Gabe Newell, the Man Behind Steam, Is Working on a Brain-Computer Interface (futurism.com)
from mozz@mbin.grits.dev to technology@beehaw.org on 12 May 2024 21:23
https://mbin.grits.dev/m/technology@beehaw.org/t/151850

#technology #usnews #valve

threaded - newest

autotldr@lemmings.world on 12 May 2024 21:25 next collapse

šŸ¤– Iā€™m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

As one eagle-eyed user on the site formerly known as Twitter pointed out earlier in the week, the website for Newellā€™s Neuralink competitor, Starfish Neuroscience, has been updated to reflect its forthcoming wares. Newell, who is president and cofounder of Steamā€™s parent company Valve, has also promoted the techā€™s other, far more sci-fi-esque use cases ā€” including, as he told a New Zealand news station back in 2021, the ability to edit oneā€™s feelings. At the time, Gaben was working on developing a BCI headset, though it seems now that Starfish is, like its Elon Musk-founded competitor, interested in ā€œminimally-invasiveā€ brain implants. Besides bringing his BCI endeavor out of stealth, the famously reclusive billionaire has also been embroiled in an antitrust lawsuit alleging that Steam is essentially running a monopoly on PC gaming and charging exorbitant fees in the process. He also, as the yachting blogĀ Luxury Launches reported in February, sold his 220-foot megayacht, which heā€™d converted into a mobile hospital during the beginning of the pandemic. Itā€™s clearly been an interesting few months for Gaben ā€” though given that lawyers are collecting sign-ons for the class-action lawsuit against Steam, he may need some help raising money for Starfish once the settlements start being paid out. ā€” Saved 54% of original text.

Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml on 12 May 2024 21:30 next collapse

This is rather old news, predating Neuralink entirely even. There used to be an unlisted YouTube video by Gray(Grey?) Newell that showed off what they were working on back a few years ago, too.

mozz@mbin.grits.dev on 12 May 2024 21:35 collapse

Yeah. I've been out of the loop apparently, because today was the first that I heard of it.

averyminya@beehaw.org on 12 May 2024 22:33 collapse

Haha glad that I brought it up on your radar! I like this one cause it seems much more medically oriented, vs. Neurolink existing ā€œjust because it canā€.

Which normally, I donā€™t really have an issue with. I think itā€™s great to do things just because we can (within reason ofc!), but I am definitely more skeptical of the fraud-Hyperloop flamethrower space-car man.

mozz@mbin.grits.dev on 12 May 2024 23:10 next collapse

Yeah. Gaben has a strong track record of bringing technology to the market that works, from a company that wasn't already around and doing things better overall before he got involved with it.

firecat@kbin.social on 12 May 2024 23:59 next collapse

Not the strongest because Steam Machines with Alienware had problems and way too early during development of Proton that games couldnā€™t handle well. The controller was stolen IP and is still currently fighting the lawsuit. VR games are not great as people expected and rarely do new VR games arrived. Leaving the VR headset in storage for mostly the owners life. Lastly, the Steam Deck original has problems and announced updates or free ifix fixes just to not have drifting problems. Still the Steam Deck after the original has some issues with compatibility and deleting their data every update.

The company has poor track records for hardware. Valve is like the Sony of gaming, they lie about stuff and make you sign up to download the game in their closed ecosystem.

mozz@mbin.grits.dev on 13 May 2024 00:24 collapse

I hadn't heard of most of this, and it's sort of an avalanche, so I picked out one particular part to check out in a lot of detail and see if it held up.

The controller was stolen IP

Looks to me like they had buttons on the back of the controller in some way which infringed on one of 105 patents that SCUF holds on specific parts of controller design, and they sued Valve a year after Valve had stopped using the design anyway.

I'm not qualified to say whether SCUF actually invented something no one else would have thought of, and then Valve deliberately copied them on it, but I'm skeptical. I lean a little more towards the side of "SCUF patented something somewhat obvious, and then wanted Valve to pay them rent in order to set their buttons up in a sensible fashion."

But at the very least, saying that it's demonstrated that it was "stolen" is, to me, not accurate.

and is still currently fighting the lawsuit

This part is objectively not true, unless there's some glacially slow appeals process I'm not aware of. It looks like the whole thing finished in 2021. Am I wrong?

averyminya@beehaw.org on 13 May 2024 01:10 collapse

Iā€™ve had conversations with this person before, in my opinion many of the things they fault Valve for areā€¦ extreme nitpicking.

Also, IMO Corsairā€™s patents are BS and are drastically inhibiting accessibility controller availability. Their stranglehold on something as simple as buttons on the backside of a controller shouldnā€™t be lauded.

mozz@mbin.grits.dev on 13 May 2024 01:22 collapse

Yeah. I was around in the games industry way back when the big publishers had a total stranglehold on the whole arena, and Steam was this magic thing that enabled non-AAA games to actually break in in a big way and achieve sales above the double digits, and on top of that I generally like Valve's games. I was sort of wondering if this is a "live long enough to see yourself become the villain" type of thing, where my good feelings towards Valve aren't warranted anymore in the present day.

