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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

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Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#161
post #74
post #7

I hit this all the time with "Salt Lake City", it gives me the time in India. Despite the fact that my phone should know that I have tens of contacts in Utah, but few if any in India.

I've never even heard of a Salt Lake City in India before... Wow,that is seriously messed up, because it's wrong even IN India, as they would of course refer to the city as Bidhannagar or just "Salt Lake" what with "City" not being part of the actual name.

Hmm, maybe that is how I'm triggering it? Asking what time it is in "Salt Lake"? Thanks, I'll play with that and see if it makes Siri behave better.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 treating Siri like a digital version of a Personal Assistant is going a bit far. It is a simple Voice Interface to a bunch of apps, local databases and cloud databases. Nobody has ever said "Should I buy an Apple Watch for $750 or hire a PA for $35,000/year?".

I don’t think asking the time in London is asking too much of a VA in 2020

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#165
post #95

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…

TBH, Google Assistant is not that much better. In the last few months it has become absurdly racist against my Italian accent, replying to me in Italian after I ask stuff in English - and getting the question wrong anyway. But yes, Siri is the worst.

Are you sure it's due to your accent? That seems like a difficult feature to even implement. I know Google loves to play language shenanigans based on your current IP address.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#166
post #120
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So do people just buy these to look cool? I tried using a Macbook many times, but often got frustrated and went back to my good old Linux laptop for development. Doesn't look quite as slick, but certainly gets the job done.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#167
post #83

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…

Heating is either a hardware issue or something like a broken program running continuously - on a normal setup that doesn’t happen.

Calendar / Todos depends on the backend. If you’re using Exchange, check the settings to confirm that it’s not set to poll every hour or something like that.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#168
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever cross the border from Frankfurt/Oder, the first thing you see in Poland is a giant Amazon building. Despite that building being there, Polish people still can't order at Amazon.

Polish people (in fact, people all over the world) can order on Amazon.de, they just can't get the same shipping rates that German customers get.

Ah yes, this is funny, because shipment from a warehouse in Poland to a customer in Germany, placing an order on amazon.de is considered "local", while shipment from this same warehouse to a customer in Poland is "international".

Before COVID there were rumors that Amazon may officially enter Polish market this year with state-owned Polish Post as the local shipping partner.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#169

I get this problem all the time and I live in "the right" London so it is not just a "nearest London" thing. It is not just digital assistants, but so many other things like Google maps, e-commerce sites, address auto-completes etc seem to assume that I want the North American one with a population of 300k that no one knows about, not the one that everyone has heard of with a population of 9 million. I've always just…

In the recent (~5y) past, I've asked Google Maps, from within London, a route to Charing Cross Station and been given the one in Glasgow.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#170
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH, Google Assistant is not that much better. In the last few months it has become absurdly racist against my Italian accent, replying to me in Italian after I ask stuff in English - and getting the question wrong anyway. But yes, Siri is the worst.

There’s nothing worse than being forced to use a language you didn’t explicitly request. Well, maybe some things are worse.

Probably at least number 3 behind the Holocaust and Internet Explorer.
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