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Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores

(www.walmart.com)
156 points Sean-Der | 7 comments | 12 Oct 25 14:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.66s | source | bottom

Alt link: https://mrchristmas.com/products/santas-magical-telephone

Video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z7QJxZWFQg

The first time I talked with AI santa and it responded with a joke I was HOOKED. The fun/nonsense doesn't click until you try it yourself. What's even more exciting is you can build it yourself:

libpeer: https://github.com/sepfy/libpeer

pion: https://github.com/pion/webrtc

Then go do all your fun logic in your Pion server. Connect to any Voice AI provider, or roll your own via Open Source. Anything is possible.

If you have questions or hit any roadblocks I would love to help you. I have lots of hardware snippets on my GitHub: https://github.com/sean-der.

1. 48terry ◴[14 Oct 25 07:25 UTC] No.45577167[source]▶
[flagged]
replies(3): >>45578778 #>>45579578 #>>45583784 #
2. kotaKat ◴[14 Oct 25 11:34 UTC] No.45578778[source]▶
All of the magic of the 1-900 numbers of the 80s and 90s with zero of the regulation. What could possibly go wrong?

btw, https://www.santasmagicaltelephone.com/privacy goes to a 404. Amusing.

3. billy99k ◴[14 Oct 25 13:07 UTC] No.45579578[source]▶
So he should just eat the cost that will add up over time, which is an unsustainable business model? Plenty of people buy subscription-based services, so I think 'everyone hates' means you actually hate it.

It's a great product that you can just ignore and not buy and the subscription model is told to you up-front, so there are no surprises.

I think it's a great use of 2025 technology.

replies(3): >>45579933 #>>45582230 #>>45583788 #
4. tommit ◴[14 Oct 25 13:41 UTC] No.45579933[source]▶
> So he should just eat the cost that will add up over time, which is an unsustainable business model?

No, I think he should just not have built this product. However, this is my personal feeling and it seems there is some kind of market for it, so what do I know.

5. tomalbrc ◴[14 Oct 25 16:50 UTC] No.45582230[source]▶
It’s an unsustainable product. Period.
6. butlike ◴[14 Oct 25 19:27 UTC] No.45583784[source]▶
They better not have used Grok under-the-hood, Santa might ask the kid to call him Hitler.
7. butlike ◴[14 Oct 25 19:27 UTC] No.45583788[source]▶
It's literally time-based e-waste. It's a bad product.