Side question. Do you use Siri/GA/Alexa/Alternatives for something serious? (which can cost you something if not done properly)
Siri, What Time Is It in London?
611–620 of 776 posts
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#612Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the post points out that Siri from other Apple devices gets it right. Apple’s “generic knowledge system” can answer this. It’s only Apple Watch which has trouble. That’s kind of weird. It’s not that Siri is especially bad. It’s that “Siri” is something different depending on how you query it. Other online search systems aren’t like that, and integration and consistency are typically Apple’s forte.
Seems like an easy plausible explanation is mobile devices (like a watch or phone) take your current location into account, while a stationary device (like a HomePod) does not. Look, I'm not arguing it's not a bug, but I'm just really surprised at how software people, who I think should know better, are surprised that such bugs exist, or more importantly that completely eliminating all types of this class of bugs is…
Siri is often self-inconsistent. Ask a query again on the same device and you might get a completely different answer.
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#613Earlier quoted context omitted.
But if you had not worked at Google at the time, there’s basically zero chance you could’ve got anyone at the company to do anything about it.
My address has been blatantly broken in Google Maps for years now. When you enter it, for some reason it deletes the house number and just looks up the street, which ends up pointing to somewhere about a 10 minute drive away. For example, if my address was "123 Elm Street" it just ignores the "123" and searches for "Elm Street" instead. We have to give special instructions all the time to delivery drivers and other p…
A couple years ago, I sent a report to google maps about a small museum in a remote corner of Norway. The map had the location of this museum about a hundred meters off. Not long thereafter, I received a thank you note saying that indeed, it was wrong, but now they fixed it. And indeed they had. I suppose I should have been surprised at this success. Or maybe they were more responsive before.
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#614At some point about a year ago I noticed that I could no longer ask my Google Home devices "what's the weather?". I'd just get a generic "I don't understand" response. But more specific queries such as "What's the weather in Seattle?" would work. After a couple of weeks of this, I somehow got the idea that it was related to the devices' configured locations. And sure enough, telling the Home that I lived in the next…
What if you asked Google "what's the weather?" and it gave you a dictionary response of "weather" as an answer? Or with more snark, responded with, "I don't know. Look outside". "What is the weather report for today/this week?" is a more accurate question, despite an annoying amount of verbosity. But answers are still given relatively. "Cloudy" could be an accurate answer, for now . But it will be "Sunny" this aftern…
> What if you asked Google "what's the weather?" and ... with more snark, responded with, "I don't know. Look outside".
Now that you mention it, I find it strange that voice assistants don't give natural responses when they encounter an error. It would make them seem more real, and it would be less frustrating.
When you ask a human what the weather is and they tell you to look outside, you don't try to rephrase the question in a way that will make them give you the right answer, you just realize this is not the way to get an answer and you look for another way.
Maybe this isn't the best way for it to work in this case, since there is a different thing you can ask to get the response you want, but maybe this would make interactions better if, say, the phone can't detect your location. "Where did you want the weather for? I think I'm lost."
Of course, the other problem is that if it gives the same response every time it'll get grating. The hundredth time you hear "Look outside," it has probably lost its charm. I wonder how possible it would be to generate responses that take into account all previous conversations, so that this doesn't happen.
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s why insurance policies in the US usually comes into effect at 12:01 AM.
Same in the UK, and similarly they often cease at 11:59PM, which has always struck me as pretty unsatisfactory. What if a plane crashes on my house, between policies, during those two uninsured minutes? Sure, it's unlikely, but so are all the other things that might cause me to claim on my buildings insurance policy.
So make insurance policies overlap by 23 hours and 58 minutes? And leave it to the insurance companies to figure out which one gets to pay out if bad things happen during the overlap.
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#616A while ago I videoed three particularly silly Siri bugs:
• Not knowing Billie Eilish on some devices only: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMkZGO5iFKw
• A fascinating interpretation of two and a half months: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Giq7bQl-jk0
• Playing the wrong song for no explicable reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yj6rroaXL0
They really need to get a handle on this!
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#617Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if you asked Google "what's the weather?" and it gave you a dictionary response of "weather" as an answer? Or with more snark, responded with, "I don't know. Look outside". "What is the weather report for today/this week?" is a more accurate question, despite an annoying amount of verbosity. But answers are still given relatively. "Cloudy" could be an accurate answer, for now . But it will be "Sunny" this aftern…
Or with more snark, responded with, "I don't know. Look outside". One of my meteorologist friends always answers "What's the weather?" with, "The state of the atmosphere."
“What's the time?” “What's up?”
The possibilities are endless.
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#618Once I had a new assistant and I asked her to book me a flight to Boston. She went to the travel booking system, typed in Boston, then called me back confused. "Which Boston do you want? There are 8 of them?" I was caught off guard and told her I'd prefer the one in Massachusetts. I did not fire her. She was young, had a poor general education, and had never traveled outside her home state. Those things do not make h…
This is how people treated Siri when it came out. It's been nine years since, so it should really not be something that is OK now.
(Aside: are there actually people who grew up in the United States who aren't aware of the significance of Boston, Massachusetts, arguably the nexus of the American Revolution?)
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#619Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not in my experience. This is how 80% of my Google Assistant conversations go: Me: "Hey Google, play Nine Inch Nails, you know, the one in my Google Play library" Google: "OK, playing Nine Inch Snails, a band nobody on Earth has heard of and is definitely not in your library!" Me: (Repeat a few times, trying all kinds of accents, eventually I get tired of songs about nine inch somethings , and I pull the car over and…
And what bugs me the most about the Google Play Music Library is that it won't sync up with the YouTube Music Library... They have two different music services which I can use with one subscription but I can't have some of the songs on both of them or have one single library.
You're going to have to, as they're going to merge
https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/05/16/how-to-transfer-pla...
Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?
#620I recently asked Siri for directions. Between two matching locations, she picked the one 30 miles away instead of the one 2 miles away.