Your hardware startup doesn't need another funding round. It... needs a one-way ticket to Shenzhen The talent pool is vast and affordable, I watched two students build an entire automated tennis ball feeder prototype for the founders who started the company. Two students in a few month. The whole thing... Some areas in shenzhen offer almost no taxes for businesses and even free office space. There's an exchange center that connects foreign founders with manufacturers, partners, and lawyers for free. You don't even need initial capital to start production. Some manufacturers I connected with will produce without upfront costs and co-design with you to make the product successful. They'll drive an hour to pick you up, spend three hours taking you to factories, and dedicate an entire day getting everything set up. They're not just service providers, they’re investing in you. And the people are genuinely kind. I had issues with a power supply for my motor components, and even when they were busy, they stayed with me until it was resolved. and they work until the task is perfectly done. 996 is pretty much the norm here, but they don't seem burnt out because there's each others support, working together like a group of friends on a project. If you're building hardware, Shenzhen isn't just an option. It's the obvious oneshow more

As long as you don't have your own loaf... of bread, you won't have an opinion. The hungry don't think, they just repeat. Freedom begins with a loaf of bread, not with dignity granted, because dignity is not granted, dignity is taken away. Poverty is not just the deprivation of money, it is the denial of dignity and the slow denial of will. You don't have the right to make Egyptian decisions related to your life when you are under the yoke of hunger. Don't ask the hungry to speak, feed them first, and don't ask for the opinion of the hungry. You must free them from the humiliation of questioning.. The mind doesn't function on an empty stomach, and dignity doesn't exist in a bread queue. Because he who doesn't have his bread doesn't have his voice, and he who doesn't have his voice doesn't own himself, and he who doesn't own himself doesn't own anything. This is true hell: being forced into silence because you can't afford to live.. Dear friends, two days ago I tweeted that I needed to buy two bags of flour... one for me and my family, and one for the 25 cats at the shelter. This is a new update. Unfortunately, no aid has flowed in over the past two days, and the price of flour has risen even more than it was. My friends, I barely received enough support to buy one bag.. I need you to stand by me because the price of a bag of flour has become $600 now. I am in real trouble. In a few days, the price of flour will rise even more and more if they do not allow any aid to enter... If I get these two bags, I can rely on them for my family and the cats for a whole month. I don't want to buy more than that, because a lot of things can happen in a month... I need a serious stand from you to get another bag of flour for me, for the cats, and for my family.. Your prayers and supplications are for us.. The tanks have advanced further today.. They are only a 20-minute walk away from me and things are terrifying.. Please keep us posted with your thoughts... and interact with my tweets... Your interaction helps spread the word. It's free support, and I appreciate it.show more

two weeks in Shenzhen and it’s an been eye-opening... experience im here for a month with MIT SCALE and the speed of hardware production is easily 10× faster than sf. from product concept to production, everything is streamlined within a single building. Nearly every component you could need is available immediately thru Taobao(e bay of China) or HQB and there are 24/7 makerspaces equipped to build anything from micrometer-scale PCBs to full assembly-line robots. What’s striking is that Shenzhen already has much of the hardware and robotics that startups in sf are still trying to build except these systems have been deployed and operating for years. The manufacturing capability, supply chain depth, and technical execution here are world-class. That said, one gap keeps surfacing: brand design, storytelling, and cohesive user experience. Software polish, UX consistency, and attention to detail often feel secondary. Take this with a grain of salt, but it increasingly feels like the company that pairs Shenzhen-level hardware velocity with strong design sensibility and UX-first thinking will dominate the market.show more

