Explores the world of Transformers in Computer Vision, GANs, Deep Learning, and Reinforcement Learning. Its applications in ML & Finance through Google Cloud
In Nairobi you have to respect hustlers. Someone is taking people to the forest and convincing them going there with headphones is better than listening to birds chirping & wind blowing through the trees. Zero stillness & moment presence, Respect.
This guy is our French Elon Musk (even cooler than Elon, I would say)
He just released a new mobile service that covers all of these red countries (doesn't mean they're communists) with unlimited data for €19.90/mo.
Now I can just use my French number in Indonesia 🫶
A 19-year-old drops out of school in Paris, teaches himself to code on an Apple II, builds X-rated chat rooms, and makes his first million before he can legally drink.
Then he hacks the French president's phone. To prove a point about weak security. He gets arrested. Spends a month in jail.
Most people's story ends there. His starts.
He founds Iliad in 1999 and launches a telecom brand called Free. The name is the strategy. He prices unlimited mobile at €19.99/month when every French carrier was charging €45+. The entire industry collapses into a price war overnight. French consumers save an estimated €10 billion over the next five years. Three legacy carriers post the worst quarterly results in their history.
Today Iliad has 52 million subscribers across France, Italy, and Poland. €10 billion in annual revenue. €2.25 billion in operating free cash flow last year, up 23% year over year. Niel took it private because he got tired of quarterly earnings calls constraining his ability to start wars in new markets.
While building a telecom empire, he also bought Le Monde (France's paper of record), co-owns the rights to "My Way" by Sinatra, founded 42 (a tuition-free coding school with zero teachers that accepts anyone regardless of credentials), built Station F (the world's largest startup campus in a converted Paris freight depot), seed-funded Mistral AI, invested €100 million in Kyutai alongside Eric Schmidt, and bought a Parisian palace from a Qatari prince for $227 million.
His partner is Delphine Arnault. The CEO of Dior. The daughter of Bernard Arnault, the richest person in Europe. He sits on the board of KKR.
Yesterday he launched Free Max. Unlimited 5G data in 135+ countries for €19.99/month. Same playbook he's been running for 25 years: walk into a market where carriers charge $15/day for roaming, price it at 66 cents, and watch every competitor scramble.
Xavier Niel is worth $14.2 billion and the only CEO in telecom who responds to customer death threats by showing up to the parking lot.
This is the shot you can’t get from the press site. This camera was sitting a few football fields from the SLS rocket at Pad 39B for days before launch, baking in the Florida sun, surviving rain, humidity, and whatever else the Cape threw at it. No photographer behind the viewfinder. Just a camera, a sound trigger, and a bet.
The way pad remotes work: you set your camera up days in advance, dial in your composition, lock everything down, and walk away. You don’t touch it again until after the launch. The shutter fires on sound activation
with a @MiopsTrigger smart+ trigger. With SLS, the four RS-25 engines ignite six seconds before the solid rocket boosters, so the camera is already firing before the vehicle even leaves the pad. You get home, pull the card, and find out if you nailed it or if a bird landed on your lens two days ago and left your a present and you got 400 photos of soemthing crappy.
There’s no formula for protecting your gear this close. Some photographers build wooden boxes with doors that pop open. Some use plastic bags and tape. Some do plastic or metal barn door rigs on hinges. I tend to leave mine open just in plastic rain covers because boxes limit my composition and setup time, but that means your cameras are more exposed to the elements and whatever energy and debris comes off the pad. You’re basically gambling a camera body every time you set one.
That’s what I love about this genre. There’s no playbook. You make it up as you go. Every time is an adventure.
📸 credit: me for @SuperclusterHQ - Artemis II pad remote | ~1,000 ft from Pad 39B | Kennedy Space Center