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jkettnich@stepstoneglobal.com

In heartwarming Silicon Valley news, Mark Hurd waives his right to 330,117 units of performance-based restricted HP shares and all is made right in the world (at least, between HP and Oracle). Frank Quattrone isn't messing around. Today's victory? A $1.7 billion sale agreement between client Netezza and IBM. (Already investors expect another bidder to come in with an even higher price.) Ben Horowitz on the right way to sack your employees. The stock market may be overvalued by 41 percent. Why the iPad won't get smaller. The Clear airport security system is back, with all the downsides. What will they say when you are dead?
Remember the Winklevoss twins, the handsome Olympian athletes who successfully sued Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook? Business Insider uncovers some of their own dirty laundry. The five best -- and the five worst -- private equity funds. As the TARP fades into history, a lookat what has worked and what hasn't. If you rely on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer’s privacy settings to control cookies on your computer, you may want to rethink that strategy. Gold schmold. Silver futures just hit their highest level in 30 years. A new report from Credit Suisse says almost 30% of Netflix subscribers aged 18-24 are using Netflix in lieu of cable or satellite TV. The New York Times' David Carr talks with the filmmakers of "The Social Network." Alex St. John, the president and CTO of social network hi5 says that social gaming is "reaching its final stage...and it's not looking pretty." Washington, consider yourself warned. Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are gathering fans on the Mall on Oct. 30, for "dueling" rallies.
Groupon may be raking in the cash, but sometimes to the severe detriment of its small business clients. (Readers might recall that I pointed this out a while ago.) How do we do it? The ranks of U.S. millionaires has swelled by 8 percent over the 12 months ended in June. Felix Salmon on how the blogosphere can move markets. Lisa Falcone: Entrepeneurial Wall Street wife. (Rich stuff, pun intended.) Lordy, is it possible that the carried interest tax change has now been resuscitated more times than Jason in "Halloween"? SEC chief Mary Schapiro argued today that to maintain a "robust examination program" into financial firms, the public can't be allowed to see every detail of the S.E.C.'s policing process. Details about Google's grand plans to make its existing products more social begin to emerge. Kind of. Former Twitter developer Alex Payne spills his guts out about his former employer.
Mark Zuckerberg has said he won't watch "The Social Network." Good thinking, says MediaMemo's Peter Kafka, because Kafka has seen it apparently Zuckerberg gets skewered. According to Moody's Analytics, the rich have historically saved their tax cuts, rather than pumped the money back into the economy. Read on for some job titles that can sink your startup. Tech news aggregator Techmeme celebrates its fifth birthday. Check out its most popular stories on this day in 2005. From the good-luck-with-that files: Creditors of the Tribune Company are looking to sue billionaire real estate developer Sam Zell, claiming it's mostly his fault the company went bankrupt a year after he led its buyout in 2007. Financial writer James Surowiecki takes a look how "stimulus" became a bad word.
For the first time, Facebook has passed Google in time spent on the site. Be scared, Google; be very scared. Scratch that. Google mobile search has grown 4x this year. Things aren't going Craigslist's way these days. A Delaware court judge just ruled in eBay's favor in a shareholder lawsuit against the popular, and increasingly controversial, listings site. The secret to dressing Gordon Gekko, then and now. (H/T: Dealbook) Institutional Investor tries ruining our weekends early with its newest feature, "Paradise Lost, Why Fallen Markets Will Never Be the Same." As the newspaper wars rage on, the WSJ is planning to launch a book review section for the first time in its history. Harvard's endowment rebounds meaningfully for its fiscal year, ended June 30.
Investors Paul Kedrosky, Jason Mendelson, and Brad Feld publicly dress down the authors of a New York Times Op-Ed who argued for speeding up the patent process -- and who may have stretched the truth to make their case. Google Instant launched today, and the function will shave up to five seconds off the standard 25-second search , says Google VP Marissa Mayer. If only they could do something about my turd ball of a PC to speed it along, too. Rodney Cohen gallops out of Pegasus Capital Advisors to become the head of Carlyle's new U.S. equity opportunity group, which will focus on small and mid-size businesses. Behold, the new Old Spice guy. (You know you want to see this as much as I did.) Amazon is trying to cut down on "wrap rage" with the help of product manufacturers. Investor Chris Sacca has actually raised $40 million, not $20 million, reports Dan from his new perch at Fortune.
HP fires Mark Hurd. Mark Hurd joins Oracle as co-president. HP sues Mark Hurd. The Journal analyzes the drama. New San Francisco-based startup Ubercab gets a nice shout-out from Jon Callaghan of True Ventures. He's not an investor (yet), but Stumbleupon cofounder Garrett Camp is; so is angel Travis Kalanick. Speaking of wheels when you need them, the Economist takes a look at the big business of renting cars by the hour. Vanity Fair profiles self-described perennial outsider Sean Parker of Facebook, Napster, and Founders Fund fame. Is Wall Street research "a valuable social good?" Google's new interactive logo has people feeling stoned confused.
Who's hurting? The WSJ has a stark interactive chart highlighting who has been hurt the most and which job sectors have been the hardest walloped. MediaMemo's Peter Kafka points out another stark chart -- one of the fall, and further fall, of one-time digital media darling Digg. According to Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs is shutting down its proprietary trading desk. Speaking of Bloomberg, is it just me or did it just blatantly rip off Luisa's 3Par story of last week? Is a civil war brewing at Wikileaks? With rape charges against him, some organizers would like to see the site's public face, Julian Assange, get lost. YouTube is turning those annoying new ads into revenue for Google.
The Sony Walkman outsells the iPod in Japan for the first time since Apple's music player hit the market nine years ago. In related news, Sony still makes the Walkman. Taxing rich British bankers didn't work out so well, admits the politician who introduced the tax last year amid cries over banker bonuses. Are Dell's shareholders on Xanax? Mmmm, robot not so smart after all. Mmmm quant fund strategy losing money. Mmm time to reboot. Good news for far-flung virtual companies (and big, chatty families): Skype just introduced 10-way calling. What Craigslist founder Craig Newmark wishes he'd said to CNN's Amber Lyon when she ambushed him.
Even the bikes get an expansive, marble-walled room at Credit Suisse. (Thanks, Felix Salmon.) Panic over Facebook Places spreads, as users claims about the service grow wilder, including that it's a "global positioning application!" (It's not, though it creeps me out, too.) Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer is aggravating at least one shareholder who wishes Termeer would stop posturing about its value and start negotiating a sale. InsiderMonkey has created what may be the world's first Nouriel Roubini stock sentiment indicator. Amazon is taking Apple and Netflix head on, via an in-the-works service that would give subscribers unlimited access to some TV shows and movies over the Internet. Shares of Saks surged today, after the Daily Mail reported that a consortium of U.S. and British firms are sizing it up and may make a $1.7 billion cash offer. Digg has a new CEO. Can he stop the company's backward slide in time? Is your Gmail account...judging you?
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