151–160 of 160 posts
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Do you think the government is going to sit atop of a giant pile of patents like a fire-breathing dragon protecting its hoard? That's what private companies currently do, and by relinquishing them to the government, the public has some say in what happens to them.
More likely they auction it off to the highest bidder.
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Do you think the government is going to sit atop of a giant pile of patents like a fire-breathing dragon protecting its hoard? That's what private companies currently do, and by relinquishing them to the government, the public has some say in what happens to them.
> Do you think the government is going to sit atop of a giant pile of patents like a fire-breathing dragon protecting its hoard? Very likely unless some distribution or maintenance mechanism gets funded.
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>… who would ever buy a neural lace from a startup — or even an established company like Google who might just lose interest — if there was no guarentee of patches and maintenance? Of course there’d be a guarantee: 5 years of security updates for your neural implant until you need new hardware. Golly, that almost sounds completely fucking crazy until you realize it’s already their current policy for smartphones-which…
You don’t have to have brain surgery to replace your smartphone.
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> I would have eventually signed up. You could have signed up only if excessive regulatory burden wouldn't have killed or prevented the startup from existing. I find the whole "medical startups should support their patients post bankruptcy" train of thought very disingenuous: as long as we as a society make no public concerted effort to cure these people and leave them to the mercy of the markets, then surely some re…
Then they should escrow all of their intellectual property and at the very least release it all to public domain the instant they stop supporting the device.
If the company goes bankrupt all IP will be released to the people. At least then motivated people can learn how to fix things.
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I'm interested in whether you feel the same way about drug use in competitive sports? My assumption from your position on cognitive enhancement is that you'd support a separate category where your allowed to dope as much as you'd like? Do we have any duty as a society to dis-incentivise people from pushing that too far?
I do think there’s a fundamental difference between sport (where we explicitly want to create a level playing field for fun) and the economy (where we’re competing with each other, but also against the universe). We might find that there are some tasks where having people take on risky enhancements really helps “team humanity.” But certainly wouldn’t want “takes on risky enhancements” to become a trait required to ge…
You may already have heard of it but there's a movie called "Gattaca"[0] that questions a world where genetic enhancements have become effectively mandatory.
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I do think there’s a fundamental difference between sport (where we explicitly want to create a level playing field for fun) and the economy (where we’re competing with each other, but also against the universe). We might find that there are some tasks where having people take on risky enhancements really helps “team humanity.” But certainly wouldn’t want “takes on risky enhancements” to become a trait required to ge…
> We might find that there are some tasks where having people take on risky enhancements really helps “team humanity.” But certainly wouldn’t want “takes on risky enhancements” to become a trait required to get by. You may already have heard of it but there's a movie called "Gattaca"[0] that questions a world where genetic enhancements have become effectively mandatory. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
I never saw the theme the movies is purported to present. I think Gattaca is conflated with other genetic-modification memes because it came out around the time those were current.
If the director wanted the movie to be about a hero, they fumbled it.
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Yes pain can indeed be an incorrect signal. Phantom limb pain is one example that comes to mind.
I've had phantom pain. I no longer do. It's still telling you something is wrong, though perhaps a different something.
Did you do mirror therapy or anything like that?
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That's just an argument for why it should be open source from the beginning: let bugs be spotted early and be sure the designs are as secure as we can make them before somebody gets saddled with one in their skin for life. Security through obscurity is not the answer.
That's exactly why the source code cannot be open to hacking by random people who suddenly wake up to a feeling of being qualified to work on something like that. There's a a general attitude of overconfidence among software developers that extends into other areas of expertise that they actually know nothing about. HN reflects this very well. And that's exactly why some things can never be allowed to be fully open.…
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Yes, the code of these devices should be 100% FOSS. Also the argument about defending intellectual property doesn't make sense: the software will probably do trivial things and be very simple, that is what you are selling is the hardware itself, and that is already covered by patents. So making the code public will allow people to find a replacement in the eventuality that the manufacturer stops supporting the produc…
> the software will probably do trivial things and be very simple, that is what you are selling is the hardware itself, and that is already covered by patents. How do you figure? In the case of something like an insulin pump or a pacemaker, sure, but once we start interfacing with nerves, especially once we start trying to communicate with them properly instead of just blunt-force stimulating a bunch of them, these d…
If you think about it, it's the same thing with drug formulas: after a period of exclusive then any company can produce it, of course paying the royalties to whoever owns the patent. It can be the same for software. Of course we have to talk about algorithms that are not trivial, as it's the case on most medical devices (most firmware just does very trivial things, that could be in principle be done by dedicated analog circuitry)