The antiđŸš«-derailment🚃 & threadđŸ§” hijackingđŸ”« threadđŸ§” ⁉

George Takei talking about a DT implant:.

((CAPTCHA: The Apex will be out Soon :tm: ))

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Here’s the original article linked but I don’t know what George Takei said.

Thanks Zwack. I figured the cringey FB comment section was half the fun

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This is what I can see, apart from the people freaking out in the comments section


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Saw the article a couple days ago

Coments on both are what you expect

Uninformed and misinformed people assuming they know anything about anything

People were arguing about batteries, that 125 is always active power
 tracking, etc

I’ll see if I can screen shot some gems




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Talking to her now :slight_smile:

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just saw that on reddit

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In the interest of exposing myself to opposing ideas, I’ve been searching for intelligent and well-articulated anti-implant arguments. And in the mountains of religious, conspirationist, paranoid and otherwise uninformed garbage, I did find a nugget. Maybe you’ll enjoy it too:

The guy is an implantee (and one who got press too), and he puts forward 5 fairly convincing arguments against NFC implants. I actually agree with his points, seen in the light of his experience of having a single glassie, trying to exploit it for actual useful purposes, and apparently having no particular interest in getting more involved in biohacking, moving up in implant size and count or putting hardware together to go with his implant.

And in that respect, he’s very representative of the majority of people who might be tempted to implant something. In other words, he’s interesting because HE is the future of biohacking, unlike us who are fringe and willing to go to what most people would describe as extreme lengths to get what we want.

He’s well spoken, his views are balanced and based on experience, and he’s not unhinged. Well worth a watch.

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I considered making a rebuttal video when this came out
 maybe I will now

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The gist of what he said is: a single glassie isn’t terribly useful in today’s NFC infrastructure (and he’s totally right - you need several larger implants to truly “live the dream” somewhat convincingly
 today) and his argument about putting your health at risk for the benefit is valid.

I think what he means to say is that it’s too early for the common man. I kind of agree. The health bit is debatable.

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As someone who isn’t implanted here are my comments on his 5 reasons.

  1. I carry up to three sets of car keys (for the same car) as I have locked myself out of my car several times. Why three I hear you ask. Well, I used to have one in my wallet, one in my phone case and one I normally used. However I have locked my wallet and normal key in the car before. Thus the third one. If I had added RFID door unlocking (before that car was totalled) then an implant would have solved that problem. I can’t lock my body parts in the car (yet).

  2. Chips are round, readers are flat. The same goes for chips for animals and yet people don’t suggest it is a bad idea to chip your pets. Yes it might be harder to get a good read, but it is not impossible. The footage of him doing just that suggests that this is not such a big deal. Of course the flex format chips remove this argument entirely. Part of his argument is a question of placement. Calling it unhygienic is kind of odd. I assume he touches other surfaces.

  3. So, don’t use it for boarding airplanes. This seems his most valid claim but presumably would be similar no matter what NFC solution was used. Paper boarding passes are faster, but NFC are cheaper, the airlines are going to do whatever makes them the most money. If they have to they will add a secure boarding area that you wait in after your boarding pass is checked and tell you to get to the airport even earlier.

  4. The solution designers do need to do a better job, but chips can be used for multiple purposes if the solutions are designed to allow it. For example a single NFC chip can have the UID used for a lock, an NDEF record with contact details, and store a password for use with the improved keyboard wedge. Three uses, one chip.

  5. This is true, but if you are diabetic you may have to perform blood sugar testing on a frequent basis (skin penetration) and injection of insulin. Personally I get frequent cuts and scratches on my arms and legs as part of my normal life. They are all a serious health risk according to this guy. As for the “potentially cancerous” I am assuming that this is a claim that the electromagnetic radiation could potentially cause cancer. I don’t think that the risk is significantly higher than the risk from cell phones or NFC tags that aren’t implanted. I disagree almost entirely with the health risks he is associating with it, if implanted properly.

His point about “if it doesn’t add any significant value” gets back to my usual point about what is your use case?

He did miss the fact that a non implanted chip cannot be used to guarantee your identity, while an implanted (non cloneable) chip can.

An interesting view, but one that is in my opinion less than accurate.

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As an implantee:

1/ I fucking hate keys and passwords with a passion, and I hate body-worn devices. Point moot for me.

