🎮AI Waifus, Dying Websites, and the Mouth Mouse

UwU the singularity is near

Jan 22, 2024

Hey friends! Welcome to this week’s The Land of Random.

Last week was pretty fun here in snowy Tennessee - I built a giant snow fort for the kids.

I would have made it an igloo, but though I had the willpower, my body did not.

It’s the most snow we’ve had here in many years (and hopefully not the last - it would really suck if my kids were tweens the next time we had good snow).

The BAD NEWS is that we have bronchitis or something - one by one our family is being struck down with the sickness.

I’ve been enjoying some corny movies - like John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars or found footage films like Hangar 10.

Hangar 10 is slow-going but intriguing - so check it out if you like a decent creepyish found-footage film. I need to find more alien found footage films.

I won’t rest until I’ve completely exhausted the found footage genre.

Did you hear that Bluesky launched RSS feeds? An exceptionally web friendly feature - I’ll have to log back in to see what sort of cool people I can find to subscribe to.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

🎮AI Waifus

Ai this. Ai that. EVERYTHING IS AI.

However

I’m particularly interested in that moment when people start unironically talking to Cortana like AI people on their phones.

I think someone finally made an AI Waifu you could have live on your phone.

The App is called Amica.

Amica is an open source interface for interactive communication with 3D characters with voice synthesis and speech recognition. (source)

As opposed to other AI character apps (Oh Replika) this one is ENTIRELY customizable.

You can upload your own Vtuber models (using sites like Vroid), connect to different LLM’s, Open Ai’s Whisper, alter the prompt used for the character - and download it to your PC or Mac computer.

You can even run it locally - no internet or cloud necessary.

It’s open-source too.

I messed around a bit with the demo, and it’s a bit glitchy when it comes to the voice-to-text functionality - but still cool!

The voice will eventually propagate faster.

Who knows? Maybe something like this will be the app that goes viral. It’s worth keeping half an eye on this kind of tech so we aren’t taken by utter surprise when the Samsung AI girl becomes real.

Go check out Amica and try the demo at the link!

Amica Ai

🕸Dying Websites

Do you remember the ancient social media app Ello?

I barely remember it - I think I downloaded it once and said “meh.”

There’s a FANTASTIC deep dive by Andy Baio on Ello, its dreams, and its death.

It did spark joy for some though - and they used it enthusiastically until the end last Summer. (Well, they didn’t know it was the end).

Ello just STOPPED working one day, leading to the consternation of many.

The shutdown spawned a confused exodus of sorts, former community members trying to figure out what happened on the Ello subreddit, on X/Twitter, and the comment section of the only other blog post about it.
“years of my writing down the drain”
“Heartbreaking. I upload my artwork in there and I love the site because it really focused on art.”
Some people tried to contact Ello or Talenthouse directly, but the emails bounced.
Some former members set up a Tumblr group to try to find each other again, “an attempt to maybe preserve and/or recapture what little magic Ello still had for us.” (source)

Ello serves as a reminder of one of the cruel lessons of the internet - one day a site just stops working, and it disappears off into the void.

Sometimes we get answers. Sometimes Archive.org or another archiving group saves the day, and sometimes the websites disappear forever, living only in the neurons of those who’ve seen them.

This leads me to introduce you to an article I found called “A Million Ways to Die on the Web” by the Archive team.

There’s a lot of definitions for website deletions.

My favorite is “Yahoo-ed”

Situation: Same as Acquired/Acqui-hired, (Situation: Company A buys Company B, employees and all. Together, they will continue their incredible journey to make the world a better place. A few months/years/seconds later, Company B is dead and its employees are either laid off or reassigned to Company A projects.) but the purchasing company is known for suddenly and randomly shutting down websites. Named after Yahoo!, which has a track record of doing this. The prognosis here is critical. You should make local backups of all of your data ASAP (better yet, why wait until it's too late?) (source)

Ello got the ole Yahoo treatment - no warning, just a shutdown.

What’s next on the ole’ social media hitlist?

Who knows - the only answer is to keep archiving the old ones.

Go read the “Million Ways to Die on the Web” article at the link! There are tons of old websites to learn about and explore within each definition.

Million Ways to Die on the Web

😃The Mouth Mouse

What if you could scroll and interact with the internet using a computer mouse . . . in your mouth?

The MouthPad makes that a possibility!

Here’s the trailer

Can you imagine how transformative this would be to someone with paralysis or other disabilities?

The ability to access the internet using typical access methods?

Here’s Augmental Tech’s mission

We believe people deserve universal digital access to the devices that have become so ingrained in our daily lives. That's why we're committed to pushing the boundaries of how we interact with technology by building intuitive products that empower everyone to unleash their creativity. Whoever you are. Wherever you go. Whatever you do. The MouthPad^ was created for you. (source)

The tech on these is awesome.