The Wall Street Journal has unearthed more details about the Silicon Valley political advocacy group first reported by The San Francisco Chronicle.

Mark Zuckerberg–fresh off his fundraiser for Republican governor Chris Christie!–is working on launching the group, along with his close friend Joe Green, a former Harvard University roommate. Mr. Green was previously involved with NationBuilder.com and Causes.com and is now an entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz. (As we noted last fall, founder Marc Andreessen himself contributed exclusively to a number of Republican campaigns, after previously supporting Clinton-Gore.)

But the tech and Republican connections don’t stop there. Read More

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 Read More

“Mr. Mayor, I know you’re wearing a suit on the outside. But this industry is all about hoodies, and I know based on who you are you’re a hoodie on the inside,” CEO Howard Lerman told Mike Bloomberg, presenting the mayor with his very own honorary pullover–Yext branded, of course.

As he took it, Mayor Bloomberg informed the shaggy entrepreneur that, “My mother would have said you needed a haircut.” A room full of techies held up their smartphones for a digital souvenir of the moment. Read More

Guess Mayor Bloomberg isn’t going to close out his third term partying in swinging London, after all. Today in the hipper-than-thou surroundings of the BuzzFeed offices (BTW? sad lack of actual cats), he announced a new all-out, city-backed push officially expanding the “Made in NY” branding (created for the entertainment industry) to the tech business.

“We’re spreading the word, hopefully drawing even more tech companies to the five boroughs by taking a couple of steps today,” said Mayor Bloomberg.

Companies with at least 75 percent of their production in the city now includes tech firms can apply to be “Made in NY” certified, meaning they can display that spiffy little logo (or as it was described in the announcement, the “mark of distinction”) on their site. Everybody’s getting stickers, in other words! Read More

New York City public advocate and Democratic mayoral candidate Bill De Blasio added his voice to a growing chorus of commentators (including The Observer) who have noted similarities between Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s affordable housing platform, announced in her State of the City address earlier this week, and a plan proposed by the real Read More

In her 2013 State of the City speech, City Council Speaker and Democratic mayoral frontrunner Christine Quinn focused on housing affordability—namely middle-class housing.

Ms. Quinn’s headline proposal is to “build 40,000 new middle-income affordable apartments over ten years.” It’s unclear what definition of “middle-income” she would use, but the Middle Class Squeeze report that she released earlier today defines middle class as “households with incomes between 100 percent and 300 percent of area median income.” Read More

Mayor Bloomberg is scheduled to exit stage left this year, which means it’s time to elect someone to take his place. Since there are no other billionaire tech evangelists waiting in the wings, local techies are being courted for their votes by candidates eager to prove they’re the all about Silicon Alley.

Wall Street? Where’s that?  Read More

What do you do when you lack the technology to create your own simulation of New York City under missile attack? You use footage from video games, of course!

Kotaku reports that a new space race propaganda video put online by North Korea’s propaganda arm Uriminzokkiri depicts a city that looks an awful lot like New York being struck by missiles. Buildings begin to burn as an American flag waves overtop the footage. The video is couched as a dream sequence, showing the dreaming man aboard the rocket the country successfully tested in December. Read More

On her way out of the public sector last Thursday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran through a spate of last-minute initiatives, including the Alliance for an Affordable Internet, which seeks to expand Internet access in developing countries where a mere 25 percent of the population (on average) is online.

Although the public-private partnership between the State Department, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Intel, and the World Wide Web Foundation “barely got a mention” at the podium, it warrants closer examination, argues Bloomberg Businessweek. Read More

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. Read More