PG seems to have become a gnomic magic 8 ball of sorts. I can only hope for his sake that he's built Eliza-like behavior into HN such that his responses to all "Ask PG" questions are fully automated.
It is the next best thing though.
Contrast this to Amazon, and later Google, where the founder(s) have had very strong influence on the culture. Another company where the founder exited too soon (voluntarily) is Ebay, and Ebay has no soul whatsoever, and they are doing everything they can to lose their natural monopoly.
So, if you sit idle on any of the comment pages for more than a few minutes it becomes unavailable. You have to start over on the main page and dig your way back down. I imagine this is not a fundamental flaw of a continuations-based design, since Seaside seems to cope with it OK (I guess?)...merely something that pg, or someone else, has not added the code to handle yet.
Despite the public statements to the contrary, I suspect that Yang's motivations are not about the short-term financial plan, but about the long-term survival of the company and of their culture.
Microsoft is a massive organization, and has had several problems integrating smaller players into it's corporate structure. My suspicion is that a number of higher-level Yahoo members are convinced that if the Microsoft were to go through, they'd lose the ability to continue to decide their own fates. Look at the AOL-TW merger for an example of the clashes that can arise when trying to combine two massive companies with dissimilar cultures.
Yahoo employees may additionally be concerned, given that their potential suitor has quite a history of purchasing, or nearly purchasing companies, and not fully utilizing them.
In immediate dollar terms, no, turning the deal down doesn't make sense.. But in a long-term view of "where do we want Yahoo to be in 5 years", it makes all the sense in the world.
The problem for the Board is that the stockholders are more interested in the former, than the later, so Yahoo is trying to contort to justify using a framing they don't agree with.
(One caveat: the Microsoft offer is part cash, part stock. Since part of what Yahoo shareholders will receive is stock in the combined entity, I suppose that predicting a meltdown a year down the road means you're saying the offer is worth less than the current calculated value)