Neuralink's First Implant Partly Detached From Patient's Brain (theguardian.com) 107
Ancient Slashdot reader jd shares a report from The Guardian: Neuralink's first attempt at implanting its chip in a human being's skull hit an unexpected setback after the device began to detach from the patient's brain, the company revealed on Wednesday. The patient, Noland Arbaugh, underwent surgery in February to attach a Neuralink chip to his brain, but the device's functionality began to decrease within the month after his implant. Some of the device's threads, which connect the miniature computer to the brain, had begun to retract. Neuralink did not disclose why the device partly retracted from Arbaugh's brain, but stated in a blog post that its engineers had refined the implant and restored functionality.
The decreased capabilities did not appear to endanger Arbaugh, and he could still use the implant to play a game of chess on a computer using his thoughts, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first broke the news of the issue with the chip. The possibility of removing the implant was considered after the detachment came to light, the Journal reported. [...] Arbaugh praised the implant during a demonstration in March and said that it had "already changed his life," while also stating that it had not been perfect and they "have run into some issues."
The decreased capabilities did not appear to endanger Arbaugh, and he could still use the implant to play a game of chess on a computer using his thoughts, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first broke the news of the issue with the chip. The possibility of removing the implant was considered after the detachment came to light, the Journal reported. [...] Arbaugh praised the implant during a demonstration in March and said that it had "already changed his life," while also stating that it had not been perfect and they "have run into some issues."
Media (Score:3, Insightful)
The glee with which the media is reporting this partial failure in an experimental technology that has restored significant function to a paraplegic is very telling. This Guardian article is pretty neutral, but others are celebrating it, as they're still seething over Elon Musk daring to make Twitter/X a slightly more open platform where people can actually speak more freely.
Re:Media (Score:5, Interesting)
Try saying the word "cisgender" on Twitter.
Re: (Score:2)
Try explaining why that word even exists.
Because young people at the time made it semi-common parlance, like they usually change the language (if you have a teenager just accept that they will rewrite the dictionary) and add in the internet. Apparently it came from Usenet.
The internet can also used to learn things.
https://www.historians.org/res... [historians.org]
Re: Media (Score:2)
Ok, you're a retard.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Because people needed to express a concept?
This isn't complicated.
Re: (Score:2)
Because it's literally Twitter's policy [twimg.com]? And yes, it is enforced [twimg.com], there are tons of examples of people having posts taken down for it - just not by an automated keyword filter.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, I do object to the word. Gender is a grammatical category, not a biological one. Consider that German rivers are masculine (der Fluss), and French rivers are (I believe) feminine.
Re: Media (Score:2)
How dare of them to use biology as gender identification. My feelings are severely hurt, and Iâ(TM)ll post a complain on Twitter.
Re: Media (Score:4, Informative)
> There are only two genders male/female, anything else is an aberration
"aberration - in biology, a characteristic that deviates from the normal type."
"normal - usual, average, or typical"
Re: Media (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, and the most common gender is hermaphrodite, almost every plant is, so are snails and various critters. So being only male or only female is the aberration. Another common gender is worker drone, roughly 20 quadrillion ants are that.
Re: (Score:2)
Everybody is an aberration, nobody is normal. Biology is chock full of aberration, it's just how things are. Nature is happy with it all, it's mostly just humans and their incessant desire to categorize everything that are bothered by aberration.
Even in humans, biology says there is not just two binary genders with clear and distinct and unambiguous differences. Genetics greatly influences sexual characteristis, but hormone releases at just the right time is the actual mechanism, and it's a very error pro
Re: Media (Score:4, Interesting)
There are only two genders male/female, anything else is an aberration
Plenty of cultures all over the world have recognized more than two genders. You think this is something they just invented? https://link.ucop.edu/2019/10/... [ucop.edu]
Hell I can pull up pictures of Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason. and Bob Hope dressed in drag.
Re: Media (Score:1)
You're free to believe that. But it is not an excuse to treat them like shit all the time.
Re: (Score:2)
"I don't treat people like shit"->"Defective people"
ROFL.
Re: (Score:2)
People can declare whatever they want, even that the sky is green (even though it's blue), people love self-deception.
That's an exceptionally bad example, as people with certain forms of colour blindness would perceive the two identically. You've essentially agreed that some people have a lived experience that is fundamentally different to yours, that you are not in a position to understand, and that you therefore just have to take their word for it.
