acjacobson

The price doesn't fall because the future purchasing power falls, the price falls because there are better alternatives in the market. No one will pay $1000 for a 2% return when they can pay $1000 for a 5% return. Market participants will always maximize their return. Bond prices adjust to be competitive or equivalent.

But the govt. doesn't have this problem. They don't care about maximizing return - they care about containing contagion. So they can pay $1000 for a 2% return and not still not lose money over the long term.

Yes you owe the depositor in current dollars, and that's why the bank failed. But I was responding to the parent about it not mattering if the bond is held to maturity - it does matter.

The problem SVB had is that there was no market buyer for their bonds at a price they needed today. They deserve to fail for that but that's not the part of the discussion I am responding to.

What I am responding to is the idea that there is a myth about the value of the bond. Here is what might happen, in a very simplified way:

- Depositors need their cash today - SVB can't sell their assets to meet this need, and so the bank is fails and is dissolved (already happened). Let's make this simple and say SVB owes the depositor $1000, can sell for bonds for $800 today. If they can have wait the bonds will return $1200 later. - The FDIC steps in with all their capital. They say ok - depositor here is your $1000 today and you are now whole. But we will not sell the SVB bond today to cover that $1000, instead we will hold the bond and wait for it to mature at $1200. Thus the depositor is whole, and over the long term no money is lost.

No regular market participant step in to provide the $1000 because they can get a better return on their money in other ways. But the government can do this because their goal is not maximizing return on capital, but instead stabilizing the system.

This is the most problematic part to me because not only did the VCs exacerbate the run on SVB, they threatened to start runs on other regional banks.

Several said that if SVB didn't get 100% depositor coverage that they would assume any regional bank could fail, and thus everyone should move to something safe like JP Morgan. By the time they started to say this publicly they already instructed portfolio companies move out of regional banks. Many were in the process of doing so.

The Fed / FDIC can see this happening and now are over a barrel. So the VCs managed to start one run, then jump up and down yelling to be saved OR ELSE we are going to actively start a series of runs by undermining trust. It's super cynical, and basically allowed the banking system to be held hostage.

Now I am not someone who thinks there shouldn't be some kind of action to help out depositors. For me the biggest issue is cash flow, and if uninsured depositors can be helped very quickly to make sure their businesses don't fail (because they can, SVB has the assets) then the government should make that happen. But somehow that wasn't good enough for the VCs. They yelled that its 100% secured deposits or nothing. And it's really uncomfortable that we allow them to have that kind of leverage.

Only a potential buyer would lose. Not SVB - for them the price and return is locked if they can wait. The problem comes when they are forced to sell (as they were).

This is why the bond price falls - an outside party will not buy the SVB bonds because they can get a better return on a different bond. The bond price falls to make them equivalent.

Genuine question - why doesn't it matter?

If I buy $1000 worth of bonds at 2% interest rate for 10 years, my expected return is 1000 * .02 * 10 or $200, making the bond worth at maturity $1200. This bond is worth $1000 today and will return $200. If the bond price falls to $.80 on the dollar or $800 and I am forced to sell today to make my depositors whole, now there is a realized loss - $200 from the original price and $200 from the eventual returns.

If I can wait I have $400 more. If I can't and have to sell then I lose $400.

I do this too. I've been locked out of a bank account for a week or so because something in their system flagged a review. A tiny blip like that can be really impactful on handling day to day expenses - it makes sense to have a backup.

I guess it's an unpopular opinion on HN, but I like switching back and forth between daylight saving and standard time twice a year. I live relatively north and I like having very long days in the summer when more daylight is available for both the morning and evening. Without DST, the sun would rise at 4am for me in the summer - what on earth am I going to do with that? I'd much rather it rise at 5am, and I get an extra hour in the evening. On the other side permanent DST would be awful in the winter because then the sun wouldn't rise for me until 9am.

Maybe countries and states should choose based on how far north or south they are because that seems to be a key factor for how useful DST is?

But beyond that I don't fully understand all the complaints specifically about changing. It's an hour shift twice a year? Maybe I get slightly worse sleep for a day or two but then I am fine. It's no different than changing one time zone while traveling. People travel all the time cross country or over the Atlantic or Pacific and that's a much bigger shift in time yet they're all able to cope? I don't see articles regularly decrying the health disaster of jetlag, so what is it about changing the clocks that really gets people worked up?

In my opinion and experience it's better to be the younger version who runs lots of experiments. While the older version may feel more wise, and may have taken some lessons from the past that helps him be aware of pitfalls in the future, there's always the danger of hindsight bias. The older version has ideas about why referrals didn't work, or the counter didn't work, but they might not be right (and I suspect they're not exactly right as Duolingo still contains different versions of affiliate referrals and counters).

A better strategy is to think about it in terms of tradeoffs - if I build an affiliate program, what does that mean I won't build? I got the sense from the article that they explored one growth idea at a time, as opposed to evaluating a group of options from the beginning. All things being equal it's probably best to spend a bit of time thinking about several opportunities before going off and building the first one. Previous product experience won't guarantee you can call what will work for the future, but it can help you weight options vs one another more effectively. You're much more likely to have a nuanced view of what's possible or what might go wrong.

Seems like a cool idea - I guess like a product hunt for games?

A nit though - fix the back / forward browser buttons as it's tedious to navigate around right now. I guess these aren't working because it's an SPA?

This reminds me of the pottery class parable from Art & Fear. At the beginning of a pottery class the teacher divides the class into two groups. One group is to be graded purely on the quantity of pots they create, the other group solely on the quality (or, make one perfect pot). At the end of the class the group that focused on quantity had produced better results.

