We believe solving dexterous manipulation is one of the largest opportunities in robotics. That’s why we're thrilled to lead Eka Robotics’ Series A. Much of the world's physical economy still depends on people using their hands, and that work has been hard to automate because the real world is variable. @EkaRobotics has built a Vision-Force-Action model that combines visual perception with force feedback from its robotic hands. The model, sensing, and hardware are designed together, so the robot can use physical contact itself as information. If Eka’s approach works at scale, the implication is profound: robot experience can increasingly scale with compute rather than human labor. Pulkit Agrawal is one of the leading researchers in robot learning and a pioneer in computational sensorimotor learning through work at his Improbable AI Lab at MIT CSAIL. Tuomas Haarnoja co-created a foundational algorithms in modern reinforcement learning at Berkeley and later worked at Google DeepMind training complex humanoid behaviors. Congrats, @pulkitology, @haarnoja, and the Eka Robotics team! By @stuffyokodraws and @RaghuRaghuram

Caffeine makes you better at doing while making you worse at thinking. Yes, caffeine can increase dopamine release, elevate mood, improve alertness & reaction time. But its benefits are strongest for tasks requiring speed, not tasks requiring intellectual power. Research described by Stephen Cherniske — biochemist and author of Caffeine Blues — found that assembly-line type work can improve on caffeine while more complex reasoning gets worse. Michael Pollan — author and journalist, who abstained from caffeine for 3 months as part of his research for This Is Your Mind on Plants — noticed this firsthand when he drank coffee again for the first time. He described himself as compulsively getting things done, focusing on each task with single-minded intensity. “Another task suddenly demanded my attention: it was time to tackle my closet. This is not something I have ever done of my own free will, but at that moment I wanted nothing more than to take all my sweaters off the shelf and sort them into four piles.” That same trade-off shows up in memory research. In one study, non-habitual caffeine users received 0, 100, 200 or 400 mg of caffeine. As little as 100 mg increased false recall and false recognition — while true memory did not improve. Meaning, caffeine didn’t improve what they actually remembered. It increased the number of memories that weren't real. Another study gave subjects 100 mg before an auditory-verbal learning test. They listened to spoken word lists and were asked to recall them. The caffeine group recalled fewer words. Working memory shows the same pattern. Working memory is what you use to hold information in mind for a few seconds, like a phone number or a short list. A 2013 behavioral and fMRI study found that caffeine’s effects were more consistent with a detrimental effect at higher working-memory loads than with enhancement. The same pattern appears in creativity. In one experiment using caffeinated gum, creative fluency significantly decreased compared with placebo. The pattern is consistent: caffeine trades depth for speed. Caffeine makes you feel switched on. It makes you attack the task in front of you. But that is not the same as thinking better. For a founder, in the AI era, that distinction matters. Pushing through tasks is not the scarce skill. Judgment is.

Our design language has evolved since the last reveal: from S3XY to Cybertruck, Cybercab & Optimus Roadster is inspired by the SR-71 & F-35

Its Armageddon!! Great work @marceldabek

types of young vc investors i've met: > type 1): reads a shit ton of history & philosophy books and somehow has the oracle of truth to predict trends. > type 2): new grad + v plugged into college campuses. > type 3): ex mbb/ib, v sharp, most are cool but few can be robots.

Google DeepMind is building out a robotics lab in Cambridge, MA (near Boston). Aaron Saunders, who served as Boston Dynamics’ CTO until last year, posted on LinkedIn that’s he’s recruiting machinists, engineers, and researchers for the new hardware team. He’s already hired several former Boston Dynamics colleagues.

We’re combining our @TranscendMech / @vuecason LA Tech Week event with @DiscipulusVent on Wednesday, October 14th. Thanks to everyone who RSVP’d for the 12th! We’d love to have you join us on the new date! Updated details and RSVP: partiful.com/e/yPX7LJMsjTZHJ…