Re: (Score:2)
So, there are people who aren't part of group A, or group B. Wouldn't that be group C? Or is this some other magic you've made up because you don't want to believe people?
Re: (Score:2)
Hate to say it, but the sky is not really blue, not all the time, and not necessarily the same for all people. Colors are weird, and words for colors are weirder. Some languages do not have words for "blue", and it appears to be a term that enters language relatively late. They sky is more grey than blue most of the time, grey with a slight bluish tinge. Sunset does not have a blue sky, nighttime does not have a blue sky, the shade of the sky varies a lot depending upon time and weather.
Remember the big
Re: (Score:2)
What a load of... I went in search of a suitable rebuttal for this fantasy.
Except.
I found the AC is fundamentally correct.
Geneticists have discovered that all human embryos start life as females, as do all embryos of mammals. About the 2nd month the fetal tests elaborate enough androgens to offset the maternal estrogens and maleness develops. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
Damn! I learn something new every week here.
Re: Media (Score:4, Informative)
We're all made of the same stuff.
Up until around six weeks, there's no difference between male and female embryos. At that point, a tiny region (usually) found on the Y chromosome called SRY activates. Less than 1000 base pairs, its job is to start the virilization cascade. It's highly mutable, so it tends to be prone to "breaking" or transferring between X and Y - leading to XX males and XY females. But XX males lack the azoospermia factor in the Y chromosome's long arm and XY females have streak gonads, so while this randomly happens, they're infertile and the mutation doesn't persist. But otherwise they're phenotypically normal men and women, up to the point of infertility in XX men and a lack of puberty (due to the nonfunctional streak gonads) in XY women.
At the start of the virilization cascade, everyone has the same basic set of organs, including the urogenital sinus, paramesonephric (Müllerian) ducts, and the mesonephric (Wolffian) duct. These are to form the common, female, and male organs, respectively. The paramesonephric ducts will develop if not exposed to anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), and will fail to develop / degenerate if exposed to it. The mesonephric duct will develop if exposed to testosterone and fail to develop / degenerate if not exposed to it. Note that this is two different hormones - more on that mix-and-match later.
Most aspects of the genitals however come from the common urogenital sinus, leading to cognates in both males and females: labia-scrotum, clitoris-glans, prostate/paraurethral glands (as well as the lower 2/3rds of the vagina). This leads to a smooth interpolation between the two (diagram here [twimg.com]). To reiterate, these pairs are the same organ, just grown to different shapes / sizes. A glans is a large clitoris. The scrotum is fused labia. Etc.
So we've already accumulated quite a list of things that can go wrong, including defective SRY, transferred SRY, unusual karotypes (X0, XXY, XYY, XXX, XXYY, etc), presence / absence of AMH without the absence / presence of testosterone, insensitivity to AMH / testosterone, etc. Using a very broad definition of intersex (e.g. including unusual karyotypes, such as Kleinfelter syndrome (XXY), up to 1,7% of the population deviates from the normal developmental process. For visibly ambiguous genitals, it's about 1 in 5500. A couple examples:
Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS): a largely (PAIS) or complete (CAIS) phenotypically normal female, but XY. Generally infertile. Exposed to androgens in the womb but don't react sufficiently or at all to them. Generally identify as female.
5-alpha reductase 2 deficiency: XY, but the body doesn't produce much / any 5aR2D, which converts testosterone into the more potent dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Born largely phenotypically female, but at puberty the testes descend, the voice deepens, the clitoris enlarges, and they undergo a relatively normal male puberty - leading to the nickname in the Dominican Republic (where it's most common) of "guevedoces" ("balls at twelve"). Despite being raised female, they typically identify as male, and - with medical assistance can sometimes father children.
Of course, in addition to primary sex characteristics you have secondary sex characteristics, developing at puberty due to whatever hormones the person is exposed to. E.g. one's larynx isn't taking a gander at what genitals one has - if it's exposed to testosterone, the voice will deepend, and if not it won't. Same with body hair, breast development, etc. E.g. male nipples aren't atavisms; they're just undeveloped tissues that never got the signal to develop. One is reminded of the scene in "Meet the Parents" where Greg, trying to impress his would-be father-in-law describes milking a cat, and says anything with nipples can be milked - to which the father in law replies, "I have nipples, Greg - can you milk me?" Except, yes, the answer to this is "yes" - expose his body to estrogen to develop the breasts, then to prolactin, and he'd lactate just like anyone else.
