Will we also get a control valve back on our heads?
Yes, but it belongs to Gaben. Don’t touch it.
I know the internet lives the guy but no. Just no.
As someone losing control of their hands and enjoys playing video games, I very much look forward to this technology not only being available via Elon Musk.
And I see that but a game developer is not the right type of business to develop these kind of extremely intrusive and potentially dangerous accessibility devices. We need much stricter guidelines and oversight for this kind of tech before they essentially become a remote control for parts of our brain.
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.
Suddenly this makes way more sense
I can hear this picture
TIL Valve is into brain chips.
The Valve Deckard was a little more ambitious than had been originally anticipated.
To be fair, I think it’s specifically Gabe who’s been obsessed with brain computer interfaces for the past many years. Obviously it’s his company, so Valve by extension participates.
Makes sense, as you get older you get more and more disgusted by the weakness of your flesh, and tend to crave the certainty of steel.
As far as I can see the company behind it (Starfish Neuroscience) is not affiliated with Valve in any way? (Aside from having the same CEO)
Might be a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I don’t really see a problem with brain implants. I wouldn’t put anything in my brain in a thousand years, but if someone’s willing to accept the risks, why not? They have the potential to significantly improve quality of life for many people.
It’s exactly like AI. Could the technology be useful were it to be used in service of goals that would serve humanity? Absolutely. Will it be used by billionaires in a way that will be harmful to most people in order to further entrench their power? Most definitely.
You can say that about literally any consumer product, however.
At least some of the people developing this stuff think they’re going to be able to partner AI and neural links. I think the desire is they think about the solution to a problem and then they don’t have to do the work of creating it. It will just exist magically because the AI will do it.
It’s egotistical bollocks that comes from believing your ideas are always right, and that a back of the napkin idea is the same as a fully engineered solution.
Like everything else, it will be come enshittified and we will be living in the Johnny Mneumonic world.
It could become the standard in time, like smartphones. I can easily see it becoming the norm, making it more expensive and difficult to use a normal smartphone instead of some brain implant, much like how “dumbphones” are coming back as overpriced and gimmicky. Maybe they pullsomething similar to the “green bubble” like apple did, alienating people without implants.
This is a very important concern. Tech companies already exert entirely too much power over society through smart phones and their accompanying apps. The damage they would do with direct access to your neurons is incalculable.
The only thing that comforts me is that I firmly expect that society as we know it will entirely collapse before this technology can really be capitalized. It’s not a very comforting expectation, but it somehow bothers me less than the idea of techno-fascist corporate feudal states taking control of everyone’s thoughts.
It is sort of funny how the idea that humanity would wipe itself out used to be a worst case scenario and now it is one of the more comforting options.
I am siding with the zombies in that apocalypse.
If I lived in, say, Iain Banks’s post-scarcity anarcho-communist utopia The Culture, I’d get a neural lace in a heartbeat. But living in this capitalist dystopia that most of us does, I don’t trust corporations to not use this sort of technology for domination over the populace.
For perspectives on how it might go (general vibes, not the same technology) I recommend HYPER-REALITY (6 mins short film) or David Brin’s Existence novel.
Continuum is a tidy lil show addressing this, too. Actually, not so tidy, a bit of a mess. But still entertaining and intriguing at times.
thanks, I’ll check it out!
I’ve read Consider Phlebas, due to either your or another lemmings’ recommendation and it’s very ‘80s sci fi in writing style. I felt it required a bit too much attention for a good audio book at work, but wasn’t really interesting enough to pick up the physical book. Player of Games is supposed to be very different, is it worth giving it a shot or is Iain Banks’ writing just not to my taste?
Tbh I think Consider Phlebas is one of the weakest Culture novels, so I’d absolutely give Player of Games a shot! I started with that one, and it does a much better job at showing The Culture’s society than the mere outside glances we get from Phlebas.
