John Backus

In 2014, @alain and I dropped out of Stanford so we could run @getcognito full time. After almost a decade of hard work, I’m extremely excited to share that @Plaid has acquired Cognito for $252 million! tcrn.ch/3rCV2vS

@kissapiai Yeah I'm annoyed by the community note being because a bunch of bozos reposted it saying "It fully coded an original Pokémon game by itself" which is just a straight up lie

@backus the community note is brutal lol but honestly the codex self-QA loop with playwright is the real story here. autonomous build → emulate → verify → iterate is way more interesting than the rom hack itself

POK(AI)MON: Experimenting with GPT 5.4 autonomously editing and rewrite the Pokémon Red ROM, replacing Pokémon with AIs. Details below

Huh, so a bunch of random people repost my video with an inaccurate caption so I get a community note on my post basically reiterating what I said immediately below the post? Strange...

It would do a good job advancing through menus and starting the game. The furthest I would have it go was walking out of the starter house just because the keyboard input → verify screenshot → repeat loop is just boring after a while, but I have no doubt it could go indefinitely. All I had to do was watch it try and fail a handful of times initially and then once it got the QA right I told it to write a guide in AGENTS.md to help it in the future.

@backus How well could it engage with the game to QA it? Was it actually making logical actions in-game with the browser emulator?

@crunch1271 @0xKiryoko Consider the original pret projects or something if you're looking to donate. This only took me a few hours, I'm good :)

@backus @0xKiryoko would you support donations to your github

@0xKiryoko Opened up Codex inside of a fresh clone of github.com/pret/pokered and just described how I wanted the game modified. It built the ROM as it went, loaded it in a browser emulator using playwright to QA, generated images on its own, etc

@backus are you loading and emulating the actual real rom and assets? so basically what I'm asking is whether this is a hack rom or a rewrite from scratch

@ByrneHobart Not quite sure tbh

@backus What's happening with the text at 2:38?

I'm sure there's a bit of accounting weirdness here with DS/ML being under xAI but even still this is completely bonkers.

Twitter's Eng org used to be TWO THOUSAND engineers. Now it's ~25 engineers and a few designers and PMs. I knew the cuts were big but this is blowing my mind.

@marcryptonio I'm so sorry. It's a tragedy, especially right before the holidays. Hang in there

@backus I lost my dad last week. I have the same feelings. It’s horrible. Thanks for sharing.

I thought I had 10 more years with my Dad. He treated his CLL so effectively the last decade, sometimes I forgot he had cancer. An infection took his brain so quickly that by the time my red eye landed we could only have simple yes or no conversations. Within 48 hours, it was a coin flip whether he would be able to recognize me. A week later, our last flicker of hope went out and we said goodbye. There was no warning. No heads up to get some quality time in. Why didn’t I call him every week? Why didn’t I ask him to show me pictures of him from when he was my age and explain that phase of his life? Why don’t I have more photos of him? With him? I’m angry at myself for all those moments I wasn’t present with him. I’m angry at the world for how suddenly he was taken. So early. Six months before my wedding. Never able to meet my kids. To be able to call him “grandpa.” I couldn’t wait to give him that, and now I can’t. The last few weeks I’ve been desperate for control. I couldn’t control the bureaucracy that denied him a bed at the specialist hospital he donated to, even when we paid for a private medical plane to transport him. It hurts even more that, in the end, it wouldn’t have made a difference. I can’t control what happened to my Dad at this point, but I can control how I move forward. I won’t make the same mistakes again, Mom. I won’t let the family go without a strong leader they can rely on. I won’t let my kids grow up without knowing who you were, Dad. Your energy. Your overwhelming optimism. Determination. Work ethic. How your hard-driving intensity turned into a distinct tenderness in your later years. I will continue to make you proud with what I accomplish, even if I can’t experience the joy in seeing the pride in your eyes anymore. I’ll pass on the values we shared. I’ll give my kids everything, just like you did. Talk to your parents.

@MichaelRihani Thanks Rihani 🙏. Will definitely take you up on that when I'm back.

I’m absolutely heartbroken to hear this, @backus. Your dad was and is an absolute legend, not only the best VC I’ve ever met, but one of the strongest, most positive, and genuinely caring human beings I’ve ever known. You could feel how deeply he cared about everyone around him; it radiated from him. Please be gentle with yourself… the love between you two is so clear, and he knew it even if think there weren’t enough phone calls or photos. I believe you moved back to SF recently, whenever you feel up for it (no rush at all), I’d love to take you out for dinner and just sit together, talk about him, or not talk at all. Whatever you need man. 🫂 Sending so much love to you, your mom, and your whole family. He was so proud of you, John.

Why strain to remember a fact when you can just Google it? We've already collectively internalized this IMO. I notice the same reflex emerging now for ChatGPT at the start of any task. At the limit, the average person's brain will just be a router to different tools.

Cybernetics predicted tech would supercharge our brains, enhancing our memory, focus, and cognition. This came true in a "monkey's paw" cursed way that also degraded our brains: • Search nerfed our long-term memory • Tiktok, our attention span • AI, thinking for ourselves

More details in this blog post and the video below: plaid.com/blog/plaid-pro…

We’re shipping all of this just 4 months after launching Ti1! This model’s capabilities are growing fast, with more coming, from graph neural networks to AI agent analysis. Every ID verification system will need a strong fraud model. Check out Plaid Protect and Trust Index.

Announcing Ti2: Plaid’s latest Trust Index model, trained on 2x the data of its predecessor and catching 30% more fraud! Ti2 uses bank transaction history and a user graph spanning Plaid’s vast network, enhancing fraud detection for synthetic identities and account takeovers.