To loop back: we're all made of the same stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fetal development is extremely complicated. But we learn a version that is greatly simplfied so we can learn it at an early age. Then later in life most people have difficulty moving on from their second grade encyclopedia of knowledge. Not just with sex but with all sorts of things they have trouble un-learning; some people will loudly proclaim that there is nothing smaller than an atom, etc. A good example is "genes", a lot of people are stuck with a notion that traits are caused by a single gene - ie,
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
That was a lovely game of "change the topic" you have there.
So to be clear, you're perfectly fine with people being being censored, for talking about issues related to their very existence, so long as, say, nazis can spout nazi crap without punishment.
Musk has banned his critics left and right [forbes.com], but you're fine with that so longer as you can make mean-spirited racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes and make as toxic of an environment as possible.
People get harassed left and right and Twitter does othing, but
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
"Compare any of that with the previous horrendous level of censorship"
What on Earth are you talking about? How long, year after year, did Trump spout vile racist offensive garbage without any action taken against him ? The question isn't "why did he eventually get banned", but "why on Earth was he allowed to violate Twitter's policies endlessly in the first place"?
Lol, is this some type of a joke? Every time I pop back onto Twitter it's like a dystopia. A constant stream of
Re: (Score:2)
rofl
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Sex and gender are different concepts. Sex is biological, gender is socially constructed.
If you disagree, you're still wrong. Biological sex isn't as clear-cut as you'd like it to be. [scientificamerican.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Gender is a new term when applied to sexuality. Gender was originally a linguistic term for languages that have gender (which English has very little of). It was borrowed for the modern usage to avoid using "sex" for both (or possibly they didn't like saying "sex"). It's an English language thing, we're so insular in America that we have difficulty understanding how other cultures deal with the same concepts. Ie, Finnish has very little linguistic gender, and no pronouns the way we think of it; and thus
Re: (Score:2)
Gender is a new term when applied to sexuality
Gender is not the same thing as sexual identity, a fact I assume you know but are intentionally confusing. Also, the term 'gender' as it applies to something other than language or biological sex has been around for ~70 years. It's not new. Even if it was, your argument is what? We can't learn new things or update definitions to reflect our better understanding? Low effort.
when things are a social construct, it means they will very often be [...]
Lots of things are social constructs that aren't political, religious, or controversial in any way. There are countless social cons
Re: (Score:2)
If that's the game you want to play, OK.
Bacteria outnumber all other living things. Statistically, there's only one gender and all else is an abberation. This is confirmed, as the Y chromosome is simply an X chromosome that is badly degraded.
Humans are tetrapods, and therefore fish. Land-living fish are an abberation and can be ignored.
You see? That's a really, really stupid game to play, because it is trivial to show that it leads to nonsense.
Abberation is the entire basis on which all science is built.
Re: (Score:2)
Technically, no gender at all. Or sex because gender isn't a biological word. Bacteria have no sex, therefore no sexual characteristics. There are also plants and animals that have sex but very loose sexual dimorophism. Even some vertebrates as well, as some fish can change sex. The tomato is hermaphroditic.
Re: (Score:2)
“gender” is about as vague as any other term in soft science sociology. I don't lend much credence to it the same way I lend it to say “fermion” but it's a drop in the bucket of vague soft science terms that simply happens to be highly politicized at this point. These are debates of semantics by fools who care about words rather than facts.
Re: (Score:2)
Citation?
Re: (Score:2)
> There are only two genders male/female,
That first clause conflates social and biological terminology: "Sex is usually categorized as female or male but there is variation in the biological attributes that comprise sex and how those attributes are expressed. Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, expressions and identities of girls, women, boys, men, and gender diverse people"
> , anything else is an aberration
The second clause insinuates the more common rhetorical use of aberrat
Re:Media (Score:5, Informative)
still seething over Elon Musk daring to make Twitter/X a slightly more open platform where people can actually speak more freely.
You might have a point, if that was actually true. It would be more accurate to say it's a platform where people Elon agrees with can speak more freely. That's his right, I just want to make sure we're being truthful about it. He is more than willing to ban people he doesn't like.
Re: (Score:2)
Then don't pretend you're about "free speech" when all you're doing is changing who you ban to match your political views.
