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Re: Google Home

#401

Post by [deleted] »

fizzbatter wrote: post #248
ewindisch wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Echo not only allows you to extend its vocabulary, Amazon offers the Echo functionality as as a service that any developer can use from their own hardware. If you wanted to use your own voice recognition and natural language processing, you could easily tie that into open source vocabulary that has been written for Echo.

Yea, i hear the API is quite good - i should have been more clear, it sounds like for me the main blocker is the trigger word. But yea, what i would want is to literally take all input from the Echo, have amazon/echo transcribe it to text, and then send it to my code. Echo would then read the english response back.

[deleted]

Re: Google Home

#402

Post by Morgawr »

will_brown wrote: post #13

When 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.

>the only thing I believe he does with it is tells Cortana to play Van Halan first thing when he wakes up

This is pretty much my usage at the moment with the Google Assistant. I tried it this morning for the first time. I sleep with my tablet on the bed next to me (I have a very big bed and a very small room, so I use half of my bed as a makeshift shelf). I woke up and went "Ok Google, play me some music, please" and then I gently woke up with the sound of whatever I had in my library.

Then I went to take a shower and realized that voice commands are really super useful for that situation. I used them to change songs or tell Google to play me different songs.

The only annoying thing at the moment is that the microphone input seems to be calibrated to a much higher volume than conversational voice so I end up shouting "OK GOOGLE" multiple times to get it to register and I'm pretty sure my flatmates aren't thrilled at that idea.

Re: Google Home

#403

Post by nunobrito »

ap22213 wrote: post #324
dguaraglia wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm amazed that people still feel this level of paranoia about stuff, when they have a clear option: do not use the product. Concerned about the privacy implication of Google Home? Don't get one. Don't like the fact that Apple Watch reads biometric data? Get a Casio watch. Don't like the fact that Facebook knows who your friends are? Go out more. The very fact that someone is watching the keynote and going "oh my Gaw…

Except soon one's environment will be enveloped by a cloud of such devices, each monitoring, tracking, and associating without consent. And, please don't think this is hyperbole. Independently, over the past year, I've caught parts of this same vision from two separate (large) companies. This is the low hanging fruit. The rewards are too high, the costs are low, and there are very few downside (to the companies).

This has always been the case across centuries. Information is power and grabbing or keeping it is a generational challenge.

So, you can't just put your arms down and say it is hopeless.

The Free Software Foundation fight was also hopeless when they started, look at what happened since that time and behold how software with available code dominates the market for third-party components.

It is in our hands the responsibility to act and make the new technology to respect privacy and people as much as possible.

Re: Google Home

#404

Post by Morgawr »

onion2k wrote: post #357
Klathmon wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- grocery list You could use your phone or take notes on paper, but being able to make a note that i need more flour the second i reach for the bag in the back of the cabinet is significantly easier. - order $thing Again, you might not think so, but instead of just making a note that i need more flour, i'd love to be able to just ask for more flour and know it will be my "normal" brand and will be here in a day or 2.…

Most people put things in the dishwasher or in the oven and then turn it on right there and then. Wanting the ability to turn it on remotely after you've put the necessary things in it is an unusual edge case, and one most people wouldn't pay extra for. Plus... An API to remotely turn on your oven is really dangerous if it isn't completely secure. I don't think I'd trust any IoT company to make one I'd have in my hou…

Most of the time you have to pre-heat the oven before you start baking stuff. And for the dishwasher, a lot of energy-saving plans make electricity cheaper in the evening/night so plenty of people load the dishwasher during the day and then turn it on at night. This is what my family has been doing for decades and it's what I'd also do if I had a dishwasher at home.

Re: Google Home

#406

Post by mbrock »

wowtip wrote: post #379
TeMPOraL wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The current trend of outsourcing everything to "the cloud" is partially fashion, partially laziness, and mostly dictated by business models - why do something the right way (from engineering point of view), when you can lock your users up in your own garden and extract rent (either directly, or by spamming them with ads and selling their data)? Our devices have incredible amount of computing power now - a gr…

- Security - Reasonable cost - Availability - Ease of use, especially setup - Eye candy - Social connections If you can check all of those for an FOSS solution, then I think you are home. Unfortunately most of the points are still not available for average Joe users with FOSS. Add to that, most people will give you a blank look when you start discussing how companies own your data, and even those who understand just…

It's also worth building networks of free systems even if they aren't immediately friendly for Mr Average Joe, simply to create and maintain a foundation for the future. I believe this is part of the strategy of the Free Software Foundation, which recognizes explicitly that free software often will lack some attractive qualities of proprietary software.

