skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Agreed 100%. So many issues with the economic system come from the fact companies want capitalism when it benefits them, but something akin to socialism when there's a risk they'll fail.

So no. If your bank can't make payments? Tough, it should close down and go into administration or whatever. Maybe the government can bail out individuals, but companies relying on said banks can deal with bankruptcy or closure like it was any other sort of business risk. Company can't pay a higher minimum wage (or a livable one)? Then deal with less staff, or shut down, your business model simply doesn't work and isn't profitable.

And if your industry is dying because of technology (like say, Australian media outlets with Google and the internet), then tough. Accept it's probably dead and either downsize, come up with a new business strategy or close down.

So many seem to want a dog eat dog system when they're winning, but beg for mercy when it goes wrong.
Sorry but absolutely NO to a bailout or government intervention or help. The VCs got themselves in to this mess of a pyramid scheme and now you have to get yourself out by yourself with others.

Before the crash, YC, Founders fund and others could have raised money to stop the collapse but it seems the VCs just let the bank fail and now are begging to the US government for a bailout put on the taxpayer to foot the bill?

Absolutely NOT this time.
Correct. The $250,000 FDIC cap is a favor to banks. They only pay fees to insure up to that amount. And it's bogus. The FDIC should require deposits to be insured, no matter the amount.
Don't need to imagine, here is good old Larry Summers https://imgur.io/gallery/JWaOuoi
I’m torn. When I put my money in the bank, I don’t consider that an “investment” and neither did the employees.

I’m the last person to feel sorry for BigTech employees (I am one) making $300K+ a year (I don’t. I’m not complaining) who got laid off and didn’t save during the good times (I have used almost every penny of my after tax signing bonus/RSUs toward “increasing my net worth”). But most of the people working at startups aren’t making nearly that much (?). Why should they suffer harm?

Could the CFOs at these companies known they were making risky bets (serious question)
If that was the case dynamic languages would be non-starters. Believe it or not there are a lot of businesses, some quite large, which have been chugging along quite nicely on PHP or Ruby for over a decade. HKTs may be fun to play with but let's get them in perspective as nice-to-haves.
> As a Canadian I wouldn't move

As a counterpoint and large scale data - ~85% of Waterloo SE grads move to the US on graduating per https://uw-se-2020-class-profile.github.io/profile.pdf. Survey completion rate was 77%.
Nope, senior devops / sys admin folk here in Singapore are more in the 7K - 8.5K (usd) range. Unless of course the employer is paying FFANG level salaries
I could not agree more. At my current gig we have forms spanning 6 pages, where the state of each sub-form needs to be preserved, pretty much half of the form fields are conditionally loaded across all pages. There is tons of dynamic data displayed and sometimes that needs to be transformed client side, has loading and error states and there is heaps of validation happening, some of it asynchronously and it involves calling other services. Some of the inputs should be also preserved for other parts of the page regardless of whether the user fully completes all forms or not and then there is a whole basket of custom tracking that the marketing team insists needs to happen.
You could of course argue that this is bad UX or that the problem starts with the requirements but that’s usually not something engineers a lot of have control over so I am actually quiet grateful that we have a framework that lets me solve this (imho) more sanely than if I were to hack away in vanilla JS.
Yes, look up "chain of thought prompting". It's also been shown previously that asking a model to write down its chain of thought improves the accuracy of its answers.

See https://ai.googleblog.com/2022/05/language-models-perform-re...

That being said, I don't think ChatGPT is ready for high-risk applications like insurance/loan approvals yet. Maybe in a year or two. For now, treat ChatGPT like you would a mediocre intern.
I'd support the government doing what it can to help these companies sell equity to make up for cash shortfall, but I don't see why it is a taxpayer problem to bail them out with no guarantees going the other way.
His own petition says:

> In the Y Combinator community, one-third of startups with exposure to SVB used SVB as their sole bank account.

