this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
351 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
69600 readers
4697 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I wounded if working people will be able to afford this... Given the amount of amputee veterans who lost limbs and veteran suicide rate...me thinks not... But sure it seems pretty nifty...just swell
It's also a massive risk when even the advanced ones have a high rejection rate of around 44% that's never talked about, and don't have nearly as much fine control as the media makes them out to be on top of being uncomfortably heavy for some people. While some do like them, a lot wind up preferring simpler ones or none at all.
Those articles hit close to home as someone hard of hearing. So much of disability activism is trying to get able people to respect what is comfortable for us to do rather than what is comfortable for able bystanders to see us do.
Like assistive devices are awesome, but they exist for the people they are used by. We consistently want comfortable independent function without being othered for it. Some will prefer subtle devices, others will ask for a fully controllable rgb option on devices that could be hidden easily.
Yes they would, in theory, because those prosthetics she's wearing were NHS-funded. I can see the waitlist to get ones like those being pretty fucking long though but hey, what NHS waitlist is not pretty fuck long these days anyway
I wonder if data going into the hands is also wireless when they’re attached. Seems like a rather critical set of functions to go with wireless instead of a hard connection. Maybe wireless fidelity has improved enough that concerns about things like interference aren’t as big as they used to be.
There's one other advantage to wireless here: a bionic prosthetic is moving a lot, and that's not great for wire harnesses or connectors. Going wireless potentially allows for greater range of movement (or at least removes the engineering challenge of making it durable long term).
That would be a more interesting line of questioning than all the viral stuff about "mind control" and whatnot.
It may just be cheaper to slap a wireless connection in there than to engineer routing cables through a fully mobile articulation AND keep the whole thing water resistant. I bet whatever the real answer there it's fascinating.
I wish that worked better than Deus Ex collabs and morning show interviews, but given how often I've seen this pop up the last couple of weeks it clearly is not.
Deus Ex is a horror universe. Example:
You work as produce loader. One day, your coworker comes in with a fancy new set of robot arms. He can lift three times as much as you can and work twice as fast. Your hours start getting cut back, boss doesn't need you anymore. You lose your job. You apply for a new one, but it's the same story everywhere: companies want cyborgs. So you spend the last of your savings on a set of bionic arms. They work great, and you land a new job. It's enough to pay for the anti rejection meds and your living expenses. Two years later, a new model comes out. Efficiency improves even more. Your services aren't needed anymore, and you can't afford an upgrade.
You're homeless now, and you can't afford the rejection meds. So you sit on the side of the street with a cardboard sign and an empty hat, waiting for your arms to rot off your body as your immune tears the connection apart.
Drag wouldn't buy prosthetics from a company that associates themselves with that image.
Yeah, well, too late. These guys DID do a Deus Ex collab. Officially. Marvel, too. Their thing is they want to make these cool for kids and teens, so it's mostly fine.
I wonder if they're banking on wireless chips lasting longer than physical ports. Though making them wireless also means batteries and charging ports, two parts notorious for failing.
You could always do both and fall back on external power when the battery dies. Thats how laptops often do it.
Until the pillow starts to get spicy....
One of the things that they keep saying is that this is the lightest bionic available, so it’s possible that physical ports are simply too heavy.
Batteries weigh more than ports though.
The hands have 360 rotation. It’s not impossible to make a reliable continuous rotation connector, but they aren’t as reliable and durable as you’d want in a daily use device.
Makes sense to save development costs on a funky connector. It also makes upgrades simpler later on since it’s a simpler connection.
I build and fit orthotics and prosthetics.....this is mainly just a marketing gimmick. The myoelectric sensors that feed the data to the terminal device are built into the socket of the prosthetic. There's no real reason to wear the socket without the hand, and you can't operate the hand without the socket.
The hard connections from the end of the socket and the hand are very durable, and they typically don't really have any issues with wear. I don't think fidelity is a big issue because there's not a ton of information being transferred, the myoelectric sensors haven't really changed a bunch in the last 40 years and the amount of information being sent is minimal.
The biggest downside I foresee is that if you had different terminal devices, you're probably going to have to pair them to the socket whenever you want to switch. When the traditional hard connection is just plug and play. That and you are just adding extra things to break in devices that are built to take a beating.
I can see a bunch of geeky engineers in the planning meeting. "Wouldn't it be cool if it could detach and still work. Think of how she could mess with people."
This 100% accurate! Recreating the Addams Family scenes must have been part of the commissioning process.
Great, now my hands can get hacked.
Or hack them yourself and become a keyboard and mouse gaming god
Or become a dead weight, when the manufacturer stops supporting it
I bet if we all try we can remember the name Tilley Lockey because it’s a pretty badass name and arguably cooler than bionic girl
We're this much closer to The Addams Family
I want to see a rocket fist
You know what, wireless prosthetics could be useful even for those of us who have both hands.
We can basically go full General Grievous and do so many things at once
Hold your own arm and reach things further away behind the dryer.
6 dudes at once!
AT THE SAME TIME?
Unfortunately the limitations there are probably in the brain not the limb. For example, can you competentely do two things at once with each of your hands?
Any random individual? Maybe not. But one man bands exist and are completely reliant on this concept.
Fair, although I was more referring to fully separate tasks, one could argue a one man band is still broadly doing things in sync and broadly the same mental task.
It is a valid point that it could be learned with enough practice and dedication, but I think going above two would be exponentially harder.
Fair, but do you have to manipulate them at the same time? Most of the time we use our hands to hold something, or do very simple repetitive movements. This doesn't require much brain power to do, and is still very useful. For example, such arms could hold our bags, while our natural ones can do whatever else.
So I don't need to cut off an arm for an upgrade?
Yay!
Off the main topic of the article here, but that was a roller coaster of thoughts for me with the Title and the link thumbnail-
Kinda looks like Drew Berrymore in the thumbnail, so “Bionic Girl Debuts…” oh cool, new movie—-wait, Drew lost her arms and now has prosthetics? Opened the article…..Ohhh…
I had the same serious of thoughts, but also thought it said "blonde girl" and so wasn't as excited for the movie.
Is this the same girl we’ve been seen pictures of since she was a little kid? She’s probably so used to it by now it’s second nature. Though at first I thought it was Drew Barrymore from the thumbnail
Jenny Silverhand
All fun and games til her arm gets hacked lol
Damn, if she has any tech-savvy siblings, this would introduce a whole new level of "why are you hitting yourself"
That's unfair 😡
The flesh is weak.
Now with 100% more grip strength.
Wild man. I was a little put off on how the lady was cutting a tomato while wearing it (it's an embedded promo clip for the Hero Pro).
She was holding the knife backwards and it just looked really weird, but then I realized she might not have had hands her entire life so she never learned the proper way to do it.
That's probably just to compensate for grip strength or range of motion with the knife.
By backwards do you mean point near the elbow? If so you can get more leverage that way.