• Archmage Azor
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      9711 months ago

      This was the original cyberpunk-transhumanist message. Not “cybernetics will destroy your soul” but “corporations own your body, or worse parts of your body”

      • @[email protected]
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        611 months ago

        And even if open source doesn’t fit their business model for any reason, there should be regulations that force these companies to open source everything in any situation that they stop offering support.

        • @DetectiveSanity
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          13 months ago

          I’ve meditated about this a while now! Imagine the amount of electronic waste produced by planned obsolescence! You have a phone, TV, car and much more that could be diagnosed, repaired and reused for same or all different use cases.

          All those phones that still are running LineageOS perfectly fine that could be used by the elderly who need not have much more than basic communication.

      • –Phase–
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        No, they’re far too busy using taxpayer money to bail out banks and businesses that are “too big to fail”.

    • @QuazarOmega
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      311 months ago

      Well that’s fucking bleak, at least I got a good chuckle out of this

      NPM’s novel implant for drug delivery.

      So that’s how they keep JavaScript devs hooked!

    • @[email protected]
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      3 years later they’ll end the support

      I don’t think that’s a fair characterization - it sounds like they ran out of money and the company that bought all their assets didn’t maintain support. (And in that company’s defense, it’s really hard to maintain support for something when you’ve bought the IP but you don’t have any of the institutional knowledge.)

      • @[email protected]
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        2311 months ago

        Maybe it’s a hot take but if you are giving life-altering treatments, and your company goes under, you should open-source everything

        • @[email protected]
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          Would that even be legal? The company has obligations to its creditors and shareholders; simply giving away potentially valuable intellectual property right before going under seems to violate those obligations. And it’s the sort of violation for which someone might be personally held liable.

          I’m not claiming that a company can never open-source anything, but rather than they have to have a plausible business case for doing so. And I don’t see a plausible business (as opposed to humanitarian) case here… But I’m not a corporate lawyer, just someone interested in this sort of thing.

          Edit: there’s also the FDA to consider. If you make medical devices and you want to release the source code, you probably need to demonstrate that it’s safe for users to reprogram their devices (and it’s not safe).

  • FIST_FILLET
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    9511 months ago

    imagine physically embedding the fucking musk into your brain, VOLUNTARILY. i can’t imagine anything worse in the world

    • @[email protected]
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      2811 months ago

      People are still driving Teslas right now. Pretty much the same in my book. You’re trusting your life to a proven moron.

      • @[email protected]
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        1311 months ago

        Elongated Muskrat has very little to do with the inner works of the company now. Even in the heights of his involvement, by his own account, his input was tangential at best, like “we make expensive car now, use this money to make cheaper car” and “we call it x because x is the best name ever”

        • @[email protected]
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          611 months ago

          Don’t forget “The Tesla Model series will spell out SEXY” and “Oh, Ford already claimed Model E? Model 3 it is, 1337!”

        • @[email protected]
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          11 months ago

          The ongoing litigation against the company begs to differ. Also didn’t Musk step down as CEO of Twitter a while back? It seems his tangential bullshit has quite an impact. I’ll be honest I think the people actually working at Tesla do their best to try to moderate his unadulterated fuck ups. But they’re not safe from it and neither is anyone else who does business with them.

      • @[email protected]
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        Slightly off topic but I live in the DMV area and whenever I notice someone with the specific combination of both driving like someone who is not at all paying attention to what’s going on around them and having 0 respect for other people on the road, 90% of the time it’s a fucking Tesla.

    • @[email protected]
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      911 months ago

      Well the disabled people getting this implant probably don’t care about musk, it’s legitimately a cool technology and good competition for the medical space.

      Musk is a cuck still, and I’m sure we’ll have to wait a couple generations before we get the dystopian stuff in Neurallink

      • at_an_angle
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        1011 months ago

        Yup. Gotta sell it as a medical miracle before you can sell it as a commercial product.

      • @Zron
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        211 months ago

        I still don’t get how it’s at all safe or practical to have what amounts to a smart watch embedded into your brain.