Re: (Score:3)
The difference with Elon running Twitter is there aren’t dozens of Government officials charged with policing, censoring, and manipulating content on behalf of the Government now. Try and keep up with the actual motivations, not the bullshit ones sold by media.
First, I should maybe suggest you actually do some learning of your own. All evidence shows both sides are more than capable of lying to further their agenda. I'm not saying both are equal, and I don't want to argue over it, but it's clear that you have a warped view of reality if that is how you honestly view it.
And every platform, every business, every organization generally has discretion to “ban” those they don’t like. Don’t like it? Start your own platform then. Don’t just talk that please-everyone talk. Go walk it.
I explicitly said that it was his right to. I personally do not care what he does with X/Twitter. I do, however, care when people try to claim it was about free discorse when it's shown he doesn't
Re: (Score:2)
Oh man, you bought into the twitter files didn't you? Wow.
Re: (Score:3)
The difference with Elon running Twitter is there aren’t dozens of Government officials charged with policing, censoring, and manipulating content on behalf of the Government now. Try and keep up with the actual motivations, not the bullshit ones sold by media.
And every platform, every business, every organization generally has discretion to “ban” those they don’t like. Don’t like it? Start your own platform then. Don’t just talk that please-everyone talk. Go walk it.
Keep drinking that Kool Aid. https://www.forbes.com/sites/k... [forbes.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
daring to make Twitter/X a slightly more open platform where people can actually speak more freely.
Yup, free to speak more freely [imgur.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, having ruled all the others out, it comes down to either disability or disease.
I'm not sure which more closely fits the bill: mental disability (can't take criticism); or disease (greed)...
Re: (Score:2)
Supposedly that's fake.
https://twitter.com/EliErlick/status/1598011331658948609 [twitter.com]
Not being a twitter user I can't tell nor do I know how often community notes are correct.
Re: (Score:2)
Read up on what happened to the apes it's nightmare fuel https://www.pcrm.org/ethical-s... [pcrm.org] and I have no idea how this was ever approved for use on humans. Neural implants aren't even that new as people were doing it back in 1998. https://www.wired.com/2016/01/... [wired.com]
You clicked and you commented (Score:1)
What this looks like to me is more hype from Elon Musk. Sort of like he bought that episode of The Simpsons and paid extra to have Lisa Simpson claim he's the greatest inventor of our age when in fact he literally has never invented anything in his life...
Doing stuff like that just rubs me the wrong way even without all his other problem
Re: (Score:2)
I think "glee" is a misattribution. For one thing, companies aren't people, and don't have emotions. Many of the publications look for ANYTHING that's the right degree of shocking or unbelievable...not because of glee, but simply to earn a few bucks. Where they differ is that amount of plausibility they require. (There are legal reasons why they want something to not be easily disprovable, but Fox went to court to defend their right to intentionally lie to viewers during a news program. And they won.)
Re:Media (Score:5, Informative)
First off, Musk didn't found Neuralink. 8 people spun it out of UCLA and other universities. he invested, and they claimed he was a founder because Musk must seem like the founder of all these companies; that's his brand even if it's not exactly true. He then pushed them to move at a pace that reportedly led them to do unethical things, like animal trials that didn't follow ethical guidelines. Push is fine for tech; not for human health. More importantly it takes away attention from the people who doing this the right way with good technology, which Neuralink doesn't have. The electrode problem they are having was well known during the academic days; every mouse died within a month. Monkeys died.
There is no glee in this article, it's just a report. I'm sad for this guy they're giving hope to that I hope does not turn out to be a false hope, but I'm worried that it is because the Neuralink team cut corners. Everything about this company is skeevy.
Follow Precision Neuroscience, who is a Neuralink founder who quit over Musk's antics and is approaching this with safety and ethics in mind, and doesn't involve electrodes inserted directly into the brain. Or Synchron which is developing a method on a catheter and using blood vessels to get the brain signal rather than invasive brain surgery.
Re: (Score:1)
>It's not about wanting Musk to fail. Musk apologists always think people are out to get him.
Even this mostly neutral article mentions Elon Musk in the second sentence. All the others do similarly. You're just blind
> There is no glee in this article, it's just a report.
You apparently didn't read my comment
Re:Media (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also the fact that Musk posted on Twitter just the day before that the trial was 100 days in and going well, so either he was unaware of the problem or lying.