So apparently two-thirds of startups in YC with SVB have at least one other bank. That might not be representative of startups as a whole, but is at least a good data point.
People are misdirecting their (rightful) ire over 2008 bank bailouts at depositors, which apparently is because they don't like some of those depositors for unrelated reasons. Nobody is defending the bank, which already has been shut down and its shareholders rightfully wiped out. The idea that backstopping depositors is moral hazard is preposterous and honestly embarrassing on a platform where people should know better. This is a bank that was in compliance with state and federal regulations, and according to California's regulatory agency, was "in sound financial condition prior to March 9, 2023."[1]

Bank deposit accounts are supposed to be boring financial infrastructure, not a source of risk. If you destroy faith in the US banking system among depositors, this particular bank failure will be the least of our problems.

[1] https://dfpi.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/337/2023/03/DFP...
These are businesses that had a reasonable expectation for their deposits to be there, and we are not advocating for a bailout of SVB's management or equity holders.
With all respect, Garry: YC is to blame for the consolidation of this risk in a single counterparty.

Those who led all these entities from the same industry to bank at the same place must be held accountable too.
Why was the title changed from "YC needs a bailout" to something that gives almost no information about the content.

"Urgent: Sign the petition now" is easily the most click-baity post-edit headline that I've ever seen on hacker news.
I grew up food insecure.
Regardless, there are people in this world living on 30 USD per month (or less). I don't care you chose to pay 8k rent per month. This is the wakeup call so many people needed.
> Many startups chose SVB because they were the ones willing to open a bank account for them at all.

I mean, given the epic scale, herd-mentality of tech startup types to cause a $46 Billion bank run in a singular day (March 9th), can you blame them?

Its clear that other banks have seen systemic risk in focusing on this sector, and are pickier about choosing their customers.

-------

I get that this is a problem in any case. But the systemic risk / scale associated with the tech startup scene has just been proven to the world. "Other banks didn't want to take $100+ Billions in startup deposits" is beginning to look like the smarter move, given the circumstances.
What sucks is that YC did not bother to make a signup list for the opposite side of the debate. Such a "save our startups pls" post
Garry Tan there, making the case for a strong social safety net to shield people from the more ruthless side of capitalism, particularly when it’s as a result of events outside of their control. I’m a little surprised, but I am glad you have joined us.
Apparently being a startup, with large chunks of money being deposited and unclear/non-existent operating revenue on a dubious business proposition raises lots of red flags for mainstream banks.
I have an Etsy shop. I have a teeny tiny side gig selling plants: homegrown dahlia tubers, tulip bulbs, unusual and super-hot chili peppers grown from seed, fancy-schmancy houseplants, etc.

I may or may not be out $21 for the month, big whoop. But for a lot of people I know who sell on the platform, Etsy is the whole enchilada of their business. A lot of people stay with it, despite the fees they charge, because a centralized marketplace is a much better way to find a market than your own store, domain name, merchant account, search experience, customer services, etc...

So, uh, asking for a friend: what banks do eBay, Shopify, OfferUp, Facebook Marketplace, and Stripe use? Because there's unfortunately no reason this problem can't happen again to others...
That rule already exists. It's Basel III, and SVB was one of those who lobbied to have it removed for particular US banks in 2018. As you well know.

Here's the explainer for everyone else: https://archive.is/gmJxU
Awesome to hear about CDARS on this board. CDARS have only seemed valuable twice in my life (2008, and yesterday)...but that is how insurance-linked products are supposed to work. You only need them when you need them. But when you need them, it is darn good to have them.
> Google will will link your new "anonymous" account to your established tracking profile as soon as you access it from a device or geographical location associated with your existing account. This is true even if you never visit any Google owned domain, through the magic of shared tracking IDs.

A separate device is <$50. Local VMs are ~free. VPNs hide "geographical location" and anyway they were never unambiguous because there can be arbitrarily many people in the same place.