Elon Musk just described the one thing most founders... in Silicon Valley have never actually done. Musk: “If you’re gonna create a company, the first thing you should try to do is create a working prototype.” Not a pitch deck. Not a business plan. Not a slide with a hockey stick growth curve and a TAM number invented over lunch. A working prototype. Musk: “Everything looks great on PowerPoint. You can make anything work on PowerPoint.” That line should follow people home. Because he’s right. Cold fusion works on PowerPoint. Faster-than-light travel works on PowerPoint. Your startup that burns $4 million a quarter with zero product-market fit works on PowerPoint. Slides don’t have physics. Slides don’t have friction. Slides don’t have consequences. That’s why people love them. Musk: “If you have an actual demonstration article, even if it’s in primitive form, that’s much, much more effective for convincing people.” Even if it’s ugly. Even if it crashes every third run and looks like it was assembled in a weekend. A crude prototype that limps through a demo will always destroy a beautiful deck that builds nothing. Always. Because a prototype can’t lie to you. A slide can promise the future. A prototype has to survive the present. The world is full of people who pitch. Nearly empty of people who build. School trained you to present. Corporate trained you to present. Venture capital trained you to present. The entire professional world is built to produce people who are brilliant in a conference room and useless in a garage. Musk builds rockets. Then talks about them. Everyone else talks about rockets. Then asks for funding to explore whether building one is even feasible. The distance between those two approaches is the distance between the people who actually reshape the world and the people who give TED talks about reshaping it. You’ve been trained your entire life to polish the pitch instead of build the thing. And you might not even know it. The most honest act left in business is to build something real, set it on a table, and let it speak for itself. No deck. No narrative. No spin. Just the work. PowerPoint is where ideas perform. The prototype is where they’re forced to be real. Most people spend entire careers in a world where the performance is enough. Until someone walks in with the thing that actually works. And every slide in the room goes quiet.show more

VTubing is for everyone! I don't like to bring... this up, but recent events in the VTuber community made some people really vile. I had my M&G at HolMat last week and had people come up and just yell at me for being a girl in the "womans world", that is VTubing, no idea about who I was, or why I was there. I had the same group return to my handler multiple times, I felt really worried about the person carrying me around having to deal with this repeatedly and tried to steer them away from the group. It seems they found my YT and left me a handful of the same comments, luckily all caught by moderation tools. While I will refrain from M&G's for a little until this calms down I want to say this; I have been managing for over 1.5 years now, I deliberately take on male VTubers to show them that they can still do it. I take on people that have babiniku accounts, those that are changing from one gender presentation to another and want help, and those that have no gender presentation in their avatar. A lot of male VTubers struggle to find a manager because the stereotype is that all male VTubers are evil and it perpetuates a stereotype that extends beyond entertainment industry subcultures like streaming. VTubing has always been a medium, while character and marketing matters, it's about what makes you happy, YOU are the person that makes the content. Use whatever you want as an avatar, use a voice changer if that's what you want to do. Every month I have a male client bring up they can't do it the same way, that it's easier if jiggle physics or a cute voice is the answer to fast growth. And I tell them yeah, I can also do ASMR, I can do drama content, collab with a larger person, and get to x amount of viewers. There are shortcuts in every entertainment profession and subculture. Does it last? Do quick fixes for anything ever last? Yes, great physics and an expensive model can get people in, but if your value, your way of interacting with people, your content plan and marketing is ass, you can pack up. Most of us start on a small budget, premade or resold models, and it's the same in the big league entertainment industry too. Can I take out a loan and put myself on a billboard tomorrow, can I pay the most expensive model artist and rigger and get in along corporate VTubers tomorrow? Sure. Will it last, will it be genuine, will people trust me? Hell no. Genuine communities and growth build trust. I think streaming, creative industries, entertainment, are full of people, regardless of gender, that will see success and call it "easy", because of what they see as the end product. They don't see most VTubers working a second job, they don't see the managers, they don't see 100+ hours a month going into content production, years invested in singing and voice lessons, model redebut after redebut. I think a lot of male VTubers get a bad rep, because so many boys are raised without putting emphasis on empathy and creativity, watching my brothers be told they should not pursue art, that theatre class is a waste of time, and that they needed to go study x or y to make money for their families in the future was heartbreaking. Nobody should have to look at others and feel so much hatred for society they turn against a whole group of people. If you want to pursue entertainment, please do. If you want to grow and try and make a name for yourself, you should start there, not with yelling about how you already failed. "Oh but I can't", "Oh but the odds are stacked against me", look at the big streamers, look at Ironmouse who overcame everything with hard work, look at Kiara who rose from the ashes, look at everyone that fights against their odds every day and give it your all. If you already think you lost, then you have nothing to lose. Don't give up on your dreams because others tell you to.show more