Which brings us to the real problem. You can't trust what Musk says, so unless you are in a desperate situation like this poor guy who probably has a very poor quality of life, you would be crazy to have his tech implanted in your brain.
Re: (Score:2)
The glee with which the media is reporting this partial failure in an experimental technology that has restored significant function to a paraplegic is very telling. This Guardian article is pretty neutral, but others are celebrating it,
The downside of being an obnoxious adolescent troll is that you make it really hard for people to cheer for anything but your failure.
This is pretty basic psychology, people are actually willing to sacrifice to punish bad behaviour, and if you think about the tribal environment we all evolved in it's pretty obvious why.
as they're still seething over Elon Musk daring to make Twitter/X a slightly more open platform where people can actually speak more freely.
Lets ignore all of the examples of his hypocrisy. Your claim is that it's a more open platform where people can speak more freely.
And yet, usage has fallen by a fifth [theguardian.com].
Perhaps some is people d
Re: (Score:1)
>obnoxious
>adolescent
>troll
>neonazis
>alt-right harassers
Counter-argument: you don't like the idea that people have the ability to speak more freely on a platform where previously only mainstream leftist opinions were tolerated.
Re: (Score:2)
>obnoxious
>adolescent
>troll
>neonazis
>alt-right harassers
Yes. Do you disagree with any one of those labels in the context they were used? Because I'm pretty comfortable justifying all of them.
Counter-argument: you don't like the idea that people have the ability to speak more freely on a platform where previously only mainstream leftist opinions were tolerated.
Counter-counter-argument. The vast majority of people silenced on old-Twitter were folks engaged in harassment, or extremists like white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
As for the harassment, well that actually does stop a lot of people from speaking freely [businessinsider.com], as somewhat evidenced by the fact that Twitter usage has declined.
As for the extremists, I don't think you should be thrown
Re: (Score:2)
>Counter-counter-argument. The vast majority of people silenced on old-Twitter were folks engaged in harassment, or extremists like white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Something tells me that your definition of white supremacists and neo-Nazis is pretty much what the MSM would define it as: anyone they wish to silence, and they've found politically convenient tools with which to do it.
Re: (Score:2)
>Counter-counter-argument. The vast majority of people silenced on old-Twitter were folks engaged in harassment, or extremists like white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Something tells me that your definition of white supremacists and neo-Nazis is pretty much what the MSM would define it as: anyone they wish to silence, and they've found politically convenient tools with which to do it.
Or holocaust denying, openly anti-Semitic Hitler sharing [nbcnews.com] infamous neo-Nazis [techcrunch.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Twitter openly has a policy that they'll allow speech that doesn't break the law. That's how the entire Internet was once, but you're probably too young to remember. (Or too old, and therefore forgetful?)
They've also made it abundantly clear that just because speech is permitted, doesn't mean it's necessarily promoted.
Re: (Score:2)
Twitter openly has a policy that they'll allow speech that doesn't break the law. That's how the entire Internet was once, but you're probably too young to remember. (Or too old, and therefore forgetful?)
They've also made it abundantly clear that just because speech is permitted, doesn't mean it's necessarily promoted.
Interesting, I guess critical reporting must be illegal then [cnn.com].
Re: (Score:2)
They were reporting the location and timing of flights he was taking, repeatedly, so they broke the rules, yes. That came after some deranged person used that information to attack him and got his son instead.
Funny, why didn't you volunteer that information? Is it because you trust a site like CNN to not lie by omission?
Re: (Score:2)
They were reporting the location and timing of flights he was taking, repeatedly, so they broke the rules, yes.
a) Ok.... so you can ban speech that "doesn't break the law" as long as it breaks Twitters rules. So just like old Twitter except their rules were a lot more stable.
b) Read more carefully: None of the banned journalists appeared to have shared Musk’s precise real-time location. They were reporting about the ban, not reporting Musk's location. It sounds a lot like "don't piss off Elon" is a new rule.
c) Also banning links that promote other platforms [cnn.com]!!
That came after some deranged person used that information to attack him and got his son instead.
Funny, why didn't you volunteer that information? Is it because you trust a site like CNN to not lie by omission?