        The surgery they want to do literally involves removing a piece of your skull. Falling and hitting your head without a piece of your skull removed is bad enough, this is going to seriously compromise the strength of people skulls. Which is especially bad when you consider it’s meant to solve problems like paralysis. I have a feeling that people who are just learning to walk again may be at a high risk of falling. Now they’re at a high risk of falling and cracking their skull open like an egg.

        It’s also charged with a wireless charger, which would need to placed on the device every night when you sleep. How many people remain completely still the entire night and don’t move their heads at all?

        This is a cool and valuable first step for brain augmentations that can probably help thousands of patients, but the implementation has so many glaring problems that it makes me wonder how well the actual product even functions.

        • @SixTrickyBiscuits
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          711 months ago

          You have to drill or cut into the skull for plenty of medical procedures. I don’t think getting a dime sized piece of skull removed at the crown of your head means your head explodes when you hit it on something.

          As for the charging thing, there are plenty of solutions. Wear some kind of headband for one.

        • @[email protected]
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          311 months ago

          How many people remain completely still the entire night and don’t move their heads at all?

          Anybody with sleep apnea who has a CPAP has solved a harder version of this problem. It sucks and takes a while to get used to but it’s way better than waking up with a headache every day.

          I assume that if the implant is helpful the overnight charging will be readily accepted by users.

          (I’ve got a peripheral nerve implant myself so I am quite familiar with what lengths people will go to to relieve pain)

    • @[email protected]
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      711 months ago

      i can’t imagine anything worse in the world

      I can… there are literally people who are willing to participate in Musk’s Mars colonization fantasies. They stand about as much chance of success (or survival) as those people who got imploded in that Titanic sub - except their deaths won’t be as quick and merciful.

      • @[email protected]
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        811 months ago

        Imagine living on Mars in a tiny hut that you can never leave while you slowly starve to death all while Musk is telling everyone on Earth how cool an successful his new colony is. New volunteers continue to arrive in waves while promises go unfulfilled and an endless line of corporate stooges tells you that you are lying about the conditions.

      • @[email protected]
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        111 months ago

        I have no idea what you are talking about because Lemmy, now all of a sudden, is refusing to show me context.

          • @[email protected]
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            111 months ago

            Yeah… that’s not how accelerationsim works. Accelerationsim would require our active participation in order to make things worse… but we don’t actually have the power to do so.

  • SokathHisEyesOpen
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    6711 months ago

    I want to thank Facebook for making it blatantly obvious to us that we should never get any brain implants. They’ll definitely use them to read your thoughts and push ads straight into your consciousness. Oh, and you’ll probably have to pay a subscription.

  • Monkey With A Shell
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    6111 months ago

    There’e not enough knowledge and connectivity in the entire internet that could convince me to ever put a connection directly to my mind online.

  • @[email protected]
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    5111 months ago

    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?
    • @[email protected]
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      4711 months ago

      The thought that frightens me even more (although I am not a neurologist) is that if this is installed in children, and the neural pathways for the child’s basic functions are formed to pass through that implant, removing the implant will render the child unable to think.

        • @Stoneykins
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          1811 months ago

          Positive thought: maybe thats the first step to become a godlike computer brain species

          Negative thought: if that is how it works I doubt it is just kids that it would do that to. If that happens I would guess it could happen to anyone who has one “installed” long enough

          • @[email protected]
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            611 months ago

            I think you lose a lot of neuroplasticity once you become an adult though, which you would need to reroute the neural pathways. Although I guess that there have been cases of adults who lost half their brain matter in accidents and were able to develop normal cognitive functions again. Actually, even babies must already have the visual cortex all connected up if they can see so maybe some things just develop too soon.

    • @SpaceNoodle
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      611 months ago

      Firmware is just software that we try to update less often.

      • @void_wanderer
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        411 months ago

        Trivia: I just learned two weeks ago that "firm"ware is in between "hard"ware and "soft"ware. It has nothing to do with a firm (a company).

    • @[email protected]
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      111 months ago

      I have a (peripheral) nerve stimulator implanted.

