A former jockey who was left paralyzed from the waist down after a horse riding accident was able to walk again thanks to a cutting-edge piece of robotic tech: a $100,000 ReWalk Personal exoskeleton.
When one of its small parts malfunctioned, however, the entire device stopped working. Desperate to gain his mobility back, he reached out to the manufacturer, Lifeward, for repairs. But it turned him away, claiming his exoskeleton was too old, *404 media *reports.
“After 371,091 steps my exoskeleton is being retired after 10 years of unbelievable physical therapy,” Michael Straight posted on Facebook earlier this month. “The reasons why it has stopped is a pathetic excuse for a bad company to try and make more money.”
Fortunately, Lifeward eventually capitulated and Straight was able to get his exoskeleton repaired — but that was only after an intense campaign in which he went on local TV, got highlighted in a horse industry publication, and gained steam on social media. If it weren’t for that, he could still be struggling to find a way to get his mobility back again.
Uhg, needed bad PR before they changed their mind
got highlighted in a horse industry publication
Wait what?
Edit: duh, he was a jockey. I should let the moment of confusion settle before replying.
Sorry
Horses are relentless.
Hole horse? This a Jojo reference?
Its a variation on this
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The future is stupid, we were promised jetpacks, not planned obsolescence mobility devices.
Prosthetics that are no longer supported, should be fully open sourced.And the copyright should immediately expire.
Support your products, or let others do it.
Tbh, I didn’t even think prosthetics could be proprietary. It’s kinda ghoulish to make it so they can be “outdated” when needing minor stuff repaired.
This is why nobody should ever put any tech in their brain. Among 50 billion other reasons.
Oh that already happened too. A bunch of blind people got implants and the company abandoned them.
That came to mind, too. If this shit isn’t open source it is not worth spit.
Even for a corporation that is fucked up.
We need to stop buying into this whole beneficial corporation idea.
Fucking exactly!
He shouldn’t stand for this!
He can’t. He’s paralyzed and his exoskeleton is broken.
On a more serious note, the 404media article (login wall) reports the problem was that the wristwatch controller for the exoskeleton had its battery wire’s solder joint break. They seem to be trying to frame it as a right to repair issue, but that’s a trivial repair for anyone with basic electronics experience.
It’s a trivial repair assuming that’s the extent of the damage and there’s not any quirks associated with an extremely complex medical device that has no documentation whatsoever. Like maybe after not having the controller’s power supply connected for such a length of time there needs to be a calibration process upon bringing it back to life that can only be done with proprietary software
The biggest thing though is that by going in and fixing it yourself you open yourself to the possibility that the company will now say “oh this was worked on by someone else and that’s why it’s broken, we won’t work on it now”. That’s the state of repair rights in America, vendors are openly hostile to people who fix their own things even if they do it sufficiently. We used to have political representation that gave us regulations to allow us to work on and even modify our cars without impacting the warranty but that’s been eroded and there’s not really anything of that nature for tech stuff (other than judgements saying broken warranty seals don’t count for anything)
here’s not really anything of that nature for tech stuff
The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act does not exclude tech stuff. The problem is that it’s a lot harder to work on tech stuff without insider information than 1970s cars.
Best to use the archived links bypasses the login barrier, as well as paywalls.
Guilty upvote for you
This is something I wish cyberpunk media touched more on.
One thing I always thought about when playing cyberpunk 2077 is why wouldn’t companies have a failsafe for their equipment being used against them. In the game, you can use cyber decks from Arisaka and Militech and be able to hack and assault their infrastructure and employees with impunity.
I am not really sure companies would allow that…
Overlooking the concept of a failsafe? How did they get past the concept of the subscription model?
Fuck me I didn’t think about that… owning your own implants? Goddamn!
I always imagined that it was due to a higher level of computer literacy amongst the consumer population. An hour after a corpo releases a new piece of tech under a subscription model, the software has been cracked and pirated all over the net.
why wouldn’t companies have a failsafe for their equipment being used against them
Because they got tired of paying for the whiny engineers that would have to implement the failsafe and so they fired them all.
so they fired them all
Even fictional evil companies need to meet goals set by the board.
Presumably those failsafes can be circumvented and your character being a cool hacker applies those exploits to their hardware.
“Jailbroken”
Uh yes the cracked version of Ida pro getting used to crack the next version of Ida pro.
This ends with Microsoft pluton
Kinda like how software crackers have a pirated version of a game ready to go within hours, regardless of the encryption.
I guess that does make sense.
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That’s the problem with cyberpunk as a genre. Its to cool. The first Deus Ex did it right. If it was in the hands of a better developer Watch Dogs could have too.
Ghost in the Shell called it thirty years ago.
I work in appliance repair. My favorite appliance to fix are sub zero refrigerators. They’re easy to work on, straight forward and the company continues to support their product as far back as models from the 1970s.
Subzero makes nothing more than household appliances a thankless industry plagued by planner obsolescence and they can supply parts for their appliances longer than a medical company.
Got any recommendations in the 5k range?
This is a very good question.
I’m assuming you mean a range around $5000?
In that case there’s really not much in that specific price range.
Ranges in general can cost between 500 and 3000 dollars for a regular range you can get at your local appliance retailer. Here in the states that would be like home Depot or Lowe’s.
If you wanted more high end than that you’d have to go much higher up in price. Like past $10000. It’s a weird market for ranges.
I recommend Frigidaire for cooking appliances in general they make really good ranges. For less than $1000 dollars you can get a very decent appliance.
Anything related to healthcare has no business being any closer to the whims of “the market” than the public roads.
It would be unheard of for a government to stop maintaining a public road because whomever was supplying some ingredient of the asphalt said that particular mix is “to old and the new mix is not compatible with the roads created using the old mix”.
They don’t want to do it anymore, fine, then provide whatever is needed for someone else to maintain it for the cost of the materials to print/email/upload to GitHub the technical documents. It should not be legal to get someone hooked on your life altering medical device then rug pull them like this.
371k steps over 10 years is like 100 steps per day. Is it really slow, or did he only use it once a week?
My guess is he would use a wheelchair at home where the area is prepared to accommodate it. The exoskeleton is likely slower and harder to wear around the house, but can make him mobile in places where a wheelchair can’t go.
Hope he can make it to at least a million steps to bring down his per step cost below 10 cents.
[Insert Steel Ball Run Reference Here Because Someone Mentioned A Paralyzed Jockey]
Anyway…
Human Greed is what’s obsolete and it is beyond past time to end support for it.
cant a battery be rigged to fit? no modders around?
I was ready to hear something like a story from someone who had signed onto a medical trial and was upset the trial was ending. Nope, instead an absurdly short support period that seemingly is fed by the same culture of replacement over repair that has infected our economy.
Immeasurably great reporting. This was painful to yet, but a blessing to know.