With the possible exception of Phlebas, I recommend going through the series in publication order. But feel free to skip Inversions and State of the Art, imho they both mostly suck 😅 The rest of the books are great :)
Not “The Matrix” – we will just serve as batteries for someone’s AI or Crypto farm while having/living in lucid dreams?
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 😂)
Another problem is abandonment. When the company goes under or the device becomes outdated and they no longer want to support it the device can’t be easily removed. If the device was fixing a disability, the person’s disability will be reinstated.
I suspect we will end up in a situation where you have a “mount” that is connected to your brain. The mount is able to be serviced by any company in the field, because it is standard. From there, you have the actual chips which are going to be relatively easy to install and remove, eventually you might even be able to do so at your house. This allows competition while allowing being consumer friendly.
As for the disability side of things, it just means that when your chip is no longer serviced you easily swap it for another companies whose are.
My piercings are against God but technoligarchs think they will convince those people brain chips you can swap out on the fly are okay. lol
Anyways I’ll take one brain chip here in like 5 years.
I’m not trying to convince anyone. I well aware of where the tech will be in 30 years and I am getting one. If anyone else has a problem with it, they can wait until then to do their surprise pikachu face when the tech ends up being awesome, exactly how AI is going. LLMs are basically useless, but outside of those AI even in it’s modern incarnation is wildly inpressive, and will only get moreso.
10 years ago no one believed me when i told them about the LLMs we currently have. It was around that time I realised that the public makes sweeping generalizations about tech when 99% of them don’t understand the tech, the math, or even that something being present in nature means its replicable, because nature can replicate it(and therefore so can humans). That last one seems to be a huge disconnect in peoples cognitive abilites.
Edit: also anyone who tells you anything about your piercings in a disrespectful light can go suck an egg, they don’t live in your body. I realize im autistic but the fact that people try that shit and then other people are susceptable to that sort of societal pressure is wild to me. I do what I want, when I want, however I want. People call me weird and I openly ridicule them for thinking their opinion holds any sway over me. You try to shame me, and I will shame you for your massively inflated ego that you think has power over me.
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.
Like “Unauthorized Toast”… with all the DRM laws, we could get arrested and charged with a felony for trying to repair ourselves.
At some point in humanity’s future, I assume that it will be a thing and be widespread. Just too many potential benefits to having high-bandwidth links to the brain not to eventually do it.
But it’s a path with a lot of hurdles along the way, and risks.
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The CRISPR technology is more advanced than brain implants.
If I can read your thoughts, it can change them. I guess it depends on the level of sophistication but it opens up the ONE place in the entire world that is completely yours.
The one place i cant leave, id love to not have my shit fucked up anymore.
Imagine the guy at BMW who invented subscriptions for heated seats teaming up with the guy at nvidia who does drivers and youll understand why I wouldnt
That’s the challenge with technical advances. It’s not just solving the technical problem, it’s also solving the societal problem.
If you look back into history, Automated elevators was a major panic until people got comfortable with the idea.
"Alright, the implantation surgery was a success, now all we have to do is fire up the remote activation. Throwing the switch in three… two…
How the hell is this not the Onion?
isn’t the verge the same as the onion?
Nah, the verge is less credible
I was sure it must be. Is it not? Gosh.
I think we all know where this is going.
- The Brainchip is trendy in Silicon Valley but doesn’t do much yet. The company says cyber-superintelligence will be available in a year, tops. Investors are pouring billions into it. Everyone says you need to hop on the trend now or you’ll be obsolete in six months.
- It’s been two years. The Brainchip still struggles to control a mouse or search Google. Everyone’s lost interest in building apps for it. Many users are reporting severe migraines, but the company says there’s nothing to worry about.
- The Brainchip pipes three unskippable ads directly to your optic nerve every time you go to the bathroom. Notifications ping your brain all day long. You can get it removed if you’ve got $80k to burn, but there’s a high risk of postoperative stroke.
