Benyam Ephrem @notbenyam Twitter profile

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Benyam Ephrem

3 months

Had a great time shooting this for the @Vapi_AI team. What a view! 🖼️🌁 If you’re building a Voice AI application give them a try.

Vapi

@Vapi_AI

3 months

We’re the founders of Vapi. We're building Voice AI Infrastructure for the Internet. Build, test and deploy voicebots in minutes rather than months. Here's our story 🧵👇

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 months

I wanted to see if I could build a simple phone ordering assistant w/ Llama 3 70B (on @GroqInc ) & @Vapi_AI to order for me from a restaurant called Indian Oven here in San Francisco. Here's how it went: Demo 0:00 Picking Up the Food 1:31 Debrief 2:32

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

This is my last week @Twitter as a returning Software Engineering intern. I just want to make a thread to shout-out and thank some people. The organization has changed the course of my life.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

3 months

I tested @hume_ai 's demo for ~1hr in (an attempt) at normal conversation. Here's how things went (▻▻1.5-2x recommended): 1:19 — Conversation Start 6:23 — Reconnecting w/ Old Friends 19:56 — Solitude & Loneliness 23:31 — Videography 24:51 — How Do I Come Off? 34:24 —…

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

3 years

Introducing v1.0 of Social Checkout, an API for social sales at checkout. Social Checkout lets your customers redeem discounts at checkout for inviting others they know to purchase: . Appreciate any support!

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

15 days

In the past week or two I've been working on a small site for voice AI developers called "Vocalized". I'm open-sourcing the site (& looking for contributors ☻), all links below.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

3 months

I tested @Vapi_AI 's homepage demo for ~1hr in (an attempt) at normal conversation. Here's how things went:

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

@zachperret now inspired to move there

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

Full launch coming ~late-Jan. At launch we will have 110+ lessons, ~40+ hours of instruction, & support 8 programming languages. 2023 will be a busy year. The focus is quality, quality, quality.

Interview Pen

@InterviewPen

1 year

✨👶🖊️✨

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

Who would’ve thought. Just a kid.

Back To Back SWE

@backtobackswe

4 years

Thank you. To everyone.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

Growing ~750-1,000 subscribers a day, breaking 4,000 subs today. Building a team to tackle System Design while I lead Data Structures + Algorithms. Long road ahead for product, a lot of work to be done in partnerships + organic channels. 🫡

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 month

You can now split test @retellai vs @Vapi_AI on (working on surfacing model + voice configs to make the comparison more configurable/fair). Planning on adding integration for @usebland , @hume_ai , & @play_ht agents next.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@NBCOlympics @olympicchannel I thought I missed the Olympics for a hot minute

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

16 days

@patriciamou_ had hope until "South San Francisco" 😭

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 years

You can’t force genuine hard work. You will work 8-11 hour days, 6-7 days a week, when work is like a video-game. You are excited to play the next level, see the next screen come to life. How will I make that work? The challenges bug you. You solve as your eyes shut for sleep.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

Interning at Twitter in 2019 & 2020 was a pivotal experience in my life as an engineer. @couch somehow picked me to join the team & @magusnn played a core role in shaping my thinking around software engineering in a way I had never experienced before. (and @masotime is just the…

noah

@magusnn

1 year

today is my last day at @twitter , after 7 years i can only look back at my time here and feel grateful. twitter took a chance on me, hired at SWE 2. the people at twitter will forever make it what it is, i grew only because of the support of the amazing people around me.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

6 months

@gaborgurbacs @rohindhar *very far outside of Baltimore in the really nice foresty northern parts This is far outside of what you think of as proper Baltimore city. Beautiful during the fall -- multicolored, fragarant trees. Tranquil. Even Baltimore city grows on you after a while. It's a chill place,…

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 months

not tech related but filmed Fisher @ Cow Palace last night 😇

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

7 months

Really enjoying deploying to @Railway so far, seems like the perfect level of abstraction for most applications + has many sweet features. We really need a better blue-chip alternative to Heroku today. Heroku was part of an era where the problem was just being solved - now the…

