AbstractH24

Well put

-another with weird brain waves.

>To isolate workers to make them powerless gives even more power to companies that are already very powerful.

How far we've come from everyone saying "WFH or we quit, its our right!"

> Cool project bad political motivated wordings in the post.

Sad part is the kid likley doesn't realize that.

The fact this doesn't seem like a bigger deal shows how numb we've all gotten to these.

A quarter of their workforce! While a major conference was going on!

The kind of keto needed to actually impact epilepsy is so strict it’s nearly impossible to stick to it and live life. Particularly as an adult.

If you eat an apple you’ve eaten all the carbs you can have in a day.

That said, putting epilepsy aside I clearly function better as a human when I have less carbs. And I’m interested in these wearables coming to market [finally] that track ketones along with blood sugar.

Thanks for the wishes. I'm super lucky for the time I live in and access to cutting-edge medical care.

Other than a slightly worse-than-normal memory, I live a pretty normal life. Most people don't realize even I have epilepsy, let alone a computer in my skull with wires running deep into my brain sending electric pulses.

If I didn't live when I did and where I do (NYC) my life would be very different. And relative to many others, my seizures are not so bad.

It's been 4 years since I got it, and been quite a journey. I'll do my best to try and answer the question succinctly:

The RNS succeeded as a tool for capturing orders of magnitude more detailed data about how my brain functions and how medication impacts it. It also had some success in reducing the the severity of the fairly infrequent clinical seizure I do have. But, not only did it fail to live up to its promise of getting me off medication, it didn't even prevent me from needing to start taking one that's effective but has some pretty strong side effects (Xcopri).

Titrating onto Xcopri is a long, slow process. I started over the summer, and my doctor could see immediately see the degrees at which subclinical seizure-like activity stopped. Then, as the titration continued and the side effects started to become noticeable, my doctor could see how adjusting my other meds to reduce side effects impacted activity and could do so comfortably with a much finer tooth comb than he would otherwise.

Without the information the RNS provides, I would likely be unable to tolerate the Xcopri and the next step would be another brain surgery (although without the RNS, my epilepsy would appear to be much better controlled than it is. Because I rarely have a clinical seizure.)

So it seems to me that while these implanted devices have real power in their ability to collect data, their ability to reliably alter the brain function is questionable. But that data itself is huge . Hope you keep working in the space!

(glad to answer more questions; feel free to ask or DM me. I'm a bit more informed about this than the average bear)

Most of this already exists, and I already have it implanted in my brain

https://www.neuropace.com/

Articles can be weird sometimes in the details they include/omit.

There is two ways of looking at this - one is that things are overhyped.

The other is that there is so much more value to be extracted before this bubble burst.

Not sure which I believe, objectively. Subjectively, inside of tech, it certainly feels like the former.

For just shy of 5 years I was prescribed and took a benzo daily for my seizures called Clobazam. It's relatively weak, extremely long-acting, and slightly structurally different than the ones people most frequently abuse.

Today marks a week since I've totally stopped. It's been interesting to see the relatively low-stakes rollercoaster that getting off it has been. The bigger roller coaster was how sedated I was last month, because before stopping I started another epiplepsy drug that increased how much of this benzo I metabolized. While I see how this experience has ranged from euphoria to insomnia to exhaustion, it's certainly been nothing like this author (so far).

When I started this benzo, my psych said something to me I'll never forget: "oh, there's nothing wrong with taking benzos daily... as long as you take them every day at exactly the same time for the rest of your life." My epileptologist swore that wasn't the case and seems to have been right, but that advice still lingers with me about benzos in general.

When I learned video blackjack is playing the odds in a way that tickled my brain I’ll admit I enjoyed it. I’m sure for some prediction markets do the same. If you can stay level headed there’s probably easy money to be made on prediction markets trading people’s momentum. Staying level headed isn’t easy.

Bummer that tables on the strip in Vegas have such high minimums. Couldn’t even get myself to play one hand on them (but losing $500 in a matter of minutes on Kalshi or Polymarket seemed like nothing)

In the past 5 years I’ve been to Vegas & Atlantic City 7 times for conferences and music festivals. Never had any interest in gambling, except $20 in video blackjack on the most recent trip.

At the end of the summer I dipped my toe in Polymarket while watching the US Open (the only sporting event that interest me). In a week and I half I nearly lost 2 months salary. Found myself up at 3AM betting not just on tennis, but also on random sports that seemed like a “sure thing.” And not just on Polymarket, but Kalshi too.

The dark patterns involved in prediction markets are real and terrifying. Washed my hands of that, but woof.

Whats their incentive to share an open weight model? Heck, whats anyone?

Just like frontier models get away with things no humans would.

Country that prizes education and is constantly under threat. Plus, most folks do serious time in the army and only after that do they go to college.

Yeah, I'm a bit confused why this is profound. Don't plenty of services already offer this?

But maybe I'm dumb or missing something.

Details the headline leaves out.

When did Thunderbird suddenly become cool again? Suddenly I'm hearing about it in all sorts of contexts.

It's 20+ years old. Is this part of some broader trend relating to mozilla i missed?

Does nobody else wonder if its chance he's a "Saudi national"

If this isn't part of an ongoing media hype effort geared towards regulatory capture or government bailout?

> I don't think people having the inner desire for excellence would work in the kind of environment that is Anthropic

There is an assumption here that everyone thinks of excellence the way you do.

> Engineering is the science of “good enough“.

Work in general is.

Heck, life in general is

But just like laws about including a salary, what's the penalty for not complying, and how will it be enforced?

I’ll have to test it again. Its been a few years

From the article:

> In woodworking, the power tools didn’t reduce the woodworker’s emotional investment in what they made. The worker still felt like they’d made that thing out of wood themselves.

This raises the question - is the software engineer the tool or the thing being made? And who is the woodworker?

SE who worked for big tech thinking they were any different than the farm worker are now disillusioned

Maybe there are multiple bubbles slowly imploding at once here.

Makes sense. Sounds like you contribute in the sense of a feedback button or building things that are unique to you

> Why don't you contribute? Are you comfortable just taking from society?

Since an overwhelming number of open-source projects I use these days have some effort to monetize as part of them. I no don't feel it's free.

But outside of that, I feel I contribute in other ways and lack[ed] the skills to contribute to the projects.

Tor has always been so slow I could never actually use it for anything. Are there people who can?

So in the last 2 weeks or so we've gotten a ton of decision-making models. Its the new cool thing.

I'm behind the times. Outside of Jev which are worth looking at?

> When I was a junior developer I did see programming as an art but I really don’t see it anymore. What is important is the output. And does the output is in accordance to its design and functions as intended.

This is so often missed across most anything.

Rarely do people appreciate or want to fund something that doesn't provide the desired outcome. The lucky few on this planet are those who can find joy in creating something others want to pay for.

Personally, I've spent most of my 20s and 30s having this tremendous imposter syndrome when it comes to actual programming, but through working in sales operations, I have learned a good bit about scalable architecture. So tools like claude code have unlocked many fun challenges for me. Even if. I spend a lot of time cleaning up the sprawl they create.

Can someone explain to me how you "acquire" an open-source project?

I know it's been done for years and reflects so basic a misunderstanding I have about the ecosystem.

Also, if your goal is to commercialize, why open source at all anymore vs have a free tier and ecosystem?