> Second, your position rests on the assumption that this hypothetical federal ID will be mandatory. How will it be "required"?

If you make it easy to use and use of it allows you to be tracked more effectively then websites that want to track you more effectively will require its use.

> but they can also just require your identity today.

That is more difficult to do now and so they do it less. Making it easier would allow them to do it more, which is bad.

I mean there are two options. One is nobody would use it, and then it shouldn't exist. The other is that people would use it, which is bad, and so it shouldn't exist.
Wait so now everyone has to sit down and evaluate their banks balance sheet before trying to do business with them?

Silicon Valley Bank had nothing wrong with it's business practices other than they were concentrated in one particular industry, and a slowdown in VCs pumping money resulted in them shrinking deposits suddenly. They asked their investors for money, some VCs basically yelled fire in a crowded theatre and boom a 40 year old institution was wiped out in 24 hours.

America has thousands of banks, and the way you would have this work would shrink that to 5. This way of operation would also wipe out every single credit union. Literally none of them have the insane levels of stability necessary to trust with money, if larger accounts are going to be at risk of a bank run.

That 250,000 number hasnt changed in nearly a 100 years. Maybe it isn't what we should be going off of?
the regulations say only $250K are insured per account

smaller depositors should be ensured by the FDIC

you can, and should, have accounts in different banks if you have over a quarter million in US$
Am I supposed to be convinced by this? Cause I'm not.

It looks more like moon mode is assembling fake detail out of shot noise from a photo being taken in the dark indoors. That's enough to cancel out his blurring and all that.

Even if it is guided upsampling with a "this is a moon prior", so what? That's not "fake", it's constrained by the picture you took.
Twenty hours on a Qantas plane: future of aviation or hell in economy?
Nationalize
The point is that everyone should bank with four too-big-to-fail banks and all other banks in the US should be shut down? That's certainly A Take. I thought we wanted to do away with too-big-to-fail banks, not permanently cement them into place.
We are asking for regulation to prevent this failure from occurring again.
They were definitely doing high interest yield:

> ## Up to 4.50% annual percentage yield

> Help make your money last longer with our Startup Money Market Account. Like with a savings account, you’ll earn up to 4.50% APY on deposits — so you gain a longer runway. Certain restrictions apply.

https://www.svb.com/startup-banking
There is a difference between having sympathy or empathy and agreeing with the idea of socializing the loss here.

I don't think many will argue that this is a "good" thing or that they are "happy" to see ppl suffer (some might but they generally are a fringe group) but agreeing that a situation sucks doesn't mean you are willing to take a bullet to fix it.

I get the sense that most people are more in the camp of: "Yeah that sucks, hope it works out for you and maybe think about the risks more next time"
I would be happy to support a bailout of SVB in exchange for some reasonable concessions to American taxpayers.

1) Skin in the game - GPs of YC / a16z / Sequoia / Founders Fund / etc put in some equity in to a joint venture to acquire SVB's assets and make depositors whole. Government will backstop some portion of it.

2) YC / a16z / Sequoia / Founders Fund / etc agree to support ending the carried interest tax exemption
I don't think startups can be honestly called huge businesses. If you're referring to SVB, then yeah no bailout for them, but the petition isn't calling for that.

Isn't it possible to think that both small businesses/startups and average joes deserve to be bailed out when shit goes sideways?
Your funds are insured up to $250k. That's the expectation and reality. Every account has the disclaimer that amounts in excess of $250k are not insured.
The Macedonian Orthodox Church did what?
I had the same car model for a couple of years, in red. Mine did have reverse, but the engine used to heat the same as your script and then generated a dense cloud of white smoke.

This is the coolest thing I've seen this week.
You don’t even need to use multiple banks. Each individual amount is insured to $250k. So if you have monthly payroll due of $1M, then open four checking accounts (all at the same bank), and don’t keep more than $250k in each.
$250,000 will be available initially, which is doable for payroll of up to 15 to 25 people for one month, generally if you're a startup.

