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I Fired Google

theartofdoingstuff.com

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Re: I Fired Google

#121

Post by krabizzwainch »

cwnyth wrote: post #109
krabizzwainch wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget a pihole! Sometimes I really do forget how obnoxious the internet is until I try to look at a website when I'm outside of my ad free setup at home. Which in a way keeps me from browsing around websites on my phone and wasting time in that way.

ublock Origin works decently well on Firefox on Android. I think I saw that something worked on iPhones, but I never investigated it myself.

I have an old iPhone 14 Pro and I haven't been able to get too much working as far as adblocking outside of the pihole. Firefox for iPhone is bad and Mozilla has committed to simply not fixing it. But I want my bookmark sync so I'm stuck.

Re: I Fired Google

#122

Post by econ »

cfiggers wrote: post #106
RajT88 wrote: post #100

Earlier 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…

You are now technology enough to finally be ready for a mechanical cooking timer. The really old ones are even made from metal.

My preference goes to steampunk level wear and a sticky grease shell made from 50 years of cooking.

I got an electronic one once, it's only a few years old and it keeps eating batteries as if some subscription plan. "Progress" here already offers one more thing to do of the when I just woke up type.

Re: I Fired Google

#123

Post by projektfu »

elbasti wrote: post #11

I 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…

We are solidly in the Nutri-Matic phase of AI deployment. I fear we may never leave.

Re: I Fired Google

#124

Post by projektfu »

Hugsbox wrote: post #15

I 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?

It went away when I scrolled past it, but it is still a form of a dickover that shouldn't happen on good websites.

Re: I Fired Google

#125

Post by projektfu »

cmoski wrote: post #87
chymerax wrote: post #19

The whole upgrade thing is stupid. For years I was able to tell my phone in the car: "Play this song on spotify" and it did it. Not any more. "Ok google! Set a timer for 20 minutes." -> "Sorry Bob, I don't have permission to do that". "Ok google, navigate home" -> "Navigating to Store@Home24!" (half a country away). I agree. I wasn't smart but it was useful in certain cases. Now it's just lobotomized.

and it takes sooooo looooong to write a text message with your voice now.

I am driving along, listening to a podcast. A notification pops up that my wife has texted me. I tap the notification. Google reads the message.

"Would you like to reply?"

"No."

10-20 seconds pass.

"Okay."

Podcast does not restart.

Re: I Fired Google

#126

Post by projektfu »

hylaride wrote: post #12

The only things these "smart" speakers are good for is timers, adding to lists (especially grocery lists in the kitchen), and playing music. And even then they often stutter...

The regular Amazon Echo Dots are fine, but I have one Echo Show that I thought would be useful in the kitchen. The damn thing must be mining Monero because it's almost unable to do anything else most of the time.

Re: I Fired Google

#127

Post by hyperhello »

cfiggers wrote: post #106
RajT88 wrote: post #100

Earlier 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…

What you’re getting at is a personal basic language parser that input-output-maps to a safe subset of operations. It can’t delete your hard drive, but it has a “set a timer X, Y, Z” to some wait function execution. That would quickly be adopted and no one would ever upgrade in their life, so how is it profitable?

Re: I Fired Google

#128

Post by cfiggers »

RajT88 wrote: post #114
cfiggers wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Hey, that's clever, actually. I didn't do that because I didn't think of it!

Re: I Fired Google

#129

Post by tommodev »

elbasti wrote: post #11

I 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…

Yeah, I only ever use voice for music or navigation with android auto.

Navigation is OK but now for music, everytime I ask it to play a song, it warns me it can't do that on Spotify Free tier (I have a subscription?).

Then it goes ahead and plays the wrong song anyway.

Re: I Fired Google

#130

Post by fastforwardius »

netsharc wrote: post #95
fastforwardius wrote: post #77

Good to stop repeating actions making you unhappy, but how about going without assistants alltogether? From the examples given I haven't seen any meaningful life improvement with them.

"Remind me [at datetime/in x hours] about Y." is very useful for handsfree reminders. I have an alarm clock that reacts to "Hey Google" so I just say "alarm at xyz" to set alarms. With the phone, "Navigate home" saves a few seconds compared to opening Google Maps and hitting the "Home" shortcut. I'm just waiting for Google to send the email with the title like "An update about Assistant's future" to make the clock e-…

Fair point about the reminders!

May your wait be long.

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