Vanja Tesin

What I cannot create, I do not understand. - Richard Feynman.

Opinions are my own.

[Vanja Tesin @vtesin]

What are some of the important breakthroughs in AI apart from deep learning in the last 10 years? by Sridhar Mahadevan https://t.co/PD7hSI1jW9

[Dave Lauer @dlauer]

I spent the week in DC meeting with members of Congress, their staffs, and plenty of people over at the SEC. We talked about equity market structure, abusive short selling, Gamestop, and yes even MMTLP. DC is paying attention right now to individual investors.

[Kevin Malone @Malone_Wealth]

Mortgage Payments now 58% more expensive than Rent payments. Guess what happens next..

[Starfield @StarfieldGame]

We're giving away a limited-edition #Starfield @amdgaming GPU and CPU! Follow and repost for a chance to win - a winner will be messaged on August 30!

Rules: https://t.co/KuFwVsEUHo

[Vanja Tesin @vtesin]

@VirginMediaIE Morning, managed to resolve itself after some time. Thanks.

[Vanja Tesin @vtesin]

Hello @VirginMediaIE is there a service outage in Dun Laoghaire, more precise Cualanor? Internet went down, no amount of restarts helps.

[/home/~j0ule @gigaj0ule]

Small molecule oral cancer drug kills 100% of solid tumors across 70 evaluated cancer types in vitro and in animal models with a therapeutic index of 6 and no discernible side effects

Phase 1 trials now underway

https://t.co/PfpvPaRD4L

[Vanja Tesin @vtesin]

@shanselman Can't live without Lightrun..

[OpenAI @OpenAI]

Code Interpreter will be available to all ChatGPT Plus users over the next week.

It lets ChatGPT run code, optionally with access to files you've uploaded. You can ask ChatGPT to analyze data, create charts, edit files, perform math, etc.

Plus users can opt in via settings.

[emily 😌 @extraemilyy]

got to stop by @GameStop and checked out their new trade in deal!! 🥳 i hope u like my acting 🙂 #trade #ad -
https://t.co/nxA9m0ZX9X

[Michael Nicoletos @mnicoletos]

Germany’s federal audit office has warned the Bundesbank may need a bailout to cover losses arising from the European Central Bank’s bond-buying scheme, potentially throwing a spanner in the ECB’s plans to carry out similar programmes in the future.

Also note that in Europe, many pensions and insurance companies were forced (by their mandates) to buy bonds with negative yields (a market which at one point reached the size of $18 trn).

This means they were losing money from day one. #euro

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

Benjamin Franklin’s daily routine was fascinating…

[Dave Lauer @dlauer]

I've gotten a lot of questions today on whether GME traded between 9:51-9:56am. As per one data source, we don't see any trades for most of that time period. We're checking the raw data now, will report on what we find.

[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.

[Otavio (Tavi) Costa @TaviCosta]

Meanwhile:

Foreign holdings of US Treasuries just reached the lowest level in 19 years.

This concern is further amplified by the diminishing availability of buyers for Treasury securities.

Market participants are beginning to recognize that the true risk this time around lies not in the failure to reach a debt ceiling agreement, but rather in the escalating and concerning nature of the debt problem.

In the last three years, the responsibility of absorbing this debt fell on the Fed and US banks, but now both entities have withdrawn from that role.

The current lack of demand is indeed a growing problem that may ultimately necessitate the intervention of the Fed as the buyer of last resort.

[Nick Gerli @nickgerli1]

Mortgage rates back to 7%.

Meaning that the cost to buy a house in America is now approaching $2,700/month when including mortgage, tax, insurance, and maintenance.

Meanwhile, cost to rent is $1,850.

Biggest gap we've ever seen. Something has to break.

[Nick Gerli @nickgerli1]

Realtors are officially quitting.

The growth rate in Realtors registered with the NAR officially went negative in May 2023.

That's the first contraction in the # of Realtors in America since the 2008 crash.😬

[Rachel Woods @rachel_l_woods]

I'm technical. But I've never officially had a job with the title "Engineer".

Now with ChatGPT + products like GitHub's Copilot -- I'm building entire projects in weekends.

And it's not just me.

My sister wasn't "technical" 6 months ago.

Now is.

Yes, also enabled by ChatGPT.

Software development is changing. Fast.

People who know what they're doing are able to move and ship incredibly fast.

People who are novices are able to learn at an unprecedented pace.

Even if you're not an engineer yourself, this will definitely be a trend that has a wider reach. Worth paying attention.

[Kevin Malone @Malone_Wealth]

Pictures of Gamestop stores around the world last night.

[Susanne Trimbath PhD @SusanneTrimbath]

Here we go again. This is your government on crack.
https://t.co/xrf5cGC0Mu

[Swing @US247365_2]

@InvestorTurf Awwwww man... I found the screenshot though.