March 2023 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

[leak] facebook llama most trained research language model
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 13 Mar '23

13 Mar '23

this is a cutting edge public language model that was kept private to the academic community. if i recall correctly its major feature is significant downsizing via use of much more training data. it is likely more powerful than common for-pay models such as those sold by openai. i have not verified the torrent is real. from twitter and reddit. https://github.com/facebookresearch/llama/pull/73/files magnet:?xt=urn:btih:ZXXDAUWYLRUXXBHUYEMS6Q5CE5WA3LVA&dn=LLaMA

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Renewed promise of fully decentralized storage and globalized governance
by professor rat 13 Mar '23

13 Mar '23

Crypto and Artificial Intelligence are eloping despite parental disapproval https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2023/02/20/crypto-bittorrent-implement-ai-infras… Reposts not first starlings of spring

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[crazy] [idea] vr can replace drugs?
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 13 Mar '23

13 Mar '23

https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/08/08/2153210/vr-is-as-good-as-psyche… the article, which i have not fully read, focuses on an artistic vr environment that produces responses indistinguishable from lsd and psychedelics on some tests. it also raises the idea that vr could produce other human changes, which is pleasant from a perspective of unaddressed algorithmic psychological manipulation in the world. i was thinking i needed an environment encouraging of rationality. i thought maybe having the user plan how they would move, and then follow through with their plan, as a first idea. i’m not sure how i would make it pleasant — but that seems maybe the study or art of human influence. maybe in the end a different thing than simply what i wanted to do better, would be more humanly influential.

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OBAMA, sorry, Fedbook helped fuel a genocidal campaign in Burma
by professor rat 13 Mar '23

13 Mar '23

In late 2018 the company admitted that this activity had helped fuel a genocidal anti-Muslim campaign in Myanmar for several years. In 2020 Facebook started belatedly taking action against Holocaust deniers, anti-vaxxers, and the conspiracy movement QAnon. All these dangerous falsehoods were metastasizing . . ." https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/11/1020600/facebook-responsible-ai… Reposts not reams of reactionary Gramps garbage

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Silicon Valley Bank Was a Wall Street IPO Pipeline in Drag as a Federally-Insured Bank; FHLB of San Francisco Was Quietly Bailing It Out
by Gunnar Larson 13 Mar '23