Somewhat counterintuitively those that riff and just try a lot of different things get better over time - exactly what the author says makes them happiest. But perhaps we're all just a little shy about doing that in public, and pushing past that can a challenge.

This is weird because the behavior you describe is available on the desktop version of Maps, but not in the mobile app. I can't imagine why...

I love your channel (and podcasts)! I first found you through your alternate vote videos quite some years go. Whenever I have a reason to vote on something with friends or family I insist on ranked choice largely due to your influence.

Thanks for the recommendations - here's a few of mine that are related:

For woodworking I am a big fan of Paul Sellers - though he is primarily a hand woodworker. His videos are very accessible.

For chess I like John Bartholemew. He's an IM, so lower in the rankings than someone like Hikaru, but has a lot of videos geared towards people looking to improve their overall game.

A lot of products already have both printed on the package.

You'd think he'd be disabused of that notion when he was forced to buy Twitter after trying to back out of the acquisition agreement.

Since forever. There are a few reasons why - one is cultural the other is risk. On the cultural side industries that are "controversial" tend to be avoided. Payment processors don't like to be associated with porn, gambling, drugs etc. because of potential negative PR. If you're a payment processor and trying to land big conservative clients, having press about how you support the porn industry doesn't do you any favors.

The other side is risk, meaning industries that have an above average chargeback (fraud) rate. Many times these industries overlap - porn for instance. Lots of stolen credit card numbers are used to by porn, but also legitimate purchases can easily end up as a chargeback. The classic example is that someone buys porn on their credit card and then their partner finds out. Instead of admitting they bought porn, they claim someone must have stolen their credit card to save face.

If I were Google this is what I would actually be worried about. I ask ChatGPT a typical question and I get a clear short answer.

I ask Google the same thing have to wade through a 1000 line blog post talking about 25 other things to finally find the one piece of information I need.

It solved Day 3, Part 1 for me almost instantly. It used the sample strings as opposed to the full input file, which makes sense because I didn't give it the full input. Modifying the generated code to handle the entire problem is low effort to extend yourself, so I was quite impressed.

Regarding your question - my current guess is that you probably are going to need smart people to tell ChatGPT what to do and check that the output is sane. I expect this is where quite a bit of tech is going - at least most of the basic scaffolding.

I've had it twice. I was double-vaccinated when I caught it the first time, and then later boosted and caught it a second time. Both times sucked and I was useless for about 15 days. The second time was worse.

My grandfather was like this. Full stint in the Marines and then worked on computers. I remember him telling the story of how exciting it was (and what a big deal it was) when one of their systems got upgraded to 4k of RAM.

If you're interested learning more about Kanban, I thing Eric Brechner does a great job of describing it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD0y-aU1sXo

I keep a private list because sometimes people ask me for book recommendations and then I have something to refer to. I have found it's easy to forget on the spot all the things I have read.

I would assume he is referring things like the House of Lords and the hereditary title system - not economic class.

Their business models can afford to pay a lot because these companies generate that much cash. They drive that much cash because software can be highly leveraged (whereas plumbing cannot). Having salaries come down to means shifting where the profits are distributed and allowing the company owners and investors to capture more in comparison to the employees. I don't see how this is better?

I feel like this might be true, but if it is true wouldn't someone else take advantage of the fact? Competitors usually spring up when there is an advantage to be leveraged - and there usually is always an advantage when an incumbent is lazy or rent building.

True, but it could still be treated as a crime within the city and punished accordingly. This was the premise of DC vs. Heller which overturned a DC law that banned handguns in the district.

Code word for torrents. Linux ISOs are probably the most common large file legitimate use of torrents and so it's become a code word for pirated content.

I agree with a lot of the other comments here. I've been using a catch-all for years without significant problems. I think the closest to an awkward moment was when a small web comic artist wrote to me a bit confused. I had used the name of her comic to subscribe to her newsletter. I explained what it was and we had a laugh - if anything it perhaps increased a bit of human connection between us that otherwise wouldn't have existed.

I feel as though the author is throwing away a lot of advantages because of some minor social awkwardness that can be worked through, or completely avoided by using a different naming pattern.

We're even starting to see one-off emails created for you automatically (iOS can do this) because of the number of advantages.

Are you being paid to take the training?

If so then I probably would continue training and being paid while looking for a job. If not - then I would stop the training (as you said they are worthless without the extra experience of working after) and look for a new job.

Unfortunately once a company says that you "may need to find a new job" it's almost certain that you will need to.

I mostly agree, though I think there are differences you'd notice rather quickly (but nothing as big as moving from 1890 to 1950)

If you removed all the screens you'd probably first notice what's missing as opposed to what's different. In many of today's homes you wouldn't see things like tape / record players, stereos, VCRs, telephones, books, maps, yellow pages, rolodexes, calendars - all of these having a digital replacement.

And depending on the affluence of the home you'd notice a lot more variety of specialty things - for example kitchen equipment (espresso machines, burr coffee grinders, instant pots, sous vide machines, mini blow torches, automatic ice cream makers). There are thousands of available board games now compared to the 80s - and it is super easy to have specialty hobby items as they're cheap and readily available. If you went to the grocery store you'd see a far greater variety of vegetables, prepared foods, cheeses, meats, "exotic" ingredients etc.

I think the big differences are around convenience, variety, and availability - and for whatever reason they don't feel quite as big, even though the work that goes into making that possible is astoundingly large and complex.