For the sake of the patients, I hope there's a better long-term service plan than Second Sight Medical Products had:
This case is very infamous in the disability & tech academic research community -- kind of their version of the Therac-25 in terms of ethics, damage to people, etc.
- devices are not OSHW (and didn't comment on the new OSHWA open healtware initiative) - implants don't actually have firmware or even battery - devices connected to implants rely on their protocol Synapse https://github.com/sciencecorp/synapse-api
So... arguably they haven't taken a positive stance on the topic IMHO but assuming the situation is as they describe (kind of an advanced mirror in the body connected to smarter stuff outside but that one could replace) it's not as terrible as others mentioned e.g. in the IEEE Spectrum article.
The most expensive IT failure in our governments history was healthcare related.
It's typically $10-$50 per visit. Maxes out at $130 per year.
This probably weeds out a lot of frivolous visits and keeps the system healthy.
Blind people in my family rely on proprietary software for dealing with visual impairments. It's painful and offensive how exploitative these tools often are. The thought of installing something by a similar company into one's body is frankly dystopian.
I would gladly pay big money for proprietary tools if it means regaining some of my sight until libre options exist. Looking at the rather sorry state of accessibility on libre software, I'll be dead and buried before the first digital eyeball with free software comes out.
> Second Sight merged with Nano Precision Medical in August 2023 with a commitment to provide technical support for the Argus II
Maybe you're alluding to something more than is mentioned in that article, did they not fulfill their commitment to provide the technical support in the end?
If they did not fulfill their commitment continuously, it's messed up.
It's annoying when software support ends for anything, phones, Nest Protect, (any Google product!), but I think best to bear it in mind in buying anything that it's a possibility, who are you relying on for what and what's their incentive to keep going.
Traditionally, if I buy a $500 dishwasher, the OEM is responsible for repairs under warranty. When the warranty lapses it'll still keep working perfectly fine, and if something breaks I can go to one of a dozen repair shops in my local area. Same if the manufacturer goes bankrupt: it'll keep working, and I can still get it repaired.
These days, if I buy a $500 tech product, it can turn into an expensive brick literally the next day, and there's nothing I could do about it. Even worse, it can happen because the OEM feels like it, not just because they went bankrupt! The fact that I own and possess the product has become completely meaningless, its fate is permanently in the hands of the manufacturer.
Somehow we've ended up with all the downsides of renting/leasing, and all the costs of purchasing. It'll only get worse unless we start punishing companies for behaving like this.
As an old post on usenix I liked (paraphrased) went “of course they shit on the floor, it’s a corporation, it’s what they do, the job of government is to be the rolled up newspaper applied to their nose when they do”.
That’s the fundamental problem, our governments don’t stand up to businesses enough when they should and roll over too easily when they shouldn’t.
The relationship is far too cosy at the top levels as well.
It is a reasonable argument for the regulatory state though - which is to say, delays to market from regulation could have reasonable origins - like requiring sustainment plans when you're going to do human implants which aren't removable. With the obvious counter-balance that the government and by extension the taxpayer should take on some of the risk if they truly want "rapid to market" development.
If you avoid that you have more freedom to operate as a corporation in China than in the US, of course in the US the corporations just buy sorry lobby the politicians.
It used to be much more understated than it has been recently though, that they’ve pulled the mask off more over time suggests they think they can get away it.
Interesting times.
Occurs to me there was actually a Black Mirror episode on basically this in the latest season - not sight exactly, but a neurological implant of some kind. (Jacking subscription fees, removing features, etc., with real-world consequence.)