13 Mar '23

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/03/silicon-valley-bank-was-a-wall-stree… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 13, 2023 ~ If you want to genuinely understand why Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failed and why Jerome Powell’s Fed led the effort yesterday to make sure $150 billion of the bank’s uninsured depositors’ money would be treated as FDIC insured and available today, you need to take a look at how the bank defined itself right up until it blew up on Friday. (That history is still available at the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine at this link. Give the page time to load.) This was a financial institution deployed to facilitate the goals of powerful venture capital and private equity operators, by financing tech and pharmaceutical startups until they could raise millions or billions of dollars in a Wall Street Initial Public Offering (IPO). The bank was also involved in managing the wealth of those startup millionaires or billionaires once they struck it big in an IPO. Many of the former startup companies also continued to keep their operating money at the bank – in many cases in the millions of dollars, ignoring the fact that just $250,000 of that was insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Last Friday, dozens of publicly-traded companies made filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicating that they had large sums of uninsured deposits now frozen at Silicon Valley Bank. Several indicated that the amounts represented 23 to 26 percent of the company’s cash and/or cash equivalents. Roku, Inc., the publicly-traded manufacturer of digital media players for video streaming, reported the following to the SEC: “The Company has total cash and cash equivalents of approximately $1.9 billion as of March 10, 2023. Approximately $487 million is held at SVB, which represents approximately 26% of the Company’s cash and cash equivalents balance as of March 10, 2023.” Publicly-traded Oncorus, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing RNA-based medicine for cancer patients, reported the following to the SEC: “The Company informs its investors that it has deposit accounts with SVB with an aggregate balance of approximately $10 million, which is approximately 23% of the Company’s total current cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. In addition, the Company has a standby letter of credit in place with SVB of approximately $3.4 million securing obligations under its lease agreement with IQHQ-4 Corporate Drive, LLC.” In big, bold type on its website, Silicon Valley Bank bragged that “44% of U.S. venture-backed technology and healthcare IPOs YTD [year-to-date] bank with SVB.” To put it bluntly, this was a Wall Street IPO machine that enriched the investment banks on Wall Street by keeping the IPO pipeline moving; padded the bank accounts of the venture capital and private equity middlemen; and minted startup millionaires for ideas that often flamed out after the companies went public. These are the functions and risks taken by investment banks. Silicon Valley Bank – with this business model — should never have been allowed to hold a federally-insured banking charter and be backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer, who was on the hook for its incompetent bank management. We say incompetent based on this fact alone (although there were clearly lots of other problem areas): $150 billion of its $175 billion in deposits were uninsured. The bank was clearly playing a dangerous gambit with its depositors’ money. Adding further insult to U.S. taxpayers, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco was quietly bailing out SVB throughout much of last year. Federal Home Loan Banks are also not supposed to be in the business of bailing out venture capitalists or private equity titans. Their job is to provide loans to banks to promote mortgages to individuals and loans to promote affordable housing and community development. According to SEC filings by the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, its loan advances to SVB went from zero at the end of 2021 to a whopping $15 billion on December 31, 2022. The SEC filing provides a graph showing that SVB was its largest borrower at year end, with outstanding advances representing 17 percent of all loans made by the FHLB of San Francisco. Loan Advances Outstanding at Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, December 31, 2022 Notably, another bank which had $14 billion of loans outstanding from the FHLB of San Francisco – First Republic Bank – saw its stock price plummet by 14.8 percent on Friday. In premarket trading this morning, its stock was down another 70 percent, despite the announcement of a new bailout facility last evening by the Fed. Western Alliance Bancorp, also on the FHLB of San Francisco’s list of its top 10 borrowers, saw its stock close with a loss of 20.88 percent on Friday. It had lost another 29 percent in premarket trading this morning. Another member of the top 10 borrowers at FHLB of San Francisco, Silvergate Bank, announced last Wednesday that it was closing shop and liquidating. Silvergate’s problem stemmed from the hot money it held in deposits from crypto companies heading for the exits as investigations began into its role in potentially laundering money for Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed house of frauds. Another crypto-related bank, Signature Bank, was shuttered by New York State regulators on Sunday, with the FDIC being named the receiver. All of its depositors, including its uninsured depositors, will also be made whole, according to a statement from the FDIC yesterday. Signature Bank’s filings with federal regulators indicate that more than $79 billion of its $88 billion in deposits were uninsured at the end of the fourth quarter of 2022. Signature Bank was also quietly tapping into ongoing bailouts from a Federal Home Loan Bank. In this case FHLB of New York. Its borrowings from FHLB of New York exploded in the fourth quarter of last year, rising to $11.3 billion. According to an SEC filing, as of September 30, 2022, it had total borrowing capacity of $23.4 billion from FHLB New York. We’re starting to see a pattern here. If you want to know which banks are going belly up next, simply look at which ones took the largest loan advances from a Federal Home Loan Bank last year. That appears to mean that they were seeing an exodus of depositor money and needed to plug their liquidity holes. The new emergency lending program set up by the Federal Reserve was announced last evening, as follows: “The additional funding will be made available through the creation of a new Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), offering loans of up to one year in length to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions pledging U.S. Treasuries, agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, and other qualifying assets as collateral. These assets will be valued at par. The BTFP will be an additional source of liquidity against high-quality securities, eliminating an institution’s need to quickly sell those securities in times of stress.” The translation of the above is as follows: to prevent banks from further panicking the markets by taking massive losses on their underwater Treasury securities by selling them in order to meet depositor withdrawals, we’re going to accept these Treasury securities as collateral for one-year loans and pretend that their market value is par (the full face amount at maturity). It’s not clear if this new emergency bailout program from the Fed complies with the statutory language of Dodd-Frank, which prohibits the Fed from setting up an emergency bailout program to bail out a specific financial institution; requires that it accept good collateral; and requires that any new Fed emergency facilities be broad-based across the financial industry. Federally-insured banks that did themselves in with crypto deposits or functioned as an IPO pipeline to Wall Street, do not appear to us to represent a broad base of the federally-insured, commercial banking industry in the U.S. The Fed’s bailout program, once again, appears to be rewarding hubris and enshrining moral hazard in the U.S. banking system. Equally troubling, both Silvergate Bank and Silicon Valley Bank were supervised by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Why the San Francisco Fed’s bank examiners didn’t blow the whistle on the dangerous manner in which these banks were operating deserves its own investigation. For years now, Wall Street On Parade has warned that the crony Fed should be stripped of its supervision of banks.