Yeah, no, I’m not putting anything in my brain that isn’t open-source from end to end. And even then probably nah.
the only way, and I mean the ONLY way I’ll put hardware in my brain is if I have resurrection level support like in Altered Carbon.
the fear of losing my outward identity over the ability to live forever is worth losing.
You still won’t be able to live forever.
I wonder how often you have to back up in case you need a reboot.
Why so pessimistic? With any luck brainchips will mean the end of annoying adverts once and for all. You’ll just feel an unexpected desire to acquire certain products. And maybe crippling headaches or a nauseating feeling of unease if you ignore these urges
The Brainchip is trendy in Silicon Valley but doesn’t do much yet.
These guys would beg to differ:
https://thedebrief.org/neuralinks-first-human-trials-mark-one-year-of-control-through-telepathy/
this isn’t for you, you’re not a paraplegic, are you?
The article does not mention paraplegia.
Why does it have to? All current bci’s are designed for the disabled, why would this one be an exception?
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He’ll only be able to make the first prototype, and then a second. He will never make it to 3.
By then he should be able to pass the tech off to a smaller, independent contractor like Gearbox (please don’t; I don’t want Randy in my brain) or Obsidian.
He’ll make a few versions:
- Brain Chip
- Brain Chip Army
- Brain Chip Police
- Brain Chip 2
- Brain Chip 2 Coastal Vacation
- Brain Chip 2.1
- Brain Chip 2.2
- Brain Chip 2 VR
Will never make it to 3 though.
Not advocating for our against but 2 thoughts here:
1: Gabe isn’t Musk. Yes money etc but don’t immediately jump there without other malfeasance please. Caution absolutely but don’t ascribe one rich assholes shit to another.
2: He probably has hard data on accessibility… Possibly more than nearly anyone else. There’s a HUGE portion of the population that can’t use “traditional” controllers or other input devices. And that’s not even going into the medical realm.
Could game Gabe be starting his villain phase? Sure! But until more negative details come out I’m just hoping this is investments he’d use toward a new steam controller.
let’s not circlejerk and have a soft spot for a billionaire just because you like video games. why give gaben the benefit of the doubt just because you think steam is a good product? if they’re a billionaire doing this, we can assume this is a money making venture.
if you’re a billionaire, you’re already way into your villain phase. he’s not musk, but he’s one of them. you don’t make a billion dollars. you take a billion dollars.
So, you are reading things I didn’t write. I’m not defending him about steam games etc… The only good will here about any of it is the work toward better Linux life.
I agree billionaires shouldn’t exist.
I don’t like steam.
I don’t really do much gaming… And it’s worth stuff from GOG.
Chill out. I’m not the fanboi you are looking for.
I’m only saying perhaps he sees $$$ in a venture that is rife with much worse people doing far worse to vulnerable people.
On the off chance better access comes about from rich assholes eating each other, I’m game to at least watch.
I’m willing to say more positive things about him. His dedication to Linux is great of course, but I’ve also heard that people working for him get a lot of freedom to choose what to work on. And no crunch. In the games industry, that’s pretty good.
So yeah, he seems to me to be one of the better among the tech billionaires. But in the end, he’s still a billionaire, and he’s god that ridiculous fleet of super yachts.
I’m not. your post is literally saying we should be nicer to him because he’s not Elon. you’re saying we should be easy on him because he might be doing some good. I’m saying we shouldn’t.
No. “Don’t immediately assume he’s doing the same exact evil” is not the same as “be nicer”.
At the least, it’s “assume other bad motives perhaps”.
My thought is this is just another way to milk money from others. That simple. Not “let’s bribe govts”.
If it’s assumed he’s doing the exact same as Musk, then we either prepare to undo the damage incorrectly, or waste time looking at the wrong stooge.
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.
First step to getting away with shithead behavior is convincing a group, any group (but preferrably one marginalized), that you’re representing them.
