Milo Yiannopoulos hopes it's the former; the tech writer and Cambridge University student is coordinating the Nude London Tech Calendar 2010 project to raise money for Take Heart India, a charity that raises money to help bring information technology to blind and disabled students. There's been some chatter that the female participants might be undermining their careers, but they are balanced out by plenty of male participants — mostly startup founders, like the women — and follow in the footsteps of other British women who posed naked for leukemia research

Yiannopoulos said the calendar will go on sale in the next day or two, with a launch party slated for Monday. No word yet on the dress code, but you should probably leave your jokes about "USB dongles" and "back-end systems" at home. Or at least keep them in your pocket until after the second drink.

(Video via Vimeo)

In response to a question about "what keeps you up at night" at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Brin talked about what "keeps me excited at night." Oh, Sergey, you naughty boy. "Primarily hardware." Heh, do tell! "A processor with eight cores... two terabyte hard drive... micro SD cards."

Sigh. A computer geek at all hours, then. Not knowing about batting averages is one thing, even if Brin did immigrate from Russia at the young age of six. But laying awake at night, thinking about computer chips and Moore's Law? That's hard core nerdery, right there. And if that's what it takes to achieve a multi-billion-dollar personal net worth and the creation of a hugely powerful tech company, we know plenty of people who would give up their normalcy in a heartbeat.

Above, find a compilation of geeky-freaky Brin moments, culled from conference footage and this interview his wife gave, in which she mentions that coffee helps prevent Parkinson's, which Brin is genetically at risk for. It's especially palatable with cream and sugar, Sergey.

Certain, that is, if you judge from recent history. Here's a roundup of tech chauvinism flare-ups from just the last couple of months:

• "Booth babes" were explicitly discouraged at the TechCrunch 50; some people still hired the attractive spokesgirls.
  
• On stage at the same event, Penn Jilette promoted his iPhone magic app by explaining how it helped a stripper increase her tips. Oy, said Twitter
  
• When the fit, female co-founder of the startup TotalTrainer gave a presentation at VentureBeat's Demo conference, some male geeks in the audience got snarky about her body on Twitter, provoking a backlash against their "sexist tweets."
  
• Attendees at TechCrunch had to be warned not to mock the accents of speakers from foreign countries, according to co-organizer Jason Calacanis.

What's more, the girls who danced on stage at this year's Yahoo Hack Day were merely a sequel to the gyrating women who appeared on stage last year, notes Kara Swisher at All Things D. That's despite the fact that an all-woman team won the top prize at Yahoo's first Hack Day, in 2006, and that Yahoo has a tough-as-nails female CEO.

Chalk it up as evidence that, whether a woman calls the shots or not, the tech world remains heavily male dominated. It goes beyond that, though: Human relationships, across the gender divide or not, get severely twisted in Silicon Valley's intense startup culture, where they're all too often pushed aside to make way for technical achievements (think marathon coding sessions) or business success. The Hack Day incident is as much about interpersonal awkwardness as sexism (does this guy look like he's enjoying himself?).

Images from this year's event are below, via simonwillison.net and CocaChou on Flickr. It's a well-stocked gallery, purely so you can fully appreciate how, uh, deplorable this whole scene was.

via CocaChou on Flickr

via CocaChou on Flickr

via CocaChou on Flickr

via CocaChou on Flickr

Oh, sure, Goldberg married Thomas Goldberg while working in Seattle, but the couple were soon looking to skip town, mulling destinations like New York or London. In the meantime, Goldberg kept a buttoned-down look, as illustrated in the first two pictures below.

Then came Goldberg's ejection from Jobster, his creation of the networking site Social Median (later sold), and his eventual relocation to Hamburg — where Goldberg apparently went very, very gay, as seen in the pictures below.

Tech tyrant or not, we don't begrudge Goldberg his sexy partytime. We're just sad he had to fly east to enjoy it. With the rise of the tech startup scene in India and China, it seemed like proud, defiant hedonism was one of the few sectors San Francisco could corner. So much for that theory.

