During school, our AI class had a guest lecture from Monaca Lam talking about Almond [1]. I personally don’t have much interest in virtual assistants, so I haven’t actually tried to use it, but curious to see if anyone else has heard of it or worked on the project.
Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?
121–130 of 166 posts
Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The CSAM fiasco" was just geeks on the internet being geeks on the internet. And some really bad marketing on Apple's part. The feature itself was perfectly fine, very few people even bothered to read up on it and focused on "OMG APPLE IS SCANNING MY PHOTOS!" without any nuance.
Yeah, they absolutely were not scanning photos and anyone with basic knowledge of how hashing works should know that. I was really disappointed with some of the reactions a saw coming from this community, which totally lacked any nuance or acknowledgment of how serious the issue of child abuse is.
They are Not scanning the photos But if there is a positive scan of the hash of a photo then the photo will be send to a human to check. Now with a certain error rate it is sure that humans working at apple will see privat photos that don’t have child pornography in them .
Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?
#123Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?
#124If you use Home Assistant and want something that is easy to setup, there is Home Intent: https://homeintent.io It uses Rhasspy under the covers, and automatically imports lights, switches, fans, etc and sets up sentences and intents for you. After initial setup, it can be used without an active internet connection. All you need is some container knowledge, an extra Pi, and a good speakerphone (like a Jabra Speak 410…
Wow, this looks really promising! Thanks for doing this. My family back home is hooked on Google Home but sister agreed to switch off for the kids - but her requirement is to be able to control Spotify via voice. Given I set aside enough of my time to help them out and figure out appropriate hardware, do you think it's worth a shot with HI?
I've been meaning to take a look at Spotify through Home Assistant and what that is capable of (and potentially voice controlling it)
But, if you wanted to write some python to directly play some pre-defined playlists (it currently can't do open speech transcription), you could definitely make that happen with Home Intent!
It supports custom components, so any integration is technically possible: https://homeintent.io/reference/developer/example-component/
I tried to design the interface to be easy to understand what sentences trigger what functions, and not have to write a lot of boiler code.
Hope this helps!
Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, this looks really promising! Thanks for doing this. My family back home is hooked on Google Home but sister agreed to switch off for the kids - but her requirement is to be able to control Spotify via voice. Given I set aside enough of my time to help them out and figure out appropriate hardware, do you think it's worth a shot with HI?
I've been meaning to take a look at Spotify through Home Assistant and what that is capable of (and potentially voice controlling it) But, if you wanted to write some python to directly play some pre-defined playlists (it currently can't do open speech transcription), you could definitely make that happen with Home Intent! It supports custom components, so any integration is technically possible: https://homeintent.i…
Cheers!
The Spotify part I'm assuming I will figure out - was more curious as to how your experience with voice control has been, if it performs well enough to be practical.
Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?
#126It's unfortunate that another comment that links to Rhasspy has been downvoted (I assume because it lacked any other context) so I wanted to mention the project with some additional context: https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io/ While I've not used the entire Rhasspy project myself (but trying it out is on the long list of things to do :) ) I have used the offline Text-To-Speech sub-project Larynx... ...and it is amazing !…
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Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?
#127It's unfortunate that another comment that links to Rhasspy has been downvoted (I assume because it lacked any other context) so I wanted to mention the project with some additional context: https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io/ While I've not used the entire Rhasspy project myself (but trying it out is on the long list of things to do :) ) I have used the offline Text-To-Speech sub-project Larynx... ...and it is amazing !…
This is still buried too but someone just released a promising HA integration of Rhasspy
Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?
#128Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?
#129I’m also very interested in an answer. We use Alexa a lot, but this week I had to unplug every Alexa in the house because a distant family member had gained access to the family Amazon account and was trying to use the “drop in” feature to listen to our conversations. In the course of our investigation I found out that Alexa does not log privacy related events at all (there is no record of a drop in stored anywhere),…
Well you installed an always on microphone in your house, attached to a processing unit connected to internet all the time. People said again and again it's going to be abused, and you had the technical knowledge to evaluate the risk. Yet you went with it. If it was not your scenario, it would have been another one. There will be other ones. Hell, with things like PRISM, that's inviting 3 letters agencies in your bed…
>Well you installed an always on microphone in your house, attached to a processing unit connected to internet all the time.
How is it different from a smartphone or notebook?
Re: Ask HN: Private Alternatives to Alexa?
#130Someone make all offline voice recognition system, you record any catch phrase or “intents” you want the dumb device to recognize as a wake word, no internet needed.
This is similar to a feature I saw in waze, you can record your own turn by turn audio directions by recording your voice saying things like “turn left” or “police reported ahead”, it’s how they offer all the fun celebrity and cartoon voices.
Thoughts?