Neurotechnology for people with disabilities

similar boat 7 years ago. Luckily, I found a data science job that barely covered by rent and family expenses for 12hrs a day. In addition I had to freelance for a 2 to 3 hours everyday to make ends meet - basically sleep, work, repeat - rough patch - you will get through it. Hold tight, wishing you good luck!

I’m creating a series of video tutorials to get people started on neurotechnology and brain-computer interface design. You can check out the playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVBm6iuVBaQ&list=PLJYQoZIKDl...

My ultimate goal is to bring brain signals to the browser and develop neuro-apps, all in public. I share updates weekly on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/mind-tether

This is interesting. Maybe this could help bring back some long form tv, which in my opinion is better than watching TikTok which consumes our dwindling attention span

1. Identify target audience - who is buying? This could be through experimentation with different channels, messages etc. One starting point could be people who are reading scanned pdfs on kindle, maybe? (I've struggled with this personally)

2. Find out when/why are the buying your service. (Maybe because they really want to read a book, but digital copy isn't available)

3. Start imagining the purchase cycle as a funnel. For 1 paid customer you would need something like 50 people using your free/trial features (50 is an example, you can talk to founders in similar niche to get a better sense)

4. Define what the qualitative and quantitative outcome after using your service and double down on it - do this to an extent that your customer becomes an ardent advocate of your offering.

5. Get a sales/marketing person to help. You don't have to do it all yourself.

Hope it helps in some way. Best of luck

This is great advice, thanks! Since you mention the kindle niche, what did you do when you encountered that frustration? I feel like the people I actually had in mind when building this are not technical enough to realize they even have a problem that can be easily solved.

I've encountered this problem with PDFs in general, where the pages are images instead of text. I've learnt to search for the same book/document in epub/mobi format. If I don't find it after searching the web, I will still use the PDF version - either squinting my eyes to read the tiny text or change the orientation to landscape mode (so that the image is a little bit bigger). If none of this works / its too much hassle - I use laptop/phone to read the document

To be honest though, I am not sure if this a pain-point enough for me to pay for a service to convert it to text. In my mind, these are edge-cases.

This is such a fascinating aspect of the brain. It feels as if there is some kind of "latent/subconscious" thinking involved and the 'conscious' thought only rises to the surface when the trigger arises.

I've had a similar feelings of awe about our own brain during dreams at times. I could talk in a different language, come up with tunes I have never heard before, create visual art in my head etc.

The same extends to some of.my psychedelic trips. There could be a possible connection here.

Would love to see more BCI experiments on both fronts.

Even drummers using their four limbs tend to make weird faces or open their jaws wide while playing.

It should have something to do with dexterity, coordination and limb independence I believe. I can still play simple beats without making faces. But I wouldn't be able to play complex polyrhythms without making faces.

When I play guitar or mandolin my mouth often moves in some sort of way as if keeping time. I recorded a video one time and noticed it. Now I'm a little self-conscious about it but it's a bit relieving to hear it's pretty common / innate.

Maybe routing commands just to the limbs becomes too complicated and the commands spill over to related routes.

Or maybe the brain is too busy with the limbs and relinquishes face control which starts acting on random signal flows.

You can see this in other situations, for example when you are in a high impact situation you stop caring about "how you look".

Or lift heavy weights.

Amazing app. I am trying to learn dutch with this. It pushes you to converse in the language of choice. I also tried to get translation in english. Could be a good feature to understand new words and form better sentences.

Thanks man! Yes, definitely - will look at adding translation

If we can predict lightning in an area, can this lead to an alternate source of energy? What are the contextual, technical difficulties for implementing such a system?

Okay so found this from MIT website here:

The problem is that the energy in lightning is contained in a very short period of time, only a few microseconds. Further, to obtain that 1 million joules, one would have to handle a voltage of several million volts.

But even at 1 million joules, the typical lightning strike contains only about ¼ of a kilowatt-hour of power, which is not enough to make much difference on our electric bill.

Whoa. I have been struggling with this issue for a long time. My gut has turned very sensitive and bloated. I could have a hard day even if I have strong coffee. Let alone skip a meal. My medical diagnosis doesn't show any problem with my stomach or gut. I used to smoke and there used to be times when it was stressful at work and I believed it was natural for anyone these days. After 2 years of stoppinh smoking + taking care of my diet + medicines it is still not gone completely. It's uncomfortable to live with this.