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One year after Silicon Valley Bank's collapse and seizure, "Regional bank stocks remain volatile compared to other types of financial institutions," reports the Observer, "indicating investors' lingering worries about the sector." But not everyone suffered: Benefiting from the crisis were big players, like JPMorgan Chase. After acquiring First Republic's $212.6 billion in loans and $92.4 billion in deposits for just over $10 billion in May 2023, JPMorgan saw a 67 percent year-over-year growth in profits that quarter. Overall, larger commercial banks saw inflows as customers sought safer institutions to hold their money. And what happened to Silicon Valley Bank? Axios reports: Today, SVB says it's still the same bank customers loved, but with better risk management and some other tweaks, like smaller deposit requirements for startup borrowers, president Marc Cadieux told Axios last month. 81% of SVB's clients from a year ago are still banking with SVB, according to Cadieux, with "thousands of them" returning after initially switching out... "I think there was an inference that this was a regional bank crisis, but it really wasn't — those were niche banks," Citizens CEO Bruce Van Saun tells Axios. "The failure was is in governance and the business model." Citizens is America's 14th largest bank, and as its CEO, Van Saun was asked by CNN what caused 2023's failures at other banks: CEO Van Saun: Both of those banks [Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank] went from $50 billion in assets to over $200 billion in four years. They grew too fast, took in a high percentage of uninsured deposits, had very concentrated, narrow customer bases so they were susceptible to [deposit] flight risk. They also borrowed short and invested long, which is a cardinal sin of banking. They didn't manage their interest rate risk well because they didn't have the muscle that you would have if you grew slowly over the years and were heavily regulated like bigger banks like ourselves. CNN: Who deserves more blame: failed banks' management teams for not ensuring proper guardrails were in place or financial supervisors whose jobs are to identify red flags? Van Saun: It's a joint failure... CNN: [W]hat about commercial real estate? The number of people working in offices is much, much lower than it was pre-pandemic. Are you bracing for another chapter of banking stress? What is Citizens doing to cushion against potential high losses in the sector given close to one-fifth of your loans are there? Van Saun: You have to look under the covers. The nature of our portfolio matters. Within commercial real estate, industrial, warehouse and distribution space is fine. Multi-family homes are generally fine. When it comes to offices, we have certain pockets of life science businesses like lab research facilities that are super safe because they never had to close during Covid. [Loans to general office buildings are riskier though, he said.] We go through all of that and we say we'll lose some money here, but we're not going to lose our shirt and we've put up big reserves against them. We're working on a loan-by-loan basis with our most senior people. I think it's a well-managed process.

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Ubuntu-based Linux Mint includes HexChat software by default "to offer a way for users of the distro to talk to, ask questions, and get support from other users," according to the Linux blog OMG Ubuntu. But in February HexChat's developer announced its final release... That got devs thinking. As is, IRC isn't user-friendly. It's a kind of an arcane magic involving strange commands. Its onboarding is obtuse. And the protocol doesn't natively support things like media sharing (screenshots are useful when troubleshooting), clickable links, or other modern "niceties". And yet, IRC is a fast, established, open, and versatile protocol... It's free and immediate (no sign-up required to use it) which makes it ideal for 'when you need it' use. So work has begun on a new dedicated "chat room" app to replace HexChat, called Jargonaut. Linux Mint's goal is not to build a fully-featured IRC client, or even an IRC client at all. Jargonaut is a chat app that just happens to use IRC as its underlying chat protocol. Users won't need to know what IRC is nor learn its syntax, as Jargonaut isn't going to respond to standard IRC commands... When the app is opened Linux Mint's official support channels are there, ready to engage with. A real-time support chat app built on IRC — with additional bells: "[Jargonaut] will support pastebin/imgur via DND, uploading your system specifications, troubleshooting and many features which have nothing to do with IRC," says Linux Mint lead Clement Lefebvre in the distro's latest monthly update. "HexChat was a great IRC client which helped us make a relatively good support chat room. We're hoping Jargonaut will help us make this chat room even better and much easier to use." "Like most of Linux Mint's home-grown XApps the new app is hosted on Github," the article points out, "which is where you should go t to check in on Jargonaut's current status, check out the code and compile it, or contribute to its development with your own fair hands." The article also argues that IRC "isn't as trendy as Discord or Telegram, but it is a free, open standard that no single entity controls, is relatively low-bandwidth, interoperable, and efficient."

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Long-time Slashdot reader garote writes: It's the year 1991. You're a teenage computer geek. You've just upgraded to an Apple IIgs, your first "16-bit" computer. To relieve the crushing boredom of your High School coursework, you and your friends embark on the computer geek equivalent of forming a heavy metal band: Making your own video game. You meet at the benches during lunch hour, and pass around crude plans scribbled on graph paper. You assign each other impressive titles like "Master Programmer", "Sound Designer", and "Area Data Input". You swap 3.5" disks like furtive secret agents, and stay up coding untl 3am. Your parents look at your owlish eyes — and your slipping grades — and ask if you're "on drugs". If that sounds familiar, this essay may prove interesting. It uses the game my friends and I started — but didn't finish — in High School over 30 years ago, to explore the absurd programming contortions we did to make it playable on the Apple IIgs: The red-headed stepchild of the Apple II line; a machine that languished for six years without a hardware upgrade to avoid competing with the Macintosh. Thanks to the recent release of the first cycle-accurate emulator for this machine, you can actually play the game in all its screen-tearing glory. You can also explore the source code which has survived for 30 years, and been adapted to build on modern hardware thanks to Merlin32 and CiderPress II. "Nowadays, the content of the game itself is only good for an embarrassing laugh," according to the web page, "but I feel that the code we hammered out shows the unique challenges of a bygone era, which should be remembered..."

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Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shared this article from NBC News: Exposure to leaded gasoline lowered the IQ of about half the population of the United States, a new study estimates. The peer-reviewed study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on people born before 1996 — the year the U.S. banned gas containing lead. Overall, the researchers from Florida State University and Duke University found, childhood lead exposure cost America an estimated 824 million points, or 2.6 points per person on average. Certain cohorts were more affected than others. For people born in the 1960s and the 1970s, when leaded gas consumption was skyrocketing, the IQ loss was estimated to be up to 6 points and for some, more than 7 points. Exposure to it came primarily from inhaling auto exhaust. "Lead is a neurotoxin, and no amount of it is safe.

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