The photo of the wall in the article is obviously digitally altered, just to the left of the person walking. The rocks change into uniform smooth grey, and it doesn’t match the reflection in the water. Is it supposed to be the digital plan of the wall vs the real thing?
The excavator creates a mesh of each stone by scanning it "in hand", and updates the settled positions of them as it builds. The left side of the image is the 3D digital twin model that is maintained by the system, captured from the same perspective to show how it matches the real wall.
What took down SVB was mortgage securities. In the USA mortgages are typically 30 years long, with a fixed rate the entire time. Actual average duration is only a few years in a declining rate environment and 5-6 years in flat rate environment. In a raising rate environment, which we haven’t really seen for any length of time in most people adult lifetimes, it’s probably 10-15 years. This transition is what harmed SVB and it’s hurt all the banks but most didn’t leverage up so much on them and didn’t have only large, flighty customers. Very unique situation. There are also lots of ways big banks can protect themselves from this duration risk, if they actually care.
It sounds like in Australia (and Canada and the UK) the risk has just been shifted from the professionals to the consumers, with only five year mortgages. You can’t pay off your entire house in five years, so many people are dependent on being able to refinance, and are going to be in a lot of hurt over the next few years as the mortgages come due. This does not sound like a better solution.
Fixed terms above 5 years are basically non-existent, most people tend to fix a portion (not always 100%) of their loans for 2-3 years if they fix at all.
30 year mortgages here aren't uncommon, but the rates are variable and are basically whatever their bank wants to charge (with competition from other banks preventing them from increasing ridiculously).
Loan affordability is a big thing here too with banks being mandated to ensure that borrowers can afford the mortgages they're receiving and even shading interest rates at 3 points above their current levels when assessing this.
Sub-prime mortgages are effectively non-existent here as are long-term interest rate risks for banks as their borrowing costs are always pretty closely aligned with their lending revenues.
I’m sorry, this was an utter mess, shouldn’t have happened and lots of people share blame. But I don’t think it was wrong for depositors to pull deposits from an insolvent (or nearly insolvent) bank. Neither is it wrong to encourage companies you’ve invested in to move money. The only thing I have a problem with is when some of the VCs, like Jason Calacanis, deliberately tried to spread panic to other banks to make SVB more important to the government so they’d backstop his deposits. That was pretty bad.
But realizing your badly run bank is badly run and pulling your funds and encouraging others to do the same is a very reasonable thing to do. Certainly not worthy of this virtual tar and feathering. They are, or would have been, the innocent victims of this banks poor risk management.
For one this article is now on the main page of hacker news and it reports four days since last Elon on hacker news :D Might just be that it hasn’t been on the front page long?
As I’ve gotten older I’ve fallen into this problem but also climbed out of it. It is worrisome that it is permanent, but it likely isn’t. There were several things about my life that I changed that helped me regain my focus and deep concentration abilities.
First was reducing TV, social media, and just scrolling internet news. Doing those things all day was training my brain to have a 1 second attention span. A vacation, if used to just chill out and do boring things for hours at a time can help snap you out. Your body and mind don’t want to live in that frenetic state so your stress will reduce too.
Diet and exercise is also important in making your body run as it was designed and helping your brain to be in a more relaxed, nourished state that will give you more mental stamina. Exercising first thing in the morning is good, but anytime you find your brain conking out is a good time for a run and often i’ve felt better immediately. Cardio helps me, I don’t know about weight training.
Diet is very important, and if you eat lots of carbs, especially late in the day you probably aren’t sleeping well and you might have high blood sugar that is impacting your ability to concentrate. Reducing carb intake, eating good breakfasts and light dinners, and not eating for several hours before sleeping (go to bed hungry, you will sleep much better and feel better in the morning) can make a big difference. If you work remotely and get drowsy after eating and you can take a nap early in the day, go for it!
Also just doing whatever it takes to calm yourself down and sleep long and deep night after night can help a lot.
At this age it is also a very good idea to get blood work done to see if there is any imbalance which could be affecting your well-being.
Finally, like muscles our brain seems to atrophy over time and strengthen as you use it. If you’ve been coasting for a while and haven’t had a real challenge, it might take a couple of weeks of frustration before you rebuild that mental stamina.
All of these life changes are very difficult to do at first, but once you make the change and feel the effects it becomes a lot easier and you feel so much better. I’ve done everything I mentioned here and gotten back my ability to learn and focus to a similar level as my younger self.
Your argument basically boils down to you don’t really use your glove box and prefer the slightly cleaner aesthetics. In your case you might argue for a car that doesn’t have a glove box. But if the glove box is included it should be intended for use. To not be able to access it by the passenger while driving, or while the car is off can be very frustrating for people who like to have a glove box.
All the comments on this thread seem to ignore a basic simple truth.
On long road trips with passengers, they often use the glovebox to store things.
When we go on road trips the kids rotate sitting in the passenger seat. They store their books, kindle, phone, etc there as it is a very convenient storage space easily accessible to them.
This is the most common approach even if it isn’t done on purpose, and I think it should be formalized with terminology and studies. The current zeitgeist of immunity as understood by the general population and, importantly, politicians, just can’t seem to incorporate the concept of something that is so contagious but changes so quickly. But it’s the reality for almost all sickness we get, this is the norm, not the outlier. Why are we still even thinking about vaccinating people with the original covid vax? We give the annual flu shot more respect.
Despite what we want and how we wish the world would be, the reality is that if you are constantly exposed to covid you are unlikely to ever be symptotically ill. Since we can’t prevent that from happening everywhere in the world, might as well plan for it. It also puts evolutionary pressure on the disease to be less severe, since if you feel sick you stay home, but if you don’t you go out and spread it.
