
Facebook to acquire CTRL-Labs, a startup for controlling computers with the mind - Bostonian
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-23/facebook-to-buy-startup-for-controlling-computers-with-your-mind
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asdkhadsj
Interesting that this is a tech I've wanted for ages, yet with these days of
privacy issues where mere mouse behavior can lead to identifying signatures...
I'm not letting anyone near my brain patterns.

I'll wear a tinfoil hat on this one.. but not knowing what possible
behavioral/emotional/matchable patterns might exist in my waves is a bit
terrifying. Thanks no thanks Facebook. If there even was a company I'd trust
with my brain signature, it's sure as hell not you.

 _edit: I should note, it sounds like this is not specifically brain waves..
but still. My opinion in this arena doesn 't change hah._

~~~
est31
Also note that this might not be a one way street. They might use brain
machine interfaces to stimulate your brain according to the ads you are
watching. E.g. you watch ads for beer and you get the feeling of beer taste on
your mouth or you watch ads for bread and you get the smell of freshly baked
bread, etc. Or when you are in a store, the implant will give you a serotonin
kick when you foveate on a specific product (whose manufacturer paid for that
kick). etc.

It's creepy af. But 20 years ago when you told someone about the privacy
intrusions of smartphones, people would've been creeped out as well so I'm
pessimist and saying it will come.

~~~
state_less
This tech has the potential to distort market forces to a significant degree.
Somewhat similar to how cigarettes are harmful to the user, but the user wants
to smoke them anyway due to the products impact on the brain.

New products may not get investment because the user is hopelessly attached to
the old product through some a reward signal hardwired into their brain.

On the other hand, learning and studying could feel awesome with such tech.
And mind altering substances might not be a requirement.

As we get more powerful tech, I think we should work towards ways of bending
the tech toward positive outcomes.

~~~
shredprez
Hopefully folks like yourself have a seat at the table when it comes time to
define "positive outcomes."

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ingsoc79
As someone who works with EMG, the hype CTRL-Labs has been pushing regarding
their tech is over-the-top ridiculous.

In short, it's a wearable band that uses electrodes to measure your forearm
muscles' activity (electromyography, or EMG), coupled with accelerometers to
capture motion. It's awesome technology, but contrary to all the "neuro"
buzzword bingo, you can't "control computers with your mind" – you have to
physically contract the muscles in your forearm, just like if you were using a
mouse or keyboard. This video gives you an idea of what the device is actually
capable of:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD4efk8T2X4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD4efk8T2X4)

Either way, it's exciting to see this kind of tech make it into the consumer
space. Even if it doesn't catch on with AR/VR, it will have a lot of positive
effects for researchers as well as for users with accessibility and mobility
challenges.

~~~
anaisbetts
Whether you have to move your muscles isn't so important, the goal here is to
create a control surface that is usable in VR/AR, which this technology can
totally still do.

Walking down the street with AR glasses right now sucks because you can't
actually _do_ anything without disruptive gestures (holding your hand to your
face, talking out loud to nobody, etc). If you could tell the glasses what to
do simply by making small imperceptible movements in your hand, that's a huge
leap forward towards making AR actually something usable

~~~
buboard
the question is if this device is more expressive than , say, wearing a glove.

~~~
anaisbetts
Even if it was equally expressive, it's probably far less obtrusive to wear a
bracelet than wear a glove (though that depends on the design of the bracelet
I guess)

------
michannne
I have still never owned an Oculus Rift simply because it is owned by Facebook
and while I can't know for sure what they are doing with data collected, I can
try my best to not walk straight into the fire. Maybe it would actually be
better for Facebook to spin off an acquisitions/ventures arm associated with
the main company as loosely as possible, and leave out data and privacy
concerns by not using any data from their ventures until they are wholly
incorporated into the Facebook business, but I'm no legal expert and Facebook
is definitely not the type of company that would stay it's hand at an
opportunity of collecting even more data

~~~
Allvitende
Agreed. If they were smart, they would break themselves up as Alphabet did in
preparation for future investigations etc.

They could then acquire companies more "quietly".

Mark should also take a page from Larry's book and transition to the
background more while lettings someone else run Facebook.