Idk, there are tons of good things that have happened from rich people doing stuff. Hell, that’s the reason medicine progressed — if nobles weren’t terrified of dying, who knows how long it would have taken to figure out that bloodletting with leeches doesn’t work?
I don’t think I need to point out all the bad things that have happened because of the rich.
Not saying represent by any stretch.
If I need X thing to survive, I’d rather get it from a pure and innocent source… If that’s not possible, I’d rather it from the dude with too many boats who charges too much money than the one actively gloating about destroying lives literally and on a much higher scale.
Yes I know lesser evil etc… This isn’t a philosophy course and I don’t need what they’re selling. But many do potentially and I’d rather minimize damage than just let the absolute worst be the default.
I respect that, I just try to provide context. It’s often misinterpreted, and I do succumb to emotional responses — but my goal is to make sure those that are justified approach their goals with a clear mind.
I’m not advocating for the rich. I just want people to make the right decisions when it inevitably comes to the point where we need to decide what to do with the rich. I don’t think we should treat GabeN with any more respect than we owe the poorest person, is all.
Billionaires either inherit their money or get it by being an asshole. Being nice doesn’t make people billionaires.
There is literally no evidence of that other than tankie memes.
I am ready for my 99999 downvotes and insults for not going with the propaganda. Nothing prevents someone for eventually saving up billion by making a good product in todays digital age. Nothing requires you to be evil. Countries having shit tax policies that do not get the full benefit of having hyper rich is a country policy issue. Killing people is not the solution, change in policies is.
nah. you need to be pretty fucking terrible to build a business where your share of it is worth a billion dollars. you do so by cheating your customers, employees, and competition. valve is no exception.
there are plenty of companies out there that pay their employees decently, make good products, and compete fairly. those companies usually aren’t worth that much and their leaders aren’t making a billion dollars from it. you’re right that the tax policies are shit, but it’s not like you ever accidentally become a billionaire. you do so by cheating the tax system too and screwing the general public.
and nobody said anything about killing people.
There are a few exceptions. JK Rowlings became a billionaire simply by writing some really popular books, and even stopped being a billionaire by giving much of her wealth away. As far as I can tell, she didn’t become an asshole until later.
I bet she was always an asshole, she just hid it from the general public.
The billionaires today have an opportunity to eliminate world hunger yet they don’t. Instead, they fly rocketships, sail on giant yachts and buy island compounds or towns in Texas. So yeah, No one at that RB club is going to win a Nobel Peace Prize. They all suck.
Yeah, if we were putting billionaires against the wall, GabeN would probably be near the end of the line.
There was a time the same was true for Elon Musk, before he suddenly decided to jump the queue. I really hope Gabe isn’t going down that path.
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You don’t get to be a billionaire without some malfeasance.
And even if you don’t assume actively malicious intent like you should with Musk, there’s a lot of potential danger with technology like this, and if you don’t stand a lot to gain, and have reasonable controls against things going wrong, it’s probably not a good idea to be an early adopter. It’s just like a pacemaker, there are a narrow segment of people who should want to test a new model/concept for them.
Absolutely agree at every part.
My desire would be strong regulation via a real agency (not current US), or alternatively ONLY work via non-intrusive means on the scalp.
They should make a big facility to test the implants
Maybe have an AI overseer, they could name it Gladys
You’d need people to solve puzzles to really put the implant through its paces. Something involving blocks should be sufficiently simple to play around with while having lots of variation.
Yperating System?
Yeah no thanks
Billionaires should not exist
Step 1: Tax all wealth above 999 Million at 100% taxrate
Step 2: Congrats, no more billionaires! 🎆🎇🎉🎊It’s worth remembering that there was a time when the highest US tax bracket was taxed at 90%, and that didn’t stop the US’s longest period of sustained economic growth.
Ridiculously high tax rates for ridiculously high incomes have been done before and are entirely feasible.
