Why wasn't this done under Nest?
Google Home
131–140 of 468 posts
Re: Google Home
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, except I trust Google FAR less than I trust Amazon--simply because Google has permeated in many more facets of my digital life (gdocs, gmail, chrome, maps, search, etc). Amazon just has my shopping history.
I've worked at both companies, so i have a good sense of the soul of both. And I trust Google way more than Amazon. I mean bezos vs sundar. Enough said.
> I mean bezos vs sundar
What about Bezos vs Schmidt?
Re: Google Home
#133Competition against Amazon Echo is always positive for consumers.
Perhaps, but bear in mind that Google is a PRISM partner, whereas Amazon is not. The NSA will likely record every sound from your house, if you own this. Edit: Downvoters, please educate me on where I am wrong. Thanks.
[citation needed]
Last time I checked, the only connection Google had with PRISM was their fiber optics being hacked by NSA. I don't recall any proof Google was actively cooperating with them.
Re: Google Home
#134When Windows10/Cortana was released my buddy attached a mixer/switch to his PC allowing him to wire input mics and sound speakers to every room in his house. And though I can't see any personal uses for such a device, he swears it has changed his life, and the only thing I believe he does with it is tells Cortana to play Van Halan first thing when he wakes up.
I love the image of an old stasi officer seeing the current trend of people paying good money to effectively bug their own appartments. It must be surreal to them.
Re: Google Home
#135"
404. That’s an error.
The requested URL / was not found on this server. That’s all we know."
is it only me who can't see the webpage ?
//EDIT: weird now it's working :S
Re: Google Home
#136You too can bring a slice of 1984 into your home with this lovely crafted listening device!
The difference between this product and 1984 is that we choose to install Google home into our places of residence for our own convenience. We are not forced into installing said software. That having been said, if Google chooses to release the data to the government, it has an obligation to tell us about that or it will be behaving unethically. As matters stand, however, this is just a new technology with pros and c…
> That having been said, if Google chooses to release the data to the government, it has an obligation to tell us about that or it will be behaving unethically.
No, as far as I know that would be incorrect with NSLs in place. Gag order and such.
Re: Google Home
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
The hardware for this is the easiest part. Understanding voice that's far from the microphone (sound gets muffled, echos off walls, etc.), with other sounds in the background, is significantly harder than understanding speech near the microphone.
"OK Google", Google Now, their voice recognition tech, and NLP recognition are far far past Echo's version. So if the hardware is that easy this should have been out yesterday. The even mentioned earlier in the keynote how they've been training it Google assistant with background noise.
Speech recognition is a lot harder than you'd think, and the problems of far field speech recognition especially. All of google's in-house ASR (and wakeword) has been dedicated to near-field devices.
Speech is not a "solve it once and it works everywhere" kind of problem.
I would ballpark that Google needed to collect 10k hours of _far-field_ speech to train this to a level that was acceptable for the enormous variety of noise conditions and accents that a far-field system needs to work on. That scale of data collection takes time and a lot of trench-warfare effort.
Re: Google Home
#138Re: Google Home
#139Looks like something that should've been under the Nest brand. Whatever happened to that?
You're right. When I got the Nest products I assumed Google would foster integration with them. If I can't raise my Nest thermometer by voice with this then that'll be Google training me once again to not invest in their platforms.
You know that you can already do this right?
https://nest.com/support/article/How-do-Google-voice-actions...
Re: Google Home
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
You probably have on in your pocket already, is the thing. (I agree though, I don't want this in my house, and I turned off the "Ok Google" functionality on my phone)
I do. And I recognize the hypocrisy of that. I think the difference for me is that my phone isn't a permanent fixture in my house - it's not explicitly a surveillance device. Echo/Home are explicitly audio surveillance devices, though ostensibly benevolent in their design. I can stick my phone in a Faraday bag easily enough if I want to. I guess what it comes down to is that while I recognize that I sacrifice a measu…
> I think the difference for me is that my phone isn't a permanent fixture in my house - it's not explicitly a surveillance device.
For most people, its a permanent fixture on their person: people these days leave their home more than they leave their phone.
> Echo/Home are explicitly audio surveillance devices, though ostensibly benevolent in their design.
Echo/Home are no more explicitly audio surveillance devices than cell phones are.
> I can't say the same for Echo/Home, and it somehow feels qualitatively different in that phones aren't designed to be always-on microphones constantly processing audio to send it off to a server somewhere else for analysis.
Modern phones (considering the hardware and software stack together) are, in fact, designed to do just that, both Siri and Google Now voice recognition works (though it is, IIRC, disabled-by-default in the latter case) from the lock screen. Its just as always-on as Echo/Home.