out the right ringtones for the important people in his life. That Doors song was for Brian Bedol, Mr. Lerer’s business partner in the media and entertainment company Bedrocket. "If you knew Brian," he said, "'People Are Strange' is the perfect ring tone for him."

Did he have a ringtone for his son Ben, the cofounder of Thrillist? “Oh this is embarrassing,” he replied, admitting that it was Rod Stewart’s “Some Guys Get All the Luck.” “Not bad, huh?” quipped Mr. Lerer the elder.

Brit’s Got Jokes On Monday, Brit + Co. founder Brit Morin announced on her Facebook page that she was expecting a baby with her husband, Path cofounder Dave Morin. Of course, the update was quickly debunked as an April Fool’s Day prank, despite the fact that she posted it towards the end of the day. “For all of you who wished me congratulations on being pregnant, thank you for being a total sucker!” she wrote.

Apparently, along with making Christmas trees out of cheese and turning Mac extension cords into jump ropes, such personal pranks are part of Ms. Morin’s repertoire.

“The trick is to wait until the evening of April Fools when people think all the jokes are over,” she wrote. “I pull this one every single year and still, so many fall for it ;)” Guess she lost all of next year’s suckers by giving away her secret.

PR darling Brooke Hammerling had a subtweet for the ladies pretending to be with child for April Fool’s Day:

https://twitter.com/brooke/status/319229167046623233

Jack Did it All for the Nookie We knew about Jack Dorsey's nose ring, but we had no idea he used to be in Limp Bizkit. Business Insider uncovered an old photo of the Square cofounder that shows him looking quite different than he does when sporting his current hand-sewn jeans look. The black and white portrait has Mr. Dorsey with full-on 90s rave kid hair. Pass the glowstick, bro.

(Photo: Twitter)

Bloggers! They're Just Like Us! Business Insider editor Steve Kovach gets hearts aflutter, apparently. As overheard by fellow editor (so many over there!) Alyson Shontell, a starry eyed PR person compared their meeting with Mr. Kovach to that of a Hollywood star. It's understandable, we constantly confuse Mr. Kovach with Jake Gyllenhaal every time we see him out with the normals.

http://twitter.com/shontelaylay/status/319838156486758400

Do You Startup, Bro? Silicon Valley's fraternity president and Digg founder Kevin Rose was the subject of an ABC News profile this week which reminded us he's still around! The Google Ventures partner revealed what new apps he's circling to potentially fund, including a personal training app called FitStar. He also revealed that the Instagram filter Toaster is named after his adorable dog and detailed what his typical day is like: "Invest in start-ups. Find the next big thing. Meet with entrepreneurs. Drink coffee. Hang out." Sounds like a Bravo show in the making.

Internet Weak On Thursday, the New York collective of the Web’s  hive mind met up for a low key gathering at the Watch What Happens Live prop closet Design Within Reach showroom in SoHo to celebrate the quickly approaching Internet Week. The festival's new director Caroline Waxler welcomed the sharply dressed but older-skewing crowd. iPads were shuffled around to get attendees to sign up and vote  for the 200+ panels that are in contention for just 13 slots to be showcased at the yearly event. (Holding a drink from the open bar and registering on the iPad was difficult, but we managed.)

Anyway, the annoyingly arranged support columns, a seating arrangement dependent on the furniture layout, and the tri-level setup made it hard to pay attention to Vice editors Kelly Bourdet and Brian A. Anderson. After talking for a half hour about all the cool things Vice does (and plentiful mentions of the burgeoning media empire's massive presence at SXSW), they showed off a drone for people to play with. But that wasn’t enough to amuse the partygoers as throngs of them slinked off shortly after the panel ended. Perhaps that was enough Internet for one day.

(Photo: The Social Network)

Accel has closed a $475 million fund that they plan to use for Series A startups mainly in Israel and Europe. [TechCrunch]

Yesterday was Twitter's 7th birthday and it celebrated by hitting the 200 million users milestone. That's great and all but... [The Verge]

...YouTube announced they have one billion monthly users. You know what's cool? [San Jose Mercury News]

The influx of new money from this round of billion dollar startups has undeniably changed the Valley. But is it for the better? [East Bay Express]

Turns out Starbucks baristas actually have no idea how to use that Square thing. [Fast Company]

As far as technophiles seeking political office go, Jack Dorsey is taking the opposite approach from Sheryl Sandberg.

Ms. Sandberg's new book may read like the source material for a campaign platform, but on a recent 60 Minutes appearance, she evaded questions about leaning in to the White House. Mr. Dorsey, on the other hand, is once again boldly pointing to his desired political office (Mayor of New York City), just not, you know, when he's running or what exactly he'd do when he got here--besides marvel at our transportation system, of course.

Last night, the Twitter and Square cofounder also took the hot seat on 60 Minutes. Actually, the temperature was rather warm and welcoming. The CBS crew seemed smitten with the man "many people" call "the intellectual successor" to Steve Jobs and his shy, contemplative ways. Indeed, it was hard not to read a note of admiration as Lara Logan asked about his inability to communicate, as is befitting the new mode of deference to our nerd-boy-kings, who are somehow still able to snag model girlfriends and charm celebrities.

The segment was also bookended with mentions of Mr. Dorsey's vague mayoral campaign. As Ms. Logan intoned:

"Square is still a startup, but we were surprised to learn that Jack Dorsey already has his eye on the next job he wants, Mayor of New York City--an unlikely role for a man who calls himself a loner and spends a lot of time dreaming and thinking."

The daydream believer revisits that ambition as he and Ms. Logan are filmed riding around the subway. Here's their exchange from the middle of the Times Square station:

Dorsey: What I love about New York is just the electricity I feel right away. Just look at us in this station, there's just people walking everywhere--

Logan: Chaos.