Careful now you are scaring tankies because they can’t go long without their delusions of getting to massacre everyone who disagrees with them.
It’s wild how Lemmy gamers and others treat Steam as if it’s a noble corporation and Gabe is THEIR billionaire so he can’t possibly be bad. The fact that he’s a billionaire is proof that he underpaid and stole from everyone below him. There are no good billionaires, and Gabe is not your friend
I mean, it’s hard to hate on someone who pays his people well, gives fun benefits, cultivates chill working culture and is overall simply a chill guy and whose big, fat marketshare comes from actually working for the customer.
Yeah. He could probably pay better or give more of his wealth into the society. Hell, prolly even should. But the fact is that among anyone else with that title, Gabe looks like a goddamn saint.
He’s anti union, valve employees aren’t allowed to unionize. Also seems cool with making money off all the games made by studios who are also underpaying and over working employees
Anti union sucks. But about money - yeah, Steam is a game selling platform. If they tried to avoid selling games by studios underpaying their workers, they’d evolve into indie game selling platform. Most AAA studios underpay folk, do they not?
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He could direct his company to stop targeting kids with addictive gambling mechanics and looking the other way regarding grey-market resellers.
Valve doesn’t make money from keys on the grey market. Only on games bought through Steam, what do you want them to do?
Valve are the pioneers of lootboxes. No denying that.
cultivates chill working culture
First of all, admittedly, watched half of it. But also I don’t see the point. Yeah, they have problems coming from their structure, but these seem kinda miniscule compared to any other game company. I mean come on, people looking up to more experienced colleagues for advice was shown there as a problem “because they have more to say”. Or the bias in hiring…that even ex employees seem to understand that it simply happened due to their requirements about experience and such. The video was informative, but…pretty much shortly after mentioning what they aim for when hiring, one could easily foresee most of consequences.
Although damn, the pressure with these must feel enormous. And also…they really seem to say a lot of it up front so where’s problem?
it’s almost as if there may be room for something in between love and hate, black and white, good and evil
OMG GET OUT OF HERE
Is a killer a good person? Isn’t there a line to cross before you become bad? If you reached billionaire status you left the moral line far behind
that’s a good way of thinking when you are 6…, by puberty you should have realized it’s not that black and white
The fact that he is a billionaire does not mean that lol. He’s a billionaire because his company gets a cut of every sale of games on his platform, and his platform is the industry standard/default platform for digital distribution. He could be paying his employees a million a year to be a janitor and he’d still be a billionaire, no “stealing” and not one being underpaid.
Stop defending billionaires, they don’t care about you. Great example he don’t care about us? He is anti union and refuses to let his employees unionize to ask for better conditions. They’re also raking in money on all these games that are also being made on the backs and labor of underpaid workers
Stop defending billionaires, they don’t care about you.
I’m not “defending billionaires”, I’m correcting misinformation and rubbish. Of course Gabe doesn’t care about us, I never said he did.
Just because he is a billionaire doesn’t mean that he exploited, underpaid, or stole from anyone. He’s a billionaire because he created the only fish in a huge pond that everyone throws money into hand over fist. Like I said, he could be paying everyone there a million dollars a year and he’d still be a billionaire because he OWNS the company. It’s not a publicly traded company, it’s private. He owns it.
They’re also raking in money on all these games that are also being made on the backs and labor of underpaid workers
That’s got nothing to do with him. He built a marketplace and tools for people to distribute and use in their games. The working conditions of people making the games that are then sold on his marketplace has nothing to do with him.
But yet he might be one of the better billionaires in the pool of filth.
Nicest guy in prison
Given the state of the US justice system, that’s not much of a gotcha.
The fact that you wrote this with just vibes makes me love Gabe that much more. I’m finding that the best past in life is to reject whatever the fuck you all are selling since you’re all so out of touch with reality.
It’s wild how many servile, billionaire lovers there are here today. It’s kinda pathetic
