Fran Romano

he boot

[Noland Arbaugh @ModdedQuad]

I can’t overstate how fired up I am about the Neuralink dual implant. One in the brain, one below the injury, finally working together. The potential is unreal.

Yeah… I’m amped.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Noland might be the first to receive a Neuralink upgrade and/or dual Neuralink implant to further augment his abilities.

It won’t be long before a Neuralink recipient can beat most and eventually all humans at fast reaction video games.

[Ashlee Vance @ashleevance]

How @neuralink Builds a Human Head. Our full episode here on @X.

Having covered @elonmusk for a long time, I see engineering culture similarties between @SpaceX, @neuralink and his other companies all the time. Here Neuralink's engineers perfected making a skull and brain to practice surgeries with lots of off-the-shelf parts. They make the brain pulse with a party balloon. 😂

[Danish Hussain @astrodanish]

One of my best memories @neuralink was the Friday @Fromano12 held his preliminary design review for this project and one of his open questions was if he should make the proxy brain pulsate or not.

Both myself and our manager at the time said it’s not worth it, we just need something that emulates the physical and optical properties of brain tissue for benchtop testing- making it pulse would be an unnecessary distraction.

On Saturday, Fran called me and said “Sorry dude, but I’ve been thinking about this all day and I really want the brain to pulse so I’m just going to figure out a design that works today and if I have a sick demo by Monday I bet I can convince y’all its worth it.
And I’m technically not on company time right now so y’all cant stop me as long as I finish over the weekend 😈”

Sure enough, the first thing he showed me when I came in was a hyper realistic, pulsating brain model (5:06 to 5:16 in the video)

It was one of the coolest things I’d seen and Fran excitedly explained how he cobbled together a motorized pneumatic system with a party balloon and syringe we had lying around.

I’ve found it true throughout my career that some of the best features in any technology exist ONLY through the stubborn persistence of one engineer who is unwilling to accept “good enough”

Kudos, Fran. Thanks for never settling for less than your best. I’m blessed to be surrounded by people that inspire me with their exceptionalism!

[Danish Hussain @astrodanish]

hot take: nobody should major in biomedical engineering for undergrad

the reality is that companies don’t hire for the jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none archetype that those programs tend to produce

if you had to build a biomedical device with 3 engineers, would you hire 3 BME’s?
or would you hire a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, and a software engineer?

for those of you already in college, just keep in mind that there’s incredibly few entry-level biomedical engineering positions. You’re more likely to be competing for an entry level ME/EE job at biotech company, against hundreds of applicants who spent four years focusing specifically on that discipline. you’ll need to be better than them!

[Lex Fridman @lexfridman]

Here's my 8.5 hour conversation with @elonmusk & @neuralink team.

It is the longest podcast I've ever done! 🤯 It's a fascinating, super technical, and wide-ranging conversation.

It's here on X & everywhere else, including YouTube: https://t.co/0kYbFNj2Su

On X, it's split up into 3 parts (in replies to this post) due to the current 4 hour limit for video. I continue to push the X engineering team to increase the limit... up it to 10 hours let's go! 🤣

Thank you to Elon Musk, DJ Seo, Matthew MacDougall, and Bliss Chapman who are part of the amazing Neuralink team: @elonmusk, @djseo_, @matthewmacdoug4, and @chapman_bliss.

And thank you to Noland Arbaugh (@ModdedQuad) who is the first human to have a Neuralink device implanted in his brain.

Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
0:49 - Elon Musk
4:06 - Telepathy
10:45 - Power of human mind
15:12 - Future of Neuralink
20:27 - Ayahuasca
29:57 - Merging with AI
34:44 - xAI
36:57 - Optimus
43:47 - Elon's approach to problem-solving
1:01:23 - History and geopolitics
1:05:53 - Lessons of history
1:10:12 - Collapse of empires
1:17:55 - Time
1:20:37 - Aliens and curiosity
1:28:12 - DJ Seo
1:36:20 - Neural dust
1:43:03 - History of brain–computer interface
1:51:07 - Biophysics of neural interfaces
2:01:36 - How Neuralink works
2:07:26 - Lex with Neuralink implant
2:27:24 - Digital telepathy
2:38:27 - Retracted threads
2:44:01 - Vertical integration
2:50:55 - Safety
3:00:50 - Upgrades
3:09:53 - Future capabilities
3:39:09 - Matthew MacDougall
3:44:58 - Neuroscience
3:52:07 - Neurosurgery
4:03:11 - Neuralink surgery
4:22:20 - Brain surgery details
4:38:03 - Implanting Neuralink on self
4:53:57 - Life and death
5:03:17 - Consciousness
5:06:11 - Bliss Chapman
5:19:27 - Neural signal
5:26:19 - Latency
5:30:59 - Neuralink app
5:35:40 - Intention vs action
5:46:54 - Calibration
5:56:26 - Webgrid
6:19:28 - Neural decoder
6:40:03 - Future improvements
6:48:59 - Noland Arbaugh
6:49:08 - Becoming paralyzed
7:02:43 - First Neuralink human participant
7:06:45 - Day of surgery
7:24:31 - Moving mouse with brain
7:49:50 - Webgrid
7:57:52 - Retracted threads
8:06:16 - App improvements
8:13:01 - Gaming
8:23:59 - Future Neuralink capabilities
8:26:55 - Controlling Optimus robot
8:31:16 - God
8:33:21 - Hope

[Fran Romano @Fromano12]

@AmericanAir Gotcha. Am I still in the 24 hour cancellation window?

[Fran Romano @Fromano12]

@AmericanAir did you remove the 24 hold button?

[Fran Romano @Fromano12]

@AmericanAir

[Michael T. Lawton, MD @mtlawton]

It was a pleasure to host @ElonMusk at @BarrowNeuro recently. We look forward to our continued partnership with @Neuralink to advance brain-computer interface technology for our patients…

[Neuralink @neuralink]

https://t.co/OMIeGGjYtG

[Neuralink @neuralink]

We’ll be live streaming an update on X today at 2:30 pm PT

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

The first human received an implant from @Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well.

Initial results show promising neuron spike detection.

[Neuralink @neuralink]

We’re excited to announce that recruitment is open for our first-in-human clinical trial!

If you have quadriplegia due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), you may qualify. Learn more about our trial by visiting our recent blog post.

https://t.co/mPLKFelOnD

[Caitlyn Yaede (she/her) @caitlyn_yaede]

The front page of tomorrow's @dailytarheel –

I shed many tears while typing up these heart-wrenching text messages sent and received by UNC students yesterday. Our campus was on lockdown for more than three hours.

Beyond proud of this cover and the team behind it.

[Neuralink @neuralink]

Our surgical team enhances their skills by training on realistic, patient-specific head and brain models, ensuring surgeries are tailored to each individual for safety and success 🧠

[Fran Romano @Fromano12]

Soooooo excited 🥳

[Neuralink @neuralink]

We are excited to share that we have received the FDA’s approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study!

This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people.

Recruitment is not yet open for our clinical trial. We’ll announce more information on this soon!

[Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D. @hubermanlab]

New Huberman Lab Podcast out now: Neuralink & Technologies to Enhance Human Brains w/@MatthewMacDoug4 the Head Neurosurgeon @neuralink
•Brain Surgery by Robots
•Repairing & Enhancing Limb Movement
•AI-Assisted Super Memory, Cognition
•Neuro-Evolution
https://t.co/Ep1T2SbUvx

[Fran Romano @Fromano12]

@ryanzip What happens if someone pulls on the chord ?

[B/R Football @brfootball]

Buenos Aires from above 🎆🇦🇷