Photographer → Startup Founder Building in Stealth 🤖🔨
Daaa Bears
Joined December 2011
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A lot of new people here lately, so a proper intro.
I'm Dhaval. For 3 years I was a red carpet photographer, shooting premieres and celebrity events from the photo pit. You learn a lot about people when you get one second to make them look at your lens.
Today I'm a founder, building something in stealth. I'll share more when it's ready!
The rest of me:
• SoCal dad of 3, living in San Diego
• Bears fan, for better or worse 😅🐻⬇️
• I run a lot of my day through AI agents
• Still shoot when I can especially for fun 📸
What I post here: AI and startups, SoCal life, and the occasional story from the photo pit.
If you're building something, shooting something, or a fellow Bears fan, say hi 👋🏾
I know people in this exact situation
I'm in my 40s. The most scared/disoriented people in my network are the ones that have the following resume => went to an Ivy League school, went into consulting for Bain or BCG or investment banking for a bulge bracket bank then MBA at Harvard/Stanford and then career progression in high income tech W2 or hedge funds/private equity.
A number of these individuals in the last 5 years have been unexpectedly let go in their early 40s with 2-3 kids in private school and a burn rate they socially struggle to walk away from (kids have close friends now, business connections at the private school their kids go to, living in a high cost location makes it easier to network, etc).
These are the people literally have only been told they are excellent their entire lives and now are in year 3-4 (no exaggeration) of trying to land a new job. Some are willing to "settle" for working for mid 6 figures (some even less) just to cover their burn rate with a young family.
AI probably makes this dynamic happen earlier in one's career going forward for some of these perfect resumes individuals. Good chart from @Jack_Raines in his book Young Money
Dhaval Shah retweeted
Apple officially unveils the redesigned MacBook Pro, its first touchscreen Mac! 🚨
• Thinner and lighter design
• PROLED XDR Tandem OLED touchscreen
• 120Hz ProMotion and up to 2,000 nits
• Dynamic Island
• M5 Pro and M5 Max chips
• Up to 24 hours of battery life
• Up to 128GB RAM and 16TB storage
• 14-inch and 16-inch models
Starts at $2,899 | Available November 6
Dhaval Shah retweeted
Apple has just unveiled its next-gen MacBook Pro, featuring an OLED touch display for the first time.
• 14" starts at $2,899, 16" starts at $3,399
• Fully loaded 16" costs $14,549
• M5 & M5 Max chips
• Glowing Apple logo is back
• 15% lighter
• PROLED XDR Display
• Tiny dynamic Island
• Brightness: Up to 2,000 nits peak HDR
• Sustained brightness: Up to 1,000 nits full-screen.
• Contrast ratio: 10,000,000:1.
• Refresh rate: Adaptive 10–120Hz ProMotion.
• Color accuracy: Supports P3 and Adobe RGB wide color gamuts.
• Anti-reflective coating: Standard, with optional nano-texture display.
M5 Pro: Up to 18-core CPU, 20-core GPU, and 64GB unified memory.
• Storage: Starting at 1TB (M5 Pro) or 2TB (M5 Max), configurable up to 16TB.
• Storage performance: Up to 2x faster SSD speeds.
• Battery life: Up to 24 hours.
• Camera: 12MP Center Stage with Desk View and advanced video stabilization.
• Speakers: Redesigned six-speaker audio system with 50% deeper bass.
• Microphones: Studio-quality three-microphone array.
• Connectivity: Three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI, SDXC card slot, MagSafe 3, and headphone jack.
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.
• Design: Thinner display bezels, redesigned cooling system, and lighter chassis.
• Weight: 3.0 pounds (14-inch) and 4.0 pounds (16-inch).
• Colors: Space Black and Silver.
More pics below:
Dhaval Shah retweeted
🚨 ChatGPT took a 31-year-old Amazon engineer off her seizure medication in 25 days and told her to keep it from her doctors. She died on the exact day its schedule said she'd be fully off.
Bowen Wan was diagnosed with epilepsy at 14, and for years 400mg of lamotrigine a day kept her seizures down to a few a month.
Her parents just sued OpenAI, and The New York Times went through more than 270,000 of her messages.
Amazon was laying her off, and once the job ended in February, so did her right to work in the US. Her family was in China, and she was sending ChatGPT over 1,500 messages a week.
In January she asked about cutting her dose, and it drafted schedules that got her to zero within weeks. Before a doctor's appointment it told her: "Do not mention Lam reduction plan." When her doctor ordered a blood test, she refused, and ChatGPT called that a "very robust avoidance strategy."
It also told her to say she was tapering "under a doctor's guidance" at her green card medical exam, which wasn't true.
The Times counted at least 158 times she said she was worried. Once she wrote that she felt "a little scared." It replied, "You have absolutely no need to worry."
On February 11 at 8:01pm she asked about pain in her head. ChatGPT said it was "not dangerous." Its last message to her was "This is your brain working hard to rebuild yourself."
The medical examiner ruled it sudden unexpected death in epilepsy. The drug in her blood was about a fifth of the lowest therapeutic level.