FDIC website indicates remediation time in the months-to-years. This is the concern.
> in the US we've long established an expectation that if you have funds in a bank account at a registered bank, the government would back those funds

Not since around 2010. The ~2007 crash was not without consequence.
> They banked with SVB because it's one of only a handful of banks that was willing to align its financial products with the holistic levels of risk that are required to work in startups.

I don't really understand what this means. What specifically did SVB offer that, say, Chase or BoA didn't?
I believe these functional React and Redux patterns got largely inspired by the Clojure ecosystem. It took a while for the adoption of functional patterns in the JS world.

But I believe what OP meant is really more about how these idioms are holistically implemented throughout Clojure. Whereas in JS we have to fight the language quite often.
Did an admin just edit the title from:

"YC is asking for a bailout"
to:
"Urgent: Sign the petition now"

??
Not that long, it was raised from $100k to $250k in 2008. They were up for review last in 2020, and again in 2025.

Most people - people - have far, far less than this. And it's fundamentally about protecting people - institutions, like we're discussing here, are supposed to be considerably more risk-aware.
I’m saying banks should not be able to lend without tracing and specific consent from the individuals whose money is being loaned out.

When a bank promises to keep your money, then converts it for their own use and purchases investments and lends it to others… that’s fraud.
> such a technique should only be necessary if the items don’t come with unique and stable ids on their own.

FWIW, these tips are also covered in his React course and he makes it clear in the course that this key generation technique should only be done when items don't have something better to use as the key. I think the blog post is just missing that context.
Then you should also have no problem pledging 33% of all gains on top of regular taxation to the Federal Government as payment for the bailout

Those single moms living paycheck to paycheck, who you want to fund your bailout, would become part owners of YC
A decent sized startup with a CFO or even just decent advisers should be conducting due diligence on banking partners with over $250k in deposits. I’m in crypto which is a different world, but the idea that I would advise a project to deposit their treasury into a defi protocol I was not continuously risk monitoring is insane to me.
Where was YC's petition or other action in support of all the thousands tech workers who have been laid off in recent months?

They don't care about the individuals affected. They care about their investments. That's it.
Boy, this got pushed off the front page awfully quickly.
> Depositors in banks aren't expected to do due diligence on the financial statements of the bank they're depositing in. Have you read the 10-K filings of your bank in detail?

If you're depositing more than the FDIC insurance limit, you should probably do some due diligence and/or get private insurance for the risk.
> Because 1 ivy league school should have no business forcing a different school on the other side of the country on how they run their business

Fortunately, all the Ivy League schools are on the same side, in same corner even, of the country.
Shouldn't they have enough capital to well recapitalise the startups they funded? At least if they fully believe that they are great and will make the money back multipletimes?
Apparently this is a regular thing that happens all the time? https://twitter.com/tedtalksmacro/status/1576109944289792001
> Depositors have a reasonable expectation that when they choose a bank (especially a publicly traded bank that is regulated) that their deposits are safe.

Not if they know how banks work, and plenty of those depositors do. They know that there’s a risk to their uninsured deposits (that’s why the insurance exists!) and so they either account for that risk or play dirty and pretend, after the fact, that they didn’t know better and that the government should pretty please make them whole.

> If this is not true, then most people will only bank with the largest banks. That's not a good situation.

No. They’ll do what they’ve doing for a century: diversify banks and asset classes, sweep accounts, buy private insurance, etc.

Deposits are a loan to the bank. If the bank doesn’t have any risk of default on those loans, that’s no free and efficient market. That’s the government giving bankers free money to play with. We already do that for small accounts held by naive investors because the stability is worth it and they can’t be expected to afford the inherent risk themselves, but that can’t extend to all accounts.
The US government made $15B from the 2008 bailouts.

