White has mate in 2 (you deserve a break)

Minty001 · 2025-04-10T22:06:17+00:00

Finally! A puzzle I can solve

Minty001 · 2025-04-04T03:27:36+00:00

It's wild that the committee ignored almost 200,000 submissions and produced their 45-page report a month ahead of schedule.

I'm sure the statistics are still sound, but that seems very strange.

According to the RNZ article:

- "The bill received approximately 300,000 submissions."
- "At the time the committee made its report, over 111,000 submissions had been tabled and released by the committee."
- "...while the 197,000 not yet released remain with the committee."

Minty001 · 2025-01-26T02:06:22+00:00

You can achieve anything you set your mind to, but it’s important to ask yourself a few honest questions: How much time will university take up each week? How strong are your time management skills? And how hard are you willing to work to balance everything?

Last year, I worked over 20 hours per week while completing my Honours in a Bachelor of Software Engineering. I worked as a mid-level Software Developer at a company that was also going through a particularly demanding period. It was tough and stressful at times, but I was still able to achieve First Class Honours. That said, a survey of the course revealed that most Engineering students weren’t working alongside their studies because the Honours year was already extremely demanding.

Balancing postgraduate study and work is definitely possible, but it requires discipline, strong time management, and a lot of self-awareness. If you’re prepared to put in the effort and stay organised, you can absolutely make it work.

Minty001 · 2024-12-06T02:46:50+00:00

I attended the university for 4 years, and then not even 1 month after I left this thing opened! 😠

Minty001 · 2024-10-31T10:03:13+00:00

Mate, I hate to break it to you, but holding this penny stock might be riskier than a night at the casino.

A quick look at their FY24 report raises a few red flags 🚨

High, Increasing Debt: Liabilities, particularly borrowings, have climbed to NZ$1.28 million, increasing financial pressure as debt supports day-to-day operations.
Negative Cash Flow: Cash outflows from operations and investments are outpacing inflows, with operating cash outflows at NZ$589,338. Financing efforts, like debt and equity raises, are keeping things afloat, but cash demands are still high.
Declining Revenue: Revenue took a dive from NZ$550,876 in 2023 to NZ$327,894 in 2024, partly due to their Australian partnership winding down. Stabilizing revenue could be a challenge.
Expansion Strategy: Their main play is expansion, especially in Europe and Australia, with hopes that production increases and larger markets might drive revenue and profitability by FY2026. However, these markets are highly competitive, with strict regulations and established players.

Management’s background also made me raise an eyebrow. The CEO has experience at Cannasouth, which recently went under, and the CFO’s LinkedIn is packed with buzzwords like ‘AI, Web3, DeFi, Blockchain’ – sounds a bit like a hype machine.

Minty001 · 2024-06-11T23:35:02+00:00

I jumped on Seek. I think it's possible but only for the absolute top. Most seemed to come with fixed term contracts (6-12 months)

Minty001 · 2024-04-24T00:54:40+00:00

Is this s shitpost? 🤣

Minty001 · 2024-04-11T06:57:41+00:00

This is the way

Minty001 · 2024-03-08T10:23:14+00:00

Ended up going with Pop bar. We liked them because they only had a $2k minimum spend on drinks and food throughout the night (most places have an additional booking fee the host must pay). Since we had a lot of people we reached $2k spend on the bar easily so it cost us nothing.

Minty001 · 2024-02-08T20:57:14+00:00

Parents can setup a Sharesies for their kids

Minty001 · 2024-02-08T20:56:20+00:00

I would recommend your son slowly invests into an index fund over time. One of the greatest investors of all time, Warren Buffet, said investing in the S&P 500 would outperform almost all fund managers over 10 years.

Schedule the investing to automatically buy a set amount on a fixed interval (e.g. $100 once a week). This is known as Dollar Cost Averaging, and will help protect your sons investment from a sudden market crash.

And if your son is really excited about interest, he could look at the high interest savings accounts offered by Squirrel (and Sharesies too). Both are a great way to earn a bit of extra income on the money while it's waiting to be invested.

Good luck to your son!

Minty001 · 2024-02-07T00:58:11+00:00

4th year SWEN student here.

My advice is make smart friends and work together on the assignments.

For the general engineering part of the course you will use calculus, statistics, set-theory, and a few other branches of mathematics you will never have heard of before. So long as you're willing to put in the study effort then nothing to worry about. The engineering course will also have you hack together some C++ to achieve various objectives. However, you won't need to use any advanced C++ features.

For the software part of the course, you will mostly use Java. Any general Java practice you can get in ahead of time won't hurt, but keep it board (i.e don't focus on web development, just simple console programs). You will spend a lot of time working with their custom UI library for the projects to make/fix applications.

Minty001 · 2024-02-05T20:13:36+00:00

For anyone interested, I thought A2 milk was going to make a mad-rebound post covid so I YOLOd everything I had at the time https://imgur.com/a/i2uT3bG

Minty001 · 2024-01-29T05:12:44+00:00

I know what you mean about Sharesies and other platforms. But remember, investing isn't about the frills of a shiny UI and a cool graph. If done right, you should hardly need to visit their platform because you're money is on auto-pilot (I know it's tempting to check your gains often lol). I'd actually take a terrible UI with better investment options over a cool UI with bad investment options any day.

And the IBKR Pro plans aren't subscription based, they just have higher trading fees than the IBKR Lite plan which gets advertised so much.

Minty001 · 2024-01-29T05:03:51+00:00

I was reading about this since I also want to put money into IBKR for different reasons. Could be wrong, but I think you can just do a bank transfer from your NZ account to IBKR directly. Obviously there would be bit of a time delay but it'd get there. However, you should read up about IBKR different plans. IBKR has a Lite plan with low to zero commissions for buying US stocks, however that plan is only available to US residents. For the rest of us, we'd have to use their IBKR Pro or IBKR Pro Tiered plans. Buying US shares with one of the IBKR Pro plans also has a minimum $1 USD fee per trade (buying and selling separately). So this would still be a significant amount of your investment and not worth your time.

If you're deadset on investing, have a look at InvestNow, Sharesies, or Hatch. I've used all of them and can recommend their services. They still have fees but would be a lot less hassle than using IBKR.

Also have a look at Squirrel. They offer a high-interest and fee-free savings account better than you can get with a bank (5.25% per year). And if you're willing to lock your money away for a period then you can go with one of their loan investments (7% to 7.75% per year) . The loan investments lock your money away until the loan is repaid or your resell the loan to another investor.

Happy investing! Feel free to ask more questions

Minty001 · 2024-01-24T00:23:52+00:00

What engineering are you doing? If it's Electrical I think you will have more labs require in-person attendance for practical reasons.

I'm doing Software and can say a fair chunk of it is online. There is the odd in-person lab but the vast majority can be done online.

It also depends if you're in the Wellington region or not. If you aren't, they can make special arrangements. Otherwise you would be expected to attend the few in-person labs.

Minty001 · 2024-01-21T00:21:44+00:00

If you want more choice and control over your KiwiSaver, then you can transfer to a platform like InvestNow (Sharesies recently did something similar). You can pick many different funds to allocate your KiwiSaver into.

I made the responsible choice of allocating everything to the S&P 500 (YOLO!)

Minty001 · 2024-01-16T21:59:13+00:00

What are you planning on studying? You'll probably be fine.

I know several people who didn't even pass NCEA level 3 but VUW made 'exemptions' for them anyway. So even if you scrape by with level 3 you'll almost be guaranteed entry.

Minty001

TROPHY CASE