Have you seen us at the Kololo Junction Traffic... Lights 🚥 today? That was us: After the lunch date at Protea, I took the boys on a street vending challenge. The idea was to teach them to make pitch in 20 seconds and make someone buy an apple 🍎 or an orange 🍊. I gave each boy 3 apples to sale make sure they bring me back my capital investment but keep their profit. They had to learn to smile for someone in the car and convince them to buy an apple. They had to learn to fight for space with other street vendors because they also want to work. They had to find away to pay attention to the bodabodas while they walk through the cars. Above all, they had to learn to take “no” as an answer in case someone is not interested in buying. I taught them that sometimes people have a bad day and they don’t want anything to do with your products. They also learned that to make a sale , it’s not a walk in a park!!! Thank you for the people who passed by and bought from these boys …. Today is an experience for them to remember.show more

Just lost ALL Autopilot, FSD, even basic cruise control... and Tesla Technical Assistance says they can’t do anything and apparently my car needs to go to a service center for a software update even though there are no warnings on the car. I got an FSD strike and the whole system went down. They said they can’t turn FSD back on and forgive the strikes remotely even though they did just that in January 2025 for the California fires. When I drove from Nevada into California back then my 4 strikes disappeared. Even the Tesla Technical Assistance Supervisor (who was very nice) says they have no way to fix the car remotely and it must go to a service center. Unfortunately, now I need to drive over 1000 miles with no type of cruise control or driver assistance at all. There are no warning lights on or anything of the sort. I even did a forced software update via the service mode and my Starlink, plus a few hard and soft reboots and that still did not fix it. Sadly the car is now less safe than it was a few minutes ago. Tesla Tesla North Americashow more

The Sabotaging Practice of Over Supply and Sameness in... the NFT Space. The current zeitgeist of the NFT space is that the same artists are doing the same kind of work five times a year, with project after project leaving a trail of disappointment and discontent among collectors and all of us watching in disbelief as huge resources are extracted from the space over work that feels like it could be left as an "artist study." I understand that you can do what you want with your money as collectors, but we are killing the whole space with this incestuous practice. No artist is that prolific to be able to do 5 collections of 100+ pieces each every year and actually deliver innovation and some kind of creative evolution. Of course, they can pretend play that the work has something new, but there is no precedent nor proof that that has ever happened in the speed that it happens in the NFT space. Again, people are free to through away their resources on whatever they want but with this way of doing things, we more and more are going to start seeing the consequences. Oh! There are consequences? Yes. Maybe unintended, but there are. Let's see. Let's start with the loss of belief in the NFT space as somewhere where emerging artists can come and find support for their experiments. Why even bother to bring experiments, innovation, and new ways to think of art on the blockchain if the same people have all the collectors hypnotized with their magical flutes? Why even try to come to a space where taking risks and challenging the status quo (the mission of art!!!) is overlooked? This makes the NFT space a social club and not a space for art. I guess it is fine, but IMO it is a recipe for disaster. New collectors stay away because the art will slowly but surely become stale and un-challenging. Why even bother to come and see what is happening here if you can't, as a collector, see new weird and up-and-coming artists? The amount of noise emitted by the same artists doing the same art over and over, drowns out any new voices. Again. A recipe for disaster. The NFT space is becoming a space of disappointment and doubt. We think that collections going to zero one after the other, over and over, is not damaging? I feel we are kidding ourselves. Disappointment piles up, and again, the people who will hurt are the emerging artists, the new blood, the ones who are willing to risk the most and, in return, put fire in this cold space of sameness. I love this space—don't get me wrong—it has changed my life, and I believe it has a ton of potential, but things need to change for it to become a beacon of light in art. But we need to support new voices. We need to support new ideas. The challenge is huge. I hope to contribute all I can to this change. I hope more and more see how exciting it is to go out and try to discover what else is out there and move this space forward. But again, I understand the leaps of faith needed, but if there is a space that is based on that, it's the NFT space...so there is hope. We will see. 📺by Boldtronshow more

