Magnitude and Direction — Issue #173
Ultra-fast charging, the ultimate "TSA PreCheck", and cold Cold War research
Welcome to the latest installment of my bi-weekly newsletter, covering some of my favorite new developments in the fields of biotech, data science, engineering, and more. If this is your first issue, it's great to have you! For everyone else, thanks for coming back!
If you like this email, forward it to a friend (I can't encourage this enough) and if you're seeing it for the first time, subscribe here to get it regularly. As always, if you come across something cool you'd like to share, send me a note.
Notes
The relentless schedule of friends’ weddings is clearly getting to me because, once again, this newsletter is going out later than anticipated (I completely forgot yesterday was an “M&D Friday”). Hopefully things will be cooling down a little bit soon and, in the meantime, this edition’s font is called Eater.
Jobs
No new job opportunities in this edition, check earlier editions for previous posts.
Hardware, Prototyping, and Fabrication
⚡ Soon, you might be able to charge your phone in less time that it takes to make pasta.
🔁 I still think the PortabeeGO was the gold standard of portable 3D printing, but the Positron (which I believe I featured here once before, back when it was in the development stage) is another great entry into the category and definitely employs one of the most unique printing methods I've ever seen.
🛠️ This is a store I will definitely be checking out, should I ever find myself in Denver.
Software and Programming
🤖💬😂 Much like people, not all AI models are equally funny.
📊 The next great language for writing web apps is... SQL? (In all serious, probably not, but this is a pretty cool innovation for the dataviz space.)
✅ A few editions back, I shared the website 1 Million Checkboxes. That website ended up going super-viral and inspired some pretty creative interactions from a small, but dedicated community of creative "hackers".
✈️ Speaking of hackers, a pair of white-hat hackers were briefly able to skip every line in the airport (and expose a pretty serious security vulnerability along the way).
Science, Engineering, and Biomedicine
👁 If you're interested in AR, but less interested in the headsets that go along with it, this new approach to fabricating contact lenses may be of interest.
🔵🟦🔷 Apparently, we have a decent bit of discrepancy in how we see blues. Is My Blue Your Blue exploits that phenomenon by zeroing in on shades between green and blue until you don't even know what's real anymore.
🫥 Cheeto dust may make your fingers more visible, but it apparently makes mice skin invisible.
Mapping, History, and Data Science
🕹️ The pixel art of arcade games of yore was never meant to be blocky - it was a design choice that reflected the physical limitations and quirks of CRT TVs.
🔬🚀🧊 Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were some crazy experiments happening up in the Arctic during the Cold War.
Events and Opportunities
Monday, 9/30 The Entrepreneur's Journey. Join SOSV's IndieBio, Catalytic Impact Foundation (CIF), and Orrick on Monday, September 30th for a panel discussion on the entrepreneur's journey. Following the panel, there will be general networking & drinks/light snacks.
Tuesday, 10/1 DeSciNYC - Dr. Amanda Vondras on Winegrape Genomics. Learn about the grapevine genome and its role in advancing research, winemaking, and understanding viticulture and biodiversity. Dr. Amanda Vondras is a biologist that studies genome structure, diversity and function. Her primary expertise is vitis vinifera, the wine grape!
Tuesday, 10/1 Explore the 'Now, Near & Next' in Health & Biomedicine. Delve into what's 'Now, Near & Next' at the intersection of rapidly advancing technologies in healthcare and biomedicine. From AI, Big Data, and Robotics to Low-Cost 'Omics, Synthetic Biology, Digital Health, and Virtual Reality, discover how these innovations transform healthspan, diagnostics, therapies, and global health while improving access, equity, and outcomes. Special guest Chris Mason, Ph. D., a leading synthetic biologist at Weill-Cornell Medicine, joins The Cure to discuss his pioneering cutting-edge multi-omics research, which has involved everything from the sewers of NYC to the International Space Station.
Thursday, 10/3 Textbook Ventures' Accelerator Guide v.2 Release. Textbook Ventures, along with sponsors Banc of California, Withum Smith & Brown, welcomes you back to the lovely space of RISE by Barclays for the Textbook Ventures' Greater New York City Accelerator Guide for Founders 2024 v.2 release party and Accelerator Panel. The Textbook Ventures team is updating their guide to venture accelerator programs in the greater New York City area — a resource for founders and the startup community — by adding their new section on University Accelerators. You'll find all the information you could want on the startup and founder programs at Columbia, Cornell, NYU and more! The evening's panel will feature some of the very best of those running these accelerators at different universities to share how best to leverage them for your startup!
Thursday-Sunday, 10/10-10/20 Evolved 2024 Hackathon. Join Lux Capital, Evolutionary Scale & Enveda Bioscience in the second Bio x ML hackathon to drive forward the frontier of science. Build on top of the latest foundation models like ESM-3 (988 parameters) and proprietary datasets.
Monday, 10/14 NY Robotics Meetup. For their next meetup the NY Robotics group is partnering with NY Tech Alliance to showcase robotics with the worlds largest meetup group! Join both groups as they dive into the world of robotics innovation, featuring live demos, cutting edge projects, and insights from leaders in the field! This event will take place on Monday, October 14 at the amazing Civic Hall in Union Square.
DEADLINE Monday, 10/14 BioHack NYC 2024. Join Nucleate NYC and friends at the 2nd annual BioHack New York City: an AI-in-Bio hackathon that will bring together computer scientists and biologists to build AI/ML tools that will accelerate research in the life sciences. Intended to facilitate collaboration between computer scientists and biologists, BioHack NYC will feature speakers & mentors who are creating impact using AI in biology as well as datasets and other tools to help teams develop and build their ideas. The hackathon encourages using software and generative AI to create computational tools that will make the research/discovery process simpler and easier. You don't need an idea or to be an expert in AI or biology, being interested in either (or both) is enough!
🧠Friday & Saturday 11/1-11/2 The New York BCI Symposium. Join Mount Sinai BioDesign, the Mount Sinai Department of Neurosurgery, and some of the leading companies advancing brain-computer interface technology for the inaugural New York BCI Symposium. This two-day event will offer attendees a deep dive into the science, startups, and surgical techniques enabling one of the fastest growing and most cross-disciplinary fields in the life sciences and deep tech. The event will be hosted by a mix of leading startups (including Synchron and Precision Neuroscience) clinical institutional partners (including Mount Sinai, UPMC, CMU), federal regulatory organizations, and patient advocacy leaders. Keynotes, panels, and breakout sessions will be led by the world’s leading scientific, surgical, industry, and regulatory experts.
Early bird pricing will be available until the end of August, so be sure to register now!
Other events coming up you think I should know about? Let me know here!
Map of the Month
🛰️🔠 This edition's "map" uses landsat images to spell out words. (You'll get it when you see it)
Odds & Ends
💬🗨️🐤 This is what Twitter would have been like back in 1995.