~~~
corobo
I don't think Facebook is able to get away with that, at least not as easily.

With Google my #1 concern is they'll shut it down. With Facebook I know it's
going to sniff up all my data it can get its grubby hands on (which is also
the #2 concern with Google if the product survives)

In any case on the subject I don't want anything but my own hardware
processing anything thought related. That is not something the cloud should be
involved in

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oceliker
> uses a bracelet to measure neuron activity in a subject’s arm to determine
> movement that person is thinking about, even if they aren’t physically
> moving

I don't understand how this could possibly work with an armband. They
presumably are reading electrical signals from motor neurons, but why do they
fire if there's no movement? Is it possible that they are detecting incredibly
small movements that are involuntarily caused by thinking about moving your
hand?

~~~
martin_a
This sounds straight like future-future-tech. My Fitbit can't even measure my
heartbeat or steps with sufficient precision and they want to measure electric
signals from neurons? Sounds (yet) impossible.

~~~
mncolinlee
It's not even that new. A professor was using a much earlier version of this
same tech to steer his boat in the 90's. It was very easy to read left and
right signals to control a rudder as a prototype.

There have been commercialized versions of this tech already. The Myo was
Kickstarted in 2015 and then acquired by CTRL-Labs. I have one and that
generation of the tech was still tricky to use effectively.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/312488939/myowaretm-
har...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/312488939/myowaretm-harness-the-
power-of-your-muscle-signals)

Here's a pretty decent paper on the quite long history of Brain-Machine
Interfaces:
[https://www.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.00027.20...](https://www.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.00027.2016?view=long&pmid=28275048&)

------
pulkitsh1234
Relevant post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21039955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21039955)

What I think FB is probably going to use it for:

* Some sort of peripheral to "unlock" advanced features in FB, which will basically give them a never-ending stream of neural-data to train models on.

* Ad impressions, no need to track clicks anymore, if user reacted to it in a "positive" manner they will be getting a cut.

* Bundle with Oculus (Something like: [https://youtu.be/D8pB8sNBGlE?t=638](https://youtu.be/D8pB8sNBGlE?t=638))

~~~
mattrp
agreed - this is all about improving ad engagement metrics. If they can
demonstrate that the user was engaged even if they didn't click the ad, then
the acquisition is worth the $500m-$1b they reportedly paid for it. I also see
the wrist band as becoming linked to payment / libra functionality -- that way
it's always on the user and it opens fb to greater awareness in the physical
world as well. It's funny how the tech future is finally materializing just
the point where we are realizing that instead of utopia, it is turning out to
be an utterly repulsive sci-fi nightmare.

------
vlaaad
There is a presentation about tech in question:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8pB8sNBGlE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8pB8sNBGlE)

Looks very interesting, but I would prefer it not to be owned by facebook.

~~~
Ajedi32
This doesn't seem like a neural interface at all. Yes, _technically_ the
device is measuring neural activity, but it's measuring neural activity in
your arm, not in your brain. In effect, this seems to be _way_ closer to
gesture control than it is to a neural interface.

If that's all they're doing, the title of this post is very misleading (and
consequently, most of the comments in this thread are irrelevant).

~~~
buboard
yep. it's totally a surface electromyography device that feeds into a neural
network to recognize the gesture you are making from your wrist. There are
alternatives of course, such as gesture recognition from a camera. This is
interesting regardless, but wonder how useful it is. Gesture recognition is
not new , it's just has not surpassed other input devices yet.

------
19CTO
Sounds like a very interesting tech. I'm curious if the Facebook brand is the
right place for it though. Facing public scrutiny I don't think many people
trust Facebook anymore to share the intricate info of their lives.

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elyobo
Letting something owned by Facebook anywhere near my mind is the last thing
I'd want to do.

~~~
qnsi
It’s going on your arm not brain

~~~
elyobo
The mind might be largely collocated with the brain, but I did specifically
say mind :D Where the device goes is irrelevant to my concern; what it might
be reading, and what I'd trust them to do with it, is not.

To be fair this concern is not only about Facebook, I'd have similar concerns
now about anyone, but Facebook have already shown themselves to be bad actors.
Fool me once, etc.

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justforfunhere
Ok, this is the kind of tech I would like to see come up and mature in the
coming ten-twenty years.

Having dozens of employees and four years of development period with VC money
suggests that they have something more than just a POC.

With any great technology/innovation, the next obvious question always is, how
can it be used at a mass scale, so that it gets accepted as just another part
of a person's life. To put it another way, how can it be assimilated into the
common services/products that we consume in our daily lives. Only then it will
produce the value that it's makers were hoping for.

So what kind of void could this technology fill?

That depends on the vision of the creators and those who own it. I guess, if
it was Apple that was buying this startup, we would see very different end
usage of it.

If it was Google, we would see something absolutely different. If it was
Amazon, who knows what they might use it for?

But since it is Facebook, we have to feel a bit apprehensive.

Because what is it that Facebook intends to do in long term? What is it's
vision? Being one of the biggest tech companies in the World right now, it is
of paramount importance that we know what do they intend to do with the tech
they acquire?

And this tech could be revolutionary! It is the kind of stuff that we read in
Sci-Fi. Hope they make something good/useful out of it.

~~~
bryan_w
Oculus connect 6 is tomorrow and Thursday. You should watch the keynotes to
get an idea about what they will do with this

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rejectedstone
Has Black Mirror taught us nothing? ;)

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stakhanov
Seems fitting. They're already controling minds with their computers, why not
close the loop :-)

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Yuval_Halevi
After cambridge analytica and Libra, I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg is the right
person to own a this kind of technology

~~~
ravenstine
He just wants to make the world more connected. /s

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throwaway122378
Can we learn from our mistakes (Instagram, WhatsApp) and just block this.

~~~
LeonM
Why was Whatsapp a mistake?

~~~
Angostura
For it to work fully it demands full access to ALL your contacts.

Facebook now knows the name, location and details of your bank, doctor, where
you work, your family, your accountant, your psychotherapist etc.

------
jchook
David Brin’s (sci-fi) version sits in your mouth and detects minute muscle
movements to determine which words you are thinking of saying.

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i000
Nice addition to their current technology controlling minds with computers!

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avip
So it'll be like voice control where I have to speak slowly and clearly, hide
my accent, control my pronunciation... just to get Siri to tell me the
weather... but _with my thoughts_? I don't even know how to think slowly and
clearly.

~~~
logicprog
What's funny is with Siri and Google Assistant I can mumble barely-
intelligibly and they understand exactly what I'm saying. I guess I should
thank my lack of an accent?

------
GistNoesis
As a D&D fan I enjoy associating companies with creatures. This acquisition
fits the picture well. Let's see if you can associate each FAANG with its
creature. Dragon, Lich, Illithid, Beholder, Djinn

~~~
gaogao
Facebook - Beholder (Obvious)

Apple - Dragon (Pile of gold. Ancient. Has good variants.)

Amazon - Lich (Seeks to conquer everything)

Netflix - Djinn (Not actually as scary as the rest.)

Google - Illithid

~~~
GistNoesis
Almost :) I swap F&G.

With the article hint about mind reading, mind flayers (or Illithid) connect
their minds together in huge cities. They are also famous for manipulating
minds with their psionic abilities.

Beholders have plenty of (non-googly) eyes and look everywhere, gather ancient
knowledge, gather various artifacts, but usually don't care about you except
for when they zap you for coming too close.

Djinn are masters of illusions rocking you with dreams while they drain you.

The lich (or maybe semi-lich soon) is in the business of dealing time. He has
a special relationship with time, which allows him to trade advantageously to
fill its boundless ambitions.

The cash hoarding behavior and love of beautiful shiny things is indeed a
characteristic of dragons.

