Even putting a cheap smartphone SoC would take the gadget out of the kind of price range people are prepared to pay for a toy. And yes in products like this the hardware is usually subsidised and ultimately paid for with data harvesting.

I have no evidence to support it, but I feel those two things are linked. Everything I described can be run on a smart phone so the only reason they need a server that can brick the device is to use it to harvest data. In which case, the toy is second to the spyware and probably deserves be bricked.

There have been some attempts at something along those lines. They usually end up with the company going bankrupt, the servers being turned off and the toy turning into a paperweight.

"I am not a tree! I am an Ent!"

But it is the wrong term. Taxidermy (Greek; arrangement of skin) means exactly the opposite of what happened to that Furby.

This is a necropsy.

When it comes to creepy Furby art, this is just the beginning.

Always wanted to get another 90s era furby and build one of those open source virtual assistants into it. Train a voice model on furby, grimlins, ewok, Stitch, and maybe a few animal companions from Disney movies or something so that it speaks a coherent gibberish language with some crudely formed English like a cute creature grammelot. Then put it in charge of home assistant or something.

Bake in a couple of pre-scripted interactions like having it use hostile tones if it doesn't recognize the voice, or get confused if you ask it for something it can't do. Have it go full demonic with the voice turning gutteral and the language taking a Latin tilt if you activate the home security mode just to learn into the old urban legends of them acting creepy when left alone.

Honestly, I'm pretty peeved that we finally have the tech available to do what all those toys promised us as kids an no one seems to be interested in actually making something special. An LLM, a roomba, and a cyberdog slapped together could easily mirror a real dog in all the ways that someone who wants a robotic pet would care. Furbies were 3 buttons and a tilt sensor and they left enough of an impact that we're still taking about them. Imagine if they didn't have less complex input than my humidifier? Instead we just get spyware toasters, data harvesting washing machines, and child porn generators... That's such a waste.

Well, I love the word techsidermy now.

Awesome! I'm happy to hear that.

This goes unfathomably hard; fantastic work.

You're too kind. I really appreciate it.

Damn, those are some badass looking nickles

It would be really interesting to see how this is done

jokes aside this is a really incredible drawing, the photorealism on paper kinda blows my mind

Awesome! I'm happy to hear that. I love this art community.

alright fine, if we’re getting OC like this then ig i have to subscribe to this comm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo_nickel

The perfect following post

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

If you like creepy horror, season 1 of Channel Zero is this tooth monster, season 2 is No End House, a popup Halloween haunted house with John Carrol Lynch. AMAZING seasons.

This should be illegal.

In Kronos we trust.

Thanks, that was very disgusting