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Second Draft (was MC Boss Webcomic, Re: Morning Spam)
by Karl 13 Mar '23

13 Mar '23

The first draft is still WIP, but the second is being brainstormed a little. I never expect to finish projects. This is a _fictional_ account, intended to _talk about real things via fiction_. I don't attend to the news, so it's all totally wrong and I have very few poignant events. The thorough coverup patterns have been altered to make what is happening more clear. It's June, 2016. A scruffy man approaches somebody on a way to a surgery. They move in a strange pace, a way they haven't walked much before, but they don't think much about it. They're talking to themselves. "Okay, but we're not going to hurt anybody. The gun's just for show. I have somewhere to be, you know?" They walk more purposefully. Suddenly, screaming. "Please! I don't want to do this! I don't like this person but I don't want to kill anybody! Please, oh God, oh God! Please! What is going on??" Tears and blood are flying. The shotgun is discharged three times. The man takes out a knife. "Something's moving my body! Oh my God, don't do this! I don't want to stab her, I don't want to stab her ... ! She's already dead!" The knife gashes a body fifteen times, and that of a bystander as well. Jo Cox lies died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jo_Cox "Brexit!" the man's mouth cries, amidst his screams of complaint, as he runs off. [next could be: epstein's death which was called a suicide but has clear public evidence indicating it was murder by prison guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jo_Cox ]

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Cryptocurrency: Prevents Humanity From Being Taxed Back Into SocComMarx Stone Age
by grarpamp 13 Mar '23

13 Mar '23

"How are we going to tax everybody when they have a Swiss Bank Account on their phone?! -- Barack Obama, Head Thief Liar and Fraudster" Windfall Tax Leads To Job Losses At UK's Largest Oil & Gas Producer https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Windfall-Tax-Leads-To-Jo… The UK’s largest oil and gas producer, Harbour Energy, is cutting investments and jobs after the new windfall tax on the industry sapped nearly all of its 2022 profits. Harbour Energy’s profits last year were $2.5 billion, pre-tax, but after taxes, the company was left with just an $8 million profit - that’s after the $1.5 billion that needed to go towards the Energy Profits Levy. Harbour Energy has not divulged how many workers will lose their jobs. Harbour Energy said it has cut back on investments, too, with Harbour choosing not to move forward on two drill sites and declining to participate in the North Sea offshore licensing round. The windfall tax has hit UK North Sea producers, many which have already announced reduced investments on the UK Continental Shelf, the new head of trade body Offshore Energies UK said last month. The UK raised the windfall tax on oil and gas operators’ profits last autumn by 10 percentage points, to 35 percent. The increased rate for the Energy Profits Levy went into effect on January 1 of this year. It was also extended into March 2028, from December 2025. The additional levies increased the total tax rate on oil and gas companies to 75 percent - the highest of any industry in the UK. Shell has said it is reevaluating all of its UK projects which make up $30 billion of investments, and TotalEnergies has also said it would cut investments in the UK by 25 percent. Oil and gas companies saw a substantial increase in profits last year thanks to higher oil and gas prices amid geopolitical turmoil and tight markets.

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Cryptocurrency: Four Phases Of Hyperinflation via IMF Fiat GovBank CBDC... Got Crypto? Got Gold?
by grarpamp 13 Mar '23