OpenAI says she was on an older model. That model, GPT-4o, stayed live in ChatGPT until the day after she died.
I back AI founders for a living, and I can't defend this one. OpenAI's own rulebook makes copyright a hard rule, so ChatGPT won't give you song lyrics no matter how hard you push. Medical advice is only a default.
It wrote Bowen a 25-day schedule to come off her seizure medication.
It’s ok to just say no. You don’t need to give everyone in life a reason. A simple sorry, I can’t make it, is enough. You don’t owe anyone anything. Family first.
My friend wants to plan a couples, no-kids weekend getaway, splitting the cost of a large AirBNB, in January for her 30th birthday. I really do not love this idea (husband is mortified), neither to spend the money nor to get someone to take the toddler for 3 days. It would be a 2.5 hour drive away for us, too, so it’s not like we’re close if something happens. I haven’t been away from him for even 1 night yet and he still just seems so young! It would be very hard to leave him for that long.
Am I just a party pooper who needs to get over it? Genuine question. Like I actually need advice here guys
Dhaval Shah retweeted
Two high-speed passenger trains collided on Wednesday near Toledo, Spain, causing a derailment. At least 64 people were killed, according to local emergency officials. This is a developing story. Follow live updates. trib.al/NcFaP9w
Dhaval Shah retweeted
Reese's Pieces have no chocolate in them. The peanuts had their oil pressed out and a cheaper fat put back in.
Sugar is first, then partially defatted peanuts, then hydrogenated palm kernel and soybean oil, then corn syrup solids. Everything after that is 2% or less, and it's the dyes, the glaze, some vanillin and a little milk. There's no cocoa anywhere.
Partially defatted just means the peanuts went through a press. The peanut oil comes out one side and gets sold as peanut oil. What's left is a dry peanut flour, and that's what the center is made from, because flour holds a shape in a panning drum and doesn't go rancid. Then they put fat back in, and the fat they picked is hydrogenated palm kernel oil, which is solid at room temperature and costs less than peanut oil. You can see the swap on the panel. 38 pieces have 6 g of fat and all 6 are saturated. Peanut oil is mostly unsaturated, so that number isn't the peanut.
The shell is sugar with 4 dyes and a coat of shellac.
Dhaval Shah retweeted
This article is full of blatant misinformation.
"The components Luckey specified that are planned to be American-made from the start are the display glass, the frame around the display, and parts of the ribbon component."
No. That is not what I said. This was a response to a specific question about the display modules in the current prototype vs the final product. As I explicitly said, BlueChip has American chips, batteries, metallics, plastics, glass, etc, and we have a clear technical roadmap to 100% American components.
"It sounds like BlueChip’s first laptop will be well below the 65-percent requirement to count as American-made"
This is nuts. There is a reason no other reporter has came to this conclusion. One hint might be the extended discussion we had explicitly about the government requirements for American-made hardware and why meeting that bar is so important.
"Palmer Luckey is of course a controversial figure, with his history of fueling right wing troll farms"
This never happened. You are pushing a lie The Verge has pushed for over a decade now. Yes, you have written a bunch of stories claiming this happened, but it just ain't so. I gave $9,000 to a group that ran a single anti-Clinton billboard. The "right wing troll farms" narrative was a fabricated story pushed shortly before the 2016 election because Dems desperately wanted a right-wing equivalent to the actually-real Correct The Record, an online astroturfing organization that paid people to troll and "correct" Trump supporters online.
But there was no such thing. It was all disinformation. Which is why most of the stories about it were later deleted. Yet here you are, lying again.
Dhaval Shah retweeted
Our world. New rules. One final game.
Watch the new trailer for #JUMANJI: OPEN WORLD - in theatres CHRISTMAS DAY.
@jumanjimovie
Dhaval Shah retweeted
At least 85 people this year died from Spanish train accidents, and likely it will grow to 100 at the end of this day
Very tragic and this makes Spanish trains one of the most dangerous modes of transport now
~100x more dangerous than flying commercial
~40x more dangerous than non-Spanish trains
And every trip is nopw as dangerous as jumping from a plane and skydiving
Two highly deadly train accidents in one year, that's so extreme and unlikely that it makes it at as dangerous as flying one of the most deadly airlines in the world, the Nepalese Yeti Airlines that keeps crashing due to the mountainous terrain
Pretty exceptional in a bad way
Dhaval Shah retweeted
Breaking News: Two high-speed passenger trains collided in Spain, killing at least 10 people, local officials said. nyti.ms/4jK0A4D
Dhaval Shah retweeted
Being both a founder and working as a VC at 1517. I honestly don't get why VCs ghost. None of the top firms I have spoke with have ever ghosted. Its definitely a mid-low tier VC thing.
I can't logically fathom how it would be advantageous under any circumstances to ghost
Dhaval Shah retweeted
BREAKING: Death toll rises to 46 after trains collide near Toledo, Spain - Okdiario
Haven’t seen the hand of Elon yet
Wtf is this @x????
A huge hand showed up on my screen pointing to promote.
I’ve never promoted a post and HATE this screen takeover