That's 0.6% return on investment which is kinda poor but overall the bailout was profitable for US taxpayers.
There's other ways to make this work -- FDIC insurance is per-bank so you can spread your deposits across distinct banks to be covered in the low-to-mid-millions.

If you have >$5m and you haven't done due diligence on this, I'd call that a failure on the part of the company (or its advisors, like the accelerator they're a part of).
The idiotic corporate spiritual newspeak is the cherry on top of this whole ordeal. Can't you just plainly ask for a bailout without overblowing the importance of your little bubble club?
Musk does because he has a pathological need for attention.
> Are you suggesting tens of thousands of small business customers need to do due dilligence on the investment practices of their banks

Yes? I do it with my personal after 2008
Not sure if the author saw in the OpenAI docs, but their current "system" message has a really weak effect on the output. OpenAI explicitly recommends using a simple "system" message and then a separate instructions "user" message that encodes your prompt instructions.

So if you're struggling to get the chat completions API to follow instructions, don't rely on the system message alone.

(I'm the author of the `chatgpt` npm package and run a community of 10k+ ChatGPT hackers, so we've run into a lot of these kinks and found that this method works much better than using the "system" message exclusively. It's even mentioned in their official chat completions guide as something that they will be improving in future versions)
> everyone has to sit down and evaluate their banks balance sheet before trying to do business with them?

No, if you're not keeping more than $250k in the account, you don't have to do the homework. If you're keeping more than $250k in the account, you can afford to pay someone $1k to do a bit of due diligence.
>> Thinking about it as "text data" is both your and Chomsky's problem -- the >petabytes of data aren't preprocessed into text. They're streams of sensory input. It's not zero shot if it's years of data of observing human behavior through all your senses.

I'm a little unsure what you mean. I think you mean that humans learn language not just from examples of language, but from examples of all kinds of concepts in our sensory input, not just language?

Well, that may or may not be the case for humans, but it's certainly not the case for machine learning systems. Machine learning systems must be trained with examples of a particular concept, in order to learn that concept and not another. For instance, language models must be trained with examples of language, otherwise they can't learn language.

There are multi-modal systems that are trained on multiple "modalities" but they can still not learn concepts for which they are not given specific examples. For instance, if a system is trained on examples of images, text and time series, it will learn a model of images, text and time series, but it won't be able to recognise, say, speech.

As to whether humans learn that way: who says we do? Is that just a conjecture proposed to support your other points, or is it something you really think is the case, and believe, based on some observations etc?
I posted it, I'm aware of the rules about titles, but honestly I thought my title was way more clear about what the story was. In retrospect I should have called it "Tell HN: YC is asking for a bailout", think that would have been fair. The fact that it's been edited here is not cool with me, especially as the story is unfavorable to YC (though I certainly believe readers are smart enough to draw their own conclusions)
Equity in startups which had deposits there.

If you need $100k next month to meet payroll, and you had it deposited in SVB, the Fed will cut you a cheque for $100k, and in return, receive $100k in equity at the more advantagous (to the Fed) of your last valuation and your next valuation.
No bailout. Banks and VCs and Founders are risk managers. They all failed. So grow up and take responsibility (I'm a founder myself).
We're trying to help our founders, and this is a moment where awareness of this problem in DC and in the halls of power matter.
What does the government have to do with that ?
I don't know what your views on all this is.

The problem is many of your peers in your space actively advocate, lobby, and spend lots of $$$ to reduce regulations whose aim is to try to prevent this sort of stuff. SVB themselves were pushing to be exempt from stress tests in Dodd-Frank, which they were successful at achieving back in 2018. If regulation is really a concern, why continue banking at a company that was actively lobbying to be exempt from regulations that already existed?

Anyways, I'm not gonna pass judgement either way. People make mistakes. However, it's a constant battle, and when ground is gained its easily lost. It's a tireless fight against monied interests trying to make more money in any way possible. People are going to understandably be frustrated at petitions like this.