I can't wait for the future of body modification and the reverse engineering/hacking that follows.
Everyone and their dog gets one of these chips because they're so cheap, easy, and ubiquitous that you can walk right down to your doctor's office and have it installed same day, covered by your insurance!
Then some black-hat hackers come by and pull a Captain Crunch and blast a specific frequency at the highest power possible and it immediately makes everyone with the chip go to sleep.
> the messages traveling to and from the hub will be encrypted, the user will have to somehow verify any command they give the hub, and the data will only be stored on the device itself and not in any kind of cloud. Most importantly, the implantable device couldn’t be used without the armband: remove it and the implant would become useless.
And also:
> “should anything go wrong” the person wearing the device would “swallow a pill that would kill the cells inside the chip only, leaving the rest of their body unaffected.”
I wouldn't be the first person to sign up for this, but it looks like they at least did do some basic thinking about security.
It sounds like they're saying these would be living biological cells, so it'd be powered by you.
Gotta be honest though, that kind of creeps me out. As much as I do understand that not everything living in my body is me, the idea of implanting other living cells is kind of disgusting on a fundamental level.
I'm skeptical but intrigued. A lot of what is put forth in this article just seems like 3 brainstorm sessions by middle management, written out and editorialized.
Can’t wait to use this while flying on an airplane. This will basically make flying like teleportation, just that you also arrive freshly sleep at the destination.
I’m not putting anything in my body unless its entire codebase and hardware design are public and extensively formally verified. Current medical device standards are clearly insufficient and off-base as they allow for garbage like pacemakers with vulnerable Bluetooth stacks.
The VAST majority of users do not care, and many programmers (myself included) do not believe that formal verification is likely for many larger or more complex systems if they have a tech stack element somewhere in mix (probably not on the device itself but perhaps interfacing / programming it).
We will see who wins in the market, the open source player with a public and extensive FORMAL verification (NOT EASY!) or the closed source player, first to market, sales reps going to Drs offices etc
Almost certainly the latter will "win" in the sense of getting widespread adoption. If current technologies are any indication, this will lead to people, like the poster you're responding to and myself as well, who view proprietary control of such a device an unacceptable risk not adopting the technology until a FOSS alternative is made. If the device sees widespread adoption, this will probably happen several years later, and be mature enough to use about a decade later.
The latter will probably win due to high time preference and soft money. My standard is basically an admission that I'm not going to be able to use any of this hardware, unless there's a separate market for power users.
If I could get 8 hours of proper sleep and feel energized in the morning I would take this in a heartbeat. I would even take it with unskippable ads lol
Well, it sounds good, until you consider the huge chunk of the population that sleeps too deeply to dream. That chunk will only increase as obesity increases.
I have the most vivid, lucid dreams every night without fail. The idea that other people don't is just baffling to me. However, I've never 'day dreamed' and have zero concept of it.
Theoretically this is giving you cells which not only release the medication, but they also manufacture the medication inside the cell. The microchip seems to simply be a control mechanism.
Honestly I think this solves a problem most people don't have. Carrying pills is not that annoying.
But if therapies requiring prolonged clinic / hospital visits like chemotherapies or IV infusions could be given out using this technology that might be life changing.
Sleeping pills are a real kettle of worms. I don't think most people have an issue with carrying pills, but sleeping pills themselves are fraught with issues from addiction to nasty side effects.
Well, not entirely. Not all the drugs used to treat sleep disorders are mimics of existing biomolecules. Some inhibit or modify the reception of the signaling molecules. This article talks about directly generating the substance itself.
The pills themselves also tend to be somewhat indiscriminate with where they cause the substance release. When you release a substance that does X into the body via the stomach, or even an injection, you end up with a lot more hitting receptor sites scattered across the body. For example, SSRIs often cause nausea since they affect the serotonin receptors in your GI tract. Just having serotonin released inside the brain would totally side-step this.
That said, my point is more about addiction. A large amount of sleeping pills are also common drugs of abuse, and can be highly addictive. A brain chip would not have nearly the same abuse potential.
