this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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What terrifies me about this is that there are no regulations or laws in place that say how long this tech that is implanted into people must be supported. Those poor people who got the bionic eye implants are now left with no replacement parts or support after the company went under, leaving those with implants that still work seeing with borrowed time.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete
Our right to repair and IP ownership laws are not ready for the cybernetic revolution
It'll be like Cyberpunk 2077: "Why repair when you could just get new stuff?" That's basically a quote from V too, as you find the possibly last repair shop in Night City. Took me by surprise...
I mean, my fridge (hitachi) has a condensation problem and was giving the error code thingy. The guys came down and quoted 1k+ to bring it back and fix it. I’m like. Literally can get a new fridge! At this point really, what should I do?
Edit: it’s a 9 year old fridge
Man, if right to repair laws were better for all industries, I'm sure the costs wouldn't be this high either :/
That problem will always exist to some degree. We want good access to the ability to repair (in our laws, in how things are engineered or designed, in our supply chains and in industry support, in our cultural expectations, etc.), but there will always be certain types of repairs that will cost more than manufacturing a new one from scratch.
Sometimes repairing some component will take more work than the entire component is worth. For example, the extreme example of a stripped screw shows us that replacing a stripped screw is cheaper and easier than trying to re-machine that same chunk of metal back into a screw shape.
Or some types of breakage just can't be repaired practically. A torn piece of paper can be taped back together, but it isn't quite the same as a new piece of paper.
Or the repair might require work done on a particular place that makes that labor more expensive. Welding a leaking pipe might be slower and more expensive than replacing that pipe, if the leak happens to be in a place that is hard to access. Or, as you learned, paying for a repairman to drive from one place to another with the right part might cost more than just the general cost of delivery of the whole thing.
Often, troubleshooting will take a skilled troubleshooter much more time, and their time is worth more than the cost of replacing the broken thing, perhaps by a less skilled technician.
As the price of a thing goes down compared to the cost of the labor to fix it, the calculus of whether a particular repair is worth the cost is going to shift towards replacement rather than repair. And that's not always a bad thing, as it usually means the thing is getting more affordable, or people's time is getting more valuable.
My car isn't even getting updates anymore and it's fewer than ten years old. I'll never put tech in my body until it's legally required to be supported, and also open source so I can support it
With neural implants open source is not the main issue. Sure, it's nice, but it's not like I'm gonna do a brain surgery because I did RTFM.
There are pacemakers with bugs shocking hearts incorrectly and companies can't help. They're bust or don't have the copyright to the code or just won't help - buy our new product next year.
It's not difficult to imagine malicious brain implants when the users are not in control. Being open source, or rather "free software", is equally a main issue.
Do you have a source for that? I work with these pacemaker companies fairly frequently, and I'm not aware of this, and a quick search didn't turn up anything.
Karen Sandler of the Software Freedom Conservancy has a "pacemaker defibrillator" for her large heart, and has done a few talks about it. I just read that a defibrillator is not usually included as part of "pacemaker" so I may have misspoke.
Original talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XDTQLa3NjE
Follow-up talk 6 years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2FNqXhr4c8
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https://www.piped.video/watch?v=k2FNqXhr4c8
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The tldr is some portion of pregnant women get a condition which makes their heart look like it needs to be shocked by the pacemakers defibrillator. This has not been accounted for in part because most women who get pacemakers defibrillator are elderly and so won't get pregnant. Besides that, testing devices on pregnant people isn't a thing (for good reason).
Perhaps not, but it would make it far easier for any sympathetic brain surgeon you managed to find who was willing to try and fix the problem for you.
The key thing is not needing that specific company to help, but needing generic expert assistance is fine
I wonder if companies should be forced to provide a product’s core tech diagrams, material science, and major code base revisions to a kind of escrow, which is then released when the product is sunsetted.
That would be ideal. If you're not going to support it anymore, then you shouldn't be allowed to keep the knowledge of it locked up.
We also should have laws on other medical implants (ex. stents etc.), so there is a pathway to getting these regulations in
We just need them yesterday
People are not too bright I'm afraid. I feel sorry for them, but it is what it is....
Some people are just desparate.
Not too bright?
If you lost your vision, would you not consider a bionic eye if it could restore your sight? Your independence?
Have you ever seen that video of the blind child struggling to learn how to step down a curb into the road? How tense it was watching this adorable little kid struggle to navigate something that we take entirely for granted? Now imagine doing that for everything.
https://youtu.be/BsXa-mAKDVs
Learn to cook some basic meals for yourself, burn your finger every time you make a cup of coffee or tea because you put a finger in the lip to feel when it's full. (Or use the little alarm you hang over your cup that makes a terrible squeal when water hits it.)
Remember to pin socks together when you take them off so you don't lose the match in the wash and need to ask someone to help you match them.
Mark the settings on every appliance from your washer to your microwave because they all use seamless buttons and dials. Mix up your shampoo and conditioner every time you forget to put them in the same place.
Hire someone to do the most basic tasks for you because you cannot see to properly scrub surfaces or sweep and mop, you can be methodical and keep things mostly ok, but to find the bits that need a scrub?
Have to take public transport and navigate the endless construction and idiots who leave scooters and cars parked on the sidewalk.
https://www.tiktok.com/@jemmabrown8/video/7159318917033282821
A blind person is not "dull" because they took a chance to have their sight restored, rather, we are not too bright for failing to regulate these new technologies to protect those people who depend on them.
Every safety rule and regulation is written in blood. Those at the forefront of these new technologies will not regulate themselves, it is up to us to keep them in check.
Yes of course. If desperate, then of course people would sign up for this.
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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.