2/ He used an NFC glassie. RFID glassies are much more forgiving. In fairness, NFC glassies are difficult buggers. He’s right. And if you’re a hygiene freak (isn’t everyone a bit these days), yeah
 you’re fondling a device you shouldn’t be fondling in an ideal NFC world.

3/ If I was an SAS customer and I wanted to board a flight with NFC (and boy I guarantee you that I would, because that’s one less occasion to carry bits of paper or a cellphone around) then I would get yet another implant. And most likely a flex. If the readers in my local buses worked with my converted bus card, that’s what I would have done too. The issue is, you can’t multiplex in today’s NFC world. The guy is totally right: one chip, one application. If you don’t want to implant more than one chip, that forces you to format the one you have and it totally blows the usability out of the water.

4/ The chip should be chameleon as much as possible (and for certain applications, they already are to a certain extent). But ideally the infrastructure should understand the concept of a single tag usable for multiple purposes. That’s not the case today, and I fear it won’t be until the very concept of implants starts being taken into account by designers. Because if the tag isn’t an implant, why even bother? Just use several tags. That’s what’s happening today because implants and the need to avoid collecting multiple implants aren’t even on the radar.

5/ The guy’s health argument hinges on risk/benefit. His conclusion is that the usability benefits don’t outweigh the health risks for him. Fair enough. They do for me, 10 times over. To each his own.

At least unlike the usual crazies, you can have a real discussion around what he says.

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Counterpoint: Javacards :slight_smile: (and the next)

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I’m not saying the technology doesn’t exist, I’m saying by and large, the world has more dumb Mifare readers and single-application smart readers than multi-application ones.

That’s kind of my fear with the Apex when it comes out: it’ll be multi-role, it will do many things, but nobody and nothing will take advantage of its capabilities out there. Then again by the time it comes out, Vivokey will have become as big and powerful as Google is today, so there is hope :slight_smile:

I think that he might be referring to the tumors in rats thing. Amel covered this a while back:

Another weird thing is that the guy who made the video against it, mentioned that people where “pushing the use of NFC implants”. Sure, some of us love the idea but I don’t think that anyone in the biohacking community would press others into getting implants. We’re the ones talking about morphological freedom after all.

I understood what he said in his video re health issues as “I spent 15 minutes on Google and found concerning material, but I have my doubt about the material and I didn’t bother to research it more, so I won’t reach any conclusion about this.” He does recognize that he doesn’t really know, which is at least intellectually honest.

To be fair, there is cause for concern. Personally, I don’t really worry about the glass envelopes of glassies - especially since bioglass has been pretty well tested in animals for decades now. Amal’s magic coating however
 who knows what that stuff will do to you in 10 or 20 years. We ARE the guinea pigs :slight_smile: The guy in the video didn’t want to be a guinea pig and that’s fair enough.

I am going to assume that @amal has done his due diligence on his magic goo.

I am certain he did his best. But it’s very hard to predict long-term effects of anything. Even companies with vast resources can’t always predict accurately what time does to components. Accelerated wear tests aren’t always representative of actual wear.

In the case of implants, what other tests of time are there than simply implanting the stuff and waiting to see what happens? We’re doing that. And it’s okay. Just like vapers chose to test what vaping does to their bodies over many years, because when it was invented, there was no data. There is now, but it didn’t come from pre-testing.

However all materials are classified as either Known carcinogens, Probable Carcinogens, or Unknown whether they are carcinogens. There was one that was classified as Known not to be a carcinogen, but it was reclassified recently.

At the very least I assume he is only using materials that are not known whether they are carcinogens.

Yes of course. But going back to my vaping analogy: all the ingredients in vape juice are classified as GRAS (generally regarded as safe). But that classification was done when ingested, not when vaporized and sent to a pair of lung. The assumption was that the ingredients should be more or less okay, but it turned out to be false for at least 4: menthol, diacetyl (butter flavor), ethanol and vitamine E acetate. Now we know, but the enthusiasts who voluntary played guinea pigs to test that assumption are either pushing up the daisies or breathing through an oxygen mask now.

I don’t know what Amal uses in his magic goo. That’s proprietary. I’m sure the stuff comes with assurances with regards to carcinogenicity and safety and such. But for what purpose? Is it proven to be safe inside the body? Does it stay safe even when flexing for many years - and possibly work-hardening or changing composition during that time? I don’t know. I assume Amal has done his homework and I choose to trust him, but ultimately it’s still kind of unknown territory.