When not directly exploiting the homeless or calling them all ravenous drug addicts, the Valley's efforts to help out have often been clueless at best and straight-up insulting at worst. An effort to improve the homeless population's panhandling signs with better graphic design was probably well-meaning. It was also idiotic and patronizing.

It recalls that time that BBH Labs set up "Homeless Hotspots" at SXSW last year, turning homeless volunteers into unpaid personal wi-fi carriers for the visiting technorati. BBH Labs called it a "charitable experiment." Everyone else called it repulsive.

And here it is, the final straw. Tech entrepreneur Patrick McConlogue has publicly announced an "experiment" in yet another Medium post. (Medium, Sam Biddle notes, is "quickly becoming a sort of online mass grave for hasty thoughts of the moronic.") McConlogue, a partner in something called "Kickass Capital," calls his project "Finding the unjustly homeless, and teaching them to code."