Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | stagger87's commentslogin

I'm probably spitting in the wind, but stuff like this is why I removed all my hosted open source projects. I manage several niche projects that I have now converted to binary only releases (to almost no push back). It's niche enough that it's not very hard to get LLMs to output chunks of code that it managed to scrape before I took it offline. I don't see many people talking about this angle, but LLMs ripping off my work killed my open source efforts.

>I don't see many people talking about this angle, but LLMs ripping off my work killed my open source efforts.

This is exactly what the article is talking about.



A friend of mine has mad Jenga style stacks of manga all over his flat and I will be forwarding this word to him.

Why did you want to install windows 11 anyways? I also have a PC stuck on Windows 10 and it makes me happy that it's now stable and not part of the forced rolling releases in Win11. Im going to run it on Win10 as long as I can.


Lack of security updates is a problem for a computer that's connected to internet.


FWIW, You can buy legit used 82357s for quite a bit less than 1k. Anecdotally, I've never had one fail in 20 years. Probably bought a dozen over that time frame. All used daily.


I seem to remember a similar arc with Cortana. Didn't it briefly appear everywhere in MS365?


"In a liquidation, common stockholders receive whatever assets remain after creditors, bondholders, and preferred stockholders are paid."

Coupled with what sounds like an already bad financial state of the company... I'm not claiming no foul play, but it looks like there is a reasonable avenue for what is happening.


Yet the board and CEO will get paid... So they're not that out of money. Just out of money enough to screw everybody but themselves.

> Philz board members, which include former CEO Phil Jaber and his son, Jacob Jaber; representatives from investment firms Summit Partners and TPG Growth; and CEO Mahesh Sadarangani will receive payouts or bonuses from the deal.


Salary takes preference over equity and debt in all liquidations.


The article implies that it's not a liquidation or bankruptcy, though, just a sale.

I don't know how you can buy a company without buying its stock from the shareholders, given that they are the owners of the company, but there must be some special circumstance that's not mentioned in the article.


There are tricks. I've been through such an acquisition. The purchaser sets up a new "Philz Coffee Co LLC" then purchases assets and operations for the exact amount the preferred stock holders want. They then liquidate the old company. Because the old company was never legally "bought" the common stock holders are SOL because they now own stock in a fictional company. That's not to say they don't have options... but I am not a lawyer and that definitely involves lawyers.



Shocking that that's legal


If the purchase amount is less than the liquidation preference amount of preferred shares then there is nothing to pay common shareholders.


I agree with you and don't know enough to speak authoritatively. That being said, I did find this definition of liquidation (below). The article hints the business was in trouble, the way I'm reading it, if the sale doesn't cover all obligations, its would be a liquidation.

"Business liquidation involves selling off a company’s assets, such as equipment, inventory, and real estate, and using the proceeds to pay off debts and obligations. This process usually occurs when a business is no longer profitable, facing insurmountable financial challenges, or the owner decides to retire or pursue other opportunities."


This is precisely the reason for accredited investor requirements to invest in private companies, it’s extremely easy to be screwed over as a small-time shareholder in a private company.


The article flat out states that they ran out of money. That's the special circumstance. Basically this was a fire sale.


If there was no money (aka bankruptcy) then board, top management and other investors would also not get anything (divide remaining assets between all stock). But this is different, this is sale, not bankruptcy. Some people get money while common stock owners (aka company owners) don't get anything.


Right, that's what makes them common stock owners; their shares aren't preferred.


Investing in shares is, like most things in life, a task that requires some skill and understanding. Hence the concept of accredited investors. When you're swimming with the big boys, it pays to know the rules of the game.

Unfortunately employees getting or buying shares from their employer have little to no investment skills. Yes, it's possible for these shares to be worth something, but if the company fails, they're last in line.

It behooves tech staff, who think the road to glory is paved in stock options to get professional financial and legal (not to mention tax) advice.

Or just consider all stock offerings to be worthless. The times it isn't are a rounding error.