I drove Tesla for the first time; I felt... happy like a child for the first 10 minutes, and was totally disappointed the rest of the ride The autopilot feature is not available in the EU, but even the lane-control works extremely badly Tesla didn't recognize road works and almost crushed me into a barrier Then it went completely crazy on a temporary orange lane and started wiggling around The assistant consistently missed lanes and ignored speed limit signs, so I had to disable the assistant and drive manually I drove an electric BMW i4 before, and it had a much better cruise control and assistant (it boggles my mind that BMW kicked Tesla's ass in software) With BMW, I never had to touch the gas pedal and drove the car just using cruise control and speed limit assistant You could also set a speed limit, and even if you pressed full gas, it never crossed, which was handy in a city Tesla is still an insane product, the interior and exterior design are amazing, but it feels like an app with an amazing frontend and a very poor backend (at least in the EU) Driving gave me a lot of motivation to make more $$$, and I will still probably get a Tesla, and not a BMW bz BMW is a car for boomersshow more

Introducing Stratus Ventures, an early-stage venture firm investing in... exceptional pre-seed and seed companies. Stratus Fund I is a $10M fund investing in visionary founders building the future. Founders who are scrappy operators and relentless about their craft. A huge thank you to my LPs for their belief and support of the Stratus mission, my founders for their trust and partnership, and to my colleagues, mentors, friends, and family—too many to ever name. Thank you all. At Stratus, we want to partner with unconventional thinkers. The ones with the grit and vision to turn their ideas into reality. If that sounds like you, let’s chat.show more

I had the same thought so I've been playing... with it in nanochat. E.g. here's 8 agents (4 claude, 4 codex), with 1 GPU each running nanochat experiments (trying to delete logit softcap without regression). The TLDR is that it doesn't work and it's a mess... but it's still very pretty to look at :) I tried a few setups: 8 independent solo researchers, 1 chief scientist giving work to 8 junior researchers, etc. Each research program is a git branch, each scientist forks it into a feature branch, git worktrees for isolation, simple files for comms, skip Docker/VMs for simplicity atm (I find that instructions are enough to prevent interference). Research org runs in tmux window grids of interactive sessions (like Teams) so that it's pretty to look at, see their individual work, and "take over" if needed, i.e. no -p. But ok the reason it doesn't work so far is that the agents' ideas are just pretty bad out of the box, even at highest intelligence. They don't think carefully though experiment design, they run a bit non-sensical variations, they don't create strong baselines and ablate things properly, they don't carefully control for runtime or flops. (just as an example, an agent yesterday "discovered" that increasing the hidden size of the network improves the validation loss, which is a totally spurious result given that a bigger network will have a lower validation loss in the infinite data regime, but then it also trains for a lot longer, it's not clear why I had to come in to point that out). They are very good at implementing any given well-scoped and described idea but they don't creatively generate them. But the goal is that you are now programming an organization (e.g. a "research org") and its individual agents, so the "source code" is the collection of prompts, skills, tools, etc. and processes that make it up. E.g. a daily standup in the morning is now part of the "org code". And optimizing nanochat pretraining is just one of the many tasks (almost like an eval). Then - given an arbitrary task, how quickly does your research org generate progress on it?show more

