Stuff like this should be great, but all I can think about is how capitalism will ruin it. Will they only make it an “service” available via subscription, and shut off your ability to walk if you don’t pay? Will it require expensive software updates, or only work if you’ve got wi-fi or a cellular connection? What happens to the patients if the company which owns this patented technology goes out of business?
Managing a chronic problem is much more profitable than curing it completely.
The change in people is amazing. That said your estimate is not far off for cost of just the implantable generators, plus the leads. Add on cost of surgery and doctors bills and hospital stays and your probably under estimating.
Not to mention typically it’s the last choice for pain treatment, so it’s a the end of typically years of pain. Also it only lasts for about a dacade due to the battery so you will need to repeat the surgery and buy a new device periodically.
It’s a pacemaker battery. They use induction charging. A cable runs down the neck to connect to it. The charger just kind of magnets on there. The charger is also where you connect to the onboard software and choose what settings you want. Dad’s had a specialized device for that. I can imagine a smartphone connection eventually, but with the security concerns I imagine that’s not likely to happen soon.
You are almost completely correct. It does have wireless charging but like your cell phone eventually the life of a rechargeable battery wears and needs to be replaced.
That you are wrong about the last part. Our latest two generations actually use ipads for the doctors and iphones for the patient. I don’t know too much about the security on them as that’s my area of knowledge. That said unlike a pacemaker our devices don’t keep people alive. They lessen movement disorders and reduce pain but people won’t die if they get turned off.
A large part of the American healthcare system is made of for-profit businesses. Capitalism and genuinely empathetic healthcare are mutually exclusive, and the parts that actually work for patients have only managed to do so because of a shit-ton of regulation. Regulation that corporations are constantly fighting and struggling to weaken. They buy politicians to help.
Pharmaceutical companies will claim that drug prices are high because R&D is so expensive, but that didn’t stop them from fighting for the right to advertise prescription drugs on TV. Last I read, only the U.S. and New Zealand allow that. Producing and airing those ads can cost millions. R&D is expensive, but apparently not so expensive that they can’t afford that. Capitalism does not have a conscience.
I’m a sad sack because I’ve seen (and am currently seeing) friends and family members get screwed by a system that allegedly exists to help them, but really just profits off their pain. I know I’ll probably end up being exploited, too.
Ok, but it's really nice that there's a new treatment giving a dude a way better quality of life and give hope to others.
We don't have to immediately turn everything into sadness. Sometimes stuff can be good, without a bunch of people trying to figure out why it sucks because everything sucks and woe is the world.
This kind of technology should be standardized so that if one company folds, you can use other companies to repair your existing one. Or it could have a state counterpart so that the technology will be available as long as the country’s government exists.
I can only speak to our experience, but the MD who put his deep brain stimulator handled his software (and hardware) updates. They were free. Dad was part of their trial (which explains the free part), but I can’t imagine the folk in the clinic what did his implant locking their patients into worse software just because they can’t afford their annual checkup.
My dad has hearing aid device and every time the battery runs out, he has to replace the battery then go to the brand shop and pay $30 to reprogram it.
With all the issues Tesla has (poor build quality, lying about range, blatant racism in factories, Union busting, Elon) I don’t know why anybody would buy one. There are several better options at this price range.
I’m very much in the market at the moment but I’ve not seen the other options in the price range with what appeals to me the most: the quickness and fun to drive aspect. Are there actually others comparable to say an m3 performance?
Pretty much any BEV is going to have a similar driving profile. Electric motors imply the high torque that gives you the crazy acceleration and resistive breaking. It’s not really a “Tesla thing”, it’s an electric motor thing.
Now, some models might not have as much oompf, similar to how some Teslas are faster than others … but all the ones I know of from GM or Ford are going to be pretty fun to drive.
Even my Volt can do a burnout, every EV is going to have a lot of torque. But in this price range, a Kia ev6 or a Ford Mach-e would be better choices. You also have the Nissan Leaf or the Chevy Bolt for fwd options.
It’s not so much the burnout that I enjoy (I’d rather not keep buying tires 😅) as sustained actual acceleration. Which means ideally two powered axles for traction, and at least from what I’ve read it’s hard to beat a model 3 performance for the price. Especially since it comes under the cap for a $7500 tax credit.
