skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I know that 250k cash is not a lot for a company with a few folks on payroll. But why wouldn’t you distribute cash across multiple banks as a business?

It hasn’t to be this situation, but if your accounts are flagged for fraud or someone hacks an account, aren’t you safer by distributing cash in multiple banks?
In the UK, consumer deposits are protected only up to £85k. Everyone has several bank accounts. If the person on the street knows this, it’s not too much to ask that someone running a business does too.
SVB is pushed on most companies raising money because the VCs can easily transfer money from their account to the company. So companies looking to raise are pushed to open a SVB account. If they keep the money there is up to them.
One thing I think will be different and that had totally escaped my radar until recently is just the enormous and diverse community that has been developing around Stable Diffusion, which I think will be less likely to form with language models.

I just recently tried out one of the most popular [0] Stable Diffusion WebUIs locally, and I'm positively surprised at how different it is to the rest of the space around ML research/computing. I consider myself to be a competent software engineer, but I still often find it pretty tricky to get e.g. HuggingFace models running and doing what I envision them to do. SpeechT5 for instance is reported to do voice transformations, but it took me a good bit of time and hair-pulling to figure out how to extract voice embeddings from .wav files. I'm sure the way to do this is obvious to most researchers, maybe to the point of feeling like this needs not a mention in the documentation, but it certainly wasn't clear to me.

The community around Stable Diffusion is much more inclusive, though. Tools go the extra effort to be easy to use, and documentation for community created models/scripts/tools is so accessible as to be perfectly usable by a non-technical user who is willing to adventure a little bit into the world of hardcore computing by following instructions. Sure, nothing is too polished and you often get the feeling that it's "an ugly thing, but an ugly thing that works", but the point is that it's incredibly accessible. People get to actually use these models to build their stories, fantasy worlds, to work, and things get progressively more impressive as the community builds upon itself (I loved the style of [1] and even effortlessly merged its style with another one in the WebUI, and ControlNet [2] is amazing and gives me ideas for integrating my photography with AI).

I think the general interest in creating images is larger than for LLMs with their current limitations (especially in current consumer-available hardware). I do wonder how much this community interest will boost the spaces in the longer run, but right now I can't help but be impressed by the difference in usability and collaborative development between image generative and other types of models.

[0] https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui

[1] https://civitai.com/models/4998/vivid-watercolors

[2] https://github.com/Mikubill/sd-webui-controlnet
FWIW I've never had that perspective, so I'm not sure why you are saying that.
From what I can find, the uninsured IndyMac depositors lost 50% of the uninsured amount. They got that 50% FDIC Advanced Dividend and I can't find any records of anything further beyond that initial 50%.
A discussion about the employee bonuses is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35112827 and those seem fine, despite the bad image and timing. The blog post here is more about bailing out bank's customers, not employees I think.
We will make payroll, but valuations will suffer and upset our limited partners just didn't have the same ring to it.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/11/silicon-val...
Those bonuses were for 2022 so probably delayed: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/03/11/silicon-valley-bank-empl...

While the fact that the bonuses were paid at the time does help underscore the level of malfeasance of the bank leadership, many of those receiving the bonuses probably didn’t know about the gaps.
Users, advertisers – we are all trapped in the enshittification of the internet
I specifically used "relevant interactions" to rule out "modelling just a single cell's interactions with its environments" but who knows how deep you need to go to have an accurate model.

> we're studying an "emergent" phenomenon

It's like saying that mapping all cells in human organism to addresses in memory will give us emergent human inside computer.

But still at abstract layer we just do not have a model of a working brain, we only have maps of neurons, not an actual "algorithm" or a model of all relevant environment interactions needed for a working brain or a set of "abstract instructions" needed for it to work.
I think you are over optimistic about current state of our knowledge if we can't even model organism with few thousand neurons accurately. Imagine trying to do that for tens of billions of neurons and trillions of synapses, especially that we know brain doesn't work like an ANN at all[1].

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-020-0277-3/
There are lots of financial incentives for people to review bomb the app in both directions. Is there any evidence that it wasn't third parties manipulating the reviews both times in both directions?

I'm imagining a second thread on a different forum, nearly identical to the thread you linked and just as ideological, with a title like "After Circle was unfairly review-bombed with 1 Star reviews by haters, our community has added 55+ Five Star reviews in 3 days."
There's plenty of ramen to be had for $250,000. Come on YC, just hustle!
The most plausible idea would be some other bank buys SVB. Depending on the current state of SVB’s balance sheet (which is not publicly known), other banks may be willing to pay as little as $0 or there may be no takers.
it's already recovered.
That would be nice. Presently, most private banks pay less interest to depositors than the Fed funds overnight rate.
> Silicon Valley has a real problem with groupthink

This problem is found everywhere where humanity organizes and cooperates in groups. It’s in no way unique to SV, tech, or any other field. It’s also the dominant style in the corporate world, such as "Go along, to get along".
Do note, the letter is not asking for a bailout for SVB "equity holders or managers". In the worst case, they can still have their stake be wiped out completely (so a whole lot stricter than what happened in the 2008 crisis). They're just saying that the FDIC's $250k limit is not enough. The FDIC has insured larger sums than their previously stated limits before, that's how the $250k limit reached its value in the first place.
We were told the capitalist elites deserve their outsized payouts because of all the risk they took and how that was the most meritocratic thing and how dare Government think to interfere with the beauty of the free market.

