whbk

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.

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.

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.

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.

s/air transportation drones/their ipo

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

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.

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.

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.

Check the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph - I agree that he needed to be replaced due to the multitude of issues. I just think the execution of it was very poor coming within a week of his mother's death.

Remember, he was already "on leave" - whether he was honoring it or not. By public accounts, he wasn't. So the board said "ok, he's not going to change, let's remove him." My argument is they should've given him a couple weeks and then sat him down and had the "the well has broken, we need a new face for the good of the company, please support this" talk. Instead, they blindsided him at a hotel that he'd flown to halfway across the country to try to help the company (recruiting a COO) while his father's still severely injured. Had they done it in a more humane way, they might have been able to secure more cooperation in the long-term, and they could've begun to quietly get their ducks in a row during that 2-3 week grace period before giving him the ultimatum. Instead, they executed it at a moment of maximum weakness for him, which got the job done in the moment but set themselves up for him to go scorched earth in the long-term, undermining the whole exercise. Again, I do think they needed to fire him, but they'd bought a bit of time with him "going on leave" and I think it might have been more effective had they leveraged it rather than going for the immediate KO.

Perhaps we would've ended up here regardless, but maybe not.

Decent chance she wanted the job (and penned the op-ed with that in mind), but the feeling wasn't mutual.

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that a guy that founded a massive company and drove it to unparalleled success only to be forced out while in the early stages of mourning his mother's unexpected death (and caring for his severely injured father) has not gone quietly into the night.

I think the passenger rape records issue was the straw that broke the camel's back and he had to go, but I don't think it needed to be done the way it was. Sure, there's a decent argument that he only has one speed and would be meddling regardless (as he supposedly was while he was supposed to be "on leave"), but doing it the way they did made Travis lashing out once he'd had a bit of time to process it an absolute 100% certainty.

Probably because she explicitly said she didn't want to use email because she'd been investigated in the past, but didn't really have much choice but to use email in today's world: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-email-2000/st...

I'm sure it's a bit more complicated than this and we'd need to see all correspondence, etc. to give an informed opinion, but generally speaking based on that fact pattern: Tell them to fuck off. Or better yet, don't tell them anything until they act on it - and then have your lawyer tell them to fuck off.

Interesting, looks like the application this time around is definitely more geared towards people actively working on a new company :)

Great speaker lineup too.

Agreed - she should be imprisoned. You don't get to play with lives.

yeah, sad.

The US had some "bad luck" with drone strikes during her tenure. There's been no evidence released to prove it (and it may well not exist), but for people still questioning why this email setup matters: Given that it's abundantly clear any state-sponsored hacker would have no difficulty hacking her server, it isn't exactly a stretch for our enemies to move the targets of drone strikes and put innocent civilians in their place to win the propaganda war. A former State Department aide attached his name to claims that her sloppy comms may have foiled multiple counterterrorism operations. [1]

That said, this isn't "just what it is that the FBI is looking to" as this article says. The FBI director originally said they expected to wrap this up by October 2015. If we were talking about a few emails sent over the holidays, this would've been wrapped up a long time ago. In a separate civil suit, the FBI filed a motion to prevent the release of documents, or even the number of documents, for which a FOIA request had been issued. [2] Even the number of documents would tip their hand? The only explanation that really makes sense there is that they're building a RICO case against the Clinton Foundation - and thus a ton more documents than would otherwise be relevant are in play. The fact that they started investigating VA governor McAuliffe's time at the Clinton Foundation shortly after receiving the backups of Clinton's server from their third-party data backup service makes this kind of obvious. Yes, the backups that Clinton's associates attempted to have destroyed even after the State Department asked them to turn over her emails. [3]

[1] http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-email-terrorism-slop...

[2] "disclosure of these records [his immunity agreement] could reasonably be expected to reveal the nature, scope, and focus of the FBI’s activities in the investigation.” http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/new-fbi-filings-reveal-pendi...

[3]Despite Boian’s statement that Platte River set up a 30-day revolving retention policy for Clinton’s emails, Johnson’s letter noted that Platte River employees were directed to reduce the amount of email data being stored with each backup. Late this summer, Johnson wrote, a Platte River employee took note of this change and inquired whether the company could search its archives for an email from Clinton Executive Service Corp. directing such a reduction in October or November 2014 and then again around February, advising Platte River to save only emails sent during the most recent 30 days.

Those reductions would have occurred after the State Department requested that Clinton turn over her emails.

It was here that a Platte River employee voiced suspicions about a cover-up and sought to protect the company. “If we have it in writing that they told us to cut the backups,” the employee wrote, “and that we can go public with our statement saying we have had backups since day one, then we were told to trim to 30 days, it would make us look a WHOLE LOT better,” according to the email cited by Johnson. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...