I went from ZERO($0) to 5 figures in less... than 5 months The year 2024 was a defining year for me and a lot of my friends. This story is one I should have told since but was waiting for the right time It all began in August after losing a cumulative of $20,000. That was literally all I had left with me and was down to less than $300. They say it all begins when you are down to your last 1 million and funny how I didn't even have up to a million Over the course of several days I began asking myself questions as to what I would have done with the money. I could have given my parent their dream house or gotten a car for myself, my mum and started my Agric business. Well, that was how Anxiety started with heavy palpitations and a pulse of 130 Not to bore you, allow me explain step by step as to how I bounced back 1) God - I wont lie to you, God and Prayers are very important in this WEB3. We have very few Normal people on here as this space is toxic enough to destroy you and your mental health 2) Network - See, I know all your idolos are telling you to grind hard which is factually correct but the real profits in this life are from who you know. Check SAYRAAH #WID 📈📉📊 content on networking for more information 2) Excellence - One little lesson I've learned from life is that excellence in itself is not restricted to a particular sphere but its a way of life. I strongly believe the reason all my clients refer me like their lives depend on it is because I handle my job with a unique style of excellence. Starting from my personal page to my clients jobs and even mannerisms 3) Hard work - This aspect has been misused so much. Hard work although very vital must be accompanied with a lot of smart work for you to have results. Scripture shows us that there is a possibility for two people to engage in similar work while they get different result. The one with the smaller result was termed a FOOLISH MAN and the one with better results was called a WISE MAN. The difference is in the knowing, you need to learn how to actually work hard 4) Voice out - Make sure you always voice out when you are not doing as much as you are supposed to. I have a lot of my guys that I tell intricate stuffs about my money-making journey and everyone puts heads together to ensure we all make money I might sound like aspire to perspire but the reality is, bouncing back is difficult but I want you to know that your hard work will eventually pay off I could have just said GOD DID but I know there's someone out there that might need this. Don't stop and don't settle, your future will thank you for it Over the next few days, I would be sharing some opportunities I recently found that I'm sure will print you money. Stay gluedshow more

After some discussion, I'm going to experiment with focusing... on an almost 'heist-like' aspect to the game. When you first arrive the house is dark and the ghosts unbothered. As you make noise and create a disturbance the house slowly comes alive. (for example fuseboxes let you turn on the lights, but generate a burst of activity when flipped on) I think this might change the ghost hand dynamic. Maybe instead of an enemy that grabs you, and you break free from, they are instead a trap that when they grab you, the struggle is to not make noise while they're having their fun?show more

Today I'm excited to announce that Opal has raised... a $6M Seed round in just 4 hours. Our first angel, Ian Crosby, made one call on my behalf when I moved to San Francisco. That call changed everything. I moved to SF on October 17th. The next morning, my phone rang. Lan Xuezhao from Basis Set was on the other end. I’d never met her before. She said: "Ian tells me I need to meet you immediately. Can we go for a walk tomorrow?" We lived five blocks apart. The walk was supposed to be one hour. We ended up walking for four. She was asking questions to get to know me as a person. Feeling me out for one thing: Am I the kind of founder crazy enough to build a credit card company with no finance degree and no banking connections? By the end of the walk, we had agreed on terms. Today, Opal is announcing our $6M seed round, led by Basis Set, with participation from Founders Co-op, Ian Crosby, and Adam Orser. We didn't start as a credit card company. But our customers told us we had to be. Here's what we've built: - A Visa credit card built exclusively for ad agencies and the brands they manage - Credit limits that reach seven figures - underwritten on managed ad spend, not agency revenue - 1%+ cash back on all ad spend - A fraud system that actually understands ad spend, so Google and Meta charges never get flagged and kill your campaigns Traditional banks look at an agency's revenue and give them a $50K limit. We look at the millions they manage for clients and give them what they actually need. To Lan Xuezhao and the team at Basis Set - thank you for betting on this on day two. To Ian Crosby - you opened a door I didn't even know existed. None of this happens without you. To the Opal team - you're building something that doesn't exist anywhere else. That takes a specific kind of crazy. I'm grateful for every one of you. If you run an ad agency and your credit limits are costing you - reach out. We built this for you.show more

This is what “rich” looks like I wake up... everyday feeling like I hit the lotto. Not when I’m up on a trade or when I drive one of my cars, but in quiet moments like this. Just a few years ago, I was facing prison time. Broke. Delivering food on DoorDash to scrape together a few hundred bucks to fund my trading account. We shared a one-bedroom apartment with $500 to our name after bills. The journey from there to here wasn’t overnight. It wasn’t glamorous. It was a grind that broke me down before it built me up…but it made me the man I am today. Yes, I have the cars and watches now that people associate with success. But I can tell you with absolute certainty…they don’t compare to this. Building a life with someone who believed in you when nobody else did and winning the game of life Trading changed my financial situation, but gratitude changed my life. If you’re reading this and still in the grind, just keep pushing. I know it may seem like it will never work, but it will. You have to believe that. You have to be thankful for every little thing because without the bad there is no good. Without the bad you become weak. The most important thing is to remember what you’re working towards and make sure there is real meaning behind it. There’s nothing wrong with cars or a lavish lifestyle… But the only way you’ll have the hunger to get it and sustain it long term… Is by having a higher purpose that you constantly remind yourself of.show more

