whbk (u/whbk) - Readit News

whbk commented on What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money thecut.com/2019/03/maria-... · Posted by u/wallflower

kadabra9 · 6 years ago

Tournament poker is just brutal. It's entirely common to go 15, 20 tournaments without cashing. You can play great poker, sometimes over the span of a few days, and suddenly get hit with a cold deck or get unlucky and poof you are eliminated with nothing, along with your chance at a 5 or 6 figure top prize. Then you have to suck it back up and move on to the next one. The variance is just insane, which is why a lot of professional players are backed, or sell some of their action or swap with other players.

I played a ton online before the Black Friday days and did pretty well, and will usually try to play a few big live tournaments a year, but these days I mostly just play cash games as a fun hobby and a way to grind out some extra income. There's less variance and the money is more consistent.

That being said, as brutal as the swings in tournaments are, cash games have nothing like the rush of running deep in a poker tournament. The intensity and increase in stakes/prizes as the blinds move up and more players get knocked out and you inch closer to the big money is almost like chasing a high. So for me, cash games are the way to go if your goal in poker is to make money, but tournaments are a fun way to chase the dragon from time to time. I personally don't think I would have the stomach to play tournaments full time though.

whbk · 6 years ago

Yeah, I love tournament poker but can't imagine playing live tournaments for a living. I played a ton online before Black Friday too, pretty successfully, and then was one of the top online tournament players when I got back into it for a bit while I was outside of the US a couple years back.

As a last hurrah before getting back to startups I traveled to one big live festival..played terrible in the $10k main event due to poor sleep after travel and got 3-outed just before the money after playing great in a satellite to the $25k. It's one thing to miss the money after playing great for ~5 hours in a $500 tournament from the comfort of your own home...consistently walking away -$15k+ in the hole after expenses for days worth of effort? No thanks.

whbk commented on China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft reuters.com/article/us-et... · Posted by u/Ultramanoid

rob74 · 6 years ago

As far as I know, most airlines are seeing the 737-MAX 8 and its predecessor, the 737-800, as interchangeable (or they did until yesterday), so I doubt they will be able to say with certainty which aircraft type will operate a given flight...

whbk · 6 years ago

Yeah, in my case it was a pretty straightforward situation with 1 airline not having the 8max at all (despite an article saying otherwise?) and my other flights being on 737-700's. I read a fair bit about this whole mess today and saw some posts saying there was a way to use SeatGuru to reliably distinguish between Max 8 / legacy 737-800, but I didn't need to dig that much myself and as you noted especially for flights far out, they can't guarantee equipment won't be swapped.

whbk commented on China orders its airlines to suspend use of Boeing 737 Max aircraft reuters.com/article/us-et... · Posted by u/Ultramanoid

cameldrv · 6 years ago

Maybe it's politically motivated, but IMO so is the FAA's certification and nonaction so far. Boeing promised a software fix by January, and the FAA's decision not to ground the fleet was probably informally based on that promise. Unfortunately the software fix is proving more difficult than anticipated. Regulated, safety-critical software, whose failure leads to a smoking crater full of bodies can be like that. Especially in this case where it's not going to be just a bugfix, but probably a major redesign of the concept of the MCAS.

Ultimately though there are over 5000 orders for the 737MAX. The list price is $121 million. That makes the total value of the order book $600 Billion at list prices. That's roughly the market cap of Google or Apple, and the 737MAX is extremely important to the U.S. balance of trade. There is obviously going to be a political component to any big regulatory action on it.

The FAA needs to make a major course correction here, because what's even more important long-term than a single, very popular airplane to the U.S. economy is FAA's credibility as a regulator. In most countries, FAA certification means rubber-stamp certification from the local authority. As long as it is, it's a huge advantage to the U.S. aviation industry, because the FAA can write regs that are favorable to U.S. interests. This is only true though as long as the FAA is seen to have integrity.

