skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The comments here are hilarious, they really reveal the IT bubble.

The only real complaint about this purchase would be that LinkedIn was overvalued. And I wouldn't bet on that since Microsoft surely sent a big team of their brightest cookies to make a valuation of the company.

But other than that, LinkedIn fits: it is a corporate social network, if you will. I know that "corporate social network" is almost an oxymoron, but bear with me. It is social in the sense that users register and interact with each other just as on a regular social network, but ultimately the service is corporate focused. LinkedIn has created one of the biggest and best maintained databases of employment information (and of possible business contacts) in the world. As TheArcane said, LinkedIn is "Facebook + Monster on steroids".

If you don't believe me, try to speak to people you know, active professionals outside of the IT sector and see how many of them have LinkedIn profiles. Better yet, talk to people who are not in employer-dominated sectors (i.e. not like IT, where the demand for qualified workers greatly exceeds the supply).
If Microsoft buys LinkedIn, I wonder if Facebook will now try to enter that territory.
Microsoft employs fifty thousand engineers. A group of them fucked up with that Windows 10 debacle. I reckon on the whole Microsoft very much do care about their reputation.
What I never get with these huge acquisitions is what about the user's privacy?

They never agreed with Microsoft to have their data but somehow ms automatically gets access to it?
That makes $60.5 per user. Compared to other social networks this seems to be within a reasonable range.
> For example, drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed as many as 1,147 unknown people in failed attempts to kill just 41 named individuals.

So? If you're trying to make a point that this is a bad situation, this information is not enough — to judge that, we would need to know who these targeted individuals were and how much destruction could they bring.

Also, who are these unknown people statistically? Example to clarify what I mean: if you execute a drone strike on a terrorist training camp, most of the casualties will likely be "unknown", and of course will include innocent civilians as well, but it's reasonable to assume that on average, more of them will be "bad guys" that were just unknown to you than if you execute a strike on a regular village.
Everything could be about technology/security. That doesn't mean it should be on Hacker News.
"If counter evidence exists".
An existing user base is priceless. In france, when you sell a shop, you also sell for the "fond de commerce", meaning that an existing list of client is part of the price.

You also have to consider that so many companies use linkedin. It's an industry standard for professional networking, which has a different meaning than networking with friend ("consumer" networking I guess ?).
Continuing my theory that Nadella doesn't know what he's doing. I don't think Microsoft learned anything from buying Yammer.
Learn How to Improve Customer Support in Your Mobile App
Windows 10 LinkedIn Edition

Update your LinkedIn profile with shell context menus!
And the lobbyists have made the spurious practices, ala 'GatorWallet', OK for the "good guys" so it's no longer illegal, either.
There are far cheaper ways of getting LinkedIn's database!
Similarly, I wish games would be smarter about level loading.

One game I recently played, a racing game, when you select "restart race" it reloads the entire level (3d models, textures etc) when really all it had to do was reset a handful of variable (car positions, time, a few other things like that).

If its not possible to reset these variables, then take a snapshot!

Its especially annoying when a game, eg, autosaves before a boss battle and then when you die, instead of just resetting some stats and inventory, you have to reload everything... They already know there's a good chance you will die (that's why they autosave!). If its too much effort to reload just the bits that need it, then take a snapshot of non-graphics memory at the autosave point and just reload that.

There's too many games out now where you can die very quickly (within seconds) if you're not that good yet, and then have to sit through a multi-minute loading phase over and over... very frustrating.

(obviously this applies only to "reloading", not terminating the game and loading)
The forced updates are something that's been long overdue.

Imagine a world without old versions of IE that your webapps still have to support because else you're losing 10% of your users.
Of course, in "capitalism" that doesn't happen - instead banks and other "too large to fail" companies are just given money, or they are sort-of nationalized - but without actually doing so (GM, Chrysler for example - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_crisis_of_...).
I feel like I keep up with tech stuff pretty good but I had to look up what Dynamics was when Satya mentioned it in his internal email.
I would think that non-techies would be even more confused and annoyed by their computer suddenly drastically changing out from underneath them without their permission.
Consumer class action litigation against Walgreens has started and will go on for decades.
If you are looking for a job you just send a private message to a bunch of recruiters or key decision makers e.g. managers. Your employer would never know.

