Austin Wallender

moving on ... @[email protected]

[Austin Wallender @voidstin]

@tvaziri Great list. Bottoms was one of my fave teen comedies in a while.

[Austin Wallender @voidstin]

@FakeGreenDress This is huge. Thanks for all the Hard work!

[Victoria @FakeGreenDress]

🆕 More type fun for After Effects scripters just went into public beta. New scripting hooks let you get and replace fonts, complete with a handy sample panel.

More info here: https://t.co/gT9HY48OLu

[Austin Wallender @voidstin]

@FakeGreenDress This is great news. Thanks to the whole AE team! Also, my favorite variable fonts (today) are jubilat and bouba round -https://t.co/hVVJMDILFe - https://t.co/GjYmo2dNsi

[Victoria @FakeGreenDress]

Hey After Effects scripters! We have a fun treat for you: 7 new scripting hooks related to variable fonts in beta build 24.0x25 and later.

[Sterling Crispin 🕊️ @sterlingcrispin]

I spent 10% of my life contributing to the development of the #VisionPro while I worked at Apple as a Neurotechnology Prototyping Researcher in the Technology Development Group. It’s the longest I’ve ever worked on a single effort. I’m proud and relieved that it’s finally announced. I’ve been working on AR and VR for ten years, and in many ways, this is a culmination of the whole industry into a single product. I’m thankful I helped make it real, and I’m open to consulting and taking calls if you’re looking to enter the space or refine your strategy.

The work I did supported the foundational development of Vision Pro, the mindfulness experiences, ▇▇▇▇▇▇ products, and also more ambitious moonshot research with neurotechnology. Like, predicting you’ll click on something before you do, basically mind reading. I was there for 3.5 years and left at the end of 2021, so I’m excited to experience how the last two years brought everything together. I’m really curious what made the cut and what will be released later on.

Specifically, I’m proud of contributing to the initial vision, strategy and direction of the ▇▇▇▇▇▇ program for Vision Pro. The work I did on a small team helped green light that product category, and I think it could have significant global impact one day.

The large majority of work I did at Apple is under NDA, and was spread across a wide range of topics and approaches. But a few things have become public through patents which I can cite and paraphrase below.

Generally as a whole, a lot of the work I did involved detecting the mental state of users based on data from their body and brain when they were in immersive experiences.

So, a user is in a mixed reality or virtual reality experience, and AI models are trying to predict if you are feeling curious, mind wandering, scared, paying attention, remembering a past experience, or some other cognitive state. And these may be inferred through measurements like eye tracking, electrical activity in the brain, heart beats and rhythms, muscle activity, blood density in the brain, blood pressure, skin conductance etc.

There were a lot of tricks involved to make specific predictions possible, which the handful of patents I’m named on go into detail about. One of the coolest results involved predicting a user was going to click on something before they actually did. That was a ton of work and something I’m proud of. Your pupil reacts before you click in part because you expect something will happen after you click. So you can create biofeedback with a user's brain by monitoring their eye behavior, and redesigning the UI in real time to create more of this anticipatory pupil response. It’s a crude brain computer interface via the eyes, but very cool. And I’d take that over invasive brain surgery any day.

Other tricks to infer cognitive state involved quickly flashing visuals or sounds to a user in ways they may not perceive, and then measuring their reaction to it.

Another patent goes into details about using machine learning and signals from the body and brain to predict how focused, or relaxed you are, or how well you are learning. And then updating virtual environments to enhance those states. So, imagine an adaptive immersive environment that helps you learn, or work, or relax by changing what you’re seeing and hearing in the background.

All of these details are publicly available in patents, and were carefully written to not leak anything. There was a ton of other stuff I was involved with, and hopefully more of it will see the light of day eventually.

A lot of people have waited a long time for this product. But it’s still one step forward on the road to VR. And it’s going to take until the end of this decade for the industry to fully catch up to the grand vision for this tech.

Again, I’m open to consulting work and taking calls if your business is looking to enter the space or refine your strategy. Mostly, I’m proud and relieved this has finally been announced. It’s been over five years since I started working on this, and I spent a significant portion of my life on it, as did an army of other designers and engineers. I hope the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and Vision Pro blows your mind.

[Austin Wallender @voidstin]

@Filmbot @aembury I think with that power, most people don't have to learn about proxies ever.

[Austin Wallender @voidstin]

ooof, $7K.

[Austin Wallender @voidstin]

dual 10gig. #MacPro #WWDC23

[Austin Wallender @voidstin]

192gb ram in the Mac Studio! #WWDC23

[Austin Wallender @voidstin]

nice bubbles #WWDC23

[Kareem Carr, Ph.D. @kareem_carr]

Statistics can never be completely objective.

This is not just my opinion. It's a *mathematical* fact.

Read on if you want to learn a deep fundamental truth about data and its relationship to the universe we live in.

[Austin Wallender @voidstin]

@FakeGreenDress We need ShopGPT

[regular steve albini @electricalWSOP]

Nobody earned a billion dollars. It's literally impossible to be paid for work and end up with a billion dollars. You get a billion dollars by having other people work for it, then taking it.

[Austin Wallender @voidstin]

@lemonodor I’ve been seeing/hearing a lot of explosions near DTLA - I know Joker 2 filming closed broadway one day

[Todd Vaziri @tvaziri]

If you won’t listen to me, listen to Craig Mazin @clmazin.

Vulture: “The Last of Us” co-creator talks about the finale and visual effects.
https://t.co/B5JELSTCLO

[Victoria @FakeGreenDress]

🚨 Heads up AE friends! NVIDIA drivers 531.18 and 531.26 have an issue that causes Premiere Pro and After Effects to crash. Revert back to 528.49 as a workaround.

[Phil Tippett @PhilTippett]

#Pokerface was the best project that has crossed my radar for quite some time.

[Cory Doctorow NO LONGER ON TWIT TER @doctorow]

So there's a great Thai restaurant in my neighborhood called Kiin. Yesterday, I searched for their website to order some takeout. Here's the Google result.