Thanks to everyone for reading TechFlash. Here's a look back at some of the stories that generated discussion over the past week, along with some featured comments.

Bill Gates jumped into the blogosphere and Twittersphere (more than 330,000 followers as of Sunday afternoon). Some said they were looking forward to Gates' musings on everything from science to philanthropy, but reader zaine_ridling wasn't one of them: "Why should I care about Gates's thoughts? I keep replaying his testimony in his US Antitrust case where he was both dishonest and confused."

Our new TechFlash series, Startup Confidential, generated plenty of feedback especially after Seattle entrepreneur Damon Cortesi wrote about the challenges of splitting equity with his co-founder. Entrepreneur Tony Wright, aka as webwright, advocated for a 50-50 split. "Startups have a vanishingly small shot at success. It's pretty clear to me that an unequal split decreases that shot by a tiny amount-- it's just not worth it."

We've been surprised by the continuing popularity of the Cheezburger Network, the oddball lineup of comedy Web sites. But Andy Sack isn't. "Makes total sense to me. Frankly I'd rather be a repeat visitor to the Cheezeburger network than any real estate, restaurant or utilitarian site. Your article is more a question about what has happened to US culture....when the number one news site is John Stewart....If you think about popular culture and the US, one has to scratch one's head a bit. That said, I don't fight it, I admit it -- I read People magazine when I travel and watch American Idol...and love cheezeburger network."

Want to watch ESPN on the Xbox 360? Some TechFlash readers were intrigued with that idea after reading our post: "ESPN on Xbox 360: A tipping point for cable workarounds?" callmeMurph wrote: "If this does happen I would never need cable tv again."

After Facebook announced plans to open a new data center in Prineville, Oregon, some readers said Washington officials needed to do more to foster tech jobs here. Wrote reader jgertz33: "Good news for Oregon, bad news for Washington. This is not an indictor of the Pacific Northwest becoming a beacon for these data centers. It's an example of Oregon becoming popular and the continuing irrelevance of Washington in a major up-and-coming industry because of an unfortunate decision by our attorney general three years ago. Rob McKenna ruled then that data centers don't qualify for a manufacturing sales-tax exemption and boom, all the companies that had been locating data centers here started looking elsewhere. And they won't come back unless the Legislature does something about it soon. It's time that our lawmakers started creating jobs."