Interesting Links for 14-03-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Work to begin immediately on £55m music centre vision for Edinburgh landmark (the old Royal High School on Calton Hill)

(tags:music school edinburgh )

2. Gary Lineker row: All the people employed or used in BBC programming who are outspoken on social media

(tags:bbc twitter socialnetworking )

3. The care worker recruitment crisis is even bigger than the NHS

(tags:jobs Doom care )

4. Why did 250,000 Britons die sooner than expected? (Austerity)

(tags:uk austerity death )

5. Silicon Valley Bank seem to have managed risk unusually badly

(tags:risk banking Technology epicfail )

6. Nabokov was not a fan of many people's interpretation of Lolita

(tags:abuse children rape writing )

7. Gilbert and Sullivan's 'The Thing'

(tags:scifi funny music musicals )

8. The Pithiest Critique of Modern Conservatism Keeps Getting Credited to the Wrong Man

(tags:Conservatives politics mistakes )

9. Trams! Invade Leith!

(tags:Edinburgh trams video transport )

10. What's Going On With Red Dwarf?

(tags:RedDwarf TV scifi )

Comments

Re: Sometimes, things are pretty much what they seem to be.

[andrewducker]

Thank you, that's fascinating.

Re: Sometimes, things are pretty much what they seem to be.

[hairyears]

Cory Doctorow (and Wired) make an interesting point about SVB's corporate customers: if those uninsured company accounts were emptied by the SVB bankruptcy, *all* the rented servers for Internet-of-Things companies would go offline, and your IoT front door lock would be bricked:


https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/

Likewise, the payment systems for anything and everything that was a cool startup in the last two decades would be switched off: the payment-processing servers and the bank transfers go through SVB account-holders' systems. Which would've failed shortly after those companies missed payroll and stopped paying the bills for their servers.

Best not to ask what happens for the patients using medical devices or halfway through treatment on drugs manufactured by an SVB account-holder.

So the Bailout mattered in ways that aren't understood by all those who say that companies reliant on a failing bank should take their losses and learn their lessons...

And now you know why the Bank of England was willing to accept a £1 bid from HSBC in order to maintain continuity of banking services from SVB's UK subsidiary.