(SpeedHunters.com)
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
This Is A Good Read
Welcome to the Big Time
The
implosion of the daily fantasy industry is a bro-classic tale of
hubris, recklessness, political naïveté and a kill-or-be-killed culture.
THE SKILL SET needed to win at daily fantasy most closely resembles the skills needed to win at the racetrack. Like the horseplayer handicapping a Pick Six by scouring the Daily Racing Form's miniaturized type, a daily fantasy player chooses a combination of pro players who he or she believes will perform the best based on their past performances and an array of other factors. When the thoroughbreds bolt from the gate, the horseplayer becomes a deeply invested though passive observer, in the same way the daily fantasy player can only watch and root for players to run up the points after the kickoffs of Sunday's early NFL games.
That parallel wasn't lost on some industry insiders and even a few leaders of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, the 18-year-old volunteer trade group representing about 250 member fantasy sports companies. At the FSTA's winter conference, held at the Mirage in Las Vegas in January 2013, FSTA president Paul Charchian warned the daily fantasy executives assembled not to emphasize the monetary aspect of their contests or they'd risk a legal or regulatory pushback. In particular, he urged the executives to keep all gambling lingo from their websites and to refrain from emphasizing winning and winning big in marketing campaigns.
"Don't f--- this up," Charchian told the industry leaders, including the CEOs and top executives of DraftKings and FanDuel.
(ESPN.com)
THE SKILL SET needed to win at daily fantasy most closely resembles the skills needed to win at the racetrack. Like the horseplayer handicapping a Pick Six by scouring the Daily Racing Form's miniaturized type, a daily fantasy player chooses a combination of pro players who he or she believes will perform the best based on their past performances and an array of other factors. When the thoroughbreds bolt from the gate, the horseplayer becomes a deeply invested though passive observer, in the same way the daily fantasy player can only watch and root for players to run up the points after the kickoffs of Sunday's early NFL games.
That parallel wasn't lost on some industry insiders and even a few leaders of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, the 18-year-old volunteer trade group representing about 250 member fantasy sports companies. At the FSTA's winter conference, held at the Mirage in Las Vegas in January 2013, FSTA president Paul Charchian warned the daily fantasy executives assembled not to emphasize the monetary aspect of their contests or they'd risk a legal or regulatory pushback. In particular, he urged the executives to keep all gambling lingo from their websites and to refrain from emphasizing winning and winning big in marketing campaigns.
"Don't f--- this up," Charchian told the industry leaders, including the CEOs and top executives of DraftKings and FanDuel.
(ESPN.com)
Congrats To Her!
Dawn Braid named Coyotes skating coach
Becomes first female to get full-time coaching role in NHL
Dawn Braid became the first female
to coach full-time in the NHL when she was hired as the skating coach
for the Arizona Coyotes on Wednesday.
"It's something that I've wanted to see happen," Braid said. "The fact that they respect what I do enough to name me as a full-time coach, or to name me as the first female coach in the NHL, I take a ton of pride in that. I've worked very hard for this opportunity. It's been going on for years and I just look forward to going even further with it."
Braid
worked with the Coyotes as a part-time skating coach last season and
previously worked as a consultant for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Anaheim
Ducks, Buffalo Sabres and Calgary Flames."It's something that I've wanted to see happen," Braid said. "The fact that they respect what I do enough to name me as a full-time coach, or to name me as the first female coach in the NHL, I take a ton of pride in that. I've worked very hard for this opportunity. It's been going on for years and I just look forward to going even further with it."
"We feel that Dawn can provide a real competitive advantage for our team," Coyotes general manager John Chayka said. "The game is getting faster and it's all about skating.
Good News Is That It Works & Works Well
Toyota's Own Rally RAV4 Thwarted By Car Alarm
Driver Ryan Millen and co-driver Christina Fate had taken an alternate RAV4 to Gorman Ridge to test out, according to Rallynotes. This car was originally intended for showroom displays, but instead of faking it, Toyota just built another race car. Given that the only big changes were adding safety items, tweaking the suspension and swapping tires, that wasn’t hard to do.
After completing four stages in the RAV4, it wouldn’t start back up. The RAV4 got stuck in the rally’s service park because its theft deterrent system thought the car was being stolen and disabled the car accordingly.
It likely detected that the steering column had been tampered with in the process of removing the airbags and steering column lock to prepare it for racing, Rallynotes noted. Switches and sensors are so integrated into the car now that it’s become impossible just to swap an ECU out to disable theft deterrents and other systems.
The Undisputed King Of Metal
How Aluminum Changed the World
Aluminum started as one of the world’s most expensive materials because it was difficult to refine—even though it made up 8 percent of the world’s crust. But eventually aluminum became one of the cheapest materials after methods of mass producing it were invented in the 1880s. It went from $1200 per kilogram down to a dollar in 50 years.
The aluminum used back then was still weak and malleable, though. It wasn’t until Alfred Wilm accidentally discovered age-hardening which transformed aluminum to duralumin, an alloy with a much stronger crystalline structure, that things began to change. Duralumin was used to create the first all-metal airplane, and its strength eventually led to new plane structures being built that changed air travel forever.
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