13 Mar '23

The Four Phases Of Hyperinflation, According To The IMF https://bombthrower.com/the-four-stages-of-hyperinflation-according-to-the-… https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WP/2018/wp18266.ashx https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact/status/1629548147675484160 https://twitter.com/jameslavish/status/1627769987653062657 https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-just-hinted-new-inflation-target-will… https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/cpi-report-today-january-2023-inflation/ca… https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-13/inflation-stings-most… https://twitter.com/ricwe123/status/1627232577110024194 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-10/summers-sees-no-systemic… https://bombthrower.com/meet-the-most-likely-base-layer-for-global-cbdcs-et… https://stacksatsnow.com/ Inflation is much more than a monetary phenomenon; it rips at the very core of social cohesion. Secular high inflation is one of the worst possible experiences a population can face. We are now heading for what looks like global high inflation across all currencies, with multiple episodes of hyperinflation. It will be unprecedented. The Four Phases of Hyperinflation Hyperinflations are generally defined as periods in which the monthly inflation rate exceeds 50%. In this 2018 paper, the IMF breaks hyperinflationary episodes out into four phases which comprise two stages: Phase One: is “the rise”. The IMF also calls this “the extraordinary acceleration phase” which is the lead-up to the hyperinflation. IMF actually terms it “the path toward hyperinflation”, but given that they define that as an annual inflation rate of greater than 50% but under 500%, an uncredentialed, non-economist observer might describe that as already being hyperinflation. “The average duration of the first phase is 8-9 years with an annual average inflation of 125 percent” Phase Two: is the actual hyperinflation proper. Wheelbarrows of money, burning banknotes in the oven (or more tragically, sticking your head in there). In one well storied example from Weimar Germany, an emigre fighting to retrieve his savings from a German bank was finally paid out – via a cheque mailed to him in America. The stamp on the envelope cost more than the value on the cheque made out to him. Over the eighteen 20th century hyperinflations covered in the IMF paper, the average inflation rate here, according to the IMF study was 2,912% and the median duration was four years – this “explosive” phase is usually over in about two years. Venezuela, isn’t in the graph because their hyperinflation took place in the 2000’s. It is noted therein, that the inflation rate there hit 488,865%. As we’ve covered in the premium letter, Venezuela has undergone three currency devaluations over the 14 years, knocking about half a dozen zeros off their banknotes each time (via the July 2021 issue of TCC): Venezuela is launching their Digital Bolivar CBDC in tandem with a currency redenomination that took effect Oct 1st. They knocked six zeros off of their banknotes in an effort to get in front of the hyperinflation which has ravaged the economy for years. This is the third currency redenomination for Venezuela in 13 years. In 2018 they knocked five zeros off the currency and in 2008 they took away three zeroes. Maybe this is another indicator of hyperinflation? When the time between redenominations shrinks while the number of zeroes removed increases…. (The prior two devaluations also coincided with the launching of a Central Bank Digital Currency). Phases Three and Four are the second stage of a hyper inflationary event: “disinflation” – where the annual inflation rate plummets to somewhere between 50% and 500% and lasts another six years on average – and finally the “stabilization” phase, where inflation remains under 50% per year for at least three years. The case for a “Phase Zero” of Hyperinflation: I would argue that there is a Phase Zero: where the future inflationary path becomes baked in by unsustainable debt. While policy makers are still able to talk with a straight face as if there is an alternative, the path to inflation is assured. We’ve been in Phase Zero for over 50 years, since the Nixon shock of 1971. We are at the edges of the Phase Zero to One transition now. Back in the 1940s during WWII, public debt to GDP quickly jumped from 40% to over 100%. But, this actually understates the scale of what happened. Debt went from $43 billion to $258 billion, which was a 500% increase in five years. pic.twitter.com/6rA4bglkBp — Lyn Alden (@LynAldenContact) February 25, 2023 Phase zero could probably be defined as the moment a currency becomes fiat. We notice from Lyn Alden’s chart, of US debt-to-GDP above, that after the World War II spending binge, the ratio actually declined. Over the Leave-It-To-Beaver and Hippies era, it came down to below the level it was before the war. Then came the Nixon Shock in the early 70’s, when the last vestiges of gold convertibility were suspended (“temporarily”). Since then, the global monetary system has been irrevocably committed to an inflationary path. In this James Lavish Twitter thread, various participants look at how the interest due on America’s debt has entered the territory where it is cannibalizing the budget expenditures. When you have to borrow more, at higher interest rates, this is what happens. It’s really simple. And scary. pic.twitter.com/zA3eyVfBdq — James Lavish (@jameslavish) February 20, 2023 Seen in this light, it’s no surprise that central banks around the world are already backing off the interest rate hikes (Canada has already said they’re on hold, and the only thing the US is meaningfully tapering is the size of the rate hikes). [ Insert: In previous editions of the letter it was always reiterated that the Fed will continue hiking “until something breaks” in the credit markets / banking system. Given the startling and rapid collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank over the past couple days, we may be getting there ] If the Fed slows down hikes, they have to normalize higher inflation. The folks over at Zerohedge once predicted that when it becomes clear that the Fed can’t control money supply, they would start dropping “leaks” that the hallowed “target inflation rate” would be raised. Right now that’s 2%, pretty well across all civilized nations. That’s the golden rate at which governments can embezzle wealth from the economy and the peasants will let them get away with it. But to get inflation down to that level, according to this Obama-era advisor, that would mean in excess of 6% unemployment for two years. The Fed wants “demand destruction” (which means people lose their jobs or their business) – but not too much demand destruction. Apparently 6% for 2 years is too much, so the level of embezzlement will have to be raised. It’s not like we’re talking hyper-inflationary numbers, yet – right? But raising a target inflation rate from 2% to 3% is a 50% hike in the rate of theft. Fear not, the corporate press is always there with a solution. In this case it’s the Wall Street Journal suggesting you could skip breakfast “Several breakfast staples saw sharp price increases due to a perfect storm of bad weather and disease outbreaks—and continued effects from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” This reminds me of the infamous Bloomberg piece on how to make ends meet on a measly $300,000 / year… advice included that you get rid of your car, switch from eating meat to lentils… and euthanizing your dog. This all jives with our core premise that the ESG movement is so widely endorsed by “woke” capitalists because it provides cover for the reality that we are in an unsustainable debt bubble and monetary expansion – and that the rabble has to ratchet down their living standards to cope. We can look at weaker economies to see what the future looks like: Lebanon just did a currency devaluation – reducing the official exchange rate by 90%, overnight. This came after a spat of bank robberies, where citizens were sticking up banks to get their own money out. Now they’re burning them down. In Lebanon people are burning down financial institutions and politicians' homes to reclaim their own money which has been frozen by the banks. Keep in mind with CBDC the financial establishment has the ability to freeze your money with a push on a button..... pic.twitter.com/kNIn8Z1Gbh — Richard (@ricwe123) February 19, 2023 On January 31st, Lebanese citizens went to bed thinking the official exchange rate on the Lebanese pound was around 1500 to 1 USD, (whether or not they could actually get at their money, that was the rate). When they awoke the next morning, the official exchange rate had been set to 15,000 Lebanese pounds to 1 USD. The black market rate was even worse, coming in around 64,000. In Bitcoin terms, the collapse was even more pronounced: The fiat system is collapsing, weaker currencies first – but anything not backed by something tangible is headed for the dumpster of history. In prior high inflation or hyperinflationary events, people could always seek refuge in other currencies or adopt some kind of “notgeld” (emergency money). But in this chapter, it’s every currency, across all political affiliations, and jeopardizing every incumbent power structure. (Which is why it seems like the world is sleepwalking into another world war, if we’re not already in the early innings of one.) It may seem like being on alert for hyperinflation here in the West is bonkers, but we’re already seeing massive fissures in the financial system opening up from normalizing interest rates to %4.57, well below even the official rate of inflation – and that hallowed “Fed Taper” still hasn’t even gotten going yet… It probably never will. Banking crises are here (we’ve had two in under a week, if you count the Elizabeth Warren-led rat-fucking of Silvergate), and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers went on Bloomberg to say this “won’t be a source of systemic risk”. It remains to be seen if that utterance gets filed next to “sub-prime is contained”. If we squeak through this crisis, we buy some time but only forestall the inevitable destruction the global financial system, which explains the incessant drive toward CBDCs, but that could all be too late, given the rate of collapse. This morning I woke up to see USDC had de-pegged to as low as 0.82, and while it looks like it will probably re-peg in due course (I sent a note about that to my premium list earlier today), it reinforces my core tenet that volatility aside, the only thing I really trust to be around for the foreseeable future, (and that I can move in an instant during a financial collapse) …is Bitcoin.