Because it sounds like the deranged person was Musk' [theguardian.com]
Re: (Score:2)
a. Agreed, I was wrong that their rules were only illegal content gets deleted. It's actually:
Violent speech
Violent & Hateful Entities
Child Sexual Exploitation
Abuse/Harassment
Hateful Conduct
Perpetrators of Violent Attack
Suicide
Excessively Gory or adult content in live video or header images, including sexual violence/and or assault
Illegal goods/services
Doxxing
Non-consensual Nudity
Compromised accounts
b. Lying from CNN. By reporting what flights he was currently on it was clear where his precise location
Re: (Score:2)
a. Agreed, I was wrong that their rules were only illegal content gets deleted. It's actually:
Violent speech
Violent & Hateful Entities
Hateful Conduct
b. Lying from CNN. By reporting what flights he was currently on it was clear where his precise location was: on the airplane
Sounds like neo-Nazis should be banned, still don't see why the reporters were banned for talking about the ElonJet account. Maybe they linked to something that showed the data sources as part of the reporting (I don't think all did) but a "free speech absolutist" should be very, very hesitant to ban reporters.
c. I see links on X all the time to Mastodon and BlueSky
Because the backlash was so massive [theverge.com]. I don't know if they still ban, I see the official Mastodon account hasn't posted in a year but I don't know if that's voluntary [twitter.com]
Because it sounds like the deranged person was Musk's security detail harassing an innocent person whom Musk subsequently tried to dox [theguardian.com].
Wrong, the deranged person jumped on his son's car, among other things. His security detail is also being investigated, but they took no action against the attacker.
Elon is far from a reliable narra
Re: (Score:2)
So ... you're pro-neo-Nazi then? Figures.
There's a reason a truly tolerant society can't tolerate the intolerant. Can you figure out why?
the ability to speak more freely
Oh, you poor deluded fool...
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, I'm completely pro neo Nazi. You figured it out, good job.
But I am using your definition of neo Nazi, which is "anyone who dares disagree with me on any topic for any reason, and then I'll follow them around and insult them."
Re: (Score:2)
Okay ... If you "my definition" you mean some nonsense you made up to thoughtlessly dismiss any criticism.
Oh, you poor deluded fool...
Re: (Score:2)
Counter-argument: you don't like the idea that people have the ability to speak more freely on a platform
Given that that's an outright lie: mu.
"people" don't have the right to speak more freely. Musk has been incredibly liberal with his use of the banhammer. Only people who's views Musk approves of in some way (agrees with, thinks are funny when high, trolls someone who he dislikes) are free to speak. People who disagree aren't.
It's his right to spend $50 billion running his personal platform with its own
Re: (Score:2)
Looks like you logged into the wrong account to reply. How would you know what the parent poster believes or not?
Re: (Score:2)
Unlike you, I don't have any sock puppets. I've got precisely one acconut that I've had since the early 2000s.
You are claiming that on twitter people can "speak freely". This is simply not true.
Re: Media (Score:2)
A failing human brain implant isn't newsworthy, since when?
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing of what I said had to do with its news worthiness
Re: (Score:2)
You can only speak more freely if you agree with Musk. Disagree with him and you're banned. That's narry a "freedom" worthy of the name.
Re: (Score:2)
It's honestly so weird how much of a bias so many people have regarding everything Elon Musk related. Obviously like any filthy rich businessman he has his issues but I certainly don't see a reason to single him out more than all the other filthy rich businessmen. He made a fortune out of clean energy, space travel, and now restoring functionality to the disabled. — I think there are certainly less world-improving ways to make a fortune.
The Twitter case however was a clear case of the usual “Fre
Re: (Score:2)
As someone banned from twiter, all I have to say is, rofl, my god you have no clue what you're talking about. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, when did Elon make Twitter/X more open? Sure, there are more nazis there now, but the site has a whole has declined and lost customers, while still having censorship.
Must did NOT buy twitter for free speech purposes. He bought it for ego purposes, because his tweets weren't getting the traction he assumed they should be getting. After buying it, when his tweets still weren't as popular as he wanted, he demanded that the engineers fix the flaw that caused it.
"Fail fast to learn faster" (Score:2)
Not surprised (Score:2)
I know my life improved when I disconnected from social media.
Call it what it is. (Score:2)
no one wants /twitter/x running inside there head 24/7.
Yeah, but no addict thinks like that.
Naturally when everyone is an addict, no one is.
Not surprising (Score:1, Offtopic)
When you can't get accelerator pedals [theverge.com] to stay connected [youtube.com], why would you think threads would stay connected to your brain?
