I wonder if this guy even realizes what these devices do and how he's consented to 24x7 audio surveillance by companies whose moral turpitude he turns into a sarcastic joke.
I Fired Google
111–120 of 142 posts
Re: I Fired Google
#112I'm so much happier since I abandoned all of Google. Photos are with Ente (shitty buggy apps but e2e & managed hosting), Mail, Calendar and cloud storage is at Proton, Keep notes were moved to Obsidian (best decision ever). Phone is a Pixel 9 Pro XL with GrapheneOS but I'm ready to ditch it once Motorola ships their 2027 flagships supporting GrapheneOS. I have maybe 3 apps that I still have to open Play Store with a throwaway account for.
No idea how I managed to gaslight myself into liking Google products this long. I guess one just gets used to the overall brokenness, daily feature flag changes and the feeling of every interaction with their stuff being stored and analyzed forever.
Re: I Fired Google
#113I have an android phone which means I use android auto fairly often. The sheer quality destruction it's experienced since transitioning to Gemini is incredible. I experience this mostly when asking for music. Before gemini, mistakes were common but deterministic. It was easy to understand where the query had gone wrong and so how to fix it. Example: "Hey google, play Blackstar " (Plays the album blackstar by David Bo…
I wonder how much of it is them trying to minmax their revenue generating marketing algos for content discovery. (Willing to bet it's somewhat relative)
Pretty sure it just sucks. For years I've listened to Pablo Honey by Radiohead while going to bed. About a month ago it started to refuse to do that and instead start a radio from the first song on the album
Re: I Fired Google
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a bit, our Amazon Echo's were pretty decent at doing things other than music, weather and alarms. Then there was a big regression, and we stopped trying to make it do more. I guess the exception is turning the lights on and off. My wife and I both would love for the voice assistants to do more. They just won't. Even with weather, anything more than "what's the weather like today" will usually not get a good resul…
I have a crystal clear memory of the day I stopped trying to make voice assistants work for me. I use a timer every day to brew my coffee. With a voice assistant I can set a timer, but with the lack of a screen I can't see how much time is left. One day I thought, "I'm going to finally get around to digging into this voice interface and see what the options are," hoping for something like, "Hey Dingus, set a five min…
I don't disagree with what you said, but as a workaround, why don't you just set your timers for 4 minutes and 50 seconds?
Re: I Fired Google
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should urgently contact your IT department. Not enforcing ad blocking extensions is a security liability.
I'm in the IT department. Unfortunately massive global corporations routinely make extremely misguided decisions and don't particularly give a shit about what people like me have to say on the matter.
How about the FBI https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2022/PSA221221 or CISA https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/services/adblock ?
Re: I Fired Google
#116This was so spot on I felt like standing up and yelling, "Yes! Exactly!"
I have a similar experience. Having used Google home assistant since it came out for all the things that it's good for, and watched its quality fluctuate, I find I really have to be more careful nowadays when I ask it questions because it can go overboard more easily. Is there a term in AI research where it underappreciates the specificity that is being asked for? Perhaps the AI could be default prompted, "you are a…
Same thing with Alexa. I ask what is the weather outside. She gives me the current weather, what tomorrow looks like, and asks me if I would like an hour by hour breakdown or a full forecast for next week (or something like that).
So then I have to stop her mid-sentence and say, "Alexa, stop." Only for her to misunderstand what I said and say, "Now playing 'On the Rocks' by [artist name]."
I'm in the process of going as analog as I can.
Re: I Fired Google
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the IT department. Unfortunately massive global corporations routinely make extremely misguided decisions and don't particularly give a shit about what people like me have to say on the matter.
How about the FBI https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2022/PSA221221 or CISA https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/services/adblock ?
I'm well aware of all this, but I think you folks might be underestimating the hubris of gigantic corporations and how little my input as one IT guy at one little factory in one little part of the world means to the people who actually make decisions. Even if I wanted to bring these things to their attention, there is absolutely zero chance they'd ever so much as open an email from me. Whatever the company decides is gospel, only a fool would question their genius.
Re: I Fired Google
#118I have an android phone which means I use android auto fairly often. The sheer quality destruction it's experienced since transitioning to Gemini is incredible. I experience this mostly when asking for music. Before gemini, mistakes were common but deterministic. It was easy to understand where the query had gone wrong and so how to fix it. Example: "Hey google, play Blackstar " (Plays the album blackstar by David Bo…
I feel like the song suggestions also vary depending on the music service. For example the other day, "Play cicada by Igor" got me Cicadidae by Igorrr on YT Music (this is what I wanted), but got me Igor's Theme by Tyler the Creator.
????
So I tried "Play cicadidae by I-G-O-R-R-R" and I got Cicada by Good Kid.
That said I feel like no matter the music service it's a 50/50 shot each time if it plays the song I want. No matter how many times before I've played it or asked for it.
The latest Gemini update for Android Auto also absolutely ruined the voice control for Waze. It was already bad, but now Android Auto is basically unusable by voice.
Re: I Fired Google
#119I have an android phone which means I use android auto fairly often. The sheer quality destruction it's experienced since transitioning to Gemini is incredible. I experience this mostly when asking for music. Before gemini, mistakes were common but deterministic. It was easy to understand where the query had gone wrong and so how to fix it. Example: "Hey google, play Blackstar " (Plays the album blackstar by David Bo…
Even before the move to Gemini they've been on a downward spiral, 'skills' Google home used to have now don't work and it feels like they've been actively making it worse. I've not switched to Gemini yet but now I'm not too hopeful.
Re: I Fired Google
#120I Fired theartofdoingstuff.com for extremely obnoxious ads - particularly the "Would you like to save this stuff?" one that greys out the rest of the article you're trying to read to... checks notes ... ask if you want the article emailed to you? Who the hell thought that was a good idea?
Why would you even browse the web without using an ad blocker?
The site hides its content after a few seconds when using an ad blocker (on mobile Safari), showing a modal prompt asking to disable the ad blocker.
Of course there are ways around this, but at that point I don’t bother which such blogs anymore. It is a bit ironic given the subject of this blog post.