UPDATE: A tipster writes that at least some of these pictures are connected to a gay charter cruise:

.

..for the record, most of those photos — definitely 4, 5, and 6 — were taken on a cruise ship, the Celebrity Solstice. Probably the Atlantis Events gay charter sailing from Rome this late July - early August. I was on that ship, along with 1,500+ other gay guys, Bruce Vilanch, Patty LuPone . . .

If you know more, we'd love to hear from you.

Hence, the inevitable leaks:

Mashable's Pete Cashmore TechMeme's Gabe Rivera uploaded this pic, which shows the Gallic CEO of Seesmic, Loïc Le Meur, hiding behind a friend on a beach at the posh Fairmont Orchid.

eBuddy founder Onno Bakker uploaded this pic of a morning session, a masculine stew of baseball caps and intertwined hairy legs. For an event that emphasizes its laid-back nature, that sure looks like a tightly-packed agenda (lower right).

Baseball uniforms? Really? That looks an awful lot like work. It's hard to see the point of conning your employer into paying for a Hawaiian vacation like The Lobby if you have to suit up and work in a disciplined team. (Onno Bakker)

Here are some of the quotes rounded up by the Wall Street Journal:

• "Like 15,000 college kids having a gigantic frat party." —Palo Alto marketer.
  
• "Just the marquee event of the summer." —Google Dance regular.
  
• "People are upset... it could've been a good morale booster." —Social media consultant.

Google has greatly slowed its hiring and tightened its focus on the bottom line; as its workforce matured both emotionally and in raw median age, it was inevitable the company's giant frat party would go the way of the big Disneyland trip. Hopefully, for employees' sake, Google is still willing to direct some profits toward more tasteful methods of giving away booze and snacks.

Dauman, a friend acknowledges, is partying as hard as ever. Though he's grown sick of the scene in San Francisco, Dauman spends freely to find fun elsewhere, jetting to Vegas some weekends to party with his New Yorker girlfriend at events with a around four females for every male. (This is a new girlfriend; the dominatrix Dauman was said dating is history.)

Dauman's also returned to New York on a near-monthly basis, including for Fashion Week in February, and this summer to his parents' vacation home in East Hampton.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Or so we're told. But Dauman's hedonism doesn't seem to have affected his work. Though his side gig, a music startup, appears defunct, the Columbia JD and MBA got a promotion at Google last month, from "Strategic Partner Development Associate" to "Strategic Partner Development Manager." (See the excerpt from Dauman's LinkedIn profile at left.)

Presumably this means Dauman will have more responsibility around local content acquisition, as his father has described his job. This could help sell his bosses on a New York move; AOL, the New York Times and Huffington Post are all duking out in the city and surrounding markets for local news website dominance.

It certainly wouldn't be Dauman's first time finagling an advantageous transfer. Below, Dauman Sr., well-to-do CEO of Viacom, describes how no less a negotiator than Google chief Eric Schmidt was persuaded to hire Dauman Jr., despite the Viacom suit.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

[video via]

Burton is the CTO of Cisco's unified communications group. But he's not very good at that person-to-person communication thing.

According to a profile he created on PeopleJar, Burton characterizes himself as an amateur cyclist. Apparently enraged that his custom-built $4,000 Cervélo was a day late, Burton stormed into Cyclepath, a bike shop in Pleasanton, Calif., to get a final fitting. When told he'd have to wait 15 minutes while other customers got served, Burton started letting loose on the salesman, according to Cyclepath owner Joel Davis.

After a salesman apologized for the delay and asked if there was anything he could do, the Cisco executive let loose with an acidic reply. "Be sorry you are that way, not that I feel that way," Burton said, according to a written report of his encounter. "I hope you die." After Davis called Burton to complain, Burton told him, "Under no uncertain terms will I ever fucking apologize to any member of your fucking staff." Davis says Burton finally relented after he told him that Cyclepath customers were willing to testify about his behavior to the police, and offered the Cyclepath employee an apology that Davis characterized as "half-hearted."

