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- 🍪 Neuralink's brain chip gets implanted
🍪 Neuralink's brain chip gets implanted
Happy Thursday, friends. This is Bite Sized Beta. We’re your tech caddie – we carry the clubs and give you the best advice on the course.
No bogeys here!
Let’s get to the good stuff.
In the oven this week:
🧠 Elon’s brainchild gets an implant
🗳️ Poll of the week: are you getting chipped?
🍪 Cookie crumbs: 5 bite-sized headlines
💬 Tweet of the week: how to get status
🍫 Chocolate chips: our 3 favorite finds this week
😂 Snickerdoodles: our usual Thursday memery
FRESHLY BAKED
ELON’S BRAINCHILD GETS IMPLANTED
Well, it’s official, the future is here.
We just implanted a brain chip device in a real human patient for the first time.
And by “we” I mean Neuralink - Elon’s brainchild (that’s right, we got puns out here!!)
If you’re like the rest of us and are wondering what Neuralink actually does, the TLDR is that it’s a brain technology company Elon founded back in 2016.
Their whole goal is to come up with a way to interpret neural activity so that someone can operate a computer or phone just by thinking.
Imagine being able to order your mouthwash on Amazon just by thinking about it!
That’s right, no more lifting a finger.
Initially, Neuralink is planning to focus on people with disabilities, like those that have lost the use of their limbs.
Makes sense, my mouthwash can wait..
This week, Elon announced that they’ve successfully implanted their brain chip, called Telepathy, into their first patient as part of the initial trial the FDA approved last May.
The patient is “recovering well” according to initial reports.
Testing has been pretty hush hush so far and the FDA’s final approval still seems far away, but if it works, it’ll be a game-changer for people with neurological disorders like ALS.
They’ll be able to communicate at the speed of thought!
Love him or hate him, you gotta admit: Elon’s got range.
FROM THE COOKIE JAR
POLL OF THE WEEK: ARE YOU GETTING CHIPPED?
Here’s a thought experiment:
Pretend Neuralink works (cause let’s face it - Elon’s pretty good at winning).
For the rest of your life, you’re now able to order your caramel macchiato with vanilla cold foam on the Starbucks app just by thinking about it.
BUT, the catch is - you gotta get chipped.
Assuming the surgery has a 100% survival rate with no side effects, are you doing it?
Sound off 👇🏽 |
BITE SIZED HEADLINES
The new wave of antitrust is here: Amazon is abandoning its $1.7B acquisition of iRobot (the company that made the roomba), and is paying that $94M break up fee. After the news, iRobot is now laying off a third of its staff. Wooooof.
The first reviews of the Apple Vision Pro are out and it's a mixed bag (as expected). The good: best AR headset available, 1M iPad apps work out of the box. The bad: it can get blurry, there’s not much use for it besides entertainment, and it feels lonely in there since you can't share your experience. AKA, it’s still a first gen product.
US venture capitalists are sitting on a record amount of uninvested capital ($311bn), having deployed just half of what was raised between 2020 and 2022. Looks like there's still a ton of caution with those declining valuations.
TikTok is trying to be Youtube: it’s now offering incentives to creators to publish horizontal videos with longer runtimes. Apparently it’ll boost the videos within 72 hours of posting so long as you’ve been a creator for 3+ months.
THE BIG PIZOOKIE
TWEET OF THE WEEK
to get status, you have to give up status
— anu ☻ (@anuatluru)
Jan 22, 2024
Said another way, everyone is cringe on the way up.
CHOCOLATE CHIPS
OUR FAVORITE FINDS
A former CIA agent shares 6 things people with high emotional intelligence always do
An ex-Googler published a thoughtful post on how the culture has changed over the last few decades. Kinda sad, but also pretty interesting given their recent layoffs.
SNICKERDOODLES
THURSDAY MEMES
On the positive side, he can transition to VC without changing his outfit
— Matt Turck (@mattturck)
Jan 21, 2024
😂
That's all we got for ya this week, folks. See ya next Thursday!
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