A couple of thoughts on today’s news that Jason Calacanis employed John Schiefer, at Mahalo (or more accurately, that he didn’t fire him when he found out about his past). For those who don’t know, before he worked at Mahalo Schiefer got caught up in creating a botnet that was late...

Jason Calacanis, the CEO of Mahalo, the world's largest compendium of rewritten Google search results, claims he hired a computer hacker because he never bothered to Google him. Now his employee is headed to jail. In a mass email, Calacanis wrote that he and Mahalo's CTO, Mark Jeffrey, were ignorant...

Download audio file (geekcast52.mp3) Episode 52 of the Cast of Geeks was a complete failure. We had a rowdy 90 minutes of good content, and I realized at the end that I never started recording it. Then we recorded a quick 5 minute recap of the show that was never recorded. Fail, part deux. Only my v...

newVideoPlayer("/ahston_jasondiss_gawker.flv", 506, 423,""); Internet hustler Jason Calacanis might be Twitter friends with Ashton Kutcher and Kutcher's wife Demi Moore, but the Brooklyn native will still slam the celebrities for harassing two homebuilders. "Celebrities have a lot of free time," Cal...

It’s not the best of times for Kings. From Wall Street titans like Dick Fuld to Main Street titans like Howard Schultz the future looks difficult. Even the kings of the blogging world are beginning to whine. On the same day that Mike Arrington announced a vacation from blogging and blamed othe...

One of the biggest secrets about the Sundance Film Festival is the quality of its documentaries — and though Robert Redford and crew try hard to highlight the exquisite non-fiction section of their yearly independent library, the doc categories are often overshadowed by the bigger, more access...

Gawker operative Stephen Kosloff has sent us another batch of photos from the frozen film wonderland that is the Sundance Film Festival. Now with product-placing bunnies. The party for the documentary, A Sealed Fate? contained the following ingredients: Director and America's Next Top Model host Nig...

Human-powered search engine Mahalo is adding a big new piece to its business: a Q&A feature that competes with the likes of Yahoo Answers. The twist is that there is a payment system, allowing users to offer up “tips� for the best answers. On the surface, this sounds a lot like the now defu...

This edition of the Weekend Roundup is quite late because I was out most of the time during the weekend. Aside from being caught up with The Dream Match - Pacquiao vs De La Hoya, I was very busy this past weekend with all the activities in church, attending my niece’s birthday party, planning ...

Tesla the electric car company wants 400mm from the US Gov’t. This would be a complete travesty if they get it. No track record at all, no experience at all, and it’s not a practical vehicle in any way. Let Tesla build their company the old fashioned valley way. Let them bullshit VC̵...