Now the risk has shown its downside, Big Government is asked to bail them out?
DeepL.com translation of relevant bit (there's some irony in using ML to be able to read text about ML):

> However, the lunar photography environment has physical limitations due to the long distance to the moon and lack of light, so the actual image output from the sensor at high magnification is noisy and not enough to provide the best image quality experience even after compositing multiple images.

> To overcome this problem, Galaxy Camera applies an AI detail enhancement engine (Detail Enhancement technology) based on deep learning at the final stage to effectively remove noise and maximize the details of the moon, resulting in bright and clear moon photos.

It's not just this one thing, though. It also describes moon detection resulting in: setting brightness, using optical stabilization, "motion sensor data and video analysis"¹ for stabilization (VDIS), and fixing the focus at infinity. The "AI" magic is then described as being a detail enhancer, which could mean anything from {generically decreasing blur and improving contrast} to {applying a model that was purposefully overfit on the moon} (most likely it's the latter). Either way it's fake, obviously, but why do all the effort and make compromises to get a good moon shot if you're going to replace it anyway?

> If you shoot the moon in the early evening, the sky around the moon will not be the color of the sky you see, but rather a black sky, which is caused by forcing the image brightness down to capture the moon clearly. [I think this translation should have read "picture brightness"; elsewhere it also says "screen brightness" so I suspect the Korean word for "picture" is ambiguous]

So you can't shoot anything near the moon, like if someone is holding the moon up with a hand or something, presumably that would be all black. It's apparently still relying on the sensor to get most of the way there and using ML for the last leg.

Imo the feature should spawn a warning on screen "Details of moon filled in by computer and may differ from reality" with buttons for [ok] to quickly dismiss as well as [don't show again]. Then you can't not know that your images are being faked and it's not disingenuous, while most people would still appreciate the better quality because it'll be/work fine in 99% of cases.

¹ summary explanation of VDIS found on https://r2.community.samsung.com/t5/CamCyclopedia/VDIS-Video...
I wonder if there is some way you could do an E2EE LLM SaSS? Guess more work probably needs to be done into homomorphic encryption for that.
We are advocating better regulation to prevent this from happening in the future. It's in the petition.
tfw venture capitalists want socialism
Wait I thought we all embraced disruption.

Move fast and break things. Am I right?

Note sure what happened but I don't recognize these whiny young techies. They're a fundamentally different than they kinds of tech people I grew up/old with.

Apparently everyone expects life to be all upside no downside.

SMH
Socialize the risk, privatize the profits?

Why don't the startups talk to their VCs who can talk to their LPs? They probably represent something like 75% of US wealth. I'd say they have enough money to take care of themselves.
>...you have to choose your definition of success and failure

I think this is wonderful advice. Perhaps in the same vein as existentialists arguing that you get to define the meaning of your life, I like this sentiment that you get to choose whether you've succeeded or not.
What is with the headline here.

In the doc: "Small business depositors at Silicon Valley Bank should be made whole. Regulators need to conduct a backstop of depositors. We are not asking for a bank bailout."
“In 2015, SVB President Greg Becker submitted a statement [0] to a Senate panel pushing legislators to exempt more banks – including his own – from new regulations passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.”

[0] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114shrg94375/pdf/CH...
And who do you expect to foot the bill to recover your money? There are ways to mitigate this risk and it's not the taxpayers problem you mismanage your assets.
People think they succeed because they’re smart, rugged individuals who never give up. They can’t recognize the survivorship bias in their own lives.

The answer to a lot of our problems as a country is much stronger taxes on the rich. People who say otherwise are either wealthy themselves or under some delusion they eventually will be (lottery winner mentality). Luckily you can ignore them because they’re such a small fraction of actual people, they’re just loud online.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57341
Its not like SVB has tons of toxic assets on their balance sheet. They have $13B in balance sheet equity (not marking to market HTM assets). There's $40B in cash and AFS bonds which are marked to market. This can be saved by another entity or a coalition of entities like Sandhill Road. I don't think this is something the government should get involved in any further than they already are. Brex (as far as I know) is offering short term loans to SVB depositors so that should lighten the overall impact; those that get the loans will make payroll. Meanwhile I'm sure there's a few camps frantically running due diligence right now and a white knight could arise by Monday morning to shore up the balance sheet and let the bank reopen. The problem is who/what ever does that needs to ooze with trustability and confidence to keep the remaining depositors from bailing.
>No, you should insulate yourself from that risk, either by spreading out your cash between multiple institutions, or obtaining deposit insurance beyond the government's, or (most likely) both.

