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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

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Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#111

Post by quickthrower2 »

globular-toast wrote: post #54
denster wrote: post #20

I think dates, times, UTC offsets, and locales/cultures is a topic we frequently think of as "that's easy" [1] when in practice it's painstakingly hard to get right. As an example, we've spent the past few days on our eng team refining our spreadsheet functions for date/time handling, and it's like the 5th time we've iterated on this (after supporting everything Excel / Google Sheets do). Funny part is, I'm sure we'l…

Any developer who thinks dates, times, UTC offsets and locales/cultures is "easy" is grossly incompetent (unless, of course, they've never worked with human-facing software before, in which case their naiveté can be forgiven).

“Human facing”? Any software worth it’s salt needs to deal with this stuff. Unless it’s a toy program. I quite enjoy Timezone stuff, perversely. Might be Stockholm?

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#112

Post by dustinmoris »

mattlondon wrote: post #109
dustinmoris wrote: post #51

An actual assistant would have a lot of context. Do I know that you're going to travel to London, UK for a break next week and therefore I would naturally assume that you are interesting in the time there. However, are you planning to visit your parents in London, Canada this weekend? Then an assistant who would still answer with the time of London, UK would maybe also not be the smartest? So really context is everyt…

Isn't half the point of these digital assistants that they do have the context? I've got no idea about Siri, but the android one ties into your Google account to get your calendar and mail so it can get context about up coming travel etc.

See my answer below, there was context and still there is no right/wrong answer. If you expect a specific answer, ask a specific question. If you fail to do so, then maybe that is the stupid thing which happened?

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#113

Post by madeofpalk »

SirHound wrote: post #16
_jplc wrote: post #8

Siri got it wrong and you got mad, we get it. The childish rant about firing assistants is unnecessary.

Is it? Siri is a digital assistant. The point is it should be held to a much higher standard. It's currently awful to the point of uselessness. So what standard of assistant is it? Not one you'd employ.

I think it’s an exceptionally American response.

It reminds me of Gamers Online that demand for people to be fired whenever the slightest mishap happens.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#114

Post by jotm »

rland wrote: post #70

I've read that Siri collects/sends home significantly less information about the user than its counterparts. It might just be that "getting it right" requires a complete violation of user privacy. I actually am perfectly fine with this.

Ah you may be right.

Personally, I'd give it all of my information short of financial/state ID/name and maybe accurate location if it means having a real personal assistant.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#115

Post by empath75 »

DangerousPie wrote: post #41

It's ridiculous how Siri is still this shitty. I have an 11 Pro and even on such an expensive phone I can't really trust it to do anything more advanced than set timers. Every few months I try to do something else and just get annoyed at how bad it is. Before lockdown I even had it disabled entirely because it would get activated randomly from time to time, even if nobody in the vicinity said anything remotely close…

It even sucks at setting timers. I asked to set a timer for 50 minutes and it clearly said 50 minutes on the screen and then “corrected” it to 15 minutes.

For a while, it randomly decided that “call my wife” meant to “call my mom.” It clearly said call my wife on the screen and then switched to “mom”.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#116

Post by jotm »

ramblerman wrote: post #23
_jplc wrote: post #8

Siri got it wrong and you got mad, we get it. The childish rant about firing assistants is unnecessary.

You'll be relieved to know the assistant in question doesn't really exist. No-one was harmed in the making of this post.

That's AIcist :D

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#117

Post by Slartie »

mojuba wrote: post #75

This example illustrates how difficult AGI is and how far we are from it. We, humans, tend to take advantage of the context to make communication simpler and shorter. Just think about all the implications of this one simple question: what time is it in London? Or e.g. how can I get from London to Dublin? If the person asking the question lives in Ohio, they may actually be talking about London OH (or Dublin OH). Some…

> If the person asking the question lives in Ohio, they may actually be talking about London OH (or Dublin OH).

I would seriously doubt this assumption. Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state?

On the contrary, this context information would make it much more likely that the person actually meant "London, England". Except if there is a timezone border going through the state, of course.

However, I obviously agree with your general point regarding the severe limitations of what we currently call "AI" and how little "intelligence" there actually is.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#118

Post by leonroy »

chappar wrote: post #83
DangerousPie wrote: post #41

It's ridiculous how Siri is still this shitty. I have an 11 Pro and even on such an expensive phone I can't really trust it to do anything more advanced than set timers. Every few months I try to do something else and just get annoyed at how bad it is. Before lockdown I even had it disabled entirely because it would get activated randomly from time to time, even if nobody in the vicinity said anything remotely close…

I had never used an Apple product before the company which I joined recently gave me a MacBook Pro. I am really surprised how bad the product quality is. The calendar notification is very random. Sometimes it fires, sometimes it does not. I have missed couple of meetings because notification popped after the meeting was over. Similarly the keyboard shortcut is random. Sometimes it opens the app, sometimes it does not…

> The calendar notification is very random. Sometimes it fires, sometimes it does not. I have missed couple of meetings because notification popped after the meeting was over.

I see something similar and assumed this happens because Mail / Calendar are relying on ics attachments (not sure what the behaviour is with the Gmail integration). I believe this means that if Mail is closed you don’t get Calendar updates until you open both and refresh.

Either way I find I have to refresh Mail and Calendar a lot to keep them in sync.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#119

Post by kristiandupont »

molteanu wrote: post #103
erikbye wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that this piece of "news" is front page is really stupid. There was a BBC piece yesterday about the condition in the Malakasa camp in Greece ... HN is not a news website in the traditional sense, even though "news" is in the name. How is this not obvious? For what you are seeking you should go to reuters.com, you'd probably have better luck.

Meaning, the rest of the world literally has other pressing problems than the ones the planet's most capable people are spending their days with. But I get it now. This new technology is not actually about saving the people, is about controlling them, regardless of what the motto of big tech might be. That quote from Dune is still right on track: "Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this…

Your outrage rings pretty hollow as you are on Hacker News spending your time complaining rather than doing something about all the problems in the world.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#120

Post by eknkc »

chappar wrote: post #83
DangerousPie wrote: post #41

It's ridiculous how Siri is still this shitty. I have an 11 Pro and even on such an expensive phone I can't really trust it to do anything more advanced than set timers. Every few months I try to do something else and just get annoyed at how bad it is. Before lockdown I even had it disabled entirely because it would get activated randomly from time to time, even if nobody in the vicinity said anything remotely close…

I had never used an Apple product before the company which I joined recently gave me a MacBook Pro. I am really surprised how bad the product quality is. The calendar notification is very random. Sometimes it fires, sometimes it does not. I have missed couple of meetings because notification popped after the meeting was over. Similarly the keyboard shortcut is random. Sometimes it opens the app, sometimes it does not…

Yeah it is the norm these days. I’ve been using macs for 15 years and they bave been fantastic until the very last iteration (after 2016, 17).

My latest MacBook (16") is so unstable that it is actually funny at this point.

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