Ugh, continuing the dialog of Levy, Pearson, and Realbotix, all of whom are violently overquoted at this point. Levy’s original thesis was boring and heteronormative when it was published almost 20 years ago, and is worse while not having been redeveloped at all now. Pearson is also well know for “women will implant ipods in their breasts” and what not, he’s the futurist you can get to say anything for a good daily mail quote. Realbotix basically exists to get press at CES and that’s about it.
Glad that the article does take the whole subject to task but I’m just kinda ready to move on to something more useful. It’s a continued media engagement over things that were vacuous to begin with.
(Granted I work in the industry so this is also a case of massive overexposure heh.)
There’s interesting stuff happening in sex tech, but sex with robots sure ain’t it.
Akili Interactive, who made the product this 2020 report is about, eventually SPAC’d their way public but ended up being sold off to private equity in March 2024.
> With repos titled "buttplug-rs-ffi" and “buttplug-xamarin-apps,” it seems like you're trying to make sure every platform knows just how much you care about "intimate hardware control," but really, are you just trying to make it impossible for anyone to look you in the eye?
> Keep doing you, Buttplug; just remember, the internet is forever, and so is that awkward curiosity about your profile!
Android Bluetooth is a constant nightmare for me as a basically solo open source developer. I really don't want to buy a bunch of phones to test, and remote hardware testing is $$$.
Yup, exactly this. There's a certain level of confidence/stupidity required to put "maintainer of a sex toy control library" on your resume, and I'm interested in talking to people who are willing to take a risk on figuring out which one of those I am.
I really wish more headsets had eye tracking available, I've wanted to play with UX for multi-video/image gooning interfaces with gaze direction. Unfortunately headsets with that available built-in aren't cheap and the DIY solutions are still somewhat tedious.
Would love to discuss these use cases more though, feel free to contact me via one of the methods in my HN bio!
Also, if you're curious about web focused solutions to these issues, this is the perfect time to bring up a friend of our project, XToys: https://xtoys.app.
It's a fully web based (though closed source) toy control application that supports about as many devices as I do, plus a bunch of others that I don't, and has Blockly scripting and WebRTC for remote sessions.
Arctic Fox, Teledildonticist, Cube
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