In this case, when it comes to that, by my reading (and I'm not a lawyer or an expert), the MCAS is in violation of FAR part 25.672, and the 737MAX is not airworthy.

whbk · 6 years ago

Wow, I didn't realize the software fix hadn't been rolled out prior to yesterday's crash. Yikes. Also count me among those who went through the rest of this year's (already booked) flights this morning to ensure I'm not on one of these things.

whbk commented on Square Inc. Co-Founder Tristan O’Tierney Dies at 35 bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/smaili

whbk · 7 years ago

Sorry to see this. My last year of college, with absolutely zero experience in tech I tried to build a fintech startup that needed seamless processing of micro-payments and so I pinged Tristan in the early days of Square's beta program when they were just shipping out card readers asking if they might expose an API in the near future. Small interaction, but he got back to me and coming from the Midwest, that was my first experience with how open Silicon Valley can be, with a co-founder at one of the hottest startups taking the time to respond to some random college kid interested in kicking the tires on his project. My project went nowhere but I had fun exploring the tech involved, decided to learn to code, made it out here and am now running a venture-backed startup after a couple engineering jobs. I thought just the fact that he responded was really cool at the time and try not to blow off cold emails like that as a result.

whbk commented on Uber says air transportation drones are closer than we think dronelife.com/2018/11/27/... · Posted by u/raleighm

whbk · 7 years ago

s/air transportation drones/their ipo

Expect all manner of Hot New Things coming from their PR dept over the next couple quarters.

whbk commented on Postmates laid off all its city managers yesterday techcrunch.com/2017/08/31... · Posted by u/artsandsci

Macsenour · 8 years ago

There are a lot of these types of services and if I were at one, I would make customer service my hallmark. This seems like a no brainer to me, and yet it seems farther down the priority list for most of these delivery companies.

Is there a reason why they all seem to have the same blind spot?

whbk · 8 years ago

UberEats has been pretty amazing for me support-wise. They've always made it right when I've had issues - and there typically aren't issues. I use it a ton - 3+ times/week - and of those times I've had issues, only 2 required me pushing them to do the right thing, and one of those was when I was traveling in Stockholm where they'd just rolled it out.

Postmates, on the other hand, has absolutely disastrous support and consistently laughable "resolutions" as the parent comment noted. Postmates is one of those things that felt like magic the first time I used it in the early days when they were the only game in town, but they just got so surpassed by competitors to the point where I hate it. Their "taxes+fees" are ridiculous for an inferior product. UberEats gives me a flat $4.99 plus taxes that actually reflect legitimate taxes. Postmates, on the other hand, is a minimum of $3.99, often more, plus maybe it's surging, plus the "taxes and fees" is often some obscene amount (Tacolicious seems to have a $4-5 "fee" on Postmates), oh and if you're treating yourself to a small fast food order there will be another $2 "small order fee."

The last straw for me was when they started adding "walking" postmates, who would literally walk an order from ~40 minutes away when I'm paying them $10-ish to deliver it. Then when I complained and (half-jokingly) suggested they give people paying $10 for delivery the option to not have a walking postmate deliver it because my food was extremely cold, I got the typical Postmates support brush-off. Utter joke of a service.

Yes, I am Mad On The Internet.

whbk commented on Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud axios.com/benchmark-capit... · Posted by u/bobsky

PhantomGremlin · 8 years ago

VCs don't invest their own money.

I haven't been privy to details of many VC funded companies, but the ones I saw definitely had the VC General Partners investing their personal money side by side with money from their Limited Partners. That was reflected in the names on the preferred stock certificates from day one. (Probably don't do paper stock certificates any more).

I agree with your statement that "it's not that obvious" as to who should have control, and there are good arguments both ways. My personal inclination would always remain that the people putting up the money should have the final say.

whbk · 8 years ago

Yeah, they definitely put up their own money - it's also public record :)

This is how reporters know a firm is raising another fund (beyond just expecting them to every 2 years). The amount/percentage of the total fund that the partners pay in themselves varies by firm and fund.

Here's the records from Benchmark's Fund 7

Partners put up $80mm of their own cash, in a vehicle named Benchmark Founders' Fund VII, L.P.: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1507661/000150766111...

They then raised $425mm from LPs through a vehicle named Benchmark Capital Partners VII, L.P.: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1507669/000150766911...

So the Benchmark partners have 16% of that particular fund, though keep in mind VC funds have different economics than just a straight up equity split. 16% is pretty high compared to some other firms I've reviewed, but I admittedly haven't taken the time to sample widely.

whbk commented on Benchmark Capital Sues Travis Kalanick for Fraud axios.com/benchmark-capit... · Posted by u/bobsky

tmh79 · 8 years ago

wonder what this means for the CEO search, softbank funding etc. My assumption is that both parties will settle quickly but I could be wrong. Also not noted in the article is that while travis owns 10% of the equity stake, he has super-voting shares, such that him, Ryan Graves, and Garret Camp as a trifecta hold controlling interest IIRC.

whbk · 8 years ago

Travis has lost the support of Ryan and Garrett apparently (per several reports over the last month/Garrett's statement/Ryan stepping down from operating role). Seems like a man on an island at this point.