Neuralink's failures (Score:3, Informative)
Want to see how the primate experiments fared? Fucked up is the best description. https://www.pcrm.org/ethical-s... [pcrm.org] I couldn't imagine subjecting animals to these procedures.
Re:Neuralink's failures (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that these tests are literally mandated by the FDA, right?
You do realize that the USDA, after investigating Neuralink, found no animal welfare breaches [reuters.com] except for one 2019 incident, which was the result of the use of an FDA-approved surgical adhesive (bioglue) in a non-approved manner. Right?
You do realize that the FDA reviewed the results of the studies that they themselves mandated, and were satisfied with the results? Do you have any clue how long and difficult it is to get approval for new invasive treatments from the FDA? Medical startups live and die based on whether they can manage to convince the FDA to give them the go-ahead. A typical medical startup's stock shoots through the roof when the FDA grants approval, because it's such a difficult and uncertain process to convince them.
What do you actually know about primate research? Do you understand what a terminal procedure is? Do you understand the nature of how primates are shared between research labs, and they don't just miraculously become cured of whatever experiments were done on them last? Do you understand the fact that macaques in captivity frequently will attack and injure each other, and that these injuries don't just go away? Do you know what sort of histopathology is normal? Do you know literally anything about the topic at hand? Because I guarantee you, the USDA and FDA do.
Re: (Score:2)
How is any of that relevant?
Unexpected? (Score:5, Interesting)
Neuralink's first attempt at implanting its chip in a human being's skull hit an unexpected setback
This is literally the whole thing that keeps happening to all these kinds of devices. This was literally the expected outcome and Neuralink's difference was supposed to be mitigation factors for this.
Neuralink did not disclose why the device partly retracted from Arbaugh's brain
It's a thing called scar tissue. The brain does not like foreign objects inside it. Who knew?
In response to this change, we modified the recording algorithm to be more sensitive to neural population signals, improved the techniques to translate these signals into cursor movements, and enhanced the user interface
This was the thing that was supposed to set the Neuralink apart from others. Being able to use statistical analysis in real time to fine tune the signal that was coming from the brain. And input signals (while constantly changing because of the ever increasing tissue surrounding the "threads") were to be kept maximized by some unknown mitigation factor that made the "threads" so unique in this domain. Clearly there are no means for them to ensure that the signal input remains clear enough for the computer to do it's thing.
All in all, this shows that Neuralink pretty much only has the really quick CPU and fancy formulas as their sole trick up their sleeve here. They've clearly made no inroads on the whole brain rejection of implants. How much continually refining the algorithm can go is indeed interesting, but eventually the brain will form granuloma around the implant and the probes will barely pick up anything after that point. There's no trick math that can calculate the signal from zero input. So this Neuralink is just basically all the others like it but with a fancy computer to help out. Got it.
Big surprise (Score:3)
So an experimental procedure didn't work the first time. I'm not sure what people expect. Anytime something new doesn't work do we give up?
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't the first time, though. Brain implants have been around a long time, and brain rejection of the foreign object has happened every single time without exception.
This is much closer to a flerfer arguing that the Earth will be flat this time.
Re: (Score:2)
Were they even testing the rejection in this? I thought they were focused on testing the signal integrity?
Should have listened to Pink Floyd (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Patients fault (Score:2)
He didn't meet his Elon Musk praise quota 3 days consecutively. You think the implant was programmed to just let that go? Next time it'll apply a few extra volts.
Re: (Score:2)
My god (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, there are a bunch of extremely angry comments here on an article of some medical procedure having a setback. I wonder why this doesn't happen with most articles about medical research suffering setbacks. I think it might have something to do with the fact that for some reason a particular investor of the research facility at hand is being brought up. For whatever reason it otherwise never happens that investors of medical research organizations are brought up on Slashdot when discussing that something went wrong with some medical research.
I will never understand why this person lives so rent free into so many people's heads.
Inflammation (Score:2)
We might just get lucky and the brain may reject self-assembling neural lace.
Whether that Zuck document about requiring it to enter public school by 2039 is real or not it'll have to be updated to have school lunches contain mRNA antiinflammatories in them.
it's frawnkensteen (Score:2)
A chap named Igor brought me a brain to implant in my laboratory castle. He failed to tell me it came from some fellow named Abbynormal at Musk's company. As soon as I implanted the brain, the giant jumped off the table and stole a Tesla and ran away. Lesson learned, if it's Musk's, beware.