      Insurance paid for the trial implant, then the permanent one. They also paid for a couple of meetings with a rep from the mfgr who showed me how to use it best.

      I have the device, the control, and a transdermal charger. No subscriptions, no remote access, I don’t think it keeps logging data.

  • @[email protected]
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    Neuralink is an excellent advancement for brain science and it is greatly going to help disabled people and those with little function left over their bodies. It’s okay to celebrate this technology while also hating musk.

    Like SpaceX, they’ve both been excellent ventures that he so far hasn’t ruined (probably thanks to the people he delegates to). Just because it’s fashionable to hate him for how he’s absolutely fucked over Twitter (which i’ll remind everyone we’ve always hated and agreed is bad, use Mastodon instead) doesn’t mean his other companies largely spearheaded by others, and their results, are also bad.

    That’s not even to mention that the kind of dystopian technology people are imagining isn’t anywhere close to what the Neuralink device is actually capable of. What everyones fearmongering over is still just science fiction. It’s just barely able to interpret brain signals, it’s not as powerful as everyone makes it out to be.

    2nd edit: forgot what instance I’m on, this comment probably ain’t going to do well lol

    • @stingpie
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      2911 months ago

      The big issue I have with brain chips is longevity. How long until the electrodes degrade? When will the chips fail? Once they fail, will it be fail safe or fail deadly? Also, what will be the power source? Will it use inductive power, or battery power? They are both awful options. What if the chip overheats? The implementation is the real question here, but neuralink refuse to give any answers because it proprietary.

      • @[email protected]
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        All very good questions. The only one I think I can answer is that I think it was inductively charged but I forget what the pigs had on them. It may have been an external battery pack. The implant itself is definitely not external accessible.

        We could probably look at existing BMI devices to get our answer, I’m sure it’s even less pretty.

    • @[email protected]
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      1511 months ago

      That’s not even to mention that the kind of dystopian technology people are imagining isn’t anywhere close to what the Neuralink device is actually capable of.

      Yet. They’ll get to work on that just as soon as they can, don’t you worry!

      • @[email protected]
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        1211 months ago

        The brain science and neurology advancements that would be required to get to such a point would be absolute mind-blowing breakthroughs in medical science and would completely change the world as we know it. The mental/personality disorders we could now understand and solve would make me so hopeful for humanity and the upbringing of welfare for everyone. This would without question be a good thing.

        • @[email protected]
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          511 months ago

          Yes and at one time sickness was caused by the devil, then germs were found. One day it’ll probably happen. Idk if we’ll be alive or not by then but time will tell, exponential growth in tech and all.

          Almost everything can be good or bad. A.I could save us all, or it could go skynet. Nanobots could be great for surgery, but also great for grey goop. Hell, something as simple as guns, it depends on who is using it and why, and brain implants are a pretty big figurative gun. They could be the savior of humanity, or they could be the device which finally enslaves it in near totality, it’s definitly something to consider.

    • @[email protected]
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      1411 months ago

      Does it work though?

      I only ask this because Musk has been promising full self driving in Teslas “next year” for about a decade now, so any claims made should be taken with an enormous pinch of salt.

      • @[email protected]
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        611 months ago

        By all appearances yes, it’s an appreciable jump in the technology compared to current brain interfaces that are used for the immobile. They did a whole live tech demo with pigs as well as the people he’s hired to work on it there. He has top level surgeons and neuroscientists all working on it who choose to be there. Oh and also it just passed FDA approval for testing in humans.

        It would be hard to bullshit this passed all the people involved. I have the belief it’s quite a different situation compared to the continuing failure of FSD.

        • @[email protected]
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          011 months ago

          It would be hard to bullshit this passed all the people involved.

          Do you not understand people? It’s easier to BS 10 people than 1. You just BS 100 and the 10 weakest people tell you who they are. People who want to work on brain interfaces want it to work. Whether it actually works or not depends on the real world, not the number of people involved.