I like this idea, but hate the idea of needing a third party app. Something like this would have to be open for me to use it. I dislike the idea of a third party writing the code that controls something embedded in my body.
Not even for the typical reasons of 'ads and privacy'. What happens if the business fails? Someone pushes bad code? The organization is sold? Something we can't anticipate now? I'd need the certainty that I can take full control over it if needed.
As someone in the sleeptech space, I feel like this is written by someone who doesn't understand sleep.
It isn't just "peptides" and "circadian rhythms". Sleep is about much more than just being unconscious, which why sleeping pills don't solve the problem of sleep, they solve the problem of consciousness.
Sleep is what your brain and body do during the time you are asleep. Just because you're unconscious, doesn't mean you are getting good sleep.
At my company SoundMind we're identifying bursts of brain activity in your deepest sleep called Slow-Wave Oscillations (SWOs). When we detect an SWO, we have a short window in which to stimulate your brain, which causes your SWOs to increase in both power, and the number of slow waves. This results in up to 40% improvement in the performance of deep sleep. This is an improvement to the most important part of sleep, which is why we're starting here. SWOs are responsible for the clearing of Amyloid plaques, memory consolidation, and regulation of hormones such as GH, cortisol, insulin, and prolactin.
Love the project and concept. Signed up to your email list.
My first company was a DARPA R&D contracting firm and at one point we made our own EEG's. We solved some interesting problems but being in a helmet in a war is probably an easier use case than a head band that's comfortable to sleep in... What are you using for electrodes in your prototypes? Do you use an aerogel or the usual synapse paste? I can't imagine a consumer product would work for the later but maybe the former.
The state of the art for my old applications seems to now be micro/nano scale electrodes, from only a quick google. I've been out of the space for a bit shy of a decade so I'm interested to know how far it's come and how you're going to make the product comfortable.
I'll do a blog post about our electrodes after our patents are submitted.
We are not using any gel or water. It took us over 6 months of experimenting and re-implementing different papers, before we came across our current design. Which was the result of a fortuitous accident.
The design we're currently using, I've had for over 1 month with no degradation in signal quality - I live next to the ocean, so lots of salt in the air, and I try to treat the electrodes badly. The other bands that we have in use are also maintaining good signal over the few weeks of use.
The formula we're working on with industrial design atm is the balance of comfort, signal quality (maintain connection - as I said, electrodes are now good), and robustness.
I came across that same paper just the other day. No, we haven't. We've done some experimentation on increasing REM, but we're pretty focused on improving SWS with our first stimulation.
There are lots of other stims in the pipeline, and lots more research to done! It's a super exciting space.
In all seriousness, one of the sure-fire tests whether impotence is caused by physical (very rare) or psychological (quite common) reasons is to tie a thin string around your penis before sleep. If you wake up and the string is broken, it's a psychological problem, because every man experiences unconscious tumescence several times a night. "Morning wood" is just when you happened to wake up during one of those cycles. :)
I've had some experience with lucid dreaming myself, but it isn't an area we're currently interested in pursuing. It's fun when you don't wake yourself up.
One anecdote from our early development. When I was using one of our early stims, I woke up when it should have held me in deep sleep. I was a bit disappointed, as I'd had good results for a few days. Then I realized, I wasn't hearing the stim, so I actually wasn't awake. That realization woke me up. :)
Well, I think it would be cool to correlate whatever sleep measurements you're taking with the subject's dream experience. Could be a good marketing angle for you, too. Dreams are cool.
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[ 0.17 ms ] story [ 100 ms ] threadEveryone and their dog gets one of these chips because they're so cheap, easy, and ubiquitous that you can walk right down to your doctor's office and have it installed same day, covered by your insurance!
Then some black-hat hackers come by and pull a Captain Crunch and blast a specific frequency at the highest power possible and it immediately makes everyone with the chip go to sleep.
And also:
> “should anything go wrong” the person wearing the device would “swallow a pill that would kill the cells inside the chip only, leaving the rest of their body unaffected.”