Yep - and based on this and the fact that Guccifer was allowed to speak to the press [1], I'm pretty sure the public is being prepared for an indictment.

[1] In the case of unconvicted persons (including competency commitments under 18 U.S.C. 4244 and 4246) held in federal institutions, interviews are not authorized until there is clearance with the court having jurisdiction, ordinarily through the U.S. Attorney’s Office. ..In other words, the people who would be prosecuting Clinton just gave Fox News, who they knew wouldn't hold back, a chance at interviewing the guy that can unravel this whole mess.

Editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung responded to the lack of U.S. individuals in the documents, saying "Just wait for what is coming next" https://twitter.com/mathewi/status/716771686482202625

My money is on a current presidential candidate being connected to this, though I'm not 100% on which one.

Come on, let's be serious. "No one really cared about finances" means maybe it's not the end of the world if you bought a new Chromebook for yourself to use at the office without asking if it's cool. There is no world in which regularly flying yourself to Vegas and partying on the organization's dime is kosher or anything other than theft.

Note also no-charges were pressed

"It noted the board is still working on a plan for Knox to provide restitution for the stolen funds and that, so far, the board has held off on filing criminal charges against Knox."

No charges yet. They'd first like to see if they can find a way for her to repay them before she's rendered permanently unemployable.

Wow. Marie Knox, the woman that has already admitted to stealing the money, has her hands in a lot of different organizations in the Bay Area. She was the cashier, website manager, and person responsible for ordering inventory at her last position. Sure hope her past employers/nonprofits are all checking their books closely now..

Good on Sudarshana Banerjee, who took her board responsibilities seriously and uncovered this shortly after starting.

Yeah, that is very far from the way most VCs view their role in the ecosystem, and I gather that was the case even before the recent "founder-friendly" era. Tells you something about this guy in particular and his version of the Warriors story. I don't doubt that he's made a lot of good moves with the Warriors, but this piece is so over the top.

Highly recommend Swimming Across - Andy's autobiography of his childhood. The biography Life and Times of an American picks up from there with the first ~50-75 pages recounting the story Andy told in his own words in Swimming Across. Remarkable story - a life well-lived in the face of incredible early challenges to be sure.

I've actually had the (dis)pleasure of doing a fair bit of work in this area and have found LinkedIn to be pretty directionally accurate - for tech companies, I'd ballpark it at closer to 80-90% in most cases. They may very well be one of the outliers - I typically saw that in businesses structured in a way that made it readily understandable (ie 75 core employees, but hundreds of hourly warehouse employees without LinkedIn accounts). Not sure if Theranos has such a structure - perhaps the medical/research side is much less likely to have LinkedIn accounts than the tech side.

142 on LinkedIn - guessing whatever number you found is inflated by people working in clinics that do Theranos tests or something along those lines?

Wow, not mincing words. I think we've found our first dead unicorn of 2016.

Had a bad experience on the renting side including poor customer service and shoddy operations - can't even imagine renting my own car, just look at their Yelp reviews. One of those concepts I really wanted to be great, but just hasn't happened. Sorry you have to deal with this.

I got an incredible job last year through one of these threads. It's quite likely altered the trajectory of my (still nascent) career in a way that none of the other options I was considering at the time would have. Thanks, Matthew.

And true to form, missing from Erdely's apology [1] was a specific apology to the people most directly harmed, the fraternity in question. While Rolling Stone's apology directly apologized to them, Erdely instead took the route of apologizing to them, if at all, under the collective banner of "the UVa community." As was made clear by her commentary after the original piece was published, this is a woman who blames fraternities for "rape culture" on college campuses and even after libeling this specific chapter, she can't bring herself to apologize to them.

[1] https://twitter.com/ravisomaiya/status/584862956195807232

Over the past few years it's become really striking to me how dangerous it is when people attach their hopes re: a larger cause to a sensational story and let confirmation bias seep in.

You saw it here with Erdely letting her crusade against campus rape (an admirable goal, obviously) draw her into an outlandish story rather than reporting on a less-sexy but more representative account, you saw it in Ferguson where people tied their (valid) desire to eliminate discriminatory policing to the now-debunked "hands up don't shoot" narrative, you saw it in the Ellen Pao case where a large contingent of women tied their (valid/desirable) aspirations for gender equality in the workplace to a flimsy/exceedingly nuanced case when there are undoubtedly a bunch of open-and-shut gender discrimination cases.

In a click/cause-driven media environment, it behooves us to critically examine sources' leanings and blind spots upfront since it's become clear many can't do so themselves.