Gated societies are not India's future. Townships are. Think... about why gated societies became so popular in the first place. It was never just about security. People wanted good roads, proper footpaths, parks, greenery, cleanliness... basically a place where they could step out without having to deal with the everyday problems outside. But even the best gated society has one problem. The moment you step outside, you're back to reality. You still have to go to work. Your kids have to go to school. You have to visit hospitals, restaurants, shopping areas and a hundred other places. And you have to navigate the bad traffic, dirty roads, potholes on roads, etc. That's where I think townships come in. I recently visited Bhartiya City in North Bangalore. It's spread across 125 acres and has residential societies, offices, schools, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, parks... almost everything you need. The roads, footpaths, greenery and public spaces are all maintained by the private developer. You're no longer buying just a flat, but buying an entire environment/ecosystem. And this is happening because people have slowly stopped expecting good public infrastructure from the government. They'd rather pay a private developer to build and maintain it. First we paid extra for a gated society. Now we're paying for an entire town. Think about how crazy that is. People pay so much in taxes, yet they still feel the need to pay again for good roads, parks, footpaths, cleanliness and basic civic infrastructure because they don't expect to get it outside. People are trying to escape the problems of India... while still living in India. I genuinely think this is where Indian real estate is headed. More townships. More self-contained ecosystems. More people choosing to live inside these bubbles because that's where they find the quality of life they're looking for.show more

I began my art journey in 2002 as a... mature student, applying to Leith School of Art for their portfolio preparation year and then to Edinburgh College of Art for the 5 year MA Fine Art program. I was 38 years old at my graduation. My classmates called me 'Grandpa Jones', seriously. 😂 I spent the next 7 years working 3 or 4 jobs/100+ hours a week (waitering, art tutoring, charity director, Airbnb host) so I could pay for my very expensive painting habit and paint enough for an annual solo exhibition (that I had to organise and pay for myself for most of them as no commercial galleries were interested in QR code/AR tech infused paintings)... and every year but one I lost money. I was my accountants biggest loser over and over and over. 😅 So, from 32 to nearly 50 years old with my art career being a horrendous detriment to my financial future I questioned my life decisions... daily. But I never gave up. In fact, it was the opposite. With every rejection letter, with every let down and disappointment, with every financial loss, with every exhibition that didn't sell enough to even cover the costs of paint, canvas and framing, I pushed even harder. I worked even harder. I looked for new ways to differentiate myself from all the other artists around me and I invested everything I had into me and my future. Fortune favours the brave. If you're willing to put in the time, the work and the risk you will be rewarded. It may take 5 years, 10 years, 20 years or more but eventually, if you keep working and taking the risks that the rest are not willing to take (creatively and financially) you will succeed. Don't blame others for your failure. Take the knock backs, take the disappointments, take the rejections, and use them to drive you. If you are willing and able to commit 100% for however long it takes, you will succeed. This is a fact and I'm proof of that. Stop listening to the FUD, stop listening to those who don't believe in you. Show them how wrong they are. Again, it may take years, even decades, but fortune favours the bold and this is undeniable. Will you give up or will you keep pushing, learning, growing, expanding your ideas and your creative output? If you are, I look forward to seeing what you're doing, what you're creating and where you'll be in the next few years and beyond. Comment below and then connect with me in 2 years and tag me. I want to see how many of you will still be here working, grinding and creating art regardless of bear or bull markets. Artwork: EthGirl - Genesis NFT & collab with the great ᗩᒪᎧTTᗩ ᗰᎧᑎEY❂show more