It's not a moonshot at all. LinkedIn is a pretty well understood business.
> into targeting your person

Eh, what???
how many of you use Microsoft OR Linkedin ?
Upvote if result is: NO
Won't work. Instead LinkedIn will now infect the OS team, and before you know it you'll get LinkedIn notifications during boot.
Microsoft to Acquire LinkedIn – The Official Microsoft Blog
Forced Windows 10 upgrade became a meme on 9gag ("Went to the toilets and saw this", etc). I learnt about the story over there before it was on HN. I'm not saying 9gag is representative, but I counter the "no-one noticed the forced upgrades". Even my parents did. Everyone noticed.
very interesting news to say at least.
If you have that much RAM, there should be no disk thrashing since your OS will cache it anyway. Unless my "thrashing" you mean memory-memory copies and page remappings.
Can you re-architect the product from scratch? This should be doable if the raw building blocks (modules etc.) are properly designed and easily incorporated into a new design. If this is not the case, then all the more reason to rewrite the code!
I think this one makes sense though. I don't know if it's worth the money, but it complements their business approach.
To keep the design expertise in-house. Or as aptly put in this piece:

> He had subsequently watched its commercial aircraft business outsource itself to death. A key problem was that designers became so out of touch that they no longer understood basic manufacturing realities.

http://www.fingleton.net/boeing-goes-to-pieces/
this is top of the front page already... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11893153
Yes, it was annoying enough to make me give up on trying to read the article.
Accounting innovation is still innovation.
Hear, hear. Everything in degrees; spectrums. Too much of anything tends to be unhealthy.
Not that LinkedIn was stellar in any regard around user privacy, but is the situation expected to materially degrade under Microsoft?
To echo this, it was written primarily as a social satire. The mathematical part was more of a sub plot (but still fun and interesting).
Exactly! Linked In is the rolodex of the Internet on steroids. Microsoft just have to align it with the needs of their customers and they win.
>>> You effectively consent to being governed by continuing to live within the national boundaries associated with the government associated with that nation.

>>> What's the alternative, and how would you implement it?

Great question. Some here have already mentioned anarchism, which would be great if we could get there- but how could that even happen in the current regime? Most people are not philosophers, and have a hard time imagining things which don't exist here on our little ball of dirt. There is, however, a simple solution which should please anarchists and statists alike: virtual citizenship.

Virtual citizenships are the future. As you said yourself, in the current system one must change geographical location to change states, but why should this be so? We are already seeing the beginnings of this with things like Bulgaria's e-citizenship. Don't like the local religious-influenced government? Switch to another. Governments can work out treaties between themselves to establish a baseline of necessities and cost sharing. Changing your government could be simple and easy, which would force governments to compete for citizens. I think most of us realize the benefits of competition vs monopoly.

It could become the case that competition between governments becomes so fierce that governments start offering large incentives to join them- such as bonuses or minimum income guarantees.

Anyway, that would be my modest proposal for the way forward. This post is the result of thoughtful reflection and is not intended to be trolling in any way. I would appreciate criticisms and responses to my argument. Thank you for reading.
It's very hard with posts like this to understand the true reach of the problem: is this like having ssh with "password" as the password or is it something much less dangeroues. Is this something that could be exploited without Amazon team messing with the hypervisor providing your VM or something a third party can exploit? If this is a problem with Amazon then I think it's not a real problem for many people: it's inevitable to have a trust contract with them, it's pretty much essential to the notion of the cloud. They could be effectively violating their physical security rules for employees and installing modified code on the hypervisor but they still give us hints and certifications as to why that's not the reason and we need to choose to pick that or not. I just wanted to ask because I'm not an expert on this at all and I always find myself asking, how bad is this indeed and under what assumptions is it a security problem? Any hints to understand this are much appreciated! :)
Did you really think being CTO means writing a lot of code? :D
MySpace 2.0
Does anyone know why they are paying a 50% premium to closing price? That seems massive.
>Actually looking forward to MS's UX folk cleaning up LinkedIn.

This. This the only reason im excited about the acquisition. LinkedIn UX is awful.

What makes me nervous though, is some things could get worse. (skype has gone downhill ever since the acquisition i feel).
top of front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11893153
Highly dense cities with beautiful public parks are wonderful in my opinion, most anything you need within a 5 minute walk, yes please.
Bullies buying bullies.
This is one of life's conundrums. Work hard at getting really good at doing something you love doing, and then stop doing it. My advice would be to find someone or some people that are the adjacent jigsaw pieces to you - a set of skills you don't have, maybe it's the stuff that was missing previous times you ran your own businesses – and then start a business with these people where you can carry on doing the thing you love. For me, I had to do it with someone who had all the networking and new business skills that I so painfully lack.
Yet, the chances this will go terribly wrong are much higher, just in general with "other social networks", but also given Microsoft's track record with multi-billion dollar acquisitions.
But Office as a business unit is one of the cores, add in LinkedIn as another business unit - and they're building out the entire business systems ecosystem, end to end. Hiring (LinkedIn), HR (Office + LinkedIn), office productivity (Office), communications (Skype + Sharepoint, WP?), training (Lynda), infrastructure (Azure). Guessing next step will be another attempt at advertising/marketing platform. EDIT: forgot about Dynamics for that last one.
well, considering MORE (legal) gun ownership promotes LESS crime, these incidents only increase knee-jerk reactions in people who already have certain agendas set in their minds. Look at the big picture.