          • @[email protected]
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            411 months ago

            This comment doesn’t make it sound like you have much real world experience. Maybe read literally anything about Neuralink and BMIs, I’ve been following this for years.

    • @[email protected]
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      411 months ago

      I kind of agree. While I think they are not that bad as far as advancements go, most of it is shitstained by Musk, who has to be seen at all cost and have to be seen as the ultimate inventor of everything.

      He wants to be seen, stay relevant, and be the boss of everything, that he usually makes dumb decisions, which is a stain on a company mostly relying on a foundation of very intelligent people.

      • @[email protected]
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        I agree with your assessment except saying that SpaceX’s advancements are “not that bad” is a massive understatement. They’ve completely disrupted and forever changed the space launch industry, with the help of government subsidies.

        Everyone also forgets how Starlink is serving remote indigenous communities and scared the pants off shitty dominant ISPs that have been screwing rural communities over since forever.

        I’ll re-emphasize my point that I think the results of some large companies, which comprises the efforts of many many smart people, can have facets of it be considered overwhelmingly good.

        Edit: some more words

          • @[email protected]
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            I guess they may have come into existence without him. Unfortunately with the way capitalism has a death grip on the world… it seems like the only way risky ventures get off the ground is through the whims of megalomaniacal filthy rich motherfuckers.

        • @[email protected]
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          211 months ago

          Whenever I hear someone unironically use the term “disrupted” I just know I’m going to be hearing some capitalist parasite being glorified for doing something expensive that a government did much cheaper half a century ago.

          • @[email protected]
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            111 months ago

            Space launches were “much cheaper” a half a century ago? You don’t really follow any space news whatsoever do you? That’s patently false.

            • @[email protected]
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              110 months ago

              No, the entire space exploration attempt was much cheaper half a century ago - neither the US nor Soviet space programs wasted labor or resources enriching billionaire parasites. There is absolutely nothing that can be performed by parasites such as Musk or Bezos that cannot be done far better, more efficiently and more effectively through public means.

              • @[email protected]
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                110 months ago

                Can you provide a source showing space exploration was “much cheaper” half a century ago than SpaceX’s current costs to getting payloads into orbit? It sounds like you’re just assuming it would be cheaper from your idealogical leanings than that actually being the case.

                A half a century ago the US and USSR were devoting a significant fraction of their entre GDP in the space race to blast people into space on some of the largest rockets ever built, mostly for national security and military concerns And that’s not even to speak of the “safety standards” they had and ignored in order to win.

                The later shuttle program itself was a massive MASSIVE expenditure and no one in their right mind would EVER say it was an efficient and cheaper per kg in LEO.

                You’re just straight up wrong.

                • @[email protected]
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                  110 months ago

                  Yeah, hold on… let me compare the costs of enriching a billionaire parasite piggybacking off publicly-funded programs that developed all the technology said billionaire parasite is piggybacking off with said publicly-funded programs.

                  No, Clyde, it was cheaper - because we actually got results other than merely enriching a billionaire parasite.

                  Your brain has been so addled with “free market” fairy tales that you might just as well believe a glass slipper will magically turn you into royalty. There is absolutely nothing parasites like Musk can do that we couldn’t do far, far better, much more efficiently and far cheaper through public means - and that’s it.

  • @[email protected]
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    4411 months ago

    A long time ago I read some cyberpunk novel, and one of the characters had an ocular implant that got infected with malware that flashed spam ads for Indian brothels in his vision 24/7, even with his eyes closed, until he went completely postal.

    • aubertlone
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      1011 months ago

      They touched on this concept in the black mirror episode “Fifteen Million Merits”. Very minor spoilers, read on if you dare

      Not with a brain implant per se. But had to pay merits or else watch porn ads. And if you don’t have any merits, guess what they’re unskippable.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

      Edit: oh heck. It might have been The Diamond Age.

      Edit 2: search yielded

      “Bud knew a guy like that who’d somehow gotten infected with a meme that ran advertisements for roach motels, in Hindi, superimposed on the bottom right-hand corner of his visual field, twenty-four hours a day, until the guy whacked himself.” --Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

  • @[email protected]
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    4311 months ago

    Fox Viewers: ‘Don’t get vaccinated because there are brain controlling microchips hidden in the jab.’ Also Fox Viewers: ‘I can’t wait to get one of Elon’s brain chips to own the libs!’