I wouldn't be the first person to sign up for this, but it looks like they at least did do some basic thinking about security.
Or do I need to plug myself “in” every few days?
Gotta be honest though, that kind of creeps me out. As much as I do understand that not everything living in my body is me, the idea of implanting other living cells is kind of disgusting on a fundamental level.
And if airplane would be in crash it would be easy to switch OFF all on a board before plane crashed on ground.
The VAST majority of users do not care, and many programmers (myself included) do not believe that formal verification is likely for many larger or more complex systems if they have a tech stack element somewhere in mix (probably not on the device itself but perhaps interfacing / programming it).
We will see who wins in the market, the open source player with a public and extensive FORMAL verification (NOT EASY!) or the closed source player, first to market, sales reps going to Drs offices etc
But if therapies requiring prolonged clinic / hospital visits like chemotherapies or IV infusions could be given out using this technology that might be life changing.
The pills themselves also tend to be somewhat indiscriminate with where they cause the substance release. When you release a substance that does X into the body via the stomach, or even an injection, you end up with a lot more hitting receptor sites scattered across the body. For example, SSRIs often cause nausea since they affect the serotonin receptors in your GI tract. Just having serotonin released inside the brain would totally side-step this.
That said, my point is more about addiction. A large amount of sleeping pills are also common drugs of abuse, and can be highly addictive. A brain chip would not have nearly the same abuse potential.
Not even for the typical reasons of 'ads and privacy'. What happens if the business fails? Someone pushes bad code? The organization is sold? Something we can't anticipate now? I'd need the certainty that I can take full control over it if needed.
It isn't just "peptides" and "circadian rhythms". Sleep is about much more than just being unconscious, which why sleeping pills don't solve the problem of sleep, they solve the problem of consciousness.
Sleep is what your brain and body do during the time you are asleep. Just because you're unconscious, doesn't mean you are getting good sleep.
At my company SoundMind we're identifying bursts of brain activity in your deepest sleep called Slow-Wave Oscillations (SWOs). When we detect an SWO, we have a short window in which to stimulate your brain, which causes your SWOs to increase in both power, and the number of slow waves. This results in up to 40% improvement in the performance of deep sleep. This is an improvement to the most important part of sleep, which is why we're starting here. SWOs are responsible for the clearing of Amyloid plaques, memory consolidation, and regulation of hormones such as GH, cortisol, insulin, and prolactin.
If you want to find out more, check us out at https://soundmind.co
My first company was a DARPA R&D contracting firm and at one point we made our own EEG's. We solved some interesting problems but being in a helmet in a war is probably an easier use case than a head band that's comfortable to sleep in... What are you using for electrodes in your prototypes? Do you use an aerogel or the usual synapse paste? I can't imagine a consumer product would work for the later but maybe the former.
The state of the art for my old applications seems to now be micro/nano scale electrodes, from only a quick google. I've been out of the space for a bit shy of a decade so I'm interested to know how far it's come and how you're going to make the product comfortable.
We are not using any gel or water. It took us over 6 months of experimenting and re-implementing different papers, before we came across our current design. Which was the result of a fortuitous accident.
If you look at the Muse S headband reviews on Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/MUSE-Headband-Overnight-Meditation-Re..., you'll see many people having difficulty with electrodes tearing. I tried a Muse S myself, and quickly saw wear on their electrodes.
The design we're currently using, I've had for over 1 month with no degradation in signal quality - I live next to the ocean, so lots of salt in the air, and I try to treat the electrodes badly. The other bands that we have in use are also maintaining good signal over the few weeks of use.
The formula we're working on with industrial design atm is the balance of comfort, signal quality (maintain connection - as I said, electrodes are now good), and robustness.
There are lots of other stims in the pipeline, and lots more research to done! It's a super exciting space.
One anecdote from our early development. When I was using one of our early stims, I woke up when it should have held me in deep sleep. I was a bit disappointed, as I'd had good results for a few days. Then I realized, I wasn't hearing the stim, so I actually wasn't awake. That realization woke me up. :)