Maybe you should check out the polestar 2 if you’re interested in a sporty sedan. I seriously considered one of those but couldn’t find a good 2" receiver for it.
Like others have said, that is an BEV thing, not just a Model 3 thing. Here is a fun video to showcase this (note they are in Colorado, so the vette is slightly hampered).
What’s with the fact that the model 3 is the only one to commonly get shortened when it’s also the one where the shorthand clashes with a car with way more history, the BMW M3?
I normally wouldn’t but figured in context it made sense. But tbf they’re similar 0-60 times at least. I’m sure the rest of the handling is significantly better in the BMW, as well as quality, but I’m at 100k miles on my C63 and ready for some lower maintenance fun at this point. Until I can afford a 3 car garage and lift, or something, which probably isn’t for a while.
Subaru Solana or whatever it’s called. I bought an ascent earlier this year, but it basically came down to splitting hairs when I went with it over the Solana. Absolute blast to test drive that thing, and I’d love to take it down to Moab or similar places.
Probably going to wind up leasing one next year, so I don’t have to worry about battery decline down the road
I like the Mach E. It is a ton of fun to drive. I suggest just test driving a bunch. The shortage of EVs is long since over, so you should be able to drive any of them. If you have it in the budget, try out a polestar too. I have heard good things, but it is one of the few I haven’t been able to drive myself.
There are so many good EV options out there. Pretty much something for most folks. Tesla gets credit for pushing EVs into the limelight, but I’m not really sure why you would get one today with all the things you mentioned.
Yes, the Model Y is the best selling car in Norway ever, but your smooth brain knows much better than everyone who has been in the market and purchased one because it was the best option for them.
i feel like people have more than substantiated down thread why it’s not a “smooth brain” take to think Tesla cars aren’t actually that good relative to other options on the market.
So when I first learned about TOR almost 10 years ago in uni, it was said to be compromised to a significant extent by secret services holding entry and exit nodes.
I’ve hear something similar. I think I read that the US Air Force has a bunch of nodes or something.
Additionally I don’t really understand what I would use it for if I already have a vpn and how it might put me a risk of legal trouble if I’m using it and someone routes something bad through me while I’m using it…
I’m not even sure how to talk about it.
I am decently technical, I just don’t know this tech.
Disclaimer that I haven’t used Tor in a while, do your own research, etc
The US navy designed and open sourced the Tor network. If all the traffic meant to be anonymous was coming from the US navy it doesn’t work well as an anonymizer. There’s been various claims that they have backdoors over the years, but to my knowledge none have held water.
Unless you’re running an exit node (which requires different software than the Tor browser) other people’s traffic isn’t getting routed through you so you’re fine legally.
VPNs are not very good at protecting you from the websites or services you connect to. They’re best used to hide where you’re connecting to from your ISP. Modern fingerprinting using things like browsing habits, installed software, web browser size, cookies, etc is barely effected by VPNs and the Tor browser takes care of an minimizes lots of those tools.
The biggest issue for day to day use for me is how slow it is. Because your traffic is being routed through 3-5 nodes before getting to its destination overall speed and latency suffer a lot
The biggest issue for day to day use for me is how slow it is. Because your traffic is being routed through 3-5 nodes before getting to its destination overall speed and latency suffer a lot
That’s why I never continued to use it after the times I experimented with Tor.
Modern fingerprinting using things like browsing habits, installed software, web browser size, cookies, etc is barely effected by VPNs and the Tor browser takes care of an minimizes lots of those tools.
But can’t you just spoof most of that if you really want to? If you’re putting in the effort to be concerned with anonymity.
Iirc holding both the entry and exit of a routed connection, you can in theory match traffic going through, which would let you connect a user to the server/site they are connecting to. It might still be encrypted at that point, idk the details anymore.
I also heared that bit about the secret service owning nodes a few years ago. It was trough a teacher that’s also really in the stuff outside of teaching, and has a network of non-teaching proffesionals in the field.
It’s something to keep in mind, at the very least. Tor already has some weaknesses anyways. You shouldn’t trust it blindly just because it’s Tor. If anything, I think it more has a false rep for how strong it is over struggling with a stigma.
I don’t think a single credible source has shown this to be a vulnerability. You’re talking about an attack that would cost, what, millions of dollars to run per day?