Airplanes crash killing hundreds at a time, its STILL the safest mode of transport... Also, why aren't the 'gun grabbers' complaining about Chicago where this happens EVERY WEEKEND? Are 'gun grabbers' racist?

Violent crime is on the decrease. an 'inconvenient truth' that 'grabbers' don't like to talk about.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/...
Because they already own the "Office". They want you to integrate your Outlook\Exchange with Linked in.
Bir Tawil: No man's land
True - I can see them using this purchase to sell more cloud services by mining the data for connections.
Most people have not heard of 9gag.

Most adults probably don't really know what a meme is yet either (they've probably seen a few, just don't really get it yet).
Bing/Cortana could benefit immensely having access to all of the LinkedIn content.
Btw: A few years ago Microsoft paid for product placement in television series to counter "google it". It is amazingly awkward and sounds like from a strange parallel universe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfHuZ5qrYX4
I took up a job as CTO after being a lead developer and junior partner at a bunch of startups. OMG what a punishment.

I've now resolved to just go out on my own because it's too painful working for anyone else in this curious position of great responsibility but not enough power.
Microsoft to Acquire LinkedIn for $26.2B
Ask HN: Why would anyone use GitHub private repositories when GoGits is avilable?
Key question is WHY did you take up this job in the first place? Do you really believe in the mission of this company or just the CTO title and a lucrative pay attracted you here. If you truly believe in the mission of the company, you're doing the right thing by taking all crap and making progress towards end goals. You are probably not coding because your time is better spent doing what you're doing now. Will you make more difference to the world if you went back to the coding role?
Why not tell your pyschiatrist that you'd like to discuss the details of why you feel that way?

I gather you are looking for someone who will believe you, and without evidence, nobody is likely to believe you, leading you on a deeper and deeper quest for something that passes as real evidence.

That sounds super tough. Take care, good luck
How would GPU or GPU drivers know how to issue DMA transfer and know when DMA is ready on another piece of hardware? Those things are specific to a piece of hardware.

Besides there's a small detail called IOMMU that prevents PCI(-e) devices from writing or reading wherever they please.
Exactly. Integration of LinkedIn data with Dynamics and Yammer would be huge.

Imagine this scenario:

- User is logged in to LinkedIn

- User visits your website

- Their visit is logged by some JS to Dynamics CRM

- A record is created/updated in Dynamics CRM, populated with their name, job title and contact details from LinkedIn

Further down the line, I can see LinkedIn fully becoming part of Office 365.

This isn't Microsoft's attempt to get into the social networking game. This is Microsoft wanting accurate data to augment their enterprise collaboration/digital workplace platform.
top of frontpage already... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11893153
LinkedIn CEO - LinkedIn and Microsoft: Changing the Way the World Works
> This. This the only reason im excited about the acquisition. LinkedIn UX is awful.

Yeah well they acquired Skype and see what a mess that became. Even Windows itself sometimes...

I suppose it depends on which team gets the job?
[Not the right community for discussion and you can't delete old hacker news posts so let me nip this in the bud.]
I have similar experience with switching to full time home-office. No open-office jerks, noise, air-condition/heating/light fighting. I am more happier, don't get work issues personally and so seriously, less stress, better thinking and working environment. Have stand-up desk with large display. Enviroment which I like the most. I can help my wife with our kids. I am satisfied as never before. I am not able to go back to open-office environment anymore.
Symantec (SYMC) – will buy privately held cybersecurity firm Blue Coat
OP not enjoying the CTO role doesn't mean he/she should waste company resources for their own amusement.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
Maybe this transition comes too soon but moving from coding in to management is a normal progression. It is another job , but in general it values the same qualities you should have as a coder: Understanding the dynamics of the situation and finding the best solution to get the job done. As CTO you should have the flexibility to find other people to help in the things you hate the most and focus on the fun parts.
Show HN: Blockbuster Startups
Probably. On the other hand, Redhat kind of pulled up the drawbridge and focused on parts of the market that don't care so much with the RHEL / Fedora change. Of the major Linux distributions, I think Redhat is the one whose userbase would be least likely to be upset.

A few years back it'd have been totally unthinkable, but today, given that MSFT has surprised repeatedly with a more friendly approach towards the open source community, and given that Redhat - while still contributing a lot - has pulled back in a sense, it would be less problematic.

Wouldn't be trivial to pull off, by any means, though. I think if MS would like to pick up a major Linux vendor, they'd better spend a year and lots of money buttering up the community with more open source releases and PR first.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11893153
> I haven't even written a line of code in months.

CTOs generally don't write code. But, in a typical startup designations don't matter so much. How different is your current role from the one you were offered during the negotiations?

> I thought perhaps being CTO in a startup would give me some of that same ownership, control and enjoyment but it just feels like another job.

