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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • “At the same time, I think we really need to understand the fact that we are living in a different era and animals are making use of what is available to them.”

    They just adapt. If the supply of snail shells is declining - probably because of the pollution of their enviroment - those shells become scarce. When there are plastic garbage shells availiable, the hermit crabs will utilize them instead, since it probably is easier to obtain them. They serve the same purpose to them.

    Since the lifespan of a wild hermit crab can reach up to 30 years, it probably will effect their health. When plastic disintegrates and becomes micro- or nanoplastic, those particles will cumulate in their bodies. These plastic particles are suspected of being silmilar to hormones, which can have effects on the ability to reproduce, among others.

    It should be rather concerning than cute.



  • Of course many comments in this threas are exaggerated; there won’t be played any ads into your brain.

    But there are some implications for the usage of Neuralink that are worth thinking about it - especially when it comes to privacy:

    Given that it “just” runs with firmware, so that the implant can function in a way most stable and reliably, and also given that there will be no subscription model involved into all of that, will the user (patient) be able to control the functionality of the implant (e.g. controlling the intensity of the eletric signal sent out from the implant to counteract the intensity of a tremor)?

    And how will that happen? One thing I could think of is to control the implant with a smartphone app. How good will that smartphone app be? Will it be programmed sloppily like these apps we know from Internet-Of-Things-Apps and have a ton of bugs? Are those (medicinal!) apps secure in terms of privacy? What is with the product support? Will the implant be discontinued after a few years (and also the app)? What if your smartphone fails (no power or hardware failure, or after an update it doesn’t work)?

    A friend of mine has an app to monitor her blood sugar. She is not qute satified with the app. Luckily the provider of those diabetes sensors provided a separate device, so that the app is just an addition for measuring when you are travelling, for example. But in their last iteration they tried to omit the separate device, probably in order to save costs. My friend had to explicitly ask for it.

    With that in mind I’m not keen on having control on such medicinal devices with a smartphone only. If the smartphone fails, there would be no backup. Will such similar things be the case regarding Neuralink?


  • I’m sure these implants will give much needed ease to patients who suffer frem tremors like parkinson and other neurological diseases. But the things I’m mostly concerned about are:

    • Will health insurance pay for the implant in a one-time-payment? Will it be a subscription model? What happens when you can’t pay your subscription? Will it be shut off?
    • Will the implant be operated through firmware (like a pacemaker) or software, which reqires frequent updates? If so, will there be - like computer software - “new features” implemented (“With version 2.0 you will be able to share your Neuralink experience with other Neuralink users. Your data may not be leaked, pinky promise.”
    • What if a certain mentally unstable CEO throws a tantrum that will affect the performance of the Neuralink implant negatively? Will there be any legal protection from such thing?

  • Someone in the Fediverse (I don’t know where and who) posted that you have to add the following filters into U-Block Origin. When done you shouldn’t see any anti-adblock-warnings :

    youtube.com##+js(set,yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel,false)
    
    youtube.com##+js(set,Object.prototype.adBlocksFound,O)
    
    youtube.com##+js(set,ytplayer.config.aras.raw_player_response.adPlacements,[])
    
    youtube.com##+js(set,Object.prototype.hasAllowedlnstreamAd,true)
    

    I might add that I haven’t experienced any anti-adblock-warnings yet, but I added these filters in advance. I might be worth a shot!