Hi Fact Finder,
since you seem to be taking a dig at
me here (I couldn’t find any other post that matches your description, so I assume you must have meant my January 28 post), let me explain my reasoning once again:
What is true is that I did infer from the first of Elias Asbrede’s LinkedIn posts mentioning Brainchip that most likely he has no in-depth knowledge of neuromorphic computing and is “possibly just an enthusiastic shareholder”, as this youthful Brainchip advocate appearing out of nowhere did not mention Rain AI at all in connection with suggesting Sam Altman to look into neuromorphic computing in general and into Brainchip in particular, as if he hadn’t been aware that the Open AI CEO has already been personally invested in Rain AI for years.
Besides, neither his LinkedIn posting history up to then nor his work experience gave any indication that he had boarded the Neuromorphic Glacier Express long before his online outburst of praise - as
@JoMo68 had noticed as well, he has a background in hospitality, but has since mainly worked in marketing & sales at companies dealing with IT-Services and IT-Consulting, and nowadays appears to be focussing on how to enhance sales with the help of AI / GenAI.
His Damascene awakening regarding the benefits of Edge AI and neuromorphic technology seems to be rather recent: between February 2019 and at least April 2023 he was still marketing cloud-related solutions (at Oracle, Diso AG as well as T-Systems). And it has meanwhile been confirmed by
@chapman89 (who told us he had chatted with Elias Asbrede) that he is indeed a BRN shareholder. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he was also a poster or silent reader here on TSE.
However, in that same post I literally wrote
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and I posted screenshots of both his LinkedIn profile’s recent employment history and the T-Systems Wikipedia article for those readers not aware that they are a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. So was Elias Asbrede really “sort of dismissed here because it was revealed he might be a Brainchip holder?”, as you claim? I don’t think so.
But hang on, somehow your post doesn’t add up anyway…
Either you DIDN’T read my post at the time - but then why would you say someone “dismissed” him for being just a shareholder (although that does not accurately describe what I said about him), or you DID read it after all, but still credited
@IloveLamp for “a very significant reveal” ten days later, namely that Elias Asbrede works for T-Systems (no offence to you,
@IloveLamp, as contrary to what FF insinuates, I don’t have an issue with people posting the same stuff again).
As for your Feb 22 reply to me: I really don’t want to drag this argument out in form of a ping-pong match, but I obviously feel the need to refute the allegations against me and set the record straight as well as also turn the spotlight on your “I trust my memory” fallacy… Sorry, but the way you responded, you asked for it! As I’ve said before, don’t dish it out, if you can’t take it!
Despite the topic of my last post addressed to you being your inability to back up your claim while at the same time criticising others for failing to do so, you deflected from your own shortcomings by singling out a side remark of mine in parentheses aimed at you directly, and distorted it by insinuating things I never said or thought. In a recent post aimed at @Fabricated Lunacy you claimed that you “hate broad brush statements without references” and are “biased towards facts not false exaggerations to make positive or negative points”. As others have pointed out before me, you do like to employ the latter all too often, though.
“You seem to think….You also seem to think… You also seem to believe…” Wrong on all counts! No, of course I do NOT expect everyone to read every single of my posts, catalogue the references, constantly credit me etc. I don’t manage to read every single post here either (who does?! My best bet would be Esq. 111
) and many posts are way too technical for me anyway or simply not of interest. Believe it or not, I don’t read all of your posts either (#cue collective gasp from the FFFanclub#).
Over the past couple of days, I have been trying to catch up with those posts I missed during my kids’ carnival holidays (they get a whole week off school), and often I will work myself backwards or discover resp. revisit older posts, when I do my research. Some posts I will miss altogether, others I just skim over initially, intending to read them in detail later, but sometimes I simply forget. That kind of post-hopping is totally normal, as presumably everyone will agree. And I am sure I, too, have been “guilty” of posting stuff that was shared here before. I do, however, try to make it a point to use the search function before I write my posts and also like to credit others when I build on their research. Of course the search function only works with text, and info that was posted as a screenshot or an image won’t show up. And I agree that some posts undoubtedly deserve to be reposted as refreshers from time to time, for the benefit of both regular and new readers. Having said that, I consider it superfluous to post the same hot-off-the press information multiple times in direct succession.
So to sum it up, no, I don’t have an issue in general with several people posting the same thing - as you correctly said, other posters may have discovered the information somebody shared on TSE independently somewhere else. Surely this has happened to a lot of us numerous times - it absolutely has to me. Nevertheless, I wish the search function were to be utilised more frequently.
I am genuinely sorry for your eye condition, but those recent posts I was thinking of when I made that side remark were actually not the kind of small print, ultra-long ones (like this one, which I trust you will be reading on your PC), but comparatively short ones, which included large screenshots, such as the likes of me revealing that the Dominican Republic YouTuber Chris Mendez is working for Arduino or that the aforementioned Swiss LinkedIn poster waxing lyrical about Brainchip is a T-Systems employee. I was fine with
@IloveLamp posting about Elias Asbrede and T-Systems again ten days later, but when you then suddenly praised these new posts about T-Systems being Asbrede’s employer and that they are part of Deutsche Telekom “a very significant reveal”, I just had the gut feeling you wanted to spite me - maybe I was wrong, in that case I apologise. However, your abovementioned “dismissed” post makes me think I may have been spot on.
But now let’s get back to the real issue at hand:
Your sarcastic statement that you are happy for me to win the guessing game totally misses my point, which was about you applying double standards when you belittle other posters for making unsubstantiated claims and for not being able to come up with any proof to back them up, while at the same time behaving just like those you criticise.
In my initial post, I had asked you to substantiate your claim that “Imperial College researchers are deeply engaged with Intel and publish papers regarding Loihi fairly regularly.” A very legitimate request from my side, given that you had - and I quote a Jan 25 post of yours - “always encouraged others to do their own research and never believe anything I or anyone else has to say until they have done so.” In your reply you provided a link to a scientific paper as supposed “evidence”, which turned out to be nothing but hot air. Presumably you did not expect anyone to fact-check it - well, I did.
And when I subsequently challenged you to provide links to a couple of those alleged papers, all I got is a lame response. I quote: “…when you say go and prove a proposition that is settled in my mind it ain’t going to happen (…) I trust my memory and I know I am telling the truth as I believe it to be. I have dealt with that issue to my satisfaction and don’t care if you disagree.“
You gotta be kidding me! This coming from someone calling himself Fact Finder?! So you are saying you fully trust your memory of having come across those “fairly regularly” published papers that strangely appear to have vanished into thin air since? You said you sent Brainchip an email in 2022 about one of those papers. Surely you could have at least searched for that one in your sent emails folder, which would have taken you ten seconds at most? But let me guess - that publication would most likely not have proven they work with Loihi either, just that they were aware of its existence while not acknowledging that of Akida.
You claim to be a former policeman and lawyer. In that case you should be well aware that eyewitness testimony is not always reliable and accurate, and that our memory is a fickle thing. While I do not doubt that you have above average memory, even yours will fail you once in a while, and this does not necessarily have to do anything with your advanced age. It is in fact totally normal. I have a pretty good memory, too, which is extremely helpful in my research, and that’s why on reading your “I trust my memory” cop-out, a number of instances immediately sprang to my mind which prove your memory is not as perfect and reliable as you believe it is. I double-checked those with the help of the search function, though, to be sure those recollections of mine were not erroneous, as I personally do not trust my memory 100% (and no one should, as numerous scientific studies have shown).
So here we go: The first example is taken from our little exchange of opinions in early January about that uni researcher who had decided on an Arduino microcontroller to be the optimal choice for his reservoir computing project. At the time, you quoted the price for a Raspberry Pi Dev Kit at USD 499 from memory - you had, however, mixed it up with the Mini PCIe board. The Raspberry Pi Dev Kit in fact cost ten times as much - USD 4995, easily verifiable on
www.shop.brainchipinc.com. You also claimed that the dev kits came with a minimum of three to a maximum of fifty hours (for the most expensive option) of free support, even though according to the Brainchip website “Development Kits DO NOT include support services.” When I pointed this out to you, your reply was that they must have stopped offering support after partnering up with Edge Impulse, and you insisted they had initially promoted the free support strongly. You did not provide any evidence, though, so to me this statement remains unverified to date.
On January 23, you claimed that Gregor Lenz is “a prolific researcher who does a lot of stuff for NASA and Intel/Loihi”. According to his LinkedIn profile, he did some work on Loihi from May 2020 to May 2021 for his PhD thesis (
https://www.theses.fr/2021SORUS108.pdf), but right after graduating with his PhD, he started working for SynSense (July 2021 - August 2023), before co-founding Neurobus (“Igniting the Neuromorphic Revolution of Space”) in September 2023. So far, I’ve only come across one other publication, co-authored by him, which involved work on Loihi, published in September 2023 (
Ultra-low-power Image Classification on Neuromorphic Hardware https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.16795.pdf) So once again, where is all the work he has allegedly done and continues to do for Intel/Loihi? Did you by any chance mix up Intel and SynSense?
And if he really did a lot of stuff for NASA, too, as you say, wouldn’t he proudly mention that in his LinkedIn account or on his personal website? A quick Google search didn’t come up with any results either, and in fact I would be rather surprised had he done any work for NASA in recent years while being employed at SynSense, which was established as an iniLabs spin off-company in Zurich, Switzerland in 2017 (initially named aiCTX), but moved its headquarters to Chengdu (Sichuan Province), China in 2020. Why would NASA have been interested in closely collaborating with someone working for a de facto Chinese company…
But let’s move on: On at least three occasions (Feb 8, 11 and 13), you claimed that Edge Impulse’s CRO Spencer Huang had stated in Brainchip’s CES 2024 podcast that, and I quote you (in this case Feb 11),
“AKIDA was going to be in every semiconductor.” However - as @Dingo Borat correctly noted two weeks ago - this is not the exact wording. Here is the verbatim transcript of what Spencer Huang actually said (from 11:55 min): “I really applaud Brainchip for your technology and being able to, you know, your intellectual property.
And I see, every silicon vendor, every device will have your technology or neuromorphic-type technology in it, AI accelerate [? I suppose he wanted to say accelerated or accelerator?]. This is gonna be the norm.”
A huge compliment for Brainchip for sure, but not exactly what you claimed he said. For some of your loyal followers, who practically take everything you say as gospel truth, your inaccurate recollection of what Spencer Huang said is now engrained in their brains, and at least one other poster already picked it up (unless he misquoted the Edge Impulse CRO independently). Remember - this is something you posted on a public forum, and given your fame amongst BRN shareholders, it was likely read by hundreds if not thousands of people and could well influence the readers’ sentiment. I sometimes wonder if any of the 237 TSE members who liked/loved your mid-September post “Can Nvidia Survive the 4th Industrial Revolution?” as a consequence missed out on NVIDIA’s continuing stellar share price rise since then (from USD 438.96 on Sept 15 to USD 822.79 at NASDAQ close just now). Of course you will argue that no one should make any financial decisions based on what anonymous posters write in a stock forum and advise them to “DYOR”. Well, let’s just say I am quite happy with my NVIDIA shares being > 250 % in the green…
Hang on - or was it possibly not just an inaccurate recollection and thus honest mistake of yours, but a deliberate truncation of what the Edge Impulse CRO said instead?
The following screenshot is evidence that in an earlier post, dated Jan 26, you did not just jot down that quote from memory; at the time, you transcribed it verbatim, but by sheer coincidence (sarcasm intended) you cut it off right before Spencer Huang adds “or neuromorphic-type technology in it.” and replaced these pesky words with “,,,”. This deliberate omission and hence twisting the truth begs the question of what is your agenda? In this light, your earlier quote “
I know I am telling the truth as I believe it to be.” suddenly takes on a slightly different meaning to me…
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And that same day, you responded to @Esq. 111 ’s question why you hadn’t included Ipsolon Research in your list of partners engaged with Brainchip with the words “I only have on my list those things that I have actually seen or heard myself.” On reading this, I immediately recalled you posting about Ipsolon Research about a year ago (although you were then copying a typo and spelled the company as Ispolon). I remember that so well, since one of my first ever TSE posts dealt with that company and the original typo (Ipsilon) in Nandan Nayampally’s tweet.
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I reckon these examples off the top of my head suffice to demonstrate that relying on your memory alone is not always the best idea. Since you call yourself Fact Finder, why are you being so defensive when somebody fact-checks your statements, especially since you keep reminding us that we should not believe any unsupported claims by anonymous forum posters unless we have verified them for ourselves.
And to top it all off, it looks as if you trimmed and thereby falsified a quote to suit your narrative, and then repeated it multiple times in subsequent posts? Not that the rest of us wouldn’t like it to come true, but knowingly misquoting someone to alter the meaning of what was being said is a big no-no. The end doesn’t justify the means.
Don’t get me wrong. I respect and appreciate all the time and effort you have put in to research and generously share your findings here on this forum (and previously elsewhere) - you are probably the most prolific contributor of us all and undoubtedly a champion of promoting Brainchip amongst retail shareholders worldwide - but you are neither infallible nor above the law, so to say. The same rules should apply to everyone.
To err is human, but it is our personal choice how we deal with the mistakes we all make. Rather than owning up to them, some people choose to deflect from them by employing manipulative tactics such as using straw man fallacies or launching ad hominem (=personal) attacks to shift attention to the alleged or genuine faults of others.
I consider your intention to never read any of my posts again as childish behaviour (in German we would call someone like that a “beleidigte Leberwurst” which literally translates as a “sulky liver sausage”) uttered in the heat of the moment resp as an easy way out, avoiding any future arguments with me. The thing is, you wouldn’t be able to prove that you stuck to your resolution anyway. But I am glad that you evidently changed your mind and read at least some of my posts after that advance notice of yours.
I fully agree with you that the most important thing is “that those who come here from time to time have an opportunity to benefit from the research regardless of who posted it because this could feed into greater understanding of Brainchip”. We all have different backgrounds and expertise, and as life-long learners (even without Akida inside
) we can benefit greatly from what others contribute. I have learnt so much already on my Brainchip journey (far more than just techspeak), yet, at the same time “I know that I know nothing”.
So let’s continue to collect intriguing facts and speculations (marked as such), discuss things related to our company and AI in general, and of course have some fun and enjoy the banter. But let’s also be more diligent and remain truthful when making claims and not take offence when somebody else dares to question the accuracy of that information and asks you to substantiate your claim. After all, we are all in this together, visualising that hockey stick curve while trusting Akida will change the world for the better.
DYOR everyone,
Frangipani
