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YC SAFE News

The Simple Agreement for Future Equity, or SAFE, has become a standard way for early-stage startups to raise money. Here you will find articles about how SAFEs work in practice, changes to common terms, and debates among founders and investors about early-stage fundraising.

Typical stories explain valuation caps, discounts, and dilution in plain language, or report on how market conditions push standard terms up or down. Cautionary tales appear as well, often about founders who stacked too many SAFEs and only discovered the ownership consequences at their priced round.

Fundraising mechanics may sound dry, but they decide who owns how much of a company when the stakes get high. First-time founders, angel investors, and startup lawyers all follow this topic because a single misunderstood clause can be worth millions later on.

DeepSeek to Make Permanent 75% Discount on Flagship AI Model
2026-05-24

DeepSeek announced it will permanently reduce the price of its flagship V4-Pro AI model by 75%. As a result, developers will continue to pay just a quarter of the original cost to access the technology.

Swap tables, flash-friendly swap, swap_ops, and more
2026-05-24

This technical deep dive explores the Linux kernel's swap subsystem, which manages anonymous memory pages in secondary storage. It highlights recent enhancements and architectural updates, including the implementation of swap tables, flash-friendly swapping, and new swap operations to optimize memory performance.

Time to talk about my writerdeck
2026-05-23

The author transformed an old laptop into a dedicated writerdeck by installing a console-only Debian Linux operating system without a graphical interface. To optimize the device for focused work, they installed specific terminal packages to manage Wi-Fi connections, customize fonts, and handle task sessions.

On The <dl> (2021)
2026-05-23

This article explores the proper usage and semantic benefits of the HTML description list element. It explains how web developers can leverage this often-overlooked tag to improve accessibility and structure their content more effectively. Readers will discover practical examples of when to use description lists over standard unordered or ordered lists.

Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says
2026-05-23

The Trump administration is aggressively reinterpreting existing immigration frameworks to require green card seekers to leave the United States to apply for permanent residency. Although adjusting status from within the country has been a standard practice for decades, a new internal memo now frames this in-country process as a rare exception granted solely at the government's discretion.

80386 microcode disassembled
2026-05-23

Enthusiasts have successfully disassembled the microcode of the Intel 80386 processor by using a neural network to extract binary data from high-resolution images of its silicon die. By analyzing opcode behaviors to decode the underlying data structure, the team fully reconstructed the processor's internal instruction set. The extracted microcode was then translated into a custom assembly language and Verilog, preserving a foundational piece of computing history.

Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers
2026-05-23

Amazon's decision to completely cut off support for older Kindle e-readers has frustrated loyal customers who view the devices as long-lasting appliances rather than disposable technology. While software maintainers see dropping legacy systems as a necessary relief, users argue that Amazon is disregarding their needs by failing to offer a suitable replacement device with physical buttons. This backlash highlights the ongoing tension in the tech industry between corporate desires to streamline software lifecycles and consumer expectations for durable, accessible hardware.

The Art of Money Getting
2026-05-23

Technology professionals discussing the article emphasize that prioritizing high salaries often leads to career dissatisfaction, making workplace integrity essential for finding ethical employers during the current AI and crypto gold rushes. Commenters advocate for transparency when serving established industries and defend the enduring ethical standards of traditional professions like accounting against the negative impacts of private equity ownership.

My two-part desk setup (2025)
2026-05-23

This 2025 setup guide details a creative dual-zone desk arrangement designed to separate digital work from screen-free hobbies. The author partitions a single long desk into two distinct areas, dedicating one side to professional computing and the other to analog activities like reading and building LEGO with family.

SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket
2026-05-23

SpaceX successfully launched the Starship V3, which stands as the most powerful rocket ever built. The massive vehicle roared off its launch pad, showcasing unprecedented power and advanced aerospace technology to mark a major milestone in heavy-lift space exploration.

Hengefinder: Finding when the sun aligns with your street
2026-05-23

Hengefinder is a new tool that allows users to track and predict when the sun aligns with their city streets. Following user feedback, the developers have improved mobile web access and launched a dedicated smartphone app that leverages built-in directional sensors.

Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality
2026-05-23

A Texas mother was arrested and jailed after posting on Facebook about the town's brown, undrinkable water, prompting authorities to charge her under a bomb-threat law. The city later admitted that the water quality issues she highlighted in her social media post were indeed unsafe for consumption.

Reverse engineering circuitry in a Spacelab computer from 1980
2026-05-23

A team of hardware enthusiasts has reverse engineered the vintage circuitry of a 1980 Spacelab computer once used aboard the Space Shuttle. The project provides a fascinating technical look into early aerospace computing by meticulously analyzing and documenting the original circuit boards. Ultimately, this preservation effort ensures that a crucial piece of space exploration hardware history is saved and understood by future generations.

Sleep research led to a new sleep apnea drug
2026-05-23

Research on the physiology of sleep and breathing by a University of Toronto professor has led to the development of a novel sleep apnea drug. This new treatment recently reported positive results in a phase 3 clinical trial.

Making deep learning go brrrr from first principles (2022)
2026-05-23

A revived 2022 article on deep learning performance highlights NVIDIA's sustained exponential hardware growth and the massive computational gap between modern GPUs and interpreted software. Readers heavily debated the author's comparison of raw GPU processing power to Python's execution speed, arguing over whether this accurately illustrates framework overhead or constitutes a flawed category error.

-​-dangerously-skip-reading-code
2026-05-23

This article explores the frustrating reality of engineering teams being forced to skip reading code despite warning leadership about severe technical risks. It highlights the broader organizational challenge where management prioritizes short-term goals over software quality, even when fully informed of the trade-offs. Ultimately, it serves as a cautionary tale about the limits of technical advocacy when business pressures override engineering best practices.

sp.h: Fixing C by giving it a high quality, ultra portable standard library
2026-05-23

The new C standard library sp.h aims to provide a high-quality, highly portable alternative by remaining small and supporting major platforms like Linux, Windows, and WASM. However, the author's decision to list obscure architectures and operating systems as non-goals has sparked debate, with critics arguing that focusing solely on mainstream 64-bit systems contradicts the project's claim of being ultra-portable.

Rubish: A Unix shell written in pure Ruby
2026-05-23

Rubish is an open-source Unix shell written entirely in pure Ruby and hosted on GitHub by developer amatsuda. The project is currently open to the public and actively seeking community contributions to aid in its ongoing development.

.NET (OK, C#) finally gets union types
2026-05-23

The latest .NET 11 release finally introduces native union type support to C#. A new technical article explores the implementation details and design choices behind this addition, alongside a practical guide for developers to create their own custom union types.

PHP's Oddities
2026-05-23

A recent blog post explores the various quirks, inconsistencies, and unpredictable behaviors that have long defined the PHP programming language. By highlighting specific historical oddities, the author examines how these unique design choices continue to challenge developers and shape the language's enduring reputation in the web development community.