Dorsey: It's chaos. It's kind of like being in a car in the middle of a thunderstorm. Everything is raging around you but you're safe inside that car. So New York feels very much to me like that.

Yeah, "safe" isn't the first word most New Yorkers would use to describe life in the city?

That segues into a photo of Mr. Dorsey and Mayor Bloomberg. "Jack Dorsey knows it helps to be a billionaire if you run for mayor in New York," according to Ms. Logan's voiceover. In fact, as David Kirkpatrick noted in 2011, Mr. Bloomberg explicitly advised Mr. Dorsey to "make a lot of money first."

At that point, Ms. Logan swings it back his comfort level with face-to-face communication with voters. Mr. Dorsey looks down as he responds:

"I guess my natural state would be through mediation of letters or through text, all those mediums I definitely find ease with. But do I appreciate it as much as face to face communication? No. Do I feel like I'm an expert at having a normal conversation, face to face? Absolutely not. That's just not my natural state. I would rather be walking in Land's End [across from the Golden Gate bridge] and thinking about things."

Sounds more like he's running for successor to Steve Jobs than mayor.

(Photo: flickr.com/jaxed)

Several big tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Intel have publicly declared their support for gay marriage. They're part of a corporate group that's reportedly planning to file an amicus brief in support of overturning California's Prop 8. [Bloomberg]

Yahoo would like you to know that its new, anti-work-from-home police has absolutely nothing to do with you (unless you work at Yahoo). [Mercury News]

"While hanging with my 12 year old cousin the other day, I unknowingly entered into the world of Tweenstagram, a vastly different space than the Instagram I have grown to know and love (and refresh too often)." Do go on. [Wisdom of Pearls]

Max Levchin, one of the cofounders of PayPal, is launching a new mobile payments startup with the chipper name of Affirm. “You will essentially be putting a purchase on a digital tab, and we are going to make it work for us by looking at all available data to determine if you are someone who will pay it back." [AllThingsD]

Former Square COO Keith Rabois, who left in the wake of sexual harassment accusations, has landed at Khlosa Ventures as a VC. [AllThingsD]

Mr. Rabois (Photo: Twitter)

Earlier today, news broke that Square's COO, Keith Rabois, had left the company. It was a strangely-timed departure, considering Square recently raised $200 million in a Series D. Now, the Wall Street Journal has broken the news that Mr. Rabois is embroiled in a sexual harassment claim from a fellow Square employee, and resigned so that the allegations would “not cause a distraction for the company.”

Steven Berger, the New York attorney representing the unnamed employee, said that Square had failed to take appropriate actions after the employee claimed he was being sexually harassed. Mr. Rabois told the Journal, "I'm completely confident that all the facts will come out and I will be vindicated."

In a post published to his Tumblr, Mr. Rabois offered his version of events. According to the post, he met the unnamed employee through a mutual friend, and their friendship quickly blossomed into a romance. Mr. Rabois says the employee began working at Square several months after they began dating, following his recommendation to hire.

Writes Mr. Rabois:

Last week, a New York-based attorney threatened Square and myself with a lawsuit. I am told this lawsuit would allege that the relationship was not consensual, and would go on to accuse me of some pretty horrible things. I was told that only a payment of millions of dollars will make this go away, and that my career, my reputation, and my livelihood will be threatened if Square and I don’t pay up.

I realize that continuing any physical relationship after he began working at Square was poor judgment on my part. But let me be unequivocal with the facts: (1) The relationship was welcome. (2) Square did not know of the relationship before a lawsuit was threatened; it came as a complete surprise to the company. (3) He never received nor was denied any reward or benefits based on our relationship. And (4), I did not do the horrendous things I am told I may be accused of. While I have certainly made mistakes, this threat feels like a shakedown, and I will defend myself to the full extent of the law.

Mr. Rabois is a member of the storied PayPal mafia, having worked at both PayPal and LinkedIn prior to Square. Mr. Rabois' active Twitter account yesterday betrayed no signs that anything was amiss. He thanking several followers for congratulating him on moving on from Square.

"I deeply regret that I let my personal and professional lives to become intertwined," Mr. Rabois wrote on his Tumblr. "I apologize to my colleagues and friends (at Square and elsewhere) who I’ve let down, and who will bear the brunt of some of the unnecessary, negative attention this situation will likely bring."

Update (5:26 p.m.): Gawker's Adrian Chen points out on Twitter that as a first-year law student at Stanford in the early-1990s, Mr. Rabois was involved in an incident in which Mr. Rabois and two other students "shouted homophobic slurs in the direction of a lecturer's home." A New Yorker profile on PayPal founder Peter Thiel, who met Mr. Rabois at Stanford, described the incident as a law student's attempt to test the limits of the First Amendment.

Mr. Rabois. (Photo: Yaniv Golan)

Aleksey Vayner, the Yale grad who gained Internet infamy in 2006 for his video resume, "Impossible is Nothing," is dead at 29. [Motherboard]

Square COO Keith Rabois is leaving the San Francisco-based payments company; Kara Swisher says disagreements with CEO and founder Jack Dorsey are at least partially behind the departure. [AllThingsD]

The latest petty sleight in the high-school style feud between two social media giants: Facebook has cut off access to Twitter's new video-sharing service, Vine, preventing the app from using Facebook to find new friends. [AllThingsD]

What asshole decided to name a smartphone made for the African market YOLO? [Mashable]

A French court wants to force Twitter to reveal the identities of users who author racist tweets in violation of the country's hate-speech laws. Twitter is deciding whether to fight the ruling. [NYT]