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

7 months

@sama

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@couch aka Bill “How Are You Feeling” Couch, thanks for being a very good manager and a very calm human being. You are always as cool as a 🥒 and got me into biking which has made me less fat.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@backtobackswe hits 100k YT subs in 5 days. As much as I try to suppress excitement at non-critical outcomes (this really is a vanity metric), I'm pretty excited. Nearly 2 years in the making.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@anna1go @amesimmons Thanks for interviewing me in December 2018. Twitter was the last place I ended up interviewing and I had no other offers that year. I got lucky to somehow get an offer and would’ve never started @backtobackswe if I didn’t get a job

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

11 months

@thewizardlucas @pie6k takes ~2-3 years into programming to hit this point

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

7 months

@thedulab [I’ve realized] If you’re living in any major US city (NY, LA, SF, DC, etc), it doesn’t make sense to micromanage your burn as long as the major expenses (rent+food+insurance) sit between mentally pre-defined bounds. If you burn $3-5k/mo (as a single person) (in total), the…

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

Introducing . Really proud of this. It took every ounce of my creative energy. The eng, the design coordination, the content. It is the best product I have ever made (to-date). We have a vibrant roadmap for 2023, lets make it ✨ h a p p e n ✨.

Interview Pen

@InterviewPen

1 year

Introducing @interviewpen , a better way to prepare for Software Engineering interviews. Get unlimited access to a growing library of the best technical explanations on the Internet. Code along to problems, get 1-1 support, & master the fundamentals. 👉

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 months

Full video on Y o u T u b e:

Voice AI Orders Indian Food (Llama 3 70B, Groq, VapiAI, & ElevenLabs...

Try Vapi: https://vapi.aiTry ElevenLabs Voice Cloning: https://elevenlabs.io/voice-cloningVisit Indian Oven: https://indianovensf.comI wanted to see if I cou...

www.youtube.com

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

(end the thread 😳)

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@jadeloyzaga aka “RWEB Momma Bear”, thanks for being an exceptional mentor this summer. Thanks for setting aside that time to guide me and help me. You did a great job and I’m praying my code doesn’t blow up when I’m gone.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 months

working on an experiment 🧪🥼

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

Working at Twitter on the team taught me things I’d never have learned. I saw what it is like and the level of effort it takes to produce features for a global audience. All the while having my reasoning tested by other experienced professionals.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

My first summer in San Francisco was pretty cool. I got to see and explore a place I’d only ever heard about (Silicon Valley). Really was something special.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 month

Working on getting a real-time measure of when user speech stops, surprisingly difficult in the browser (to stay sensitive down to <100ms). Using the Web Speech API's "speechend" event right now, there's 3 issues: (1) Isn't very reliable due to permissions/security. Can turn off…

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@masotime aka Ben “There’s A Doc For That” Goh, I have never met someone so good at thinking/engineering and documenting processes ever. If there was a FIFA for engineers, you’d be like a 94 rating (with great defense). You are the best in the game!!!

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@kpk thanks for having an interesting accent to listen to and responding to my uninteresting Tweets.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

It's beautiful when software just works. Written well - takes on a life of its own. Straight-forward to maintain, straight-forward to reason about.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@Twitter is a fantastic organization really focused on the organization part as much as the product part. And I think I may end it here 👋

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@NatGeo That squirrel should inspire a new meme

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

When working with the right people, you just fly. Problems are solved before they are brought up. You see what you couldn’t see before. Everything just works. When working with the wrong person/people, everything is a grind, problems are everywhere, progress is slow.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

10 months

Just booked a one-way flight to SF 🫡🌉

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 years

“How to get a job at Google” - someone who didn’t get a job at Google

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

7 months

There is a joy in putting creations into the world that others find useful, necessary, & enjoyable. I need to rediscover that creative energy within my work.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

10 days

Just saw a Waymo mess up for the first time in 9 months living here. Tiny traffic roundabout (in Presidio), had right-of-way (moving in roundabout), but came to a full stop for a car waiting to enter. More so a comment on how good self-driving has become. Worst I’ve seen is a…