------
honkycat
I love fancy/zany new HCI stuff, and I have been waiting for the CTRL-Labs
product to come out for a LONG time.

In my head, the compromises CTRL-Labs are making is brilliant and I believe it
can create a compelling product.

This could FINALLY be the keyboard killer. I would love something I can walk
and use easily, use from a reclining position, and avoid having to use my
hands for typing while programming.

I have bad wrist pain from typing all day, so I am sure to use only ergonomic
keyboards and mice and take frequent brakes. Not having to deal with that
would be great.

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wonderwonder
After acquisition: "You know how you created a system to control a computer
with a mind? Well we want you to keep doing that, just the other way around."

------
projectramo
The best part is it is totally free.

In order to activate the band, you simply imagine yourself buying a product
from one of the advertising partners.

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vchak1
For a moment, I read that as controlling minds with the computer, and thought:
Wait, Facebook does that already!

------
dogman1233
Source, BSidesLV presentation on Brain-Machine Interfaces: \- for those in the
know (basically, a bunch of PhD labs and a few private companies, small
network of people), FB's efforts with this have achieved `read` capabilities,
and the thought is they have have achieved `write`.

~~~
TecoAndJix
Hey - off topic but what do you think of BSides? There is one soon in my area
and have been on the fence about attending. Is it hit or miss on location?

~~~
dogman1233
yeah def location dependent. BSidesLV is the mothership, few other cities do
big ones as well.

Conversely, an underdeveloped BSides local to you is a good opportunity for
you to get involved and make a name for yourself in the local sec scene.

------
0xADADA
This app requires new permissions: Will you grant Facebook permission to
access your thoughts?

------
Alonski
I built a Smart House system "mind" controlled by EEG made specifically for
ALS patients 8 years ago.
[https://youtu.be/mQrytBbSbsA](https://youtu.be/mQrytBbSbsA)

I'd like to be bought please.

------
5trokerac3
Makes sense, with their main business being the inverse.

~~~
the-dude
Eco 101 : [https://www.gwern.net/Complement](https://www.gwern.net/Complement)

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buboard
This seems fit to complete the loop, however it s redundant. FB already knows
what you want to do with your computer

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neonate
[https://outline.com/tnfGyL](https://outline.com/tnfGyL)

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drewda
"Facebook to acquire CTRL-Labs, a startup for controlling computers with the
~~mind~~ brain"

~~~
buboard
technically all personal computers are controlled with the brain

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joestr
I'd have called it CTRL ALT Labs, but other than that this is pretty
terrifying.

------
turc1656
Definitely one of the top 10 most terrifying headlines I've ever seen.

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rpmisms
Help, facebook was reading the old joke headlines again.

------
kristopolous
New frontiers for how to commodify and sell you

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pcora
In a way, they are already on our minds with all the weird techniques they
have to make people addicted to their stuff. But that is definitely going way
too far.

------
WilliamEdward
The technology they produce itself is pretty decent, but in the hands of
facebook this is one step away from being a dystopian nightmare.

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api
Of all companies Facebook should be kept as far as possible from any kind of
Neuralink type interface.

We are literally going to lobotomize our species in a quest to get people to
click ads.

~~~
tenebrisalietum
Could it not be said that people who are so in to Facebook that they would
like and want this are already (self-)lobotomized to a degree, by whatever
factors make people revel in boring social stuff/ignorance and not wish to
pursue higher knowledge or goals?

I mean most of Facebook seems to be:

20% of

\- saying "I was at this location"

\- pictures of food

\- pictures of people's kids

\- pictures of people at events like concerts, family gatherings, etc.

\- complaining about traffic/weather/money

and 80% of

\- reports of memes

People whose Facebook interaction is pretty much just the above, which is
probably the majority, aren't really going to achieve much more in life
without Facebook, whether it's reading your brain or not.

~~~
api
Pictures of kids for viewing by grandparents and relatives is literally the
only legitimate use of Facebook as far as I'm concerned. It's basically an
over-engineered photo sharing service.