Do you feel connected to the overall vision of the company? If you did, then you should look at the things you're unhappy with as bumps on a road worth traveling.

Since you do have the ownership (through your designation), you have power to change things that bother you. It's only when you start making visible impact, you will start truly belonging.

Finally, I would urge you to talk to other senior folks in the company openly about what's bothering you. Maybe you are missing another perspective that they will be happy to share with you.
Google Comes Down on the Wrong Side of the TPP
I have a friend request hanging there for the last couple of years and I can't accept it or reject it :) Maybe Microsoft will fix it...
Sounds exactly like the CTOs job. I think too often the folks in SV abuse the CTO title when they really mean senior architect or engineer.

I'll offer advice but it comes from someone with no experience:

Take this opportunity and grow from it. So it's not the job you wanted or expected; you can still find a way to be successful. Really get to know the teams, figure out who has the emotional and intellectual capacity to deliver for you, and reward those folks. Good luck!
Exactly. I had LinkedIn on my list of undervalued tech stocks, and I think this bears that out. LinkedIn has absolutely no competition. LinkedIn is the world's biggest, virtually-complete graph of most enterprise organizational charts / structures. That alone will be valuable for Microsoft's enterprise business.
Facebook IS trying to enter that territory. Look up Facebook At Work. This should help to stifle that.
Your "criticism" is the lowest of the low. What can anybody do about the "frequency" of their voice? YOU are unpleasant to READ. Consider that - unlike the "problem" you invent this is one that you are actually 100% responsible for.
Or they could just not change anything and the majority of people won't associate the antipatterns with the Microsoft brand a tall
So you're arguing that it was just "a rogue employee" that made that decision and executed it?
Most recruiters going through Linked Inc. is any different?

What would qualify a company to run an job board?
A leas they will fix the LinkedIN UI, that thing was psiing me off!!
And then they'd get over it. Oddly enough, my parents upgraded this past week:

Mom: Honey, what's this thing stopping me from [shopping]?

Dad: Don't click the button!

Mom: [long lecture about how she's trying to do stuff for her grandkids].

Dad: Fine, just hit the damn button.

Me: DON'T HIT THE BUTTON! I'll walk you through it.

I proceeded to explain it to them. 5 days later they don't even remember/care. I guarantee you my grandmother doesn't give a shit either, nor do most of my siblings. So far, I'm at a 6:2 ratio of not caring (one of my brothers is a developer). My parents aren't exactly ignorant in regards to tech, but it simply doesn't effect them to the extent it bothers you/us.
I would just leave unless there is some major financial incentive in your contract that you don't want to give up (hundreds of thousands or more).
Eric Ries's Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE)
LinkedIn content is basically the same as Forwards from Grandma with the odd job announcement interspersed
That's life. The higher you go, the more crap you have to eat so those who deal with executing can execute without distractions. If you don't want to eat crap, you have to stay at a lower level (team lead/distinguished engineer/r&d labs)

On the other hand, being that high should indeed get you ownership and control, if you don't have it question your relationship with the CEO/rest of the company. You should own and be responsible for all the technical stuff, that is the upside of eating all the crap you can eat.

On a related note, if you are a good coder, you can and should schedule some time to do pair programming with the team to stay on top of things and actually write some code. But only as long as you are more of a help than a hindrance.
Getting smarter
> It seems to be mostly about dealing with everyone's crap, trying to fight fires and constantly battling with the other managers and tech team to get things done. I haven't even written a line of code in months.

Welcome to management! You're dealing with the crap so your people can do their job. If you get to code a few weeks a year then you're lucky.

If you really don't enjoy it, go find something else. There are a lot of highly technical jobs that should prove a real challenge.
Actually there hasn't been enough talk about the companies LinkedIn acquired.

Connectifier - recruiting intelligence

Lynda - online learning

FlipTop - predictive marketing

RunHop - personalised content

Refresh.io - relationship content surfacing

These could be huge additions to Azure, Office 365, Bing, Cortana etc.
There is software competition to perform basic functions. There is not software competition for some more specialized cases because one competitor is far superior to the others.
> A group of them fucked up with that Windows 10 debacle

I don't think that the auto-update feature was introduced by a "group of developers". This was purely board of directors driven.
It isn't about HER, it is about her VOICE. Criticizing someone for something they have zero control over is on a level below the shit layer.
> "Everyone's being told, 'Don't go public,'" Ries said.

In my experience, If there is consensus around something, it's often a great idea to do the opposite.

I decided to take my company public last year and it has been exactly the right thing for us. As far as I can see it, there is absolutely no reason to wait if your company and your team is ready.
dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11892782
New study links being a workaholic to other psychiatric disorders
and if we find natural antibiotics there is a good chance they work even better today, because adaption of the germs reverts over time.