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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.

Show HN: Drive any macOS app in the background without stealing the cursor
2026-04-28

The open-source project CUA enables developers to programmatically control macOS applications in the background without disrupting the active user cursor. It aims to scale computer-use 2.0 by providing cross-OS fleets, open-source drivers, and benchmarks for AI model training and evaluation.

Mo RAM, Mo Problems (2025)
2026-04-28

A retrospective look at vintage computing reveals how late-1990s Intel chipsets artificially capped fast, cacheable RAM at 64MB to enforce market segmentation and push consumers toward pricier processors. To bypass these intentional hardware limitations, retro enthusiasts historically relied on clever kernel patches to treat excess memory as swap space, highlighting the extreme workarounds required to maximize older system performance.

Meetings are forcing functions
2026-04-28

While brief, focused meetings can serve as valuable forcing functions for team accountability, management often ruins them by expanding them into large, daily status updates. This performative oversight prioritizes the manager's need for control over engineering productivity, ultimately wasting significant work time and disrupting developer flow states. Effective standups instead require strict boundaries and small group sizes to act as quick interrupt routers rather than administrative traps.

High Performance Git
2026-04-28

Ted Nyman's new book, High Performance Git, explores the internal mechanics of the popular version control system. The guide is specifically designed to help software developers effectively optimize and manage large repositories for better performance.

GitHub Copilot code review will start consuming GitHub Actions minutes
2026-04-28

GitHub announced that its Copilot-powered code review feature for pull requests will now consume GitHub Actions minutes, shifting the resource cost for automated code assessments. This billing update directly impacts development teams worldwide, who will need to monitor their Actions usage to accommodate the change.

GTFOBins
2026-04-28

GTFOBins is a curated list of Unix-like executables that can be exploited to bypass local security restrictions on misconfigured systems. The project highlights how standard binaries can be abused to escalate privileges, serving as a critical resource for security teams looking to identify and patch local vulnerabilities.

Pgrx: Build Postgres Extensions with Rust
2026-04-28

The open-source framework pgrx enables developers to build PostgreSQL extensions using the Rust programming language. Maintained by the pgcentralfoundation on GitHub, the project is actively encouraging community collaboration and new contributions.

Show HN: Live Sun and Moon Dashboard with NASA Footage
2026-04-28

A new free dashboard provides live solar and lunar tracking using up to 4K NASA footage, 12 SDO wavelengths, and real-time moon phases for over 200 cities. The privacy-focused platform also features the ISS Earth feed, daily timelapses, and live space weather updates for Android and iOS without requiring a signup.

How I leared what a decoupling capacitor is for, the hard way
2026-04-28

After eagerly unboxing a newly manufactured printed circuit board, an electronics enthusiast shares a cautionary tale of troubleshooting unexpected hardware failures. The hands-on experience ultimately reveals the critical importance of decoupling capacitors in stabilizing power and ensuring circuit reliability. This practical lesson serves as a stark reminder for designers to never overlook fundamental power management components during the PCB layout process.

Waymo in Portland
2026-04-28

Alphabet's autonomous vehicle subsidiary Waymo is expanding its operations to Portland, Oregon. The addition of the Rose City to its network marks the latest step in the company's ongoing effort to scale its self-driving technology across the United States.

Can You Find the Comet?
2026-04-28

Today's astronomy feature challenges viewers to locate a hidden comet within a newly released space image. This daily online feature offers science and tech enthusiasts an interactive visual exploration of the cosmos.

CJIT: C, Just in Time
2026-04-28

The newly introduced CJIT utility simplifies C programming by allowing developers to instantly compile, link, and execute their code. This just-in-time approach eliminates traditional manual build steps, providing a significantly faster workflow for testing and iterating C applications.

Period tracking app, Flo, found to be selling user data to Meta
2026-04-28

The popular period tracking app Flo has been found sharing sensitive user data with Meta, exposing the vulnerabilities in digital health monitoring. This revelation highlights the risks of vague data collection policies and raises critical concerns about the privacy of self-monitoring biological markers.

UAE Leaves OPEC
2026-04-28

Recent reports indicate that the United Arab Emirates has officially left OPEC. While the original article could not be retrieved, the announcement is currently being discussed by the tech community in merged threads on Hacker News.

Microsoft and OpenAI end their exclusive and revenue-sharing deal
2026-04-27

Microsoft and OpenAI have terminated their exclusive partnership and revenue-sharing agreement. This decision allows the creator of ChatGPT to distribute its AI models to Microsoft's major cloud-computing rivals, such as Amazon.

GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing
2026-04-27

Starting June 1, GitHub will transition its Copilot service to a usage-based billing model where developers consume GitHub AI Credits based on their actual usage. This shift represents a significant change in how the platform monetizes its popular AI coding assistant.

4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor
2026-04-27

Mercor, a company specializing in AI voice authenticity and deepfake detection, has suffered a data breach resulting in the theft of 4TB of voice samples. The compromised audio data belongs to 40,000 AI contractors whose recordings are used to train and verify the firm's audio forensics infrastructure.

Men who stare at walls
2026-04-27

A recommended productivity routine suggests avoiding all screens and entertainment while working, recommending instead that you stare at a wall to recover focus when mentally drained. While the author notes this screen-free method is difficult to maintain, they found it to be a highly effective way to boost concentration and output.

Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained
2026-04-27

The popular open-source PostgreSQL backup and restore utility pgBackRest is no longer being actively maintained. Project developers have ceased updates, leaving the codebase without official support or future feature releases. Database administrators currently relying on the tool will now need to evaluate and migrate to alternative backup solutions.

Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico
2026-04-27

WeebLabs has introduced DSPi, a fully featured audio digital signal processing firmware designed for both the original Raspberry Pi Pico and the newer Pico 2. This new release brings robust audio processing capabilities to the RP2040 and RP2350 microcontrollers, supported by a dedicated community Discord server.