Recent submissions

Comment · 1 year ago
Aside from the main topic but related to the books, wtf happened to howstuffworks.com? "Pisces and Taurus Compatibility in Relationships: What You Need to Know" Did he sell off this domain before his death or what is going on?
Comment · 2 years ago
the tests were for these local (metal direct connect ssds). The issue is not network overhead -- its that just like everything else in cloud the performance of 10 years ago was used as the baseline that carries over today with upcharges to buy back the gains.

there is a reason why vcpu performance is still locked to the typical core from 10 years ago when every core on a machine today in those data scenters is 3-5x or more speed basis. Its cause they can charge you for 5x the cores to get that gain.

Comment · 3 years ago
Cough wells fargo, cough
Comment · 3 years ago
yeah in that regard SVB also lost hundreds of billions on trades it could have made optimally in the market with those funds (looking with hindsight).

Should you look at the opportunity costs for lost potential gains in this scenario -- yeah. Does it "lose money" -- no, not unless you are forced to sell before maturity.

lost earnings are a wish for what could have been, not lost in reality.

Comment · 3 years ago
A ton of capital at the ready to offer bridge loans at shark rates or for blood equity for companies panicking and impacted by the same act of gathering those funds out of SVB to crash it seems like motive -- only time will tell.
Comment · 3 years ago
The FDIC charter: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is an independent agency created by the Congress to maintain stability and public confidence in the nation’s financial system. The FDIC insures deposits; examines and supervises financial institutions for safety, soundness, and consumer protection; makes large and complex financial institutions resolvable; and manages receiverships.
Comment · 3 years ago
SVB was a bank that mostly served corporate operations accounts for tehc nad healthcare startups and small businesses. People were not banking there for high returns. This is not at all about risky investments (ffs the bank liquidity crunch came from long term bonds being too illiquid -- not exactly exotic asset management). The accounts impacted are mostly payroll, daily operating accounts (for expenses/manufacturing expenses/real estate lease payments etc).

The bank managers and investors are not being bailed out -- they have already lost everything.

You seem to be attaching some kind of anger for some ill conceived and non existant "happy go lucky risk wall street bet" type of activity, when this is about buisnesses losing their operating accounts who did nothing wrong except for have accounts at this bank instead of the next bank over.

Comment · 3 years ago
The other good news is that it will probably net out to costing little to nothing in the long term as they had enough assets to cover liabilities -- it was a liquidity crunch. Seems very much relevant to what the FDIC was created for -- to make depositors whole and stop contagion. It would be different if the bank was not properly asset backed.
Comment · 3 years ago
yeah I think there are two things that will be interesting here. The real detailed timeline. How much Thiel's cohorts jumped into offer bridge loans or stopgaps to impacted companies for insane rates/equity.

IMHO this feels like a small problem that was turned into a crashed bank by targeted withdraws -- with the goal being blood in the water for the industry so the companies and investors that yanked out could clean up.

Comment · 3 years ago
this is why imho I see the pull out of the clients especially those that happened before the sale offer even came to term as an orchestrated ploy to tank the bank and then be in a position to offer shark bridge loans to those impacted. These were not naive clients making the move early -- and to me it seems less to do about the actual bank asset state and more to do with wanting blood in the water for wringing out equity and loan shark rates on those bridge offers.
Comment · 3 years ago
it's good then that the funds to support the deposits are coming from the bank funded fdic fund not taxes then.
Comment · 3 years ago
They had 13b in cash going into this year and other highly liquid assets, those evaporated as the draw downs happened. Its not like they tucked away all assets into 10 year lockups (or higher risk loans). Even the bonds they did lock up -- in what would be considered 99% "normal" markets given the last few decades a sell off of those bonds would not have been highly problematic. It became problematic when they were so low return needing to be sold to reblalance the 10/90 rule when market rates were much better and they needed to be discounted due to the huge rate hikes.

SVB was pretty much considered the "boyscouts" of the industry and in normal circumstances they took a super conservative placement of the deposits. The only thing they could have done better was to (what would have normally been considered) overly hedge the bonds reducing their return even more.

I personally think they were too transparent with the liquidity crunch, and the investors and their companies that pulled out 20-30b before they even could execute the sell probably saw the ability to crash the bank and offer shark hooked bridge funding to the competitive companies left in the lurch. Its not like these folks were naive clients -- imho they were looking to do damage and get blood returns/equity on those bridge funding after the fall.

Comment · 3 years ago
I am really enjoying elixir/pheonix/liveview -- feels super fast to poc stuff out and also is not throw away as the system scales unbelievably well.
Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 3 years ago
I have not been following this closely but I thought most all of the quantum safe algorithms that had been proposed so far had been found lacking for traditional attacks very soon after they where held up as a standard contender. Has this changed?

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