While this was in a time when PCs where the main and only thing for most to access the internet, in my opinion this problem really took shape as smartphones got popular. They where shaped to adapt to a low-level of tech literacy, and lock you in instead of actually providing knowledge to the user. Facebook then went in, and then Whatsapp. Whatsapp was a fun one because carriers made it free of charge, the push to the masses was insane, and nowadays you are questioned and looked at weird if you say you don't have a Whatsapp account.

That trend is what broke most of the social interactions and services on the internet for me.

With Unity I'm trying to bundle a bunch of different free, cheap or open source solutions together. For facial, that includes a custom converter from the output of Deadface (based on Mediapipe) with ARKit blendshapes, and also eye movement. For body it's a custom hook to SlimeVR that allows you to mocap with cheap-ish IMU-based DIY trackers, and all that on top of a custom made (not free but open source) physics rig solution that gives you accurate rigid body real time collision, saving on cleanup work.

It's being going really nice despite being an unusual workflow. Hope to release it as a plugin for a in-development sandbox game in the near future. Mocap and animation has been my passion long before i started with tech stuff, and finally I'm able to pursue it.

I was thinking the other day, "since social media is kinda wearing off, could 'LLM As A Service' be the new addictive thing for the masses?" because i'm hearing horror stories of people who are outsourcing their brains, in some cases their feelings, to those services, and i personally saw a case of a 'high level professional' asking an LLM how it should respond to somebody in real time during a Whatsapp conversation. It is in fact a drug, and it tricks you very well into thinking you should rely on it.

Also when reading this piece (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47790041) earlier, i thought about it again. Nowadays instead of searching for something and being forced to learn, those services spoon-feeds contents of dubious accuracy for everybody, which will not only cause trouble for them eventually, but also creates a stream of revenue based on people's cognitive laziness, to not use harsher words.

Social media is/was bad and it relied on a similar mechanism, but i feel this is much worse. People crying as if their brains where took away is proof of that.

I wonder if it would be illegal for an user to use an outdated system without those functions when they roll out, or to use outdated applications, or to distribute outdated applications, or to keep mirrors of multiple versions of operating systems. I doubt they thought that far, or if they care at all.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Using_Source_Contro...

I know some government may do this with intent, but i imagine many governments simply never thought about it, or no citizen ever didn't accepted a "popular smartphone OS provider's ToS" and challenged that government requirement. I know some make offline alternatives very inconvenient, but that still technically legal.

That behavior also highlights how people within those services care so much about reach, clout, 'going viral', instead of communicating with other people.

This is the equivalent of a "Do you guys not have phones??"[1] but on a way larger scale.

At least where i live i am able to use the bare minimum of phones, even working with tech. The friction is increasing though, which worries me a lot, and day after day there is a new attempt to shove it down your throat if you want to be considered a member of society. Seeing that a lot of countries (including mine) are pushing for age verification, and the whole thing about Android blocking 'sideload', by the end of 2026 you won't be considered a human being without a government certified smartphone.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly10r6m_-n8

After that i moved to OpenAI, Gemini models just seem unreliable on that regard.

Despite rare reliability issues, my fear about it is that it requires a phone. Being so popular, i fear when places will refuse any other form of payments and accept only PIX, making anybody not using a phone unable to buy their products, with the common assumption that everybody uses it ("don't you guys have phones???"). You can't install banking apps on rooted phones or alternative mobile OSs (or is very very hard), so you are trapped with Android or IOs to use it.

I hope it doesn't come to that, but it seems it's going that way.

Nowadays, after 2 years of the surgery, she manages it with a restrict and healthy diet, and the pill. It takes a big toll on the well being even after the pain is gone, and she is almost always tired because of it, the body is constantly fighting the inflammation.