Re: [PLUG] more on the Insteon shutdown

["Keith C. Perry via plug" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

Thanks for this Soren.  I had never heard of this but it at first glace it goes to actually the types of risk factors that concern me.  I'm going to pull 3 paragraphs from your first link because it gets to the crux of the problem.  This honestly read like a Sci-Fi movie...

~ ~ ~

Yet in 2020, Byland had to find out secondhand that the company had abandoned the technology and was on the verge of going bankrupt. While his two-implant system is still working, he doesn’t know how long that will be the case. “As long as nothing goes wrong, I’m fine,” he says. “But if something does go wrong with it, well, I’m screwed. Because there’s no way of getting it fixed.”

Ross Doerr, another Second Sight patient, doesn’t mince words: “It is fantastic technology and a lousy company,” he says. He received an implant in one eye in 2019 and remembers seeing the shining lights of Christmas trees that holiday season. He was thrilled to learn in early 2020 that he was eligible for software upgrades that could further improve his vision. Yet in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, he heard troubling rumors about the company and called his Second Sight vision-rehab therapist. “She said, ‘Well, funny you should call. We all just got laid off,’ ” he remembers. “She said, ‘By the way, you’re not getting your upgrades.’ ”

These three patients, and more than 350 other blind people around the world with Second Sight’s implants in their eyes, find themselves in a world in which the technology that transformed their lives is just another obsolete gadget. One technical hiccup, one broken wire, and they lose their artificial vision, possibly forever. To add injury to insult: A defunct Argus system in the eye could cause medical complications or interfere with procedures such as MRI scans, and it could be painful or expensive to remove.

~ ~ ~

Its one thing to have an "obsolete" smart home system or watch.  Its another thing when your human reality is up-ended due too a company and technology being sunset without a succession plan.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E. 
Managing Member, DAO Technologies LLC 
(O) +1.215.525.4165 x2033 
(M) +1.215.432.5167 
[ http://www.daotechnologies.com/ | www.daotechnologies.com ]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>
To: "Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2022 3:59:07 PM
Subject: Re: [PLUG] more on the Insteon shutdown

On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 1:41 PM Jim Fisher via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
> /me looks at his Pebble.....

Could be worse:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete (follow-up:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-right-to-repair)

-- 
Soren Harward
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