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[ml][ot] low-end rlhf ala chatgpt, huggingface
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 12 Mar '23

12 Mar '23

i guess huggingface put themselves in charge of machine learning technology trickling down to the masses in a controlled way they released a lengthy tutorial that explains the parts, on using a new patch to their libraries to make custom large models on low end hardware. it combines the chatgpt rlhf approach with the adapter peft approach and appears to be roughly what is presently the normative cutting edge https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/11p3a0j/d_finetuning_20b_… https://huggingface.co/blog/trl-peft

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A RESOLUTION OF THE MIAMI CITY COMMISSION DIRECTING THE CITY MANAGER TO PRESENT TO THE CITY COMMISSION FOR ITS REVIEW AND APPROVAL ANY AND ALL OPTIONS FOR THE USE OF THE GIFTS RECEIVED PURSUANT TO THE GIFT AGREEMENT WITH CITYCOINS, INC.
by Gunnar Larson 12 Mar '23

12 Mar '23

File Number: 10726 Final Action Date: 9/13/2021 A RESOLUTION OF THE MIAMI CITY COMMISSION DIRECTING THE CITY MANAGER TO PRESENT TO THE CITY COMMISSION FOR ITS REVIEW AND APPROVAL ANY AND ALL OPTIONS FOR THE USE OF THE GIFTS RECEIVED PURSUANT TO THE GIFT AGREEMENT WITH CITYCOINS, INC. WHEREAS, the City Commission adopted Resolution No. R-21-0345 on September 13, 2021, which authorized the City Manager to accept the gifts from and execute a Gift Agreement with CityCoins, Inc.; and WHEREAS, the gifts may be used for any valid governmental, municipal, and/or public purpose; NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE COMMISSION OF THE CITY OF MIAMI, FLORIDA: Section 1. The recitals and findings contained in the Preamble to this Resolution are adopted by reference and incorporated as if fully set forth in this Section. Section 2. The City Manager is hereby directed to present to the City Commission for its review and approval any and all options for the use of the gifts received pursuant to the Gift Agreement with CityCoins, Inc. Section 3. This Resolution shall become effective immediately upon adoption. APPROVED AS TO FORM AND CORRECTNESS:

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