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

8 months

@earthquakesSF flet huge sudden jolt (SOMA)

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

One of the most helpful lessons I've learned from programming for the past 3-4 years is to deeply think of the "contracts" that each layer of logic/the system is offering and signing with other layers of logic/the system.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

First time in months.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@magusnn aka Noah “Source of Truth” Jorgensen, thanks for being really good at your job and mentoring me my first internship. I always quietly watched what you did/do and tried to learn from it. You always find solutions to things quickly, nothing stops you.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 month

When Siri gets a refresh 90%+ of AI voice hardware startups will get wiped out. There will always be a market for fun, niche, hardware. The market being competed for is mobile computing. Everyone has an iPhone in their pocket. Can a layer of value be built fast enough...wide…

Retell AI

@retellai

1 month

👀Check out a quick demo of this @ycombinator candidate: Meet your next personal assistant! Learn more at

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@BillHe3 aka (actual first name I can’t pronounce) “The 🐐” He, that first summer I was a very scared person and you made me feel more comfortable. The summer before I was a lifeguard and I had no idea how organizations worked, let alone programming for a large organization.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

Note to self, unique 'key' prop is really important

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

5 months

Sitting in Alta Plaza park just thinking. Very pretty day, good energy.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

I would skate around the city on my e-longboard and just explore. Often I’d need to find random charging spots. The last picture is some random school I snuck into to charge. I’m not proud of it.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

👀👀👀

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 months

A very good intro example of concurrency is equipment use at a gym. Concurrency →”working-in” on a set advances 2 workouts (in a time interval), but not at the exact same moment Parallelism → dozens of workouts around you are advancing at the exact same moment as yours…

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

Drone stuck 20m high in tree. Rescue mission, go.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

Same for Marina (couldn’t find your handle), @CharlieCroom , & @equanimityhow

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

Something I've been hacking on the past couple of days, has been quite exciting. The interactive guidance really does help a lot and make learning fun. We'll keep refining the experience every day.

Interview Pen

@InterviewPen

1 year

Introducing Teaching Assistant - get interactive guidance & help from context-aware AI briefed on your code, the problem statement, any errors you are facing, potential solutions, & more (eventually video transcripts as well). Try it out & join today 👉

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

The company will survive as long as your morale survives. When you are starting-out, you have nothing but your morale to keep you going. Eventually customers & revenue come along and propel you forward to PMF. Until then, it is just you & your mind. A tricky place to be.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

7 months

No greater joy than deleting a lot of code.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

3 years

Just spent $17.42 for a burger and fries at Five Guys 😑

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

8 months

A recurring thought recently. Right now many engineers are thinking from the chat-upwards rather than starting top-down & giving the user the most ideal interface for the problem being solved. The user shouldn’t even know AI chat/interfacing is involved. Interface thinking…

Garry Tan

@garrytan

8 months

Chat is overrated as a user experience. Good visualization, information hierarchy, copy, call to actions is underrated as a user experience. Multiply all of these effects by 10X when you have the power of an LLM involved. Start with great UX, not a chatbot.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 years

One of the greatest social skills might just be remembering people’s names after meeting them. Then using it back to them, or later when saying hi. Especially when drinking is involved (hard-mode).

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

@_rchase_ @Ersafcr7 @hostifi_net Love these posts, always so wholesome. I'd love to see a site or feed of stories like this - remote international teams that meet for the first time after years working together & having achieved a lot. Magical.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

Every person I know on LinkedIn my age has gone from from “Software Engineer Intern” several times to “Software Engineer” 😳

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 years

Before this is lost to history: in the winter of 2020 I wrapped my M3 to go from white -> matte black. Materials + tools: ~$500, time: ~6-7 days (~5-6 hrs a day).