Why would I do that when I can bank with a too-big-to-fail bank like JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, or Bank of America?
This is YC trying to protect itself and the VC community from massive losses on their investment.
It's not just that it's accessible, it's also significantly higher in quality than previous local runnable causal LMs.

I suspect people saying it's not good are prompting it like ChatGPT, not realizing how much trickier a raw model is to prompt. Getting the hyperparameters for good sampling is another stumbling block. The models are very good if you do everything properly.
This will suck for a lot of people but YC - and no VC - is not big enough to fail.
> are far, far beyond most places in Europe

Have you been to Europe?

> rent

I see frequent stories on HN about people not able to afford homes in Lisbon, London or Paris. Trivial to dig up rent stats and compare against median income.

> homeless

I was in Frankfurt in summer. Entire 3x3 block area next to the main train station reminded me of Tenderloin in SF. Homeless people, urine and poop, needles, stench.. you got it all. And this is apparently one of the richest city in the strongest economy in Europe. Let's not talk about poor parts of Moldova, Romania or Belarus.
Not really. Policy doesn't make good headlines. Everyone understands that in 2008, investors received significant bailouts. 'Bailouts' are synonymous with people receiving help for investment losees. Depositors, workers, etc. are creditors who did not agree to shoulder investment risk.

'NO BAILOUTS' is an unsubtle slogan, but we're talking about a headline. Headlines are not meant to be nuanced case-switch statements, they serve the same role as function identifiers and need to be maximally concise to get attention. Your suggestion ignores the point above that the person who coined this headline made distinctly non-extremist policy suggestions.

You might say 'well people should never use inflammatory language to make their point.' But if so, you need to consider that all kinds of bad policies can be put onto the books while being couched in very bland-sounding terms to get past people's filters.
Give it few shot examples and the quality should improve a lot. If you want a bot able to do technical Q&A give it two questions as well as the answers in its prompt. The model will then infer it's role as an AI that answer questions truthfully, and will try it's best to continue along those lines
Or, maybe an increasing number of people have suffered from brain fog caused by long covid, and that would make them feel like their Adderall is not working?
Most commenters have a very low-dimensional understanding of politics, and assume if you’re a businessman or capitalist, all failings of Republicans can be attributed to you personally.
There was nothing arbitrary about that choice. This bank promised better deals BECAUSE they were not careful enough about the risk it entailed. That was their competitive advantage, and they made bank for it. Well, tough luck, now it's not anymore: it has nothing to do with being a large bank or a small bank, it has to do with healthy business practices.
I would recommend people familiarize themselves with what happens historically when bank failures happen unchecked. It’s catastrophic. Good luck to you if any of these companies employs you or owes you money.

A good book with a first person blow by blow is “The Great Depression: a diary”
Why do startups only have 1 bank? I own a bootstrapped startup with literally just 1 employee and am easily able to get an account in Chase or Citi. Why do startups with much more revenue not able to get the same account in major banks?
> not because they made an arbitrary choice like which bank they started using

Most companies live and die by what most people would call arbitrary choices in things they wouldn't think of. I use more than one bank account for my personal finances and I don't even have 250k cash. Begging for tax payer money after the 10 year tech bull run we've seen, shame.
Brought a smile to my face, because I was just thinking the same thing.
I feel like if you have millions of dollars you should be sophisticated enough to understand FDIC insurance limits. Piling literal billions of dollars into one small bank is a calculated risk, too
The prosecutor didn’t ask for the case to be thrown out. The prosecutor decided not to cross examine Mr Epstein. She then asked the judge for an acquittal. She knew that the prosecution had lost after Mr Epstein testified and the “victim” lied under oath. There was no point cross examining and wasting more of the taxpayers money and courts time. Although the trial should never have taken place at all
Look up CDARS. There are well known cash management strategies that solve for exactly this set of circumstances. I’m not really sure why taxpayers are supposed to backstop CFO competence?

But to answer your question, yeah, I think the equity in a for-profit business takes the risks and rewards of capitalism as they come.

If the owners didn’t want to lose the basis points by holding cash in CDARS or liked the interest paid by SVB (approximately twice the median of other financial institutions), they probably shouldn’t have been trying to pick up pennies in front of steamrollers or expecting taxpayers to save them from the consequences of that freely made decision. Capitalism, baby.
I mean YC and all the VCs killed SVB by causing a run on the bank. This is not the only business that VCs have harmed by spreading FUD (in many cases unfounded or even fabricated with dubious motives), and then acting as a herd. I have tremendous sympathy for the many small startups who had nothing to do with this, but a lot less for the VCs in this case.