The concept of accredited investors is nothing of the sort. It's an arbitrary income / net worth threshold.


It’s a check for ‘can this person handle losing a large chunk of money when they get swindled by management after investing in a private company’, which will almost certainly be the case if you don’t have more money to kick in every round (dilution) or don’t own preferred shares, or any number of other tricks. Google or Meta recently ‘acquired’ a company by offering them salary packages that matched the equity they had in their company and then skipped buying the company so anyone with shares left got screwed over when the husk was sold for 1% of its prior value, since it was almost worthless once all the talent was acquihired.


Which company was that?



Disagree. I exercised some small amount of options long time ago (like 10+ years). Never called, never cared, also thought it's long gone. But recently got a nice check from them out of the blue when they got sold to a larger company. Even though all the people I worked with long gone as well, including CEO. I checked the numbers, all seems correct.


I'm not saying there's never an outcome. I'm saying the percentage of positive outcomes is tiny compared to the number of players.

Congrats on the check. But I think you approached it in the right way. Assume they're worth nothing until proved wrong.


> "young people collecting disability."

Can you elaborate?


Some articles. [1][2]

For a while, this seemed to be associated with COVID, but it's continuing.

[1] https://www.edwardconard.com/macro-roundup/just-5-of-young-m...

[2] https://opa.hhs.gov/adolescent-health/physical-health-develo...


There is no one way to learn electronics. The Arduino will hold your hand through lighting up an LED, but depending on how much depth you want, may not teach you how it's happening. Working with an Arduino is like bowling with bumpers, which is a good place to start.


Not OP, but you don't ever have to guess and backtrack, you can always work out the next move. After playing about 100 boards several simple "rules" emerge which allow for this.


Yes, 5x5 is small enough that all backtracking can be codified into easily human-accessible rules.

* 5, 0, 1 1 1, 2 2, 3 1 and 3 1 are immediately solved

* 4 lets you set 3 squares immediately

* 3, 2 1 and 1 2 let you set 1 square immediately


In summary the only ones that don't let you put a square immediately are "0", "1", "2" and "1, 1". And as soon as you put a square you can put some crosses (right click). In the end it becomes fairly mechanic.


100 puzzles in, and I've not had the need for a manually-placed cross, either.


Hot take: Some valid rules are just brute-force search in an altered state space.

For example, a valid "advanced" rule is this: consider a line, then consider all permutations of ways to complete it given the current state of the line. If a square is filled in/crossed out in all these permutations, then it you may fill it in/cross it out.

This is an O(n!) algorithm! In practice you only have <5 permutations.


If I recall correctly, it's actually possible to implement this in O(n) (or maybe O(n^2)) time and space using a "dynamic programming" algorithm.

But in general, Nonogram solving, like most pen-and-paper puzzles, is NP-Complete for large enough puzzles, so even such a high-powered rule isn't guaranteed to completely solve a (large) puzzle.


Even a cursory glance of mortality rates for driving vs mountaineering show orders of magnitude higher rates for mountaineering.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6843304/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...


I think this is a disagreement about the definition of "mountain climbing." From the available statistics: 0.68 per 10,000 climbers in the Alps vs 1.5 per 10,000 US vehicles on the road.

High altitude mountaineering is considered an elite endeavor. Most mountaineering is not at high altitude.


That's fair. If you use any of the numbers closer to the activity described in the article (mountaineering at 22k') then you see the disparity. Even non elite mountaineering (mt ranier at 14k') has twice the mortality rate, according to this data.


? this is people dying in the alps and show how safe mountaineering is.

„ For France, Soulé et al. reported approximately 25 fatalities per year, calculated for a 4 year period, with a slight predominance of traumatic (approximately 45%) versus non-traumatic accidents (approximately 35%) and nearly 20% disappearances „

The Mont blanc is in france and one of the most climbed mountains in the world.

I think this „ many people die while mountaineering“ is bragging or watching to much social media


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: