Uncanny

Uncanny started as a toy company. One of the signature products of the toy company was a Talking doll.

A private company started by Dr. Silverstein?

Newspaper Reports

TECHWORLD NEWS: Toy company at the origin of the successful talking doll rebrands and becomes Uncanny. A spokesperson from the newly formed Uncanny told the press, \"We think we can do more than just entertain. We have new plans, big plans, plans that will shape the very fabric of reality!\" Unconfirmed rumors suggest that Uncanny has already received large orders from the government."

TECHWORLD NEWS: Uncanny unveils its new product - the Grocery Bot! Thousands of else-if statements, pre-recorded voice from professional actors, what more does this adorable android hides under its smiling face? Our expert got the answer for you!"

BIONIC USAGE GAINING IN POPULARITY. A recent Lykos study found that despite their high costs, nearly one in one hundred US citizens now have a compact bionic module, or CBM, installed. The most popular CBMs are "selfbuds", an implantable BlueTooth headphone; "InnerVision", an ocular implant that allows users to view their cell phone screens from inside their eyeballs; and "eStim", an implantable treating erectile dysfunction. Sam Novak, a spokesperson for CBM manufacturer Uncanny, said in a press release, "This comes as no surprise to us. CBMs are the way of the future, and Americans know that. We hope to roll out an all-new wave of CBMs next July, allowing our customers to connect via wi-fi to their computers and game consoles, or to remotely access their baby monitors and hear their child as though they were in the same room. I guess you could say, 'watch this space'!"

COMPACT BIONIC MODULES PASS PHASE 3 CLINICAL TRIALS. Uncanny, a former toy company now rebranded into a biomedical and military parts manufacturer, has unveiled its groundbreaking line of implantable medical devices, called "compact bionic modules", or CBMs. "The cost is still high, and we're aware of that," said spokesperson Danny Veil, "but we believe the product is worth it." Although a joint-assist servo CBM, for use in people with partial or complete motor nerve damage, currently costs between ten and fifteen thousand dollars, that doesn't include the cost of installation, rehabilitation, and power and recharging modules. All told, the average medical CBM will put you - or your high end insurance - out by upwards of anywhere from one to three hundred thousand dollars.

CHOP SHOP CRACKDOWN. [Photograph: Captain Soula Anagnos poses with seized contraband bionics.] Boston PD has seized over ten million dollars in illegally obtained bionic modules in a co-ordinated crackdown on more than ten illegal installation suites. "These people are criminals," said Captain Anagnos in a press conference. "Don't believe what the internet is saying: they're not Robin Hoods. They're stealing these devices from people who need them, and they're installing them unethically, often causing severe damage in their 'patients'." We spoke online to Dr. Jose Garcia, known for his medical blog "The Artificial Truth", about the seizure. "The party line doesn't make sense on this," Dr. García writes. "If these are illegally obtained bionics, why are they weapons? And not military weapons either. Finger blades, sharpened teeth? They aren't making these in dirty basements, these are coming out of factories. I see these here in Mexico, used by gangs. There is a market, and the manufacturers of CBMs are cashing in." Representatives from Uncanny, the largest manufacturer of CBMs in North America, could not be reached for comment.

Lab Notes

"We are really obviously in heavier competition with the private industry than the other XEDRA silos. Melchior detected a fairly clever attempt at database injection through one of Melchior's access points to external units. It was shut down very quickly, but we traced the origin back to Dr. Silverstein and the group that left to form Uncanny. They already took half our best people, do they really have to try to steal our work too? Admin was unhelpful, no big surprise there. Everyone knows they're cozy with Silverstein. Don't know why he doesn't just ask them directly for all our most classified stuff.",

Those ass - pardon me. Reverse dictation and overwrite. Our esteemed colleagues at Uncanny have pushed their version of \"deep learning heuristic AI\" public. They're just attributing everything Melchior does to a little chip, and telling everyone it's \"deep learning and we don't fully understand it\". Amazingly, even the comp sci experts seem to be buying it. I guess there wasn't much chance anyone was going to guess that the central server is actually literally seeing possible futures.

Related Lab Notes

Dr. Silverstein left, along with half a dozen of our best programmers. Apparently they have an agreement to start a private startup that will present some of our findings as new research. It figures Silverstein would come up with a way to get rich and hog the limelight for discoveries we can never make public.

The big exodus after Dr. Silverstein wasn't all bad. With him no longer swaggering around and getting in the way, Davids and Kohler were able to try out that perf package they wanted to run on Melchior core traffic. It worked better than anticipated. Once we work this into Melchior's central hub, we'll be able to communicate with dispersed XEDRA silos basically as fast as Melchior can process. That'll let us store Melchior's actual main unit back at Hub01, and just have little booster versions of it at the local lab level. $aving$ is a language admin speaks.

See Also

• Uncanny Dodge CBM (entirely unrelated of course)