SVB was well capitalized and while there could be losses here they should be small, especially given the FDIC shut down the bank pretty quickly.

I do think the government needs to resolve the deposits fast so every involved company can figure out whether and exactly how much haircut they’ll get and get on with their business ASAP. The big mistake I think the government could easily make is to let this take months to unwind, which would unnecessarily kill businesses that could be fine even with small losses as long as they get access to their capital restored immediately.
What prompt are you using to get LLaMA to do summarization?
What would I gain as a taxpayer in return for this bailout?

Would the taxpayer receive 10% equity in YC?

It seems like YC could have insured these funds, but didn’t. They saved money and accepted the risk. This risk is now realized.

Seems bizarre that YC would be made whole. Certainly it saves jobs, but it benefits YC more than anyone else.
They did something, they put their money in a bank which was lobbying for less regulations so they could make riskier plays, which put way too much depositor money into MBS (what the actual fuck). They didn't do their due diligence and now they are paying the price. They will receive dividends in advance and any employees which for some reason had money in the bank will still keep their 250k FDIC insured cash. If they had more that's their problem, 250k is a lot.

Anyways, I'm not American so this doesn't affect me directly (not my money), but as an outsider I find it ludicrous how accepting everyone is being about mismanaged banks and companies that didn't do their due dilligence. I thought America was all about owning the consequences to your actions, but when shit hits the fans everyone forgets about it and comes back asking for help from Uncle Sam.
But not these jobs, because these jobs belong to people in networks adjacent to Y Combinator leadership, so they might be negatively affected.
it would make it even more apparent that it is
So… capitalism yay when it benefits us and nay when we made a mistake and put all our eggs in one basket?

Risk is everywhere.
"there are no atheists in a foxhole, no libertarians in a bank run"
>Will Roku even lose all of that 25%? Probably not. They won't be able to access it for a while, but in the end they'll probably end up getting at least some of that back.

How will they get it back? The bank is gone. FDIC will only give them $250k right?
Thanks for the reply Garry. I’m a random nobody here, but I just don’t understand how so much of YC had exposure to this institution and no one was checking in on this. It’s a systemic failure.

Demo days are great and pump the pipeline. Who’s doing your third party and vendor risk management across the portfolio? Who is doing and monitoring public policy? Rhetorical, not meant to salt the wound, I genuinely want YC to learn from this and do better.
Socialism for the rich.
Rugged capitalism for the poor.
Couldn't agree more.

Average Joe is swindled by con-men into bad deals and/or is subject to events outside his control: should have known better/worked more

Huge company in the business of risk management fucks up: bad luck, the taxpayer will cover you, no civil or criminal responsibility will come to anyone regardless of the magnitude of the fallout
The bailout would most likely benefit the VCs and their funds. It’s not about helping employees who might be living paycheck to paycheck.
Generative AI for tracked/mod music?
It seems to me like an AI that generates music based on modules would be a good thing. Not only is there a dataset that's unimaginably huge, who wouldn't want to hear a stream of unique tracker music that never ends?
I think someone should look into this. Is anyone already doing such a thing?
It seems more reasonable to think "The social contract is erroding and so more shoplifting is happening"

It's not like people consider antisocial behavior by default unless they are desperate and driven to by a society that's failing them and failing to give them hope that they have other options to survive.
The equity holders and management of SVB are likely to be wiped. In the petition we specifically call this out: we are not asking for their risks to be "socialized."

Depositors have a reasonable expectation that when they choose a bank (especially a publicly traded bank that is regulated) that their deposits are safe. If this is not true, then most people will only bank with the largest banks. That's not a good situation.

We're asking for depositors to be made whole and for regulation to prevent this from happening to depositors in the future.
And with all their connections, one would imagine they could raise some funding in exchange for shares, like their startups do. Why not?
Do non-profits drive social change?
If your competitors can't pay their employees you can poach them for very cheap if they are desperate to make rent or mortgage payments. So more sensible competitors might even benefit from the stupider ones.
It'll get worse if they're bailed out! It would totally change the perception of risk if they'll be saved every time they shit the bed.
If you’re going to get a line of credit against your cash, the bank requires you to have the cash with them.
> Think about the 2/3rds of americans above. Why shouldn't they think that?

Because:

> 2/3 of amercians live paycheck-to-paycheck [1].

Their paychecks are drawn from these demand deposit accounts.

This money above $250k is not being stored in an account like Scrooge McDuck just trying to get the highest score. This money is being held in a transitive fashion to pay employees, vendors, and lines of credit. This is what people are not understanding.