As far as I can tell, Microsoft tried to hold off these anti-trust lawsuits by intentionally making the interoperability and feature-parity between its products shockingly bad.
To be fair I would rather see them try to make money for investors this way than by cutting costs on labor and the other shady things companies do to make money. This is at least some kind of “innovation” for lack of a better term. Maybe it might be cool
Yeah, increasing profit by actually creating a product is great. Increasing profit by increasing costs to the customer or decreasing expenditures (in particular cutting pay or removing employees) sucks.
no, but i have seen people asked to give up their position so a ‘more worthy’ trans person could take their place… mostly for the ‘optics’ of being ‘diverse’. most often old white men, because they are ‘bad’ and trans people are ‘good’.
a lot in community groups in social/leftist leanings. the obsession with trans tokenism about rich white liberals is def a thing, esp when you can request a old white man and replace them with a young trans person so that your org/group is ‘with it’. i’ve seen this happen multiple times.
and in a few instance sadly, the person who replaced was great and knowledgeable, and the trans person who replaced them was an unhinged jerk who ended up quitting or being asked to leave after introducing an inordinate amount of drama into the group.
Where I live, I can be legally denied a job, housing, or medical care. If the cops wanted to, they’ve retroactively invalidated changed drivers licenses, so they could probably just arrest me for driving. I couldn’t access any form of domestic violence resource when escaping my marriage.
Some trans people are crazy assholes - just as some cis people are crazy assholes. But there is no system level oppression of cis people. Drama is annoying, but drama doesn’t mean you don’t get to eat.
These days “free speech absolutist” is used more as an excuse to defend hate speech than actual opposition of censorship. Elon was always inclined to censor whoever he finds inconvenient (company whistleblowers, plane tracker), and many of his fans are similarly inclined, say, against LGBT people, socialists, and other groups they dislike.
Zhang resigned from Apple following a paternity leave and a trip to China, telling the iPhonemaker that he was going to work in the country for XPeng Motors. That reportedly triggered an investigation, since XPeng is also working on autonomous driving technology, which revealed that Zhang was caught on CCTV taking hardware from Apple’s labs and transferring files to his wife’s computer.
6 months is not long enough.
This is stealing trade secrets, then fleeing to a country that doesn’t give a shit about that.
I’ll agree with you when a corporation is jailed for life when an employee or consumer of their product dies. Until then, this is simple theft and should be financially punished.
stealing * information* Nobody was harmed; nobody was deprived of life, limb, security, or physical property or currency. Knowledge was transferred without authorization, meaning that only the potential reduction of future profits for a corporation is at stake. It’s a breach of contract - about the least impactful thing that a human can do to non-human. This kind of crime should never result in prison, or else it should be applied to every knowledge worker, ceo, or vc who remembers any part of any business they’ve every been involved with in the past (which it never is).
Huh? No. Read the article, they literally stole hardware.
That reportedly triggered an investigation […] which revealed that Zhang was caught on CCTV taking hardware from Apple’s labs and transferring files to his wife’s computer.
Emphasis mine.
Not to mention, it would be one thing to do this between American companies, but taking it to a Chinese company, and in China no less, likely has other serious implications.
Nice redirect - this is not about the theft of hardware but the divulging of [checks Republican notecard] Super Important Information (but not important enough to patent, or so simple as to not be patentable) that was given to [Checks skin color card] those theiving, IP stealing, red communist Chinese.
I hope your corporate masters give you a pat on the head and an extra Milk Bone tonight. You’ve worked hard for it.
I just learned this the hard way. I just got laid off and rejected the severance check because in order to get it, we had to sign a thing that said we waived our right to ever sue them for anything
this is a ruleset though, and it’s likely much cheaper for them to produce one SKU for the US rather than two, a california rule abiding one, and a rest of the country one.
Right, this is absolutely because it’s cheapest for them to adopt across their product line and their PR team is trying to spin it like they are doing it for altruistic reasons. It’s the same with USB-C. Once forced by the EU, it was announced all iPhones would use usb-c, same situation
Their carbon neutral claims are a stretch, but they did massively reduce their carbon footrprint in addition to using offsets. The majority of the reduction is from using green energy at their factories and no longer using air shipping.
Everyone has an excuse but you’ve gotta start somewhere. There are probably hundreds of ways to message people and we would all survive if Meta and it’s products vanished.
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