Re: Google Home

#407

Post by mbrock »

scalio wrote: post #371
amelius wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do you think that free software can keep up against these giants? In the near future, it will all be about having large amounts of data, and processing power; it will be less and less about the actual algorithms. I'm afraid the only way out will be to rethink the economy.

I think a neat solution is home-serving. A little box with big storage which acts as a hub for your family's digital life. It relays all your devices, gathers all info they're spitting out, and works on it. Results are fed back to the UIs. When you're out and about, your devices tunnel home automatically, knowing the endpoint is trustworthy (which is more than can be said about traditional VPNs). All your photos, twe…

Search is cool, but Google-style universal search might be a bit overrated.

Google still relies on institutions to provide data in indexable form, and those institutions build their reputations in ways that only partially rely on Google traffic.

I mean, a competent librarian has a kind of expertise that Google's algorithms don't, so that's one situation to explore for a post-Google idea of finding information (of course it's also pre-Google).

The social aspect of information discovery is something that Google and Facebook are kind of fighting over, but fundamentally it doesn't belong to them—it belongs to "us" intrinsically.

They shut down Google Reader but they can't shut down the human tendency to share information!

And the panopticon information provided by Google is often just a mesmerizing massive overload with no curation, weight, intelligence...

Wikipedia is the top hit for so many searches that one could see Google as an interface for it. Add Wikivoyage/Wikitravel, some other community wikis, API interfaces a la DuckDuckGo, social curation, etc, and you might find that the value of Google Search is actually not that incredible.

Re: Google Home

#408

Post by pjc50 »

FlorianOver wrote: post #393
nathan_f77 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How accurate is the voice recognition? Even when restricted to a few command phrases, I struggle to see how this can be overly accurate when running on a Raspberry Pi. I've played with voice recognition in the past, and anything less than 98% accuracy is super frustrating after a week of usage. Siri is the most accurate voice recognition software I've used so far, and even Siri regularly fails to understand some word…

It depends on the tts plugin you use. We have build and tested several tts plugins. I can recommend Microsoft Bing Voice and the new Google Speech API. Both are very rarely wrong.

Aren't both of those "send the speech to the server" systems?

Re: Google Home

#409

Post by pacala »

dredmorbius wrote: post #366
pacala wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you speaking with the window open? Bad choice, your neighbor's advanced far field microphones are picking up every word you're saying.

And laser mics can be aimed against glass. Both have to be specifically placed, however. Common devices with location tracking and audio monitoring capabilities already exist. They can be targeted for monitoring, and to the best of my knowledge, are . Some are actively monitoring activity on an ongoing basis -- e.g., someone's voice-enabled TV sets. I really can't even keep up with all this crap any more. All of whic…

> All of which is moot to the original point: that people can choose whether or not this equipment is in their environment or not. Effectively they cannot.

Absolutely. Just pointing out that we're on the path to adding always on cloud connected far field microphones in every other house in the country. Good luck "choosing" to not be listened to. The largest danger is self-censorship. "What is the risk somebody is listening to non-correct speech? I'd better watch what I say and not formulate non-correct speech."

Re: Google Home

#410

Post by fuck_google »

manachar wrote: post #202
mbrock wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Free Software Foundation, in its texts, often uses the phrase "the free world" to mean the realm of computing without proprietary restrictions, surveillance, etc. Approximately since Snowden, I've become more and more convinced about both the fragility and the value of this free world. And today, I basically see the tech giants as colossal enemies. Career-wise, henceforth I will avoid proprietary systems and dedi…

Freedom has always been fragile and eagerly bartered away for perceptions of safety and prosperity.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few." - Wendell Phillips (Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society on January 28, 1852.)
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