We'd like to know: Are Cisco's labs developing a solution to prevent the likes of Burton from communicating with anyone, anytime, ever?

(Photo by Text 100)

Google doesn't have its own corporate jets — good thing, since that transportation perk is so déclassé these days. Instead, the company leases planes, including a set of jets jointly owned by Schmidt and Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Peter Kafka at MediaMemo notes that Google paid for $106,201 worth of travel to have Schmidt's "family and friends" accompany him on business trips.

Which made us think: What happened in Schmidt's life last year? Schmidt, who is married, has had a series of girlfriends on the side. (Good for him!) But he started getting serious with his most recent one, Kate Bohner, in late 2007. Bohner, who was briefly married to author Michael Lewis and is said to have inspired the character of sex-crazed Samantha on Sex and the City, lived in south Florida until she relocated to Los Angeles last fall. During the presidential campaign, she was spotted escorting Schmidt to at least one YouTube-sponsored debate.

I asked a Google spokesman if Bohner was one of Schmidt's passengers, but he declined to comment. So did Bohner fly free on the Google party plane? If so, good for Schmidt: Not every executive, in this perk-hostile times, gets to fly such friendly skies.

If Pell has a way with the ladies, then Thione (left), a devotee of gay beaches, has a way with the guys, according to this photo sent in by a tipster. In the background: Celebrity Cruises' Solstice ship, recently booked for a gay cruise in the Caribbean. To Thione's right: friends Kevin Lucas and Jonathan Deason. Way to go, Lorenzo! Judging by his buff physique, we'd say post-acquisition life has been good to him indeed.

We have scant details, but a tipster sent in this picture of the Googlers' flight crew at a party in Auckland, New Zealand. (Another planespotter recently sent us a sighting of the Google Jet down under (right) in late December, so the location seems to check out.) The woman on the left, we're told, is named Colleen, and chose to expose herself in front of the camera. A bit nippy, though, considering the nearby ice sculptures.

It's hardly a surprise Google's dynamic duo, known for attending the sex-infused Burning Man festival in Nevada, picked a racy bunch to steer the plane. Page was famously photographed canoodling aloft with his future wife, Lucy Southworth. And Brin demanded that his private bedroom in the sky be fitted with a king-size bed. Colleen seems like the type who wouldn't blink at mile-high-club antics.

Does anyone recognize the rest of Larry and Sergey's aeronautical servants? Please let us know.

I truly love working at Yahoo!, and believe that my position here offers the best avenue to further my career. I was not laid off. I have no plans to leave. I am not worried about mergers or buyouts. I know that some executive just quit, and clearly, I don't care even a little.

Yes, yes, you've recently gotten a million gillion dollars in venture capital, and you were founded by 2 brain surgeon rocket scientist Stanford PhD grads who invented a perpetual motion machine, blah blah blah.

I have actually heard it already, that line of yours. Probably very recently. So don't bother.

Please don't "reach out to me directly" unless you can actually afford me; it is demeaning and absurd to think that the sound of your voice would somehow change my opinion on this matter.

While googling for more info on Schlueter, who worked on the Digg-like Yahoo Buzz, I found him complaining in a thread at TechCrunch: "What is with the commenters here? Maybe they’d be happier reading Valleywag, since they clearly care more about bashing than about credible info." Oh come on, Isaac, it takes one to know one. You just keep running your mouth like that, and we'll be your best friends. In fact we'll be your only friends.

As a nearby source explains:

Justin got introduced to some guy sitting down and quickly started yelling and waving his arms. Justin accused the guy of stealing his broadcasters, using words like "incessant" and "out of control". Justin then said something about "staying off his fucking site" or that he'll just "break the guy's face", with his fists clenched. The guy just sat there pretty calmly and simply asked Justin for more than 1 example of content poaching. After Justin stumbled to answer the guy continued to say "this is not worth my time." Stumped, Justin kind of gave up, apologized, and walked away embarrassed.

More photos of Kan, Julia Allison, Sarah Lacy, and other afterpartiers: