So, to all the people freaking out and saying this is as bad as Musk and Neuralink:

Starfish Blog

Starfish

(starfishneuroscience.com)

There is here zero mention of things like 'being able to take a phone call' or 'bluetooth your brain directly into a keyboard or mouse or other people's brains' as Musk was saying.

This seems very much intended to be aimed at legitimate medical conditions.

They didn't steal the PhD work of an actual pioneer in the development of medical brain implants via poaching a number of grad students who worked with him (which is what happened with Neuralink, btw), they are instead partnering with basically a nonprofit cooperative of the world's foremost experts on nanoelectronics development, who have an established track record of developing various medical devices.

...

If news comes out about GabeN electrocuting monkeys and pigs to either death, or insanity/brain damage so extreme it causes them to kill themselves to escape the pain (again, this literally happened at Neuralink), then I will absolutely do a 180 heel pivot and condemn the fuck out of that.

Just to be clear here, a BCI is probably the very last thing I would ever be an early adopter of as some kind of commercial, general use product. Seems absolutely insane given the rampant cybersecurity problems just basically everywhere all the time, not to mention I just don't like the idea of an actual chip in my actual brain, permanent holes in my skull.

Valve and GabeN are not some paragons of virtue, they basically invented (and still widely use and encourage) half of the monetization and dark pattern bullshit that is now everywhere in the entire games industry.

... But to me at least, this seems nowhere near as openly, comically, real world supervillain levels of evil as Elon and Neuralink.

Yeah, maybe just leave all that for people born in 2030.

This will be for paralyzed people

All you had to do was nothing.

All you had to do was NOTHING, Gabe!

The picture in the post is unhinged

I think despite the claims that Gabe is a Libertarian, first spread by some blogger named Yanis V(?), are floating around the internet: he rarely makes a political statement but did endorse Joe Biden over Trump lending to the idea that he is NOT some sort of anarcho-syndicalist Republican-lite.

It's fairly on brand for Valve, one of their banners was a guy with pipe valve stuck to his head.

The reality of funding is probably going to mean that open source is off the table.

I'm with you, Elon Musk is a life lesson into why key services such as internet or brain computer interfaces should not be in the hands on the few. Path seems set unfortunately as too much money is on the table.

Finally, Half-Life 3

It will be used for paralyzed people to give it a soft spin, but the goal really is a super soldier or many other applications in the military industrial complex. If it's not for blowing up people, it's for killing people or controlling people. It's not that technology is evil. It's that our economic system and our mode of production and who benefits. That's the problem. The rich are just basically building our prison.

More than stuck on

The use of the fingers is covered under our monthly plan of $49.99

If you would like thumbs included, that is covered under our premium plan of $499.99 a day.

Tbh the Matrix never made sense from that angle, metabolism uses more energy than it generates. I think the original script said humans being farmed for their brain processing power, not body heat, which would have made marginally more sense. (Also why not just keep people in a coma in either case; anyway I'll stop poking at Matrix plot holes )

this is the same thing, publicly owned, publicly funded.

make no mistake, with all the tax cuts and incentives and wage theft involved, these are also already publicly funded.

you're quoting yourself but you never said that. you said maybe Gabe could be entering his villain phase, as if he's not there yet. thus implying you meant he's not a villain, so we shouldn't assume the worse. I get what you say now, but you did not say what you meant in your original comment.

I just need to open my work laptop and watch it utterly fail at even the most basic tasks for me to be convinced our level of technology is no where near where it needs to be to start sticking electronics in people's heads.

A brain implant reduced this boy's epilepsy seizures by 80%. And he charges it with headphones | CBC Radio

Before he got his new brain implant, 13-year-old Oran Knowlson's whole life revolved around his seizures.

CBC (www.cbc.ca)

Here's one example. Google it yourself if you're interested in learning more.

that is DBS and it is very different from what this article in this topic talking about. DBS has been around for a long time, used for other purposes like parkinsons and essential tremor. I'm very familiar with it because i have a form of parkinsons.

I think a generic plug would be great but look at how fragmented USB specifications are. Add that to biology and it's a whole other level of difficulty.

Brain implants have great potential but the abandonment issue is a problem that exists now that we have to solve for. It's also not really a tech issue but a societal one on affordability and accountability of medical research. Imagine if a company held the patents for the brain device and just closed down without selling or leasing the patent. People with that device would have no support unless a government body forced the release of the patent. This has already happened multiple times to people in clinical trials and scaling up deployment with multiple versions will make the situation worse.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2818077

I don't really have a take on your personal desires. I do think if anyone can afford one they should make sure it's not just the up front cost but also the long term costs to be considered. Like buying an expensive car, it's not if you can afford to purchase it but if you can afford to wreck it.

Coastal vacation