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

I love the internet. The gift of this lifetime.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

☀️☀️

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 years

Two major lessons keep ringing in my mind. (1) Your energy levels must be protected at all costs. Sleep, gym, mindfulness of your internal state of being, socializing. This is the seed of things moving forward in your life. (2) Focus. What one focuses on consistently will …

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

I feel like the official “you are an adult in the very large and confusing world” line is being crossed for me rn

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 months

housemate: “Got any fun plans for the weekend?” me: “I’ll be working on realtime streaming from LLM to ElevenLabs to the browser probably.” housemate: “cool cool…”

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@paularmstrong you look very good at your job. I have been watching from afar 👀👀 Your cat taking up half of your Slack profile photo will always be etched in my mind

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

I’ve learned a lot and walk away a better thinker and engineer. I will take these skills and these past 2 summers with me forever.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 months

Just got a bike. San Francisco’s hills are really hard — going up…and coming down… Huge headwinds today too.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@nealkhosla I think this is because of background. If you are a software engineer, (generally) derivatives and limits aren’t too practical. If you are a mechanical engineer, that’s probably way more important. In a high level business role statistics is way more important.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 months

Going to cycle around the hills of SF until life purpose becomes clear.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

The older you get, the less you try to change people’s minds.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

The internet always has room for something valuable.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

@mijustin washington, dc

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

6 months

Here are 4 useful keyboard shortcuts that help me program faster ⚡ (hopefully you find one you didn't know): 1) Multi-cursor — [⌥ + click] (0:20) 2) Duplicate line(s) — [⇧ + ⌥ + ↑ or ↓ arrow] (1:41) 3) Moving line(s) — [⌥ + ↑ or ↓ arrow] (2:22) 4) Hop Cursor — [⌥ or…

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 months

There’s a lot of people who just don’t tweet & are silently building great companies with overwhelmingly clear product-market fit.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

Most of creating an actual desire to exercise is effectively warming-up. Jog a mile, enter the flow state. Only when in that state does the genuine desire for movement arise (when you’re “cold-starting” into an exercise routine). Routine & discipline only carry you later (1-2…

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 month

@usebland is now live on Vocalized. All models have the fastest end-to-end latency I've experienced in any platform (sub-400ms replies w/ Turbo), but all models seem to struggle with intelligence / naturalness. You can try it yourself here →

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

2 years

Life has so many other facets beyond resource accumulation. The issue is that accumulating resources is central to survival + identity & can span a lifetime. We get lost in the race. The intersect between what others want and what we want to do rarely overlaps joyfully.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

Past 9 months have been brutal, felt like an eternity of nothingness & loss. Next 12 months are looking bright, as we enter the market.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

We swiftly got this out! 📱😮🏃💨

Interview Pen

@InterviewPen

1 year

Swift is now live on @InterviewPen 🏃📱 Swiftly go to to join today 🤲

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

29 days

Anything near foundational doesn't make sense to do anymore w/o a world-class research team. Big tech will mop up what's left in open source (eventually). More & more talent will skew to applications. It's the only safe place to be.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

25 days

@anothercohen Schott NYC makes great jackets, will last a lifetime

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

If someone made a mask that also kept the face cool (somehow reacting with the humidity created by stopping air outflow) that’d probably do really well.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

@mxmzb @rauchg @vercel Mo👏no 👏re 👏po 👏

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 months

Double rainbow over Alta Plaza park. 🌈🌈

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

@EdDaWord When I first started coding it took 2 people to explain what a for loop was to me:

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

I don’t know what is next. I am thinking nightly on it. I just know if I every do something next I want it to be big and with magnificent people. People are everything. Seriously. The substrate of anything great.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

@keegan_mcnamara I remember talking to you about this at the last Contrary retreat, looks great

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

4 years

There’s probably many more people, but I tried my best. I don’t normally get sentimental with it, but there ya go. Thanks to all 🙏

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

3 years

I was reluctant to adopt React Hooks, but they are a pleasure to work with. So many nice properties follow from only dealing in functions vs classes.

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

We are looking for a System Design instructor lead for @InterviewPen . Do you know someone passionate about teaching & system design? High-energy, articulate + well-spoken, can break down complicated ideas into simple step-by-step lessons? Experience w/ designing systems at scale…

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Benyam Ephrem

@notbenyam

1 year

I just want to make my art. Everything I do - be an expression of realizing art (of whatever form).

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