  • /home/pineapplelover
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    Wow, who did Elon have to fuck to get FDA approval for a brain chip that’s killed numerous test subjects.

    Edit: Just a friendly reminder that ublock, sponsorblock, newpipe x sponsorblock, libretube, youtube piped exist

  • Sagrotan
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    4111 months ago

    There comes the time you have to root your own brain and install CyanogenMod 23.0 “BrainIac” on it, maybe “TorView” and “OpenMath” too. I recommend “FreeTaste 2.0” as an addon.

    • @taiyang
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      1911 months ago

      Imagine how high stakes it is to avoid bricking your brain.

      • Draconic NEO
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        211 months ago

        Not your brain but rather a tiny little chip inside your brain, still would be a rather difficult task (that’s an understatement) to unbrick or replace it though. Unless they put a debug Port accessible from the outside you would need surgery if you needed to JTAG to unbrick it (probably would need it anyway since if they go this route they probably won’t let you access the pins you need to from the outside).

    • Captain Beyond
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      1311 months ago

      Sure, you can root your brain and install a custom firmware on it, but your eyes won’t work unless you install the proprietary Google-Netflix-Microsoft-MPAA DRM blobs.

    • @ngdev
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      511 months ago

      FreeTaste 2.0

      Imagine someone infecting a user’s implant with a script that makes everything you eat/drink taste like leftover Jägermeister in a cup from a week ago

    • @[email protected]
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      CyanogenMod

      That would be LineageOS now. but yes, definitely root the hell out of your brain implant!

      Edit: spelling.

  • @Notorious_handholder
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    3711 months ago

    On one hand I’m excited for what the tech can do for medical purposes and future applications… On the other hand I’m terrified on what governments and corporations have in mind for it, cause I guarantee it will not be good

    • @[email protected]
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      3811 months ago

      Looking forward to the eventual open source/Linux version of this lol.

      My brain runs Arch BTW

      • The Bard in Green
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        I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as brain, is in fact, GNU/brain, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus brain. Brain is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many humans with the Neurolink chip run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “brain”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really are brains, and these people are using them, but it is just a part of the system they use. Brain is the kernel: the organ in the system that allocates the body’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Brain is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with brain added, or GNU/brain. All the so-called “brain” distributions are really distributions of GNU/brain.

        • ronalicious
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          411 months ago

          this is glorious. thank you.

      • moosetwin@FMHY
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        1811 months ago

        mfw I try to install arch linux to my brain and fucking die after it bricks itself

      • @Notorious_handholder
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        Watch red hat make it to where your brain is more inclined to want to wear an actual red hat lol

      • [object Object]
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        311 months ago

        I mean, are you going to trust proprietary hardware anywhere near your brain anyway?

      • @WNichArk
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        111 months ago

        I just downloaded my calculus patch.

  • @Adeptfuckup
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    3411 months ago

    You mean the FDA approved of lobotomizing a select few of desperate people to satiate the narcissistic impulses of its founder. Anyone else wanna take a ride in this plastic submarine???

    • @WNichArk
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      3811 months ago

      Uh, it’s a “submersible” and it’s not plastic, it’s throwaway expired carbon fiber from Boeing…

  • @[email protected]
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    3111 months ago

    As someone who suffers daily from a traumatic brain injury 5 years ago that’s caused me to become physically disabled and cognitively declined, I’m super excited about this.

    • @[email protected]
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      711 months ago

      I’m kinda excited about the technology, but very pessimistic when looking at the way our current technology is used.

    • @[email protected]
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      411 months ago

      But what about the invisible spyware/adware(/mind control???) they’ll be putting in without anyone knowing by using threads and components embedded inside the chip?

      • TJA!
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        511 months ago

        Why should they hide it? They just sell it with ads and everyone who wants one has to endure them.