But, judging by what I saw when I grabbed one of this person's assertions at random and held it up to the light to examine in it detail for objective truth, I don't think it's based on a reasoned and objective basis. What it is based on, I have no idea.

bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 17 May 2024 01:41 collapse

spoiler

sdfsaf

jarfil@beehaw.org on 12 May 2024 23:17 next collapse

Neuralink has a technology that specifically addresses two of the main issues with BCI: data density, and implant effective duration.

There are more issues, but it addresses those two in particular, which is something quite interesting to see, and can be turned into patents that can be sold to other BCI initiatives.

The rest of Musk isā€¦ well, heā€™s kind of an ā€œunstable geniusā€, with enough money to blow on random moonshots, marketing stunts, and random publicity. Honestly, if I had his money, Iā€™d probably do the same: build a few core businesses, then go on tangents to see what sticks to the wall. It can all still be seen under the general theme of ā€œcolonizing Marsā€ though, which is a guiding starshot as good as any, with Hyperloop and Boring company having kind of exhausted what can be done on Earth, Tesla being a borderline failure, SpaceX, StarLink, or indoor farming working pretty well, and X being an experiment at social manipulation.

averyminya@beehaw.org on 13 May 2024 01:41 collapse

Taking his ethics and actions out of the equation for a second ā€“ I would have no issues with his businesses werenā€™t scamming states out of legitimate transportation and fucking with people just because he could.

While dangerous, Iā€™m not really against the idea of selling flamethrowers, kind of. It is kind of the American right, which may be dumb, but fuck if I have anything to say about it. And while it produces a lot of space junk, Iā€™m not against Starlink or SpaceX. especially the former since it does do a lot of good. Coverage in the middle of the U.S. is not good, and anything more is good.

Ultimately what it comes down to is the fact that the more money tends to side on less regulation, and reintroducing ethics and actions into the mix he is abusing that. The flamethrower ploy could have been snark against the United States for not having regulation on that (if it were something that were actually important, that may have matteredā€¦), and similarly the Hyperloop scheme could have been some form of commentary on how easy it is for a billionaire to manipulate voters with obvious pipe-dreams, then gone ahead with the high speed train plan.

Instead, he gets butthurt and lashes out. I know weā€™re on the same page, if anything Iā€™m disappointed specifically because he is in a position to be doing a lot of good, has convinced some people that he is.

Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc on 13 May 2024 01:10 collapse

Neurolink existing ā€œjust because it canā€.

ā€œAperture Science, we do what we must because we canā€

You guys seeing this shit?

Joke aside, iirc Neurolink already been used on disabled people, allowing them to use a computer easily. Whether it will have any use case on healthy people itā€™s still not clear so far.

DarkSirrush@lemmy.ca on 13 May 2024 02:20 collapse

Neurolink has been used on 1 disabled person, and it was ā€œworkingā€ for about 2 weeks before it was announced there are ā€œproblemsā€ with the connection to the brain.

Oh, and it has killed a bunch of monkeys.

seang96@spgrn.com on 13 May 2024 12:51 collapse

I dislike the thought of ol musky rushing neurolink or even being remotely involved with something put into someoneā€™s brain, the also claimed they doubled the bandwidth of the connections via software optimizations so the disconnected wires doesnā€™t have a large impact. Also from the comments of other Lemmy users from that article, my understanding was that it is a common problem for some of the wires used to probe the brain for input to pop out after surgeries where they implant a processing chip into a personā€™s brain.

Toes@ani.social on 12 May 2024 22:43 next collapse

Half-Life 3 is gonna be full dive VR.

nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br on 12 May 2024 22:46 next collapse

Which implies that the brain-computer interface will never be viable as a product

admiralteal@kbin.social on 12 May 2024 22:57 next collapse

You mean Half Life: Full Dive, followed by Half Life: Full Dive 2. The second in a trilogy never to be finished.

lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 12 May 2024 22:58 next collapse

shudders thinking about SAO

Toes@ani.social on 13 May 2024 04:36 collapse

Welcome to city 17, Kirito

taanegl@beehaw.org on 12 May 2024 23:09 next collapse

Youā€™ll have to install it onto your soul, once again revolutionising the video game industry - and the world at large.

Gosh darn it, Newell. Itā€™s too much winning. So much good faith. Leave some for the rest of us! Look at Elon! Heā€™s dying over there!

eveninghere@beehaw.org on 13 May 2024 14:16 collapse

Imagine you damage the brain cells to quit the game. Instant isekai irl.

Kolanaki@yiffit.net on 12 May 2024 22:49 next collapse

First news I hear since hearing about Gabe working on BCIs and itā€™s justā€¦ An announcement of something that was already known. šŸ˜®ā€šŸ’Ø

intensely_human@lemm.ee on 14 May 2024 04:57 next collapse

Just so weā€™re clear here, itā€™s the game marketplace called Steam. Not just, you know, steam.

kureta@lemmy.ml on 14 May 2024 10:47 collapse

Before Gaben, there was only vapour. He invented, nay, created steam.

prole@beehaw.org on 14 May 2024 12:58 collapse

Man, the way that headline begins, I thought he had died.

On a macabre, but related, note: how long after Gabeā€™s death before Steam goes public and turns to shit? Iā€™d give it 6 months.