Making the world more optimistic. Read: https://nitter.cf/t.co/XYIad7r9b1 Listen: https://nitter.cf/t.co/TJ76aesK9N
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Not Boring retweeted
From a narrow simulator of pixels to a universal simulator of reality.
This essay is the result of multiple conversations with Packy about Runway’s long-time research thesis on world models.
It's one of the most extensive overviews of our work yet, going over the applications of world models in media, robotics, interfaces, and science.
Runway has been on a tear over the past couple months.
Viral HORSE Video contest
Solaris: the world's first Interface World Model
Praxis-1: open-weight World Action Model for robotics
Project Continuum: operating system research application built around real-time interfaces
A video model. An interface model. A robotics model. An operating system. Are you getting it? These are not separate pretrains. They’re different applications, built around the same General World Model backbone, with different post-training on top.
All of them are examples of what you can do when you can simulate any pixel.
So I asked co-CEO Anastasis Germanidis to co-write an essay with me explaining how video, interfaces, operating systems, and robotics all fit together, why video was the right starting point for World Models, where the world is heading if Runway’s bets are right, and whether or not, as someone who simulates worlds, he believes we’re living in a simulation.
Welcome to the future. Enjoy!
(Video, of course, made with Runway)
Not Boring retweeted
Runway has been on a tear over the past couple months.
Viral HORSE Video contest
Solaris: the world's first Interface World Model
Praxis-1: open-weight World Action Model for robotics
Project Continuum: operating system research application built around real-time interfaces
A video model. An interface model. A robotics model. An operating system. Are you getting it? These are not separate pretrains. They’re different applications, built around the same General World Model backbone, with different post-training on top.
All of them are examples of what you can do when you can simulate any pixel.
So I asked co-CEO Anastasis Germanidis to co-write an essay with me explaining how video, interfaces, operating systems, and robotics all fit together, why video was the right starting point for World Models, where the world is heading if Runway’s bets are right, and whether or not, as someone who simulates worlds, he believes we’re living in a simulation.
Welcome to the future. Enjoy!
(Video, of course, made with Runway)
What a week for the optimists.
Editor's Pick: Atomic Machines ft. @jeffholden & @cyantist
Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.
NEW DEEP DIVE
Airbound is my favorite kind of company.
Naman Pushp is making an all-in bet that the bottleneck to moving all movement - of goods and people - to the skies is cost.
He and Airbound are maniacal about lowering the cost per kg-km of flight. To lower it, they vertically integrate, devise novel uses of carbon fibers, and don’t allow themselves to get distracted by such trivialities as near-term commercial traction.
Their newest aircraft - the V2 - carries more than it weighs (Amazon, for comparison, carries 5 lbs with a 78 lb drone).
If they can make flight ridiculously cheap, the logic goes, cheaper than a delivery guy on a bike or scooter, then a car, then a van, then a truck, then a bus, then then then… then they can eat those vehicles’ markets, push an enormous amount of demand into just three platforms (Small, Medium, and Large), bring costs down even further, and create a world in which we fly wherever we want to go, and whatever we want flies to us.
Then, the world reshapes itself around flight, and the earth around humans.
This is a Deep Dive on how they plan to do it.
New @notboringco website is so cool. Scroll through a 3D world of the companies @packyM and click to read his deep dive.
Just an absolutely enormous week for the optimists.
I don't think there's ever been a bigger week of stories in the Weekly Dose, and it's the last week of summer!
Any Human Ever
World Models' big week
OpenAI Astra 6
Fervo signs largest geothermal deal with Google
Tesla launches Cybercab in Austin
First robotically harvested iceberg lettuce
NASA Roman Space Telescope launches 9mo early
PSI raises $58M to find new physics
+ science breakthroughs, Cattani on AI demand, Fable 5.1, Thrive Holdings' The Pioneers, and Nox Metals 75k new facility
WHAT A WEEK FOR THE OPTIMISTS
An American Engineer in China
notboring.co/p/an-american-e…
A couple weeks ago, one of my smartest friends said he was heading to China for a while to get a Fingerspitzengefühl for their energy, AI, and hardware ecosystems.
He asked if I'd want him to write up his field notes for not boring as he went deeper and deeper, from a wide-eyed tourist to factory tours to conversations with leaders of China's biggest tech companies (in his first 11 days, as it turns out).
I said of course, and this is the first installment.
An American Engineer in China
Field Notes #1: The First 11 Days
Including:
- Bambu's 3D printed gun display
- Getting into the right WhatsApp groups
- Somewhat odd Shenzhen art district murals
- Knockoff Yankees caps
- Integration aspirations
- And why you don't see a lot of helicopters in China.
More to come.
Not Boring retweeted
Another incredible write up by @packyM in @notboringco. 😍
I love the "capability cannon" framing here; what we're building is a series of capabilites that we can apply to many aspects of the energy economy.
Also love the features of some of the leaders @basepowerco. The team is really what makes all of this possible.
It is worthwhile of your time!
Last week, Base Power Company announced that it had raised $1B at $13B and launched Base Core.
The perfect opportunity to write Chapter 3 of the Book of Base.
This one is about bringing manufacturing in-house, capturing the High Ground, building a Capability Cannon, aiming it at new geographies and customer types, and where it might aim next.
There are only two companies I've written multiple Deep Dives on: Ramp and Base. I plan to write a Chapter every year until IPO, and then turn it into a book.
The ambition grows each time I come back, and now it's about as big as it gets. Base wants to become the world's largest energy company.
"Because if we are the best energy technology company, and energy is going through this kind of once in a generation demand inflection as the result of AI, the company who does this should become the world’s largest energy company and perhaps the world’s largest company," Zach told me. "But we'll see."
Base Power Company: Chapter 3
notboring.co/p/base-power-co…
Last week, Base Power Company announced that it had raised $1B at $13B and launched Base Core.
The perfect opportunity to write Chapter 3 of the Book of Base.
This one is about bringing manufacturing in-house, capturing the High Ground, building a Capability Cannon, aiming it at new geographies and customer types, and where it might aim next.
There are only two companies I've written multiple Deep Dives on: Ramp and Base. I plan to write a Chapter every year until IPO, and then turn it into a book.
The ambition grows each time I come back, and now it's about as big as it gets. Base wants to become the world's largest energy company.
"Because if we are the best energy technology company, and energy is going through this kind of once in a generation demand inflection as the result of AI, the company who does this should become the world’s largest energy company and perhaps the world’s largest company," Zach told me. "But we'll see."
Not Boring retweeted
By happy accident, I interviewed HT the day after he published this article, so I got the chance to ask him about it.
RT @packyM: I had fun chopping it up with HT around his Q2 review and his (controversial) essay on the markups game.
We got into real ques…
This quoted post is unavailable.
July 23rd in business history through the decades:
1976: Steve Jobs writes a $4.01 check to RadioShack for Apple 1 parts. Apple Computer Company was 4 months old.
In other news:
- A federal court issued its decision in Purex's antitrust suit seeking more than $500 million in treble damages from Procter & Gamble over its acquisition of Clorox.
- Congress passed a public-service jobs bill authorizing roughly 200,000 jobs, protecting another 90,000 state and local positions, and authorizing $700 million for wastewater projects. Funding still depended on later appropriations.
2006: Stocks Jump as Bernanke Suggests Fed Hike Pause
In other news:
- The Dow finished the week at 10,868.38, up 129.03 points or 1.2%. The S&P 500 gained 0.3% to 1,240.29.
- Nasdaq fell 0.8% to 2,020.39, its lowest close in more than a year.
- Weak results from Intel and Dell cooled the rally; better reports from Apple, Motorola, and Google could not keep Nasdaq out of the red.
- Oil rebounded late in the week as conflict in the Middle East kept energy risk in the price.
2016: Stocks Rise on Investor Demand for Telecom and Utility Dividends as G20 Finance Ministers Gather in Chengdu
In other news:
- The S&P 500 gained 9.86 points, or 0.5%, to a record 2,175.03 on Friday, July 22—the closing tape available on the morning of July 23.
- The Dow added 53.62 to 18,570.85. Nasdaq rose 26.26 to 5,100.16. All three recorded a fourth consecutive winning week.
- Southwestern Energy jumped 9.5% after reporting a smaller-than-expected loss and raising its production forecast. American Airlines gained 4% despite lower earnings.
- Sterling fell and global stocks softened as post-Brexit UK purchasing-manager data pointed toward a possible 0.4% third-quarter contraction.
- G20 finance ministers gathered in Chengdu.
Not Boring retweeted
I've been hearing great things about Jordan Black and Senra for three years, and I was a little confused because wire harnessing does't seem sexy on the surface, but then you dig in and you realize that, for one thing, nothing turns on without them.
They're often the thing holding up production of everything from satellites to drones to F-35s, and that the problem is only going to get worse, because US aerospace and defense demand is booming while the skilled wire harness technicians are retiring.
OK, so automate it, right?
But you can't automate it, because wire harnesses are bespoke, low-volume, high-mix, 3D, bendy, and floppy, among other tricky attributes. There are parts of the process that you can plug better tools into, but making wire harnesses for A&D needs skilled humans.
So what Senra is doing instead is giving human workers superpowers - software, processes, machines, work instructions, the right parts at the right time.. everything they need to do the job well. It's training up a new skilled workforce.
Turns out, skilled assembly is one of the biggest blockers to American reindustrialization, and Senra is the best bet to unblock it.
Jordan Black, who ran wire harnessing among other things at SpaceX, is pulling together an all-star team, including many ex-SpaceX people who do not need to work anymore, to fix this really big problem, create jobs, and power the American manufacturing machine.
Jordan and I wrote an essay about it together.
There's always more optimism in the Extras.
ft. @alephneuro
