Slashdot Mirror
No, a Stolen iPod Didn't Brick Ben Eberle's Prosthetic Hand
New submitter willoremus writes A wounded Army vet had his $75k prosthetic hand bricked when someone stole his iPod Touch? Yeah, not so much. I'm a tech reporter for Slate.com, and a Slashdot post earlier this week prompted me to look into this story and ultimately debunk some of the key info. Sorry for self-posting, but I thought folks here might be interested in the truth since the false story was one of the top posts earlier this week.
If something sounds too crazy to be true without substantial evidence to back it up, it probably is. I take everything I read on the Internet with a very fine grain of salt.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Say it ain't so!
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
About time at least one blatantly wrong submission gets a correction!
Bricked means you can't recover from brickedness. If you have a chip or device that can be reset with a programmer, or if you can download software for this prosth-arm and have it working again, it wasn't bricked.
Yeah, yeah, language changes, go suck a brick. "Bricked" is such new jargon that it barely had time to be properly used before the definition got raped. (I know rape doesn't apply here, but you know, languages evolve.)
Slashdot readers don't want the truth, they want their own version of reality that fits their particular political/sociological/etc. slant.
the worst design ever conceived by mankind though... (but the US government supported it, because spare parts are booming business.)
Maybe the hurried journalists quietly noted that there are now 66% fewer Mythbusters and thought, "Let's run with it—what's the chance of being caught now, eh?" B-(
Thanks for actually looking into this. Reporting in general seems (or perhaps it's always been this way, but I just wasn't as aware of it.) to have gotten a lot more lazy recently, especially with the explosion of news blogs and other internet only news sources. There's such a rush to be the first to break a story and get the massive number of clicks and associated ad revenue that reporters have lost focus on digging deep and getting to the bottom of a story. After that everyone just links to the original without bothering to verify the information and the facts gets buried under a combination of half-truths and/or agenda-driven opinion.
This one was along the lines of "I don't think so, but there might be a designer about to be fired for stupidity".
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The guy said "they stole my iPod now I can't use my hand until I get a new one"
The media interpreted that as need a new hand, not need a new iPod. Since need a new hand means more clicks on headlines, they run with it without clarifying.
Ya, I hate how people are using the term "Bricked" now to describe even device crashes. It's pretty self explanatory, "Bricked" means the device is now a useful as a brick. Meaning it does nothing and can't be made to do anything.
You need to include printed sources too since this story was originally reported in the San Antonio Express - News and picked up by the national press - see link again.
If this Slate reporter/blogger didn't follow up, we would have never known for sure.
And here's the kicker, I guarantee you that Touch Bionics will be disputing this story for years to come.
All you need is someone who is careless or just lies because it sounds good, and it catches on, people remember the misinformation and never the truth. - mostly because it falls into their world view and they ignore anything that disputes it
I am no exception to the rule and I have been weening myself off of all news. If it's really important, I'll hear about it from my friends and neighbors. Everything else is just fluff, out of my control and irrelevant to me.
As a result, the World seems much safer, nicer, and I can listen to my neighbor's opinions and disagree without getting angry. Burying my head in the sand? Am i uninformed? What good is it to know everything happening in the Middle East when I cannot do anything about and it is irrelevant to my life? Who cares what the current leader of N. Korea says? Or the idiocy coming out of the politician's mouths? It's all lies, anyway. And don't get me started on the moronic cable news channels and the professional Trolls/Pundits like Hannity, O'Reilly, and those overpaid assholes.
Now, to ween of the Internet and all it's shit.
Sorry Slate reporter and Slashdot, but my life will be better without you.
Really!
I don't see why that would be needed. The iPod should be backed up to something. Even if the setting are not backed up to a computer or icloud, it would seem for that amount of money the firm supplying the app would provide a cloud based service to make the service device independent. What if the iPod no longer had charged and you wanted to use your phone?
It still seems kind of fishy.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Why do they think it is ok to screw over veterans like this? Why does their kind think it is good business to throw away $70,000.00? I know Republicans are stupid, but these xians are taking even farther. Screw them for trying to leave us armless and handless.
As far as I'm concerned self-posting is perfectly fine. The only problem is that you should be careful to only submit articles that fit the site. Even there, it's the editors responsibility to only admit suitable posts. Given the circumstances, this was probably the best way to proceed.
Oh, and someone else already said, but thanks again. It's good that at least one member of the media thought to check with the principals before publishing. Maybe Touch Bionics will sue some of those involved with the incorrect story. It seems that the media could use some incentive to fact check before publishing. And unlike many cases, they don't have to worry about the Streisand effect--they've already gotten the bad publicity.
https://www.facebook.com/pages...
have a look at his comment.
I don't do FB, anyone here that knows if this is pertinent?
Submitter wrote in his TFA:
The Daily Mail, in a rare instance of actual reporting, did at least take note of Eberle’s Facebook post.)
I keep seeing this here on /. and other sites, but is it really true? Is the Daily Mail any worse than any other media outlet, like CNN, the NY Times, Spiegel, etc.? Or is this just one of those internet born factoids that's been passed around so often that its just accepted as to be true, and is mindlessly repeated by careless individuals who didn't bother to verify its veracity?
I'm not sure what's more amazing to me that 1. a newspaper in America still has reporters (not relying on th AP) or 2. that they got something wrong.
There's a ROFL episode of Big Bang where a cast member is using a robot hand for "personal pleasure", when it locks up.
Table-ized A.I.
While it's good to read that his prosthetic isn't useless due to the loss of an inexpensive device, I really hope there's some way to lock out that old iPod Touch from his hand. If the thief realized what he had stolen he could cause some mischief with it. Presumably his identity is unknown since he hasn't been caught, which means he could get close enough without being noticed. So unless the limb can be programmed to ignore the old device, could the thief just get within range of the prosthetic and cause the poor guy to unwillingly and repeatedly flip everyone around him off or otherwise mess with him?
It works for Fox News. Make outrageous statements, and let people get all riled up about it. The next say explain that it was wrong, but you have already won with that emotional tie. Same for Apple haters. Rationality never enters into it.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
TFA says the iPod finds the hand by its unique serial number. But how does the hand authenticate the iPod?
I posted a link to Eberle's facebook with a note saying that the story isn't true. Shortly after, the post was deleted by moderator...
It is pretty pathetic when original stories do not contain any journalism as in verification and clarification and using plain, apparently old-fashioned common sense. The correction is the only good thing here, and how common "journalism" fails to deliver seems to have become a story in its own right. Again.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Rush to post a story without even an ounce of research or fact-checking.
Really, I only come here anymore for the profound amusement I get from watching this train wreck continue in super slow motion.
Should those groups that published this article without checking the facts be sued for negligent publishing of falsehoods? Especially those with large income (less so slashdot, especially since it was a slashdot member who noticed this error)
It seems that Slashdot has adopted CNN's recently invented journalism technique guaranteed to at least double traffic:
1) Find a barely-newsworthy story /headline are factually false
2) Twist the facts so severely that the resulting summary
3) Create a story out of someone debunking said nonsense
4) make sure to monetize at each step.
With this technique, we can double the number of postings on slashdot! Monday:"FLYING CAR INVENTED!" Tuesday: "SLASHDOT LIES ABOUT FLYING CAR-- HOW IT HAPPENED"
What incredibly forward-thinking times we live in...
FTFA:
I suspect itÃ(TM)s because the truth takes time to uncover, and often ends up being less conducive to sensational headlines. In an age when Internet media are often criticized for their breathless reporting and uncritical aggregation, itÃ(TM)s a reminder that just because is first reported by a good old-fashioned print newspaper doesnÃ(TM)t mean the facts are ironclad.
No, that's not quite it. In this age of "more profit with no effort or expense" what passes for "journalism" is actually nothing more than aggregating news stories from other sources, slicking up a web-site and collecting advertising revenue. I'm not saying that the original source for the article didn't sensationalize but I condemn every web-site (and printed publication, for that matter) that passed the article along without even a token try at verifying the facts with a call to the manufacturer.
Find out who they were (that should take 30 seconds in Google) and refuse to give them your eyeballs anymore!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How novel!
..a prosthetic hand? So to make it work, it has to be remotely operated by the working hand? Otherwise, isn't it just a narcissistic recursive device: command hand to poke at iPod so it can command the